conversations @ the real zoo

my own private utopia

2008-01-18T06:51:00.000-08:00

Sorry I’ve been away for awhile, I’ve been walking down the road of self-obsession. Its funny, when I first started walking down the path it was really exciting. Almost like the rush of a good drug leaving me wanting more. Like an addict, I couldn’t realize the effect of my condition on those around me. I was self-absorbed in my own world. In my own world there is more than enough to keep me stimulated and feeling alive… so I thought. Something happened last night, call it divine intervention, because I am still walking in a daze. I was jerked out of my own private utopia to find my real life here on earth I have a beautiful wife who is so thirsty for the deep drink of love yet is parched like a lost desert wonderer, and three loving daughters who are starving for the days when they can share daddy’s lap and just play till the evening bell tolls. It was as if someone who loves me came walking gently into my dark den of self-pity carrying a warm candle and found me with the needles of my addiction hanging from my arm. My eyes were changed; I look at the den that once gave me the reason do it again now feels like a dungeon that imprisons me from a true life.

The change is happening…the source of my wanting to live comes from not wanting to live for myself but to live my life for my family. May it be so, and may the One who leads the prisoners out keep my eyes and heart open to the Love that is right here! May I be fully present today and tomorrow!

walking the three leaf clover

2007-10-10T07:14:00.001-07:00

Today is a great day. I love starting off my day taking a brisk walk around Lake Ella. Today I noticed that there is a small line of small trees around the lake and that across the street there are a larger group of trees that line the street. It is interesting to me that I haven’t really noticed the difference in trees. In fact, I haven’t noticed a lot of things lately. Mostly because I have been walking around with my head down. I missed the fact that that there are three fountains around the lake. I knew there were fountains, I just never thought about them collectively. I’ve never really thought much about the shape of the lake itself either. I pondered today, if I were to take a birds eye view from above the lake what shape would I see? I think it might be shaped like a three leaf clover. Interesting. As I walk along I begin to think about the diversity of people that walk around the lake, so many different social and cultural groups are represented. Here all these various groups gather around this beautiful water garden if you will and just for once the diversity isn’t the dividing line, they are part of what makes the place such an enchanting mosaic. It is just beautiful. So many ducks and turtles, how do they all sustain life around so much human commotion?

It is 6 tenths of a mile around the lake, so I usually go at least 5 laps around so that I know that I have made at least a 3 mile effort of the morning. Around the lake there is an American Legion Hall that is used for all sorts of events, a locally owned coffee house, and then there is a cluster of cottages that have been converted into small shops. Everything from gifts to yo-yo’s are represented by these little shops. It really is an amazing little place. The thing I like most about the little shops is that they are all so unique and cozy; there isn’t an air of pretentiousness about these quaint shops. It is really very refreshing. My wife has said over and over she would love to have a little vintage shop in there one day. And I completely agree with her on that, I hope that one day we will have a spot where we can add to the cozy corner of Lake Ella. It would just be grand to live, work, and play, near the park at Lake Ella.

stickers and colored pencils

2007-10-09T18:16:00.000-07:00

Sometimes things start coming together even when you don’t know how they are going to all work out. Mostly, I think I have given up trying make stuff happen and just make the most out of what comes my way. I think I might be closer to living a life bent towards Providence than towards possessions and prestige. I struggle though sometimes knowing that the identity is gone. I may have severely under estimated the rebuilding process for living a life.

Today was great, after I left my consulting session; I went to my youngest daughter’s school and met with her teacher to discuss her progress. I was so disappointed with all the structure of learning geared toward these “state standards,” trying to have an open mind about it, I did see the merit in learning to build a foundation of how to read. I think my daughter has a good teacher and I think she enjoys school for the most part. I really enjoyed being present at the parent teacher meeting. I can’t even remember being present or going to one for my oldest girls. What a shame I missed out on those. When I came home, my oldest asked if I would help her with a school project and my attitude was genuinely glad to help. Later we had to go get more supplies. We had planned to only go to one stop, but it ended up being a three-store stickers and colored pencils trip. I really didn’t mind. On the way home she thanked me and said she really appreciated me taking her to get her supplies and that she actually enjoyed the time together and that was the highlight of my day.

i don't want anybody over for dinner

2007-08-19T20:19:00.000-07:00

I have this question: Since leaving the organized church, has my life worsened or gotten better? At times it seems as it has gotten worse, but I say that because I feel so completely present in my life that it is really messy. By really messy, I mean the practical things like being a husband who listens and communicates well, a father who teaches, loves, and disciplines seems to be elusive at best. And lastly, what does it mean to be a man among men is a question that plagues me.

For the last ten years of my life while I was in church, I was told that all of these things had to look a certain way. The problem was that very few people were really honest with the practical way these things looked. Everything was held up to the status of how God expects us to love and forgive. I went to teaching after teaching to learn how to live the christian life as a man of God. I think sometimes I was at so many meetings I had no chance at putting these things into practice. The busy life of a churchman not only blinded me at seeing the truth, but kept me running after a goal I could never reach.

So left alone to walk these things out, I find myself looking closely at how do I love my wife, my kids, and those I come in contact with on a regular basis? I feel so raw and insignificant that I can't tell if I am compassionate or not. Most of the time I feel like I am not. I say insignificant because my career and church life ended at the same time. And those two things really defined what I thought about myself. That is so ridiculous!

Do I believe that I matter even if no one tells me so? I should.

I say raw because that is what it seems like; everything has been stripped away and I am left to look at the way things really are. Reality is sometimes so difficult to see that I look for just about any distraction so that I don't have to deal with it, whatever "it" is. I am really tired of doing this alone. And I mean just me and my family are alone.

Hope is not lost. Last night a ray of hope and relief came by way of our friends Dave and Trish. They came over for dinner and drinks. Darla was honest about the fact they they had just caught us in one of those moments where we were just fed up to here with each other; I was not so honest. Dave and Trish just smiled and said "that's OK." The girls played a board game and Dave and I watched House of Flying Daggers. Without saying anything their visit spoke: we love God, and we love you, so let's be together in it.

Love came to dinner and lingers even still.

2007-08-16T20:46:00.000-07:00

a tale of two christianities

2007-08-05T07:35:00.001-07:00

(chart found on page 15)

I am reading what could be described as a very dangerous book. Dangerous in the sense that it risks being seen as challenging to the status quo. The books is Marcus Borg's "The Heart of Christianity." Marcus Borg is the Professor or Religion and Culture at Oregon State University and has written several books about the Historical Jesus.

I think this book is good for me because the approach of the earlier paradigm doesn't work for me so much. Borg is a scholar, fellow faith traveler, who is exploring with deepest sincerity the heart of Christianity. I am not saying that I agree with everything he says, in fact I find myself wrestling with a lot of what he writes. Nevertheless, his unending discussion and search for "how we can be passionate believers today" is worth the time to take part in.

what is social capital?

2007-07-27T08:14:00.000-07:00

"those tangible substances [that] count for most of the daily lives of people: nameley, good will, fellowship, sympathy, and social intercourse among the individuals and families who make up a social unit... The individual is helpless socially, if left to helpself... if he comes into contact with his neighbor, and they with other neighbors, there will be an accumulation of social capital, which may immediately satisfy his social needs and which may bear a social potentiality sufficient to the substancial improvement of living conditions in the whole community. The community as a whole will benefit by the cooperation of all its parts, while the individual will find in his associations the advantages of the help, the sympathy, and the fellowship of his neighbors."

written in 1916 by L.J. Hanifan urging the importance of community involvement for sucessful schools, he invoked the idea of "social capital" to explain why.

a new venture?

2007-07-22T09:15:00.000-07:00

"A good barometer to determine whether something will be of benefit materially, is whether it is the proper thing to do spiritually. A business venture that implies breaking your moral principles will also be detrimental materially.

At times, we experience tremendous pressure when our ethics seem to stand in the way of success --but this is only an illusion. The spiritual and the material are in conflict only to our subjective eyes. In fact, they work in harmony as one."

wisdom

find the spark

2007-07-18T20:36:00.001-07:00

"In every hardship, search for the spark of good and cling to it. If you cannot find that spark, rejoice that wonder beyond your comprehension has befallen you.

Once you have unveiled and liberated the spark of good, it can rise to overcome its guise of darkness and even transform the darkness fully to light." rebbe wisdom

paper tiger world

2007-07-17T19:36:00.000-07:00

"There are two paths:

One: Everything is for the good. Perhaps not immediately, but eventually good will come out from it.

The other: Everything is truly good --because there is nothing else but He Who is Good. It’s just a matter of holding firm a little longer, unperturbed by the phantoms of our limited vision, unimpressed by the paper tiger that calls itself a world, and eventually we will be granted a heart to understand and eyes to see. Eventually, it will become obvious good in our world as well."

A Daily Dose of Wisdom from the Rebbe
-words and condensation by Tzvi Freeman

creative people and creative spaces

2007-07-15T13:41:00.000-07:00

what would happen if a couple of passionate people got together and focused their creative thoughts towards solving a problem?

robert putnam discusses several stories of people who do just that. facing topics such as bringing peace to a neighborhood plagued with crime to a city wide creative project to host a neutral space where people of opposite viewpoints can co-exist for the benefit of a greater whole.

reading his book "better together" stirs in me a longing to be involved in something significant. my searching has been ongoing for some time. i have found bits and pieces of it in my own home. i would love to add to that a project that reaches out into the community and city in which i live every day. there must be something at work out there that is bigger than i am, but that requires my efforts and that of others who are willing to sacrifice time and resources in order that someone else might have the opportunity to experience belonging, purpose, and hope for a future.

social entreprenuership is a field that has recently popped up and really pushes my button. the idea of bringing people together who might not normally meet but yet find themselves compelled to join hand in hand to bring about change is a challange that sparks my soul. whether it is creating something new or whether it is renovating something that is completely outdated doesn't really matter.

maybe my searching is a search to find soemthing that is in need of repair. as i have been doing some much needed updates in my own home, i am also looking outside for a house or project that needs some restorative attention. as hard as it might be to believe, i find that most people don't want help or they don't want to admit that they could use some help. i wish the phone would ring and someone would say, help. i think the One who repairs the world knows that i want to help and i pray that things are in motion that will soon reveal themselves and that the project may begin.

wrecking my comfortable life

2007-06-11T18:50:00.000-07:00

ok this was a great book. in just about 3 days or so i devoured the pages to the last drop. here are a couple of quotes:

"Thoreau said, 'simplify, simplify, simplify,' but at that moment I couldn't help wondering if I had gone too far."

"Jesus promises a life in which we increasingly have to stretch our hands and be lead in places where we would rather not go." Henri Nouwen

Well here it is straight from the guys who lived and wrote the story:

mending or not

2007-05-29T21:32:00.000-07:00

"If you see what needs to be repaired and how to repair it, then you have found a piece of the world that G-d has left for you to complete. But if you only see what is wrong and how ugly it is, then it is yourself that needs repair." By Tzvi Freeman

the position of learning

2007-05-27T10:47:00.000-07:00

"As we prepare to recreate Sinai during the upcoming holiday of Shavuot, we are struck by the fact that their preparation to receive the Torah was not through diligent study. It was through personal refinement.

Why would personal behavior be the ultimate way to prepare to receive the wisdom of Torah? Because ultimate wisdom is about discovering – and experiencing – ultimate truth, and ultimate truth is not about being smart; it’s about being refined – about a truth that encompasses your entire being and transforms your entire person.

Compartmentalized truth can hardly be called truth. Truth in the mind is not a complete truth. Truth is a full experience.

By humbly refining yourself you become a container that can experience Sinai. Indeed, the Torah was given on Mt. Sinai – the lowest of all the surrounding mountains – to teach us that humility is the key to wisdom." Rabbi Simon Jacobson

the position of learning is a difficult one. in order for me to truly learn something, i must take the position and attitude of understanding that i do not know what it is that i wish to learn. the position of learning is humility. humility can take on many shapes for me. it might be to walk around without my temporary tooth out, it might be not only yielding my position on a certain topic but even going so far as to give first response to the competing argument and then going even one step further which is to repeat that competing argument with respect.

"A fascinating Talmud captures the power of humility in the intellectual pursuit: Three years the school of Shammai and the school of Hillel disputed… Finally a heavenly voice was heard to the effect that both schools expressed the words of the living G-d, but Halacha (the final ruling) prevails according to the school of Hillel. Now if it be true that both schools expressed the words of the living G-d, why should the school of Hillel be thus favored? Because the members of the school of Hillel were modest and patient, and would always repeat the words of the school of Shammai. Moreover, they also always gave the school of Shammai precedence when citing their teachings… From this we learn, that everyone who makes himself humble is raised up by G-d, and one who is arrogant is humbled by G-d. He who pursues greatness, the greatness eludes him, and he who avoids greatness is sought by greatness (Eruvin 13b)."

humility will look like setting aside my "i am right you are wrong" so that i might hear my wife. most recently i ventured outside of my understanding to listen to the sincere words of my bride. i learned that i have a wound that centers around trust. it may manifest itself in my feeling that i think someone might one day steal her away from me, but it comes from a 12 year boy who experienced that is falsely anchored to "marriage is not absolute and can not be trusted" when my parents divorced during my teenage years.

what do i do now? i have learned that deep down i have built a way of living around an experience. one that is real, but yet is not true? how does one tear down and rebuild? why does this deep wound come forward as we rest at the bottom of the manoa valley?

may the One who is true Marriage lead me to the truth. my heart, mind, and soul is bent low, i admit i do not know, please shine your face upon me that i might live in darkness no more. i do not want to live in fear. i want to trust in You. amen.

this is where we are staying

2007-05-24T21:04:00.000-07:00

the question at the bottom of the mountain might have been "will you rest?" what did Adonai say to his people? will you go and can you rest? what is this word rest? is it the absence of work or no labor? what does it mean to rest?

cris said to me before we left for hawaii, dude you got to just go and relax. relax might mean that all i might need to do is have the guts to get on the board and paddle out in the water, the waves will take care of the rest. maddie says saturday we might go surfing. look out i might just get on a long board and paddle out.

did i mention it is absolutely beautiful here. this is where we are staying. you can just make out the mission house behind the garden. if there is a land of milk and honey, this might be it. what a chance of a life time!

2007-05-18T05:47:00.001-07:00

more and more I am realizing that the jesus story is a life that is deeply rooted in jewish soil. For instance, for generations and generations the Hebrew people prepare themselves to remember the time when they were on the side of the mountain where Moses gave the instructions from YHWY to the people. This remembrance celebration is referred to as counting the omer. It is a count down to remember the first time they received the “breath of life” in the physical realm in the form of stones tablets. Moses came down from the mountain and captured what was believed as black fire written on white fire (google it if you are curious), the words of the One of Being.

Today we may misunderstand the 10 words as rules, but to the Hebrew people, they were and are like a wedding vow between husband and wife. Like remembering one’s wedding anniversary, the moment these words were given and received is well worth observing with great reverence.

The Hebrew people believed in the life source of these words with such devotion that they would literally write them down and place them in small boxes and tie them like bands to their wrists and forehead. They wanted to carry them with them everywhere they went. It was these words that would sustain and nourish them to be a people of hope to the entire world.

So it became a tradition to observe seven weeks of seven days to remember not only the words that were given but the process by which they were prepared to receive these words. Here is a sample of the blessing that is said each night as they remember:

May G-d be gracious to us and bless us; may He make His countenance shine upon us forever; that Your way be known on earth, Your salvation among all nations. The nations will extol You, O G-d; all the nations will extol You. The nations will rejoice and sing for joy, for You will judge the peoples justly and guide the nations on earth forever. The peoples will extol You, O G-d; all the peoples will extol You, for the earth will have yielded its produce and G-d; our G-d, will bless us. G-d will bless us; and all, from the farthest corners of the earth, shall fear Him.
We implore you, by the great power of Your right hand, release the captive. Accept the prayer of Your people; strengthen us, purify us, Awesome One. Mighty One, we beseech You, guard as the apple of the eye those who seek Your Oneness. Bless them, cleanse them; bestow upon them forever Your merciful righteousness. Powerful, Holy One, in Your abounding goodness, guide Your congregation. Only and Exalted One, turn to Your people who are mindful of Your holiness. Accept our supplication and hear our cry, You who knows secret thoughts. Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever.
Master of the universe, You have commanded us through Moses Your servant to count Sefirat Ha-Omer, in order to purify us from our evil and uncleanness. As You have written in Your Torah, “You shall count for yourselves from the day following the day of rest, from the day on which you bring the Omer as a wave-offering; shall be for seven full weeks. Until the day following the seventh week shall you count fifty days,” so that the souls of Your people Israel may be cleansed from their defilement. Therefore, may it be Your will, L-rd our G-d and G-d of our fathers, that in the merit of the Sefirat Ha-Omer which I counted today, the blemish that I have caused in the sefirah be rectified and I may be purified and sanctified with supernal holiness. May abundant bounty thereby be bestowed upon all the worlds. May it rectify our nefesh, ruach and neshamah from every baseness and defect, and may it purify and sanctify us with Your supernal holiness. Amen, selah.

For those who have connected with the Jesus way, a tradition of remembrance has also developed around the same period. It is known as Pentecost (check out wikipedia). The tradition says that

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance. “

Can you imagine trying to finds the words to describe this amazing event? Could the “tongues of fire” imagery connect the jewish listeners with the ancient tradition of the Great One speaking “black fire on white fire” that created and held all creation together and that was used to speak the 10 words to the Hebrew people at the bottom of the mountain so long ago?

So I guess my question is why would we want to remember both of these events now? What good would it do to bring these traditions forward? What might we learn about the One who is Life? Looking backwards to look forwards might prove to be very profitable. We might learn a great deal about who we were and who we are as the people of God, and possibly expand our thoughts about the Mysterious One who weaves throughout man and time.

2007-05-10T08:54:00.001-07:00

Space - Where do you live? Where do you walk? Why does it seem there is all this empty space between us? Have I done something to offend you? I can’t seem to hear you, I can’t seem to find you? Have you left the atmosphere? Why is there a wrestling in my soul? Could you please reach through to my void? I know that you are there but I can’t seem to put my finger on you?

Communicate - I would love a quick text message or a brief email, or maybe we could just skype later tonight. I really would like to hear your voice again. It seems like I am blind folded trying to pin the tail on the donkey except the donkey keeps moving. I really really long to just breath in your brilliant light. Yet I am just caught in between somewhere I am supposed to be and somewhere I am and it is very grey here.

Noise - I try to listen but then I pick up everything like distortion. I hear lots of voices speaking but nobody is really saying anything.

Bricks – it seems like invisible blocks are all around me, blocking me in and keeping everyone else out. Did I put up these blocks? How did they get here?

the darker side of me and spiderman 3

2007-05-05T06:46:00.000-07:00

this image screams "look at me, who am i, really, behind all the masks?"

i went to see spidey 3 last night. the girls were having a night out so i went by myself. there is something about this movie i don't like. i don't like it because it speaks of something dark. the thing that i don't like about the dark is that i am too afraid to face my own darkness. i have hid behind masks before. truth be told, part of me wants to be famous. i would love for someone to give me the key to the city. with all my best intentions, i still can be tricked by greed and selfish ambition.

back to the image at hand, here are some questions to me and spidey:

who is the person behind the mask?
who is the true spidey, the person in the reflection, the person being reflected, or is it the person behind the mask in the reflection, or a combination of all three?
why is this image so powerful?
does it have anything to do with the fact that it is upside down?

at first glance the image seems to speak about external differences, but if one takes just a moment longer... the message shifts to internal conflicts. this morning i read a comment by elizabeth on candace's blog. that comment, so honest, so confessional in its tone, confronted me and prompted me to explore issues of darkness of my own. thank you elizabeth for your transparency, i hope your risk yields significant reward.

so go see the movie, see if you can't help but to be pulled into the story. i think i am going to take the girls to see it tonight. now that i am less concerned about about who wins, maybe i can experience the huge sweeping symbolic themes as the story unfolds. wouldn't it be great if i could do that in my own personal life narrative?

not the God we would have chosen

2007-05-02T05:45:00.000-07:00

We would as soon you were stable and reliable.
We would as soon you were predictable
and always the same toward us.
We would like to take the hammer of doctrine
and the nails of piety
and nail your feet to the floor
and have you stay in one place.
And then we find you moving,
always surprising us
and tearing all things down
and making all things new.
You are not the God we would have chosen
had we done the choosing,
but we are your people
and you have chosen us in freedom.
We pray for the great gift of freedom
and that we may be free toward you
as you are in your world.
Give us that gift of freedom
that we may move in new places
in obedience and in gratitude.
Thank you for Jesus
who embodied your freedom for all of us.
Amen.

this is a poem/prayer by walter brueggemann

how to look at a rose again for the first time

2007-05-01T08:43:00.000-07:00

Perspectives – over the last two years I have been exploring and questioning the lens by which I view my faith. The lens of lessons taught, experiences learned, and stories remembered, as well as the movements from childhood to adolescence and finally adulthood. The interesting thing about perspective is that it is viewed from one’s current vantage point. In order to have a fuller perspective of something, one must try to view the object from at least 3 different viewpoints. Leonardo DaVinci used this 3-perspective approach to a subject matter with everything he created. In fact his journal, which was bought by Bill Gates for 30 million dollars in 1992, can only be read by holding it in front of a mirror. I thought this practice was very strange until I understood his methodology of 3 perspectives.

For a week or so I have been marinating on a certain passage in the scriptures. How might I look at Hebrews 10:25 with multiple perspectives? To avoid labels like conservative or liberal, I am just going to list them as I have been exposed to them in my life as a Jesus follower.

My first understanding of the passage comes from a Christian raised in a church environment all my life. So the “not forsaking the assembly” came with a connotation that was centered on the reality of “if the church doors are open, we are meant to be there.” In addition to this concept were the services themselves and the components that they comprised, like singing, sermons, and tithing. All of these things were meant to speak to living life, yet I spent so much time inside the church there was rarely any time to put them into practice. I remember many incredible manifestations of God in and around me as I reflect back on this vantage point of the assembly. During this period my first approach to this and any scripture was seen through the lens that this was meant literally and was written in order to speak to my current context of “the assembly” as church in a building behind the doors. I remember being taught as a child a visual illustration of this: Taking your hands, fingers first, and folding them in with the exception of your index finders and thumb pointing upward, one would say, “here’s the church, here’s the steeple, look inside and here’s all the people.”

The reverse side view comes from my life as a thirty-something. If the first view sees the assembly as the “church in a building behind the doors,” then the reflective side view sees the same “assembly” singing, speaking to issues of truth, and generosity expressed outside the brick and mortar. Also from this reverse vantage point the assembly is mainly seen as the people of faith in any given time or place. The songs and messages of truth and giving are no longer restricted to being expressed or received inside a building with the word “church” on the front of it, rather they can all be experienced by all people in situations that may or may not be labeled as Christian. Scripture from this vantage point is not limited to literal interpretation only, and must be first understood as it was said or written to the cultural context or the time and people it was written.

For example, the Gospels and the Epistles were written in the years 30-70 AD to a group of people who come from primarily Jewish orthodox or who were pagan gentiles having no orthodox at all. Further, it is quite possible to assume that the readers of the book of Revelations might identify the Beast as the Roman Empire, and the Dragon as Nero. Once again in the 1st century they may have taken the scriptures as literal just as I described in my first perspective, which gives credibility to the first view as a normal and natural response, but not the only valid viewpoint. In this second perspective, the passages in Revelations referring to the Beast might describe Germany, and the Dragon might be Hitler. In this sense it is history metaphorized. This is a short glimpse of my reverse side view of “the assembly,” meaning the people of faith who exist outside the brick and mortar of the church building and are not limited or restricted to searching for and of reclaiming the truth in all expressions. I think of the life story of Corrie Ten Boom, The Hiding Place, is a great example of “the assembly” viewed in this second perspective.

So what might the 3rd perspective look like then? What might it look like to take the first view and the reflective view and look at them together from an observer perspective? Jesus seemed to speak to this idea when he would say things like “you have heard it said…” I think the writer of Hebrews might be speaking to the understanding of what it means to approach God. If the writer was writing to a group of Hebrew Christians living in Jerusalem in the first century, the use of “episunagoge” in Hebrews 10:25 is unusual and profound! Normally, the author would have used the word "sunagoge," or regularly scheduled worship services, as in James 2:2 where "sunagoge" is translated "assembly". But the Hebrew Christians are urged to "EPIsunagoge". The "EPI" in front of "sunagoge" adds the meaning "super", or "over and above". So the text here is not telling the Hebrew Christians to go to regularly scheduled church meetings, but to encourage one another on daily basis, not relying simply on once a week temple visits.

Think of the dimensional aspects of an object, let's say a rose. Imagine a flat, one-dimensional rose, the kind of rose sticker my five year old might get in pre-school. Now compare that image with that of a two-dimensional rose which gives visibly to the front surface of the rose. Lastly, a three-dimensional image of that rose would reveal not only the shape and surface, but would give depth and fullness that cannot be viewed in the first two viewpoints alone.

This three dimensional view of the rose is the way that I would like to view the assembly. I want to see the depth, the richness of the colors, even the shadows of the petals where I lose the shape, and even for the sweet aroma of the rose itself. The difficulty is that I must acknowledge the first two as real and valid in order to move to the next perspective. Then I could view the rose connected to the stem as it sinks down into the earth. As a channel of life source, the stem connected to the root dives inward to find water and nourishment. From that point I would look to the top, the petals each reaching towards the sun to collect the energy from the heavens above. With this view, looking inside, outside, around, behind, under, on top, through the center, and in between the spaces, maybe I might be able to really begin to understand the Creator Maker’s beauty called “the assembly.” In this
3-point perspective it is no longer necessary for me to believe in the rose; meaning the existence of the rose is not dependant upon my belief in order for it to be a reality. The point here is simply to find myself captivated by the rose and all its beauty.

strange flame

2007-04-28T07:28:00.000-07:00

this is an article emailed to me this week; it is written by a jewish rabbi. it offers a perspective outside the norm for me. i hope it peacefully distrubs you as it did me.

The Ecstasy of Politics
Drugs: Strange Fire
By Simon Jacobson

Dear Rabbi,

Thank you for speaking to me the other day. Your encouraging words were truly helpful to me in my detox process. As I shared with you, I was one of those wayward teenagers who began using alcohol and drugs recreationally – as a social thing, bored and looking for fun. Then I became more and more dependent on them until I turned into a full blown addict. Procuring a drug became my daily and nightly obsession. I lied, stole money, betrayed people I loved and those that loved me – anything to get my high.

Even with my life completely out of control, I could not get out of my trap until I did some real irreversible damage which I could no longer ignore (as I shared with you, and would rather not put it into writing). Only then, when I hit “rock bottom,” did I began reaching for help.

After years, literally years of rehab, I am just beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel.

My question to you is this: Beyond the addictive, destructive and unhealthy effects of substance abuse, is there any thing wrong with achieving a high through foreign substances? In other words: if drugs and alcohol would not have any adverse effects would the Torah have a problem with their use to reach a spiritual high?

I know that this question may seem trivial compared to my dreadful experiences. It may even seem as if I am trying to find some justification for their use. I assure you that this not the case. But it does intrigue me to understand the nature of the high induced by drugs, and if it can play a role, when used properly (if that is even possible), in achieving transcendence?

I appreciate your help, your vote of confidence and above all your contagious hope that gives me strength to continue my fight.

David ,
Dear David,

Beyond the personal words of encouragement… I first hesitated to reply to your question, precisely because it seems completely out of place. You of all people know the horrible abyss of drug addiction. So why bring up even a slight consideration as to the possible benefits of an induced state of altered consciousness?

But then I reconsidered and realized that many others may have the same question. Additionally, it seems important to discuss not just the symptoms, but the actual roots of addiction.

You may be surprised to know that your question is directly addressed in no other place than the Bible itself. Yes, long before the plague of substance abuse in our times, we have a precedent that clarifies for us this topic, as well as many other issues around the timeless search for spiritual transcendence.

The opening of this week’s Torah portion concludes a mysterious event that took place three chapters back:

After the Sanctuary was finished, the Torah tells us that the two elder sons of Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, “offered a strange fire before G-d, which He had not commanded.” The result: “A fire went out from G-d and consumed them, and they died before G-d.”

Now, in this week’s portion, following the deaths of Nadav and Avihu, G-d specifically commanded that their example should not be repeated: “And G-d spoke to Moses, after the death of Aaron’s two sons, who came close to G-d and died... Speak to Aaron your brother, that he not come at all times into the Holy... so that he not die... with this shall Aaron come into the holy place” (Leviticus 16:1-2), and the Torah continues with the conditions how to enter the Holy of Holies. Rashi explains that this command comes immediately after the statement of the death of Aaron’s sons, to warn him that his service of G-d should not be like that of his sons.

What lies behind Nadav and Avihu’s actions? Did they behave properly or not? On one hand, they were clearly great men who “came close to G-d;” on the other hand, “they died” because they “offered a strange fire before G-d, which He had not commanded.” And G-d is warning Aaron not to behave like them.

And what is the meaning of the “strange fire” that they offered?
Above all, if Aaron’s sons behaved wrongly why is it important to document their sad story, which presents them in a negative light?

The key to the story lies in the word “fire.”

Fire is passion. All passion comes from the fire of the soul, “the soul of man is the fire of G-d.” Like a flame, a soul always reaches upward, licking the air in its search for transcendence, only to be restrained by the wick grounding the flame to the earth. The soul’s fire wants to defy the confines of life; the free spirit wants to soar ever higher, always reaching for the heavens.
Like fire, the spirit ablaze cannot tolerate the mediocrity and monotony of the inanimate “wick” of materialism. Its passion knows no limits as it craves for the beyond.

But just like it can be the source of our greatest strength, the fire of the soul, like any fire, can also be the cause of great destruction.

Therein lays the story of Nadav and Avihu, two extraordinary souls:

When the holy Sanctuary was finished Aaron’s sons, deeply spiritual individuals, were drawn to enter the holiest sanctum on earth. They wanted to bask in the ecstasy of the Temple’s pure spirit.

Indeed, the behavior of Aaron’s two sons was not a sin; it was an act of great sanctification, as Moses tells Aaron immediately following the tragedy: “This is what G-d spoke, saying: 'I shall be sanctified by those who are close to Me.'” The sages explain: Moses said, “Aaron, my brother, I knew that the Sanctuary would be sanctified by those who were beloved and close to G-d. When G-d said 'I shall be sanctified by those close to Me,' I thought it referred to me or you; now I see that they – Nadav and Avihu – are greater then both of us.”

Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar (the Ohr Hachaim) explains, that their death was “by Divine 'kiss' like that experienced by the perfectly righteous. Only the righteous die when the Divine 'kiss' approaches them, while they died by their approaching it.... Although they sensed their own demise, this did not prevent them from drawing near [to G-d] in attachment, delight, delectability, fellowship, love, kiss and sweetness, to the point that their souls ceased from them.”

Nadav and Avihu’s death was a result of their profound yearning for a Divine experience. Their error was that they initiated it at their own discretion, and “selfishly” allowed the ecstasy to consume them. Their sin was not they got close to the Divine, but that they died doing so. In a sense, they wanted it too much, so much so that they rushed into the fire and got burned in the process. Their bodies could no longer contain their souls.

Thus the Torah says “when they came close to G-d and (with such passion that) they died.” Why does the Torah add “and they died” when it has already said, “after the death of the two sons of Aaron?” Although it is healthy to divest yourself of material concerns, at the moment when you stand poised at the ultimate ecstasy of the soul, you must turn again to the work that the soul must do to transform the physical existence. Nadav and Avihu achieved the ecstasy but not the return. This was their sin and the reason for their death. They “came close to G-d and they died.” They allowed their spiritual passion override their task to transform the world. They escaped beyond the world and beyond life itself.

If their motivation was pure, driven by the fiery passion of the soul, why then was it called a “strange fire?”
Because even if their intention was a good one, it ultimately was driven by their personal desire, albeit a spiritual desire, but still defined by their subjective drives. It may have begun for Divine reasons, but they allowed it to become their own personal interest, mounting to a point of intensity that it destroyed them, thus rendering the “fire” into a “strange fire,” one which “He had not commanded.” They entered on their own terms, at their own pace, at their own choosing – not on G-d’s terms.
And this was the reason that they actually ended up dying in the process. Because the same G-d that imbued us with passionate souls also commanded us to use the passion not to expire in ecstasy and escape the universe, no matter how appealing that choice may be, but to channel the passion downward and transform the material world in which we live into a Divine home. This is the purpose of the Temple: “build me a sanctuary (out of physical materials) and I will rest among you.”

Thus, the ultimate test of Aaron’s sons’ intentions was their inability to integrate the experience: Had they patiently and humbly entered on Divine terms, they would have been able to integrate the experience into their lives and return to sanctify their world. Integration would have confirmed that they were doing it not for themselves but for the cause, for G-d. The fact that they allowed themselves to be consumed with their own spiritual fire, demonstrated that it was their “own thing,” not G-d’s, a strange fire not commanded.

Now, in this week’s Torah portion, “after the death of Aaron’s sons,” Aaron is warned not to enter the Holy of Holies like his sons did. Rather, “with this shall Aaron enter the holy place” – in awe, obedience and self-abnegation. And in this way he would be able to “make atonement for himself and for his house” on the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur, and to say a prayer for the sustenance of Israel – acts of concern for the world.

In other words, the determining factor whether the soul’s fire will be a constructive or destructive force is dependent on the person’s motivation, how he begins his spiritual journey: If it’s a self indulgent experience, driven primarily by personal desire and interest, then you will not wish to turn back from your private ecstasy to the needs of the world, and the fire will inevitably consume you. If, however, it is driven by the selfless dedication and all-out surrender to the Divine, then within this ecstasy, the desire ultimately to return and sanctify the world will always be implicit, and the fire will lift you and your world to exalted heights.

In the famous Talmudic story of the “four that entered the garden” (a mystical experience) only Rabbi Akiva began the journey with the proper attitude: He “entered in peace and (therefore) came out in peace.” Because he entered with humility, in obedience to the Divine will and seeking to unite the higher and lower worlds, that is why he came out in peace. His intention of returning was implicit at the outset of his path to religious ecstasy. While the other three – Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma and Acher – all entered for other reasons, which determined how they emerged. Ben Azzai entered seeking ecstasy, not return; therefore he “looked and died.” Ben Zoma “looked and was stricken” (with madness). Acher “mutilated the shoots” (i.e., became an apostate).

We are told the story of Aaron’s sons in order to teach us an invaluable lesson about our own life experiences:

Each of us contains a powerful soul, with fire in its belly. Each of us will, at one point or another, encounter spiritual opportunities; passionate moments which will entice and light up our fires, craving transcendence – the need to get beyond the daily grind. Transcendence can take on many shapes: Spirituality, music, romance, travel, or sexuality, to name a few.
How you act in these times – when the flames of your soul are ablaze – will define the destiny of your life.

This explains why this week’s portion is known by the name “after” or “after the death.” Why name a Torah portion with an odd title – “after the death?” Why emphasize their tragic death?

The Torah is telling us that the “death” of Aaron’s two sons – both the death itself, and “after the death” – teaches us a vital lesson, actually a twofold lesson:

1) The search and need for transcendence, the craving and yearning for a spiritual high is healthy and a necessary ingredient in the human journey. All mans greatest achievements, his noblest acts, his deepest loves – draw from the soul’s passionate fire.

2) Yet, as with all powerful things, great care must be taken that the spiritual experience doesn’t “burn you up,” but is integrated in your life.

The fire of our souls, like any fire, can be the source of sustenance (healthy fire), or… an inferno (“strange fire”). The challenge is great. The choice is ours. Therein lies the twofold positive lesson from the children of Aaron, both from their death and “after the death:”

Their death teaches us how not to enter the Holy of Holies uninvited, not to enter at our initiative, at any time we so choose, not to enter as a result of our personal desire; “after the death” teaches us how to enter – “with this shall Aaron enter the holy place” – with utmost humility, with sensitivity and above all, total immersing and sublimating yourself into the experience.

Let us now return to the issue of drugs and alcohol. The essential problem with inducing a (spiritual) high through foreign substances is threefold: 1) It is driven by personal desire, and therefore 2) you have not earned your right of entry, and 3) it will not be integrated into daily life. It will be an escape.

And this is precisely the reason why foreign substances are addictive and take control of your life. As their name implies, they and the altered states of consciousness they induce are foreign substances – a “strange fire” – which don’t belong to you. For a brief, but temporary moment they have the power to transport you to another place. But you don’t belong there and you have not earned your way. Having not paid your fare, the “strange fire” will come back to collect the debt: It will take control of your life until it consumes you.

By contrast, when you earn your right – through the arduous, selfless work of ego-nullification – then the emerging spirituality carries you to great heights.

The formula goes like this: Superficial experiences are just that – experiences that are felt with your sensory tools. Real experiences – love, truth, health, happiness, sexuality, spirituality – are the exact opposite: As soon as you sense them, as soon as become aware of yourself, your needs and your search – you lose the ability to “own” the experience.

Why? Because a real experience is not an experience; it is state of being. Health for example is not a verb, but a noun. It has no sensation. It just is. The same with true love: Love can manifest itself in the senses and be expressed through the senses; but love itself is not an action, but a condition, as is truth and all other inside-out realities.

Spirituality, the spiritual high, is a permanent state of being that lies beneath the surface of existence. The “container” can be artificially forced open with a “strange fire” (foreign substances), but only temporarily. No single act can be done to access the spiritual truths within; no magic can open up your soul. When you selflessly dedicate your life to a higher cause, when you transcend your ego and strip away the forces of material self-interest that impedes access to your soul within, then the spiritual will emerge. The operative word is emerge. You don’t create it, you don’t induce it, you don’t import it; you eliminate the weeds and the flower emerges.
When you try to take control, you lose control. When you let go, you begin to gain control. When you try to contain it, you lose it. When you let it free, it becomes yours.

The soul’s fire manifests in many ways. Perhaps its deepest expression is in the fires of love and sexuality. Like a fire, burning desire can be the root of our noblest acts, but also the source of our most decadent behavior. Sexuality as selfish drive, divorced of intimacy, brings us to the lowest depths; infused with sanctity, intimacy, commitment and integration, it lifts us to the our greatest heights, infusing us with the power to create – allowing us to enter the “Holy of Holies” close to G-d.

But this is paradoxically possible only when our burning desires are not driven solely by human needs. When they are, the same force is rendered into a destructive addiction.

All addictions are a result of a deep void demanding attention. The desperate search for passion will look for an outlet. If the spiritual thirst is not quenched in a healthy way, it will demand nourishment at all costs – even if it means self destructive methods.

Addiction by its very nature means profound dependency. Why would someone get addicted to anything? Why would we need something that badly that we should become addicted to it? True, this may be due to the actual substance itself. Some substances are chemically addictive; they have the power to stimulate and ultimately alter certain chemicals in the brain that creates a compulsive craving and uncontrollable dependence on that substance. But that still doesn’t explain why a particular individual allows him or herself to become addicted. What need is this substance induced altered state serving; what void is it filling?

Addiction demonstrates two things at once: A deep hunger, but the hunger is being sated with a force outside of yourself, trapping you, killing you. The solution is not to eliminate the need (by becoming a passive bore), but to relieve its pangs by feeding it with the surrender to the Divine.

The ultimate relief of the soul’s profound tension is bittul – humble submission to the world of spirit. The greater the soul’s hunger and passion, the more its need for selflessness.

The story of Aaron’s sons teaches us that the spiritual state fills the healthy human need for transcendence. But this healthy need can be filled in unhealthy ways, served by unhealthy tools; the desire can be pure, while the objective of the desire may not be, turning the flame into a firetrap.

From Aaron’s sons we learn why the Torah utterly rejects any induced state of altered consciousness. Besides for the obvious issues of health, addiction and complying with the law – all fundamental concerns in the Torah – the mere fact that one turns to a “strange fire” to access spirituality (even if the experience was in some ways genuine) reflects the abovementioned distortions: A yearning driven by self-interest, unearned, escapist and non-integrative.

Even when using healthy and natural methods and means to achieve spiritual highs, the key lies in your actual attitude and drive: If transcendence becomes another extension of yourself, and is driven by your need or desire to get high, then even if you use healthy methods, ultimately transcendence will elude you. Only when you realize that you have to let go – let go of your drives, needs and even hunger – then the spiritual high will emerge.

And then, its will also be an integrative experience instead of an escape. It will open you up to spiritual freedom, instead of becoming an addictive monkey on your back.

Ecstasy that is driven by human politics is politics not ecstasy; ethereal perhaps, but still man-made. Spirituality on human terms not on spiritual terms.

The fire of the soul is our greatest asset. The passion that burns in the unfettered spirit can overcome any challenge. Yet, our success in harnessing these powerful flames is in direct proportion to our humility and selflessness in appreciating them. And carefully protecting and nurturing these flames.

The question we must always ask is twofold:

Are my fires burning?

What will I do with these fires – will I indulge myself in them or will I allow them to lift me and the world around me to greater places?

powerful words

2007-04-20T05:33:00.000-07:00

FROM THE WORDS OF OUR SAGES ON THE PARSHAH:

--Evil talk kills three people: the speaker, the listener, and the one who is spoken of. (Talmud, Erachin 15a)

The speaker obviously commits a grave sin by speaking negatively of his fellow. The listener, too, is a partner to this evil. But why is the one who is spoken of affected by their deed? Are his negative traits worsened by the fact that they are spoken of?Indeed they are. A person may possess an evil trait or tendency, but his quintessential goodness, intrinsic to every soul, strives to control it, conquer it, and ultimately eradicate its negative expressions and redirect it as a positive force.

But when this evil is spoken of, it is made that much more manifest and real. By speaking negatively of the person's trait or deed, the evil-speakers are, in effect, defining it as such; with their words, they grant substance and validity to its negative potential.

But the same applies in the reverse: speaking favorably of another, accentuating his or her positive side, will aid him to realize himself in the manner that you have defined him. (The Lubavitcher Rebbe)

the garden and the voice

2007-04-17T19:44:00.000-07:00

Two young hearts wandered into a life garden of rose bushes. Searching for the truest path through the garden, they walked around admiring the beauty of the roses. Reaching for the beauty, they pricked their palms on the long stems. Both of them sensing that they were meant to be caretakers in this garden together, found it difficult at times to handle the deep thorns of life. How would they work together? In the midst of their toil in the soil and the feeling of not knowing exactly how to tend to the delicate beauty around them, they listened for guidance.

One day in the middle of cuts and bruises they heard a voice. “Who are you?” they asked of the voice. With a tone as soft and beautiful as the roses, the voice said, “I was here when the garden was made and I will be here long after you are gone.” “What is your name?” they asked. With a gentle reply, she said, “I have been known by many different names, but you might recognize me best by Sophia.”

So with an open spirit to learn, the two young lovers walked hand in hand with Sophia through the garden. The melody of her voice sang, "It's through me, Lady Wisdom, that your life deepens, and the years of your life ripen."

dreaming with leonardo

2007-04-11T18:37:00.000-07:00

In my recent visits to the library I have been exploring the story of art. I find it interesting that throughout human history, man has been fascinated with attempting to capture the divine. From Rembrandt, Michelangelo, to DaVinci each artist has tried to recreate the beauty as seen by the eyes of their heart.

Watching the History Channel the other night, I found it very interesting the connection between artist, man, and God. I realize that unfortunately many times the creative works of man have been elevated above the Great Creator. Man, at times, has fallen in love with his own creative artwork. I guess that must have been a risk God was willing to risk when he lit the divine creative spark within our souls. Knowing that with the magnificent power of creativity we might seek to elevate ourselves, but at the same time through the hands of his artist the world might come to experience a divine language that transcends culture, time, and people.

I really don’t have a point here. It is really just a trail that somehow has caught my attention. I have talked to people about this dream I have that is somehow connected with a school of sorts that is centered on art. Maybe a charter school or something, and the main idea would be middle school, why middle school? That is the last group of folks that I would choose personally, but yet part of me knows how extremely difficult that part of the life journey is. Middle school is the transition from adolescence into adulthood but you’re not quite there yet. Not to mention all the hormones and social issues that arise during that period. I dreamt a year ago of a place called “mosaic learning.” I really didn’t know anything about it, but I found lots of things online about it. In fact I found one white paper on a school in England that made the break from traditional school patterns to do something special for this group of people.

Once again all of this is way beyond my comprehension or control. I don’t know anything about a school, education, or starting or running a whole school. And when would I find the time to do it. Nonetheless, the dream is still stirring in my heart. I can’t do anything to make this thing come to life, but I think that the True Teacher knows the dreams that linger in my heart.

Saint Francis of Assisi held to the opinion that we are all made with a divine creative spark. He took this position from the “imago dei” that is woven into the creation narrative in Genesis. He even went so far as to say that when we intentionally walk away from the creative person, our true identity, that we are rebelling against God. That is some pretty strong language. I don’t know if I can totally go all the way there, but it is a very compelling position.

I continue to dream that things can be different… I think Leonardo dreamed too.

living in the garden

2007-04-09T11:58:00.000-07:00

"to live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle persistent efforts into a garden of solutude." henri nouwen

being present in lovingkindness

2007-04-05T15:26:00.000-07:00

Day 2 - Gevurah of Chesed: Discipline in Lovingkindness

"Healthy love must always include an element of discipline and discernment; a degree of distance and respect for another’s boundaries; an assessment of another’s capacity to contain your love. Love must be tempered and directed properly. Ask a parent who, in the name of love, has spoiled a child; or someone who suffocates a spouse with love and doesn't allow them any personal space."
by Rabbi Simon Jacobson

what does it mean for me to respect my wife's boundaries? maybe it means that i should not be like an army general with marching orders to divide and conquer. maybe i should not be authoritarian but rather diplomatic and sensitive when it comes to her borders of sensitive issues. how to be tempered and direct, this is a very interesting idea.

most of the time when engaged in sensitive issues with my wife, i have a tendency to retreat, to withdraw from conflict. i was reminded of this recently when watching "shalom in the home" on tlc. the husband of the family that the rabbi was visiting was retreating when any emotional turmoil arose. in addition to his retreat, the husband also refrained from any heart level engagement with any of the family. he was brought up in an environment of "tough love" and therefore had a very hard time being open and vulnerable with those he loved.

i recognized and related to the feeling of wanting to retreat when i saw the husband do it in the show. but the rabbi explained to the husband that by leaving the situation and going out to the garage, he was sending a message to his family that he cared more about working on his classic mustang than he did about working on his family. wow, the guy was completely oblivious to that perception.

this spoke to me about my level of connection with my wife and kids. do i regularly take time to explain my feelings or to ask for their true feelings about life? do i take time to share the thoughts that are wrestling in my head? do i seize moments when it is obvious that one of them are troubled, or do i just wish it all away hoping that it will work itself out? these are serious questions that stare me in the face and demand attention. discipline can mean the regular practice of being present in lovingkindness.

crazy life poet

2007-04-04T20:09:00.000-07:00

here is my first attempt at a very large scale piece of wood. this is a backdrop for a teen poetry slam at our local library this month. i am really excited to bring this as my contribution. i have thoroughly enjoyed learning this process of painting a brick wall and then painting the graphic over it. i haven't used spray paint as a medium before but it really is fun. it kills your fingers and forearms after a couple of hours though. anyway,

masking off the board with painters tape and then painting really made for a great finish for the wall. funny though i was telling a friend that yesterday i was helping a local school restore a mural on their building that had been vandalized with graffiti. and then for the next two days i worked on a back drop painting my own graffiti. sometimes life is such a paradox.

this friday we are going to a first friday art gallery night. there is a vibrant local art community that i am looking forward to checking out. the event is held at railroad square art park. it will be a date night for darla and i as the kids are going to be at grandma's for the night, yea!

what's in it for me?

2007-04-03T19:42:00.000-07:00

day one - Chesed of Chesed:

"LovingKindness in Lovingkindness. Love is the single most powerful and necessary component in life. It is both giving and receiving. Love allows us to reach above and beyond ourselves, to experience another person and to allow that person to experience us. It is the tool by which we learn to experience the highest reality – God.

Examine the love aspect of your love. Ask yourself:

What is my capacity to love another person?

Do I have problems with giving?

Am I stingy or selfish?

Is it difficult for me to let someone else into my life?

Am I afraid of my vulnerability, of opening up and getting hurt?"

questions posed by Simon Jacobson

i think the question for me is, can i give without wanting a "thank you" or "boy, you did a great job?" those things are fine by themselves, but sometimes it seems like my motivations are driven by the need to have those "atta-boys." i think this year God has been working with me in this area. giving, wanting nothing else in return, that is a character of Yeshua. when i think about it, giving in any other way seems so burdensome and heavy. this word "chesed" brings a new dimension to the word freedom; freedom to give out of knowing who i am, not dependent on external forces or compliments.

crummy cleaning time

2007-04-02T12:32:00.000-07:00

Here are the seven areas on the emotional map that i mentioned yesterday in my blog:

Emotion 1 - Chessed is lovingkindness, benevolence—anything that’s included within the family of love, and the warmth and nurturing that comes with love. It’s a feeling in our hearts. It’s our first and most fundamental emotion.

Emotion 2 - is Gevurah the alter-ego to love, and that is justice, discipline, restraint, awe. If love is giving and flowing, there’s another emotion which is withdrawing, focusing, disciplining, channeling.

Emotion 3 - is Tiferet. Tiferet is translated as beauty, harmony and compassion. It’s somewhat of a synthesis of the first two, but it’s beyond that: tiferet has its own power, the power of compassion that goes far beyond love. You can have love for those who are close to you, those whom you appreciate. Compassion is for strangers and people who may not deserve it: mercy, or in Hebrew and Yiddish, rachmanut.

Emotion 4 - is Netzach. Netzach literally means victory, but the emotion involved is endurance, fortitude, ambition. Netzach is the driving force behind every ambition.

Emotion 5 - is Hod, and that translates into humility, splendor, and the emotion of humility, yielding. If the alter-ego of gevurah is chessed, where chessed is a flowing love and gevurah is the channeling, the measuring of it, then if netzach is ambition and drive and fortitude, hod is humility and yielding that balances the ambitions within us.

Emotion 6 – is Yesod. Yesod literally means foundation but it’s an emotion called bonding. When you bond with something it’s not just that you’re experiencing it, you actually bond with it.

Emotion 7 - is Malchut. Literally it means nobility and kingship, but on the emotional spectrum, it’s sovereignty, leadership, the independence of a human being, the feeling that we are sovereign, that we have something to contribute, something unique about us.

“Freedom means the liberation from dependency on matters or forces that are external to our true selves and goals. True freedom allows the self to shine forth unhindered.” by Yaakov Paley

The escape hatch

“You're trapped in your marriage. You've said certain things, she's said things, both quite unforgivable, so now you're imprisoned in this cube of tense silence you used to call "home" and the only place to go from here is down. Yes, there is a way out -- just yesterday there was a moment, a fleeting opportunity for reconciliation. But you were too big to squeeze through.

You're trapped in debt. There's the house redo you just had to do, the car you absolutely had to have, the vacation you simply wanted (you deserve something for yourself, too). The bills are closing in, and the only place to go from here is down. Yes, there's a small opening, through which a tiny voice inside you sometimes beckons, "You don't really need this." But you've gotten too big to squeeze through.

You're trapped in your life. Whichever way you turn, you encounter walls -- unshakable habits, antagonistic colleagues, elusive desires. The only direction that seems not to be closed to you is down -- the direction leading deeper into the quagmire.

Sometimes, the weather clears enough for you to see the escape hatch set high up in the wall -- the way out to freedom. But it's so small. Actually, it's not so much that it's small as that you need to make yourself small -- veritably flatten yourself -- to fit through.” by Yanki Tauber

arrogant bread -

“The characteristic of leavened dough (Chametz) is that it rises and swells, symbolizing pride and boastfulness. A Matzah, on the other hand, is thin and flat, suggesting meekness and humility. Passover teaches us that Chametz – arrogance – is the very antithesis of the ideal of Torah.” author unkown

Spring cleaning –

“Ready or not, here it comes... Once again it is time for the annual pre-Passover house-cleaning. It is time to move the furniture and scrub the chairs, line the counters and scour the dinette; perhaps, perhaps, we will unearth a stale cookie or come across a half-eaten piece of licorice which the baby stowed behind the couch.”

Growing up cleaning my house was usually reserved to times when special quest were coming to visit. With that understanding, I never understood “spring cleaning.” Why clean up when nobody was coming to visit? Maybe my understanding of cleaning is being redefined. Looking for crumbs in the cushions and corners is about something deeper. For thousands of years this physical act of “spring cleaning” is a symbol that speaks to a spiritual reality. Where have I allowed myself to become egotistical? Have I literally become puffed up?

Setting out to find areas where I have become full of myself is not a fun project. I think however that it has huge implications on how I love my neighbor. Becoming “flat” is not so easy. Flat sounds like humility to me. No wonder people for generations have tried to abstain from eating bread filled with air during this time. The act of abstinence is not the point, it is “remembering” that the Creator acted on our behalf and liberated us from our enslavement. We didn’t’ break out of Egypt by our own might!

So maybe part of my captivity is my ego, and humility shapes my realization of true freedom deep within.

“The characteristic of leavened dough (Chametz) is that it rises and swells, symbolizing pride and boastfulness. A Matzah, on the other hand, is thin and flat, suggesting meekness and humility. Passover teaches us that Chametz – arrogance – is the very antithesis of the ideal of Torah.”

Chametz -- grain that has fermented and bloated -- represents that swelling of ego that enslaves the soul more than any external prison. The flat, unpretentious matzah represents the humility, self-effacement and commitment that are the ultimate liberators of the human spirit.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe points out that the liberating quality of matzah is also shown in the forms of the Hebrew letters that spell the words "chametz" and "matzah". The spelling of these two words are very similar (just as a piece of bread and a piece of matzah are made of the same basic ingredients) -- chametz is spelled chet, mem, tzadi; matzah is spelled mem, tzadi, hei. So the only difference is the difference between the chet and the hei -- which, as the illustration above shows, is also slight. Both the chet and the hei have the form of a three sided enclosure, open at the bottom; the difference being that the hei has a small "escape hatch" near the top of its left side.

Which is all the difference in the world.

who are you to begin such a journey?

2007-04-01T07:14:00.000-07:00

traveling requires a map. a map is made by those who have braved the unknown and carved out a way. the idea behind this journey is not destinational, rather it is experiential; it is to experience what others have gone through deep inside their being. where does this inner trek begin?

The beginning of all journeys is separation. You’ve got to leave somewhere to go somewhere else. It is also the first step towards freedom: You ignore the voice inside that mocks you, saying, “Who are you to begin such a journey?” You just get up and walk out.

landmarks from the patriarchs - genesis 12 (abram leaves), exodus 12 (hebrew people leave egypt). sometimes leaving what you have always known is very difficult. we don't realize what impact local routines and material surroundings have on our beings, until we think about moving on without them. anxiety can quickly come rushing in, followed closely by panic, climaxing in fear. so what are we to do when these emotions come flooding our safe little predictable world? we must begin to dismantle these distorted emotions. this redefining process could be what is meant by the word "kadesh."

This is the first meaning of the word, “Kadesh” -- to transcend the mundane world. Then comes the second meaning: Once you’ve set yourself free from your material worries, you can return and sanctify them. That is when true spiritual freedom begins, when you introduce a deeply significant meaning into all those things you do.

the sages tells us that there are seven basic emotions that make up the spectrum of human experience. at the root of all forms of enslavement, is a distortion of these emotions. what does it look like to travel deep into these areas of the soul? could there be a perfect journey - perfect in the sense of completeness not free from error? seven weeks of seven days - 49 - this is the scope of the ancient spiritual path that begins at Passover.

2007-03-31T08:48:00.000-07:00

If I lived in the first century, and my family for the last 40 generations had carried with them the weight of imprisonment, I would take freedom very very seriously. In fact our whole attitude and way of life would be centered on one ancient but profound act that set our family free from 4 centuries of oppression. A tradition that has been passed down from generation to generation would involve remembering the great Divine work of Freedom. The best way for our people to understand freedom was to remember that we were liberated from our enslavement.

To truly know freedom is to remember captivity.

This “remembering time” would occur around the time of spring known as Passover. As I am just learning about this I think I will journal this time on my blog, maybe others will learn as I learn. My hope is that this journey is more than obtaining knowledge; rather that it is an internal journey.

As I follow in the footsteps of many who have walked before me, I recognize that the Creator of All is the One who transforms all who travel the great path. It is our choice to acknowledge Him or not. I choose to acknowledge what I do not understand, but rather choose to go beyond that point led by the Spirit of YHWH.

2007-03-30T06:45:00.001-07:00

My Own Prison
Originally uploaded by ryan_carville.

what is freedom? is it just doing what i want when i want?

Am I not then just a slave to my whims and fancies? What if my fancies are not really coming from me? Maybe I have desires that were placed in my head by others. Am I truly free if I follow those desires? What if I have instinctive drives that are harmful to myself? Can you call me free if I am bound by those drives? What about compulsive or addictive behavior? Bad habits? Can't you also be a slave to what you want?

True freedom is the ability to express who you really are. If there are levels to your personality that have not been explored, if your soul has not had the opportunity to be expressed, then you are not yet free.

"Passover is all about breaking out of our constraints, attaining personal freedom. Each of us is enslaved inwardly in some way or another and Passover helps us break out of our personal slavery and become free. Doing things that are beyond our comfort zone, pushing our limits for the sake of a higher purpose, a higher calling, actually liberates us.

I think this is a concept many people don't recognize. We think of slavery as someone else enslaving us, but in truth, we are often the ones enslaving ourselves. We are so busy being influenced by money, by society, by external pressures, that our true identity and abilities can be hidden.

It is this slavery that keeps people caught up in "Egypt," in the false safety net of their lives, in their external distractions, and it keeps people from going into the wilderness of their souls, from delving deeply into themselves.

It is only when we realize what we have within, that we can act from the inside out instead of the outside in." Matisyahu

2007-03-29T18:39:00.000-07:00

The Sages tell us that the leaving of Egypt is a constant process. It means realising our freedom, in all aspects of our lives. What does this mean?

For a plant, freedom means good soil, water and light. To be trapped in one place does not worry the plant. It does not expect to be able to move around. But an animal does. For an animal food and water are not enough. The animal also needs freedom of movement. But the animal does not feel deprived if we do not teach it how to read and write, how to think and be creative. So we come to the higher freedom of a human being. He or she needs food and water, freedom of movement - and also education, creativity, freedom of self-expression.

what do we mean by self-expression? It means a sense of identity, the quest for knowledge, for the "imago dei" expression in daily life. If we take this away, or limit it, then the aspect of the person - his or her essential aspect - is not free. It is in Egypt.

The way to go free is to let this "imago dei" aspect express itself. In every generation, and indeed every day, this is our private Exodus, our personal, our "true self' liberation.

The Exodus and Daily Meditation

There is a kind of personal deliverance from 'Egypt' every time we stop and still ourselves before the Creator. The soul of each person is a sacred portion of the Divine. However, the soul feels itself to be trapped by the limitations and self-centredness of the body and the ordinary material concerns of the person. For the soul, this is a kind of Egypt. In fact the Hebrew word for Egypt, Mitzrayim, is very similar to the Hebrew word for 'limitations', meytzarim. Sometimes the person is able to leave these limitations of material concerns, at least for a few moments.

This is a brief moment when the person is actually focused on the One of Being. For those few seconds one is oblivious to the weather, the state of the world, the meal one is going to eat, the possibility of buying a later model convertable. At this moment there is just the individual and God. Temporarily at least, for the soul, this is freedom.

What does all this mean to me here and now?

Today I felt the warmth of the sun and the spray of the sprinkler on my feet. I looked deep into creation through the evergreen blades of grass glistening around my feet and for just a moment I was ok... in the center most part of me... I was free for a moment.

a dialogue worth having

2007-03-25T17:44:00.000-07:00

i began reading "the meaning of Jesus" this weekend. it is a difficult read, yet i am completely intrigued by the first two chapters. borg challenges me on one end, wright pushes me beyond what i thought i knew on the other. i wonder what it was like for the two of them to work on this project coming from such diverse perspectives?

reading the foot notes

2007-03-23T08:48:00.000-07:00

i just finished reading "sex god" by rob bell. it was fantastic. i think it was better than his first book. there was a lot of material in this book that i hadn't heard him teach on. and the real bonus is the reference/notes/comments section; he gives people a whole new rabbit trail to chase. whether you are single or married this book is a must read just for the exposure to a larger understanding of what sex is and isn't all about.

ache

2007-03-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

i ache today

from the center of my being

i try to look away

but the ache remains

i don't want to be alone

love is such a mystery

she wounds

she heals

deep in a cave

i want to hide

heavy is my chest

where is the air

hear me

beautiful One

come to my aid

do not let this depair

grip too tight

humble me

restore hope

or live with pain

if i must

and he shall come riding a red stallion

2007-03-19T16:23:00.000-07:00

and a cry of great joy was heard throughout the land! for the rider and his steed had come at dusk and rescued the winn people from their plight. the great horn of hampshire was blown as the red stallion rolled upon the wild plains of overgrown cloverleaf and dandelion.

can i just tell you how overjoyed i was to see my good friend pull up in his truck with his mighty red riding lawn mower. not only did he cut my grass, but all the leaves were sucked up like some wicked kirby vaccum was unleashed upon the fields of weeds and such. then all the kids got a turn riding the mower. it was as good as pony rides at a birthday party. my friend stayed and the rest of his family came over as we shared a fine meal together. we topped off the night with a game of apples to apples. if you haven't played, you are missing the boat.

seriously, i want you to know it really did my soul good for my friend to show up just at the right time. he may or may not have read my plea for help on saturday, but when he came with mower in tow, he brought a little piece of hope along with him. when the lee and winn family come together, the ten of us make one heck of a party.

i think God does hear the whinning and complaining of his kids. and unlike me he responds using all the resources under heaven and on the earth, so that we might know His goodness to us.

thank you anthony, my good friend... may your deed be returned to you 100 fold!

the movement of creativity

2007-03-18T19:33:00.000-07:00

"A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his mind is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist."

(St. Thomas Aquinas)

broken camera - lens of life is cracked

2007-03-17T18:41:00.000-07:00

things are breaking all around us. this week our garage door buckled while trying to close, today while walking at lake ella our camera dropped and busted into two pieces, and then this afternoon one of our girls pushed a boy down and he fell on his glasses cracking the lens. his mom came down and told me that he had just bought the glasses and they were nearly $200. she is a single mom i think and has five boys one who has mental disabilities. who knows what kind of life she really has behind the doors of her house.

ok all of this is going to sound really stupid but here it is. we sold all of our stuff because we were hoping to move to hawaii to start a creative community center or something like that. now we are back in our house and have minimal stuff. the minimal stuff is not so bad. but we have no lawn equipment and now it is time to do spring yard work. it is a different feeling not being able to just go out and do what it is you need to do because you don't have the tools to do it. it sort of is a trapped kind of feeling.

yes we have neighbors and friends who would gladly let us borrow their lawn stuff, but that flows against the grain of being self sufficient. so does being self sufficient somehow work against the idea of community?

now the family camera is broken, this has become almost a 6th member of our family. we have shared many moments of our life with our friends through the pictures taken from our camera. but does a broken garage door come first? not to mention my wife's glasses are just about out of prescription. oh yeah i forgot that the timer on our dryer doesn't work so sometimes it just goes for hours and hours if we fall asleep and forget to check it. oh yeah and the ceiling fan in delaney's room doesn't work, well the light part works but the fan part doesn't. is it neglecting these things or is it trying to get by with minimal stuff? at this point i really don't know.

is this the grip of materialism or is it being lazy or is this simply being retarded? once again i don't know. and if all men struggle with wanting to fix things what does all this broken stuff say about me. i really don't like this post one bit. in fact i think i should just delete it. i really don't want all you people out there to know that i am this whacked out about this silly crap.

self taught artist - art in public places

2007-03-17T11:06:00.000-07:00

"You can find God through your art for God is spirit. The nature of God is love, that's nature. You use that God nature to reach out to people. The universality of life - and the universality of art - is based on this spirit. They're one and the same."

James Washington

akeelah and me

2007-03-16T14:52:00.000-07:00

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” – by Marianne Williamson

this is a quote from the film akeelah and the bee. laurence fishburne co-stars in it, when he reads this quote he sounds like the voice of a rabbi. his character plays that of a teacher, i can't help but to hear the voice of morpheus from the matrix films (which i love). we checked this movie out from the public library so i am sure many of you have already seen it. if not go to your local library and check it out for yourself.

ps. when i was in elementary school i also entered the spelling bee. needless to say i did not win. i didn't even come close. somehow along the way i forgot how to spell. i mean really spell, like the way the doctor teaches akeelah in the movie. i wish i could learn again, because i love words. a little secret is that my wife edits all my posts so that i don't sound like a third grader. one day i will grow up and learn how to spell big words like entrepreuner or something like that.

pss. therefore i really suck at scrabble.

reading the pages of my life

2007-03-11T10:37:00.000-07:00

last week i picked up rob bell's new book SEX GOD. i am reading session 2 "sexy on the inside." i realize that lifting one section out of any book is a dangerous thing. in light of the tone and thoughts of my entire blog, i think this quote is in context of my journey.

"you can't be connected with God until you're at peace with who you are. if you're still upset that God gave you this body or this life or this family or these circumstances, you will never be able to connect with God in a healthy, thriving, sustainable sort of way. you'll be at odds with your maker. and if you can't come to terms with who you are and the life you've been given, you'll never be able to accept others and how they were made and the lives they've been given. and until you're at peace with God and those around you, you'll continue to struggle with your role on the planet, your part to play in the ongoing creation of the universe. you will continue to struggle and resist and fail to connect." pg 046

that is just as plain as it gets.

identity. acceptance. relation.

the merger of role, soul and creation.

tap tap tip tap - sounds of the true me

2007-03-09T19:57:00.000-08:00

over and over there is this phrase that seems to come up -

“be who you were created to be”

this language is not new by any means but it does have a nuance that has been lost in translation for me. coming from a western evangelical background, i thought that who i was created to be was to look like a certain cookie cutter shape of the average middle-class american republican christian. that definition doesn’t work for me anymore. i am walking away from that understanding and embracing the idea that I am uniquely shaped from the inside out. To get to the core of the real me is to search for the imago dei.

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i am reorienting my life around this concept. if I am the truest me that I can be, then the natural outcome is a sort of ripple effect to those around me. It impacts my wife, then it impacts my children, next are those that I have regular unplanned contact with, and then lastly those that I may only meet once. It is not really me affecting them (like putting on a bright yellow jacket.) it is a sort of divine spark that somehow just comes out from the center of my being.

the divine spark is in everyone.

it is like breathing, when you stop breathing your spark is no longer seen by those on earth. what happens beyond that i am not exactly sure? i hope that all sparks are gathered together into the Original Light of Being.

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so how did I get to this place? i am constantly confronted by the pure life of the rabbi from nazareth. the narrative of Jesus captivates me. the more i read and experience the story; the more it transforms my inner man. from the Jesus story I look back to the people of Yahweh before him, and through their story they remind me to remember what was the “original intent” of God and man – to be together and walk the earth in harmony with all things.

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tonight we went to see happy feet the movie. i think it is a great story of “being true to who you are” regardless of what others try to tell you about who you should or shouldn’t be. the film portrays well that life will hand you difficulties in the midst of that pursuit and it may come a great cost. but those momentary losses will pale in comparison to the significant ripple caused by people who are truly authentic. as in the movie, your identity may turn out to be the small key to bring about great reward to many; hmmm, that sounds a lot like the narrative of the kingdom of God at work to me.

why go to the pool if you're not sick?

2007-03-06T19:55:00.000-08:00

this is a very interesting painting: follow the artist story here

what does spring hold?

2007-03-01T14:55:00.000-08:00

an ancient path

2007-02-24T06:48:00.000-08:00

Moses on the mountain, Noah in the ark, Elijah on Mt. Horeb, and Jesus in the wilderness. All are stories of the people of God on a trek of the soul. The season of Lent is a journey of reflection. Central to this journey is dialogue. It is not mere conversation, rather it is time given to allow one's soul to speak to its Creator. What enviroment might give way to this solitude of the inner man with the Divine?

Last night it was one passionate Christ follower mixing deep trans-like electronica loops fused with subtle orations of ancient truths. The room was filled with stations, a blank canvas, tea candles, a map under black light, and stones with a basin of water. In and of themselves all very ordinary objects, but mixed with desperate souls and the Spirit of the Living God they became the means to journey inward.

Reflection. Examination. Release.

As I sat at the "Fellowship" station furnished with one large candle, many smaller tea candles, and a paper that read:

God came to Earth.
Like us, He was flesh,
His name was Jesus.

Jesus' light was bright.

He died and his light went out.

But three days later, the light was back.
Jesus rose from the dead.
He was wholly human and wholly God.

Humbled by these images and sacred truths I penned these words:

Ages ago when Light shattered
it began to seek to restore itself.
When the time was full the One Who is Light came to all.
With His great Light He draws all sparks to unite.
Deep within the dark of man dwells a divine spark.
What draws the flicker to flame?
He is the One who is the Name.

No longer exiled in the shadowlands,
the hearts of man are called to ignite the sacred flame.
What once was like wax has melted down,
only the pool of liquid grace remains.
Carry we must our eternal spark
through time and space
until all light is restored
to the One True God.

Last night was such a beautiful expression of faith. It was a natural extension of the Lent journey I find myself on with countless others across the globe. May you find this season one that prepares your heart to know His Grace once again.

the first day of lent

2007-02-21T11:29:00.000-08:00

What does it mean to enter the season of Lent? Where did the tradition come from? Along with many people for generations long ago and for many to come, the people of God will travel through this time. I hope to emerge from this time with a sense that it has been a time of reflection and transformation.
Mars Hill (Grand Rapids) has setup a link for daily readings during this season of Lent. Today as I found my way into the sacred story of the people of God, asking some of the same questions of those who walk the road of faith before me. Maybe lent is a season of honest questions to oneself.

Luke 18: If you are content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.

Hebrews 12: Only irresponsible parents leave children to fend for themselves. Would you prefer an irresponsible God?

Job 3: What's the point of life when it doesn't make sense? When God blocks all the roads to meaning?

Psalm 32: When I kept it all inside, my bones turned to powder, my words became daylong groans.... Then I let it all out, I said, "I'll make a clean breast of my failures to God."

I join with the many who will wander the wilderness of Lent these next 40 days knowing that we are not alone.

speak or crush the stone

2007-02-17T11:05:00.000-08:00

A great man once lived who was a sage leader of an unknown people. For four decades he led these nomadic people on a soul journey through the wilderness of identity. This reluctant leader listened to the moans and complaints of the people and finally became weary of their lack of faith in the promise given to them. Frustration was his companion.

One day on the side of an ancient mountain he heard the voice of the One God. In a time when the people were famished and their souls dry like the desert, the One of Being asked him to give aid to the people’s cry. He was to speak to the mountain rock, speak to the center of where lies an abundant stream of water to nourish body and soul.

The frustrated leader acted not from his heart but from his emotional dross and smites the mountain rock with his staff. Despite the leader’s actions, the One God used the man’s wrong doing and brought forth water for the people. Symbolically the people who had been entrusted to the leader were the mountain rock, but the man was unaware of the symbol until later in his life.

This frustrated leader loved and hated by the people never physically saw the final destination of the people, yet he passed on with the promise in place in the center of his being knowing that the One God would bring about the identity of the people who followed the Name.

I have found myself in this ancient story. For I am the leader of a people; the people are the ones who have been entrusted to my care. My frustration seems to grow from an unrealized dream. I listen to the complaints and the bickering amongst my children. It fuels my angst that nothing wonderful can come this way. And so the seed of discontent plants itself; its roots take hold of my words. When I am tested to be their life caretaker amidst their nagging and complaining, I strike out with careful chosen words that sting ever so slightly or give a quick jab to whatever inanimate object might be near.

I am walking in the Moses story on so many levels. Out of my frustration and discontent, I traverse the days hoping that one day something wonderful will come this way.

Last night I was brought to this revelation of the story I am in by the simple reaction to a poignant scene in the movie the Bridge to Terabithia. I found myself covered in a sea of tears as I watched a father give striking verbal blows to his dreamer son. Wading in my own sorrow, I looked over to see my middle daughter sobbing. Somehow this simple fantasy story transported a real father and daughter to the harsh reality of how things are at home.

But all is not lost. Hope still lingers, because in my heart I know that if I am hearing the soul of my family cry out, then I am not too far away from the arms of Grace. With my humbled heart I reach out to the One who Heals all and ask for his Mercy. And I know that He restores the broken dreams of his people. Maybe something wonderful has come this way and it dwells in the hearts of the ones I have been entrusted to love and care for.

new year for trees

2007-02-03T11:47:00.000-08:00

In the Hebrew way of life there comes a day each year to stop and celebrate new beginnings. The New Year for Trees usually occurs between mid-January and mid February signifying the end of the winter rainy season; it marks the renewal of the cycle of growth.

I cannot begin to say how closely that parallels the season of life I am in right now. For the last several weeks, a close friend of mine who moved back to the Tallahassee area and I have been talking about who are we at the core of our being. From those conversations, a reoccurring theme has been: helping people move from where they are to the place they want to be. I think my post from January 19th speaks to this in detail.

It became official on February 1, the formation of a people group who are focused on helping people move from one place to the next; a legal entity called Catalyst Consultant Group LLC was formed. Yes, we have a Federal Employee Identification Number. What is very interesting about this new business formation is that it is not just something that we want to do; it is something being birthed from who we are at the core of our God given inner shape. I think when something is birthed from the core of who you are, it is from the “imago dei.” It is very possible that from that image of God within you, there is an unending supply of power, energy, and creativity. I think we may have actually stumbled upon something wonderful.

Thomas Merton seems to communicate over and over the idea that if you are doing and being who you were created and intended to be, then you are communing with God unceasingly. I am beginning to rethink what it looks like when Paul writes “pray unceasingly.” It doesn’t just look like kneeling in a pew, bowing you head, or closing you eyes for a certain length of time. I think in surrendering your everyday life to God, you place yourself in a humble attitude of communion every moment.

Isaiah says “as you come, the mountains and hills will burst into song, and the tree of the countryside will clap their hands.” (55:10)

Maybe when the people of God “come into” and become who they were created and intended to be, the whole earth rejoices. It is good news for the people of the earth when God’s people learn their true identity from the imago dei.

a change of perspective

2007-01-27T17:48:00.000-08:00

Painting number 1 (1601) = Supper at Emmaus

Painting number 2 (1606) - Supper at Emmaus

I came across this illustration while reading Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian culture. Both paintings are done by the same artist - Caravaggio. The second one is five years after the first. As an artist he is interpreting the story of Jesus at the table with the men he met on the road to Emmaus. What do you think he is trying to say?

an agent of change

2007-01-19T05:54:00.000-08:00

catalyst = an agent that provokes or speeds significant change or action

talking to a good friend last night, i mentioned that i am coming to an awareness of what it is that i do. i have a desire to help people, who are no longer satisfied with the status quo, move from where they currently are to the place that best represents forward or positive progress.

i realize that when i am doing that i am connecting with what i was meant to do. it doesn't matter where i am, what matters is who i am in that location. i could be in the coffee pub, a local business, the library, or at home; if i am helping someone go through significant change then my role and my soul are one.

In chemistry and biology, catalysis is the acceleration (increase in rate) or slowing down of a chemical reaction by means of a substance, called a catalyst, that is itself not consumed by the overall reaction.

i was looking at my life through the lens of where i was to define what it was i was doing. so if i was at the marketing job then i was this person, if i was at a social gathering then i was that person, if i was at church then i was that person. living a compartmentalized life is the most unsatisfying life i can live. i am so thankful that the living Spirit of God has brought me to this revelation of who am created and purposed to be. in my limited educated view of life, i see that my role of a catalyst doesn't directly benefit me, rather i am present in order to help those who come in contact with a catalyst. for me, a catalyst is a kind of servant to its host environment but yet is not altered by its surroundings. that being said, it doesn't mean that the catalyst isn't affected by the reactions that are taking place. in fact, i would think that the more significant changes that are made as a result of the service of the catalyst the deeper the energy source for the catalyst for future service.

humility has an impact on my view of the catalyst. a catalyst is only an agent. agent meaning a representing entity of a greater power or source. so when i am in the purest sense living breathing and being who i was created to be then i am representing my Designer/Creator.

"the revelation of God is whole and pulls our lives together. The signposts of God are clear and point out the right road. The life-maps of God are right, showing the way to joy. The directions of God are plain and easy on the eyes." Psalms 19 - the message

exiles: living missional

2007-01-13T09:34:00.000-08:00

I got this book for a gift for Christmas. I am excited to crack open the pages. Last night I began the first chapter. The intro explains who might be reading this book.

"This book is for the many people who wish to be faithful followers of the radical Jesus but no longer find themselves able to fit into the bland, limp, unsavory straightjacket of a church that seems to be yearning to return to the days when "everyone" used to attend church and "Christian family values" reigned.

This book is for those Christians who feel themselves ready (or yearning) to jump ship but don't want to be left adrift in a world where greed, consumerism, laziness, and materialism toss them about endlessly and pointlessly."

And so I read on...

two invitations one decision

2007-01-09T06:57:00.000-08:00

Imagine you got a party invitation in the mail. Inside the card reads:

Are you confused about life? Don’t know what’s going on?

You take a moment to deliberate if you will attend the fiesta. The next day you receive another invitation in the mail. Inside the card reads:

Are you confused about life? Don’t know what’s going on?

Now you are really perplexed. Two invitations. One decision.

Reexamining each card you find that the first card offers an evening of insight and healthy dining, a full feast with bread, choice meats, and fine wine. The second card offers a pleasure filled night of passion and feverishly wild festivities.

Which one do you attend?

work. thought. dance?

2007-01-07T10:20:00.000-08:00

“The requirements of a work to be done can be understood as a will of God. If I am to hoe a garden or make a table, then I will be obeying God if I am true to the task I am performing. To do the work carefully and well, with love and respect for the nature of my task and with due attention to its purpose, is to unite myself with God’s will in my work.

Unnatural, frantic, anxious work, work done under pressure of greed or fear or any other inordinate passion, cannot properly speaking be dedicated to God, because God never wills such work directly.” Thomas Merton – New Seeds of Contemplation pg. 19

I have read and re-read this page about a dozen times. I have handwritten it in my journal and now I am writing it electronically. Someone must be trying to tell me something about the thing I put my hand to or as we would say today, what kind of work do I do?

Contemplation is a big word, thirteen letters in all. A simple working definition for me might be how I think about things. Now to take that one step further is to say that if I really want to experience the most intimate relationship with the Original Thinker, then I must open my thought life to Him, but that isn’t exactly the way it works. I think that I must open myself to the concept that He is present in my thought life. It isn’t like my thought life is some area that is off limits to the Creator of all Thoughts, rather it is me being honest to acknowledge that my thoughts are not off limits but are a place where I can join the incredible dream realm where anything is possible.

Most of the time my thoughts are not an incredible dream world. Many times they are full of doubts, fears, and unsatisfied frustration about the way my physical world hasn’t worked out the way my dreamed world thought it should. I would be embarrassed and ashamed if God knew what my real thoughts were. But maybe that is just it; maybe He knows the frustration - He is just wondering why am I not sharing it with Him.

If my thoughts were like a dance, why would I want to dance alone? I don’t know about you, but my thoughts occupy most of my time. They continue even while I am asleep. Maybe the thought-dream-dance-with-God is the crossing over into a life of contemplation, or what others might call a life of prayer. In that context, it is not some concept I am trying to apply, but it is something that I naturally practice out of self-discipline because it is who I am. I dream and dance in my thoughts everywhere I am.

something's burning

2007-01-05T16:48:00.001-08:00

This past summer I spent a week with some people that would change my life forever. It was close quarters as our two families of 5 crammed into a 3-bedroom house. When I sleep I like a ceiling fan above me; so most nights I crashed on the couch in the living room. Each morning I would awake to the aroma of incense. It was really amazing. The thing that made the aroma even more beautiful is that my hosts were in the next room offering the thoughts of their hearts to the One Who listens. I was so captivated each morning by the scent of the day, knowing it was coupled with the prayers of my new friends.

This year to celebrate the dawn of a new kind of humanity, my wife gave me a gift; a small ornate incense box. Each time the smoke rises from the wooden chest, I am reminded of my friends and their care for my family as guests in their home.

This simple wooden chest being porous in nature absorbs the scent of the incense long after it has burned. Each time I walk by it I smell and I remember.

Long ago the fledging people of God were told to create an altar for the burning of incense. The incense was meant to be a symbol, a symbol for the prayers of the people rising up to the One True God. It was to be a reminder to the people. Daily burnings were central to the life of the priests attending the duties of the temple.

I wish I could carry that scent with me. I wish somehow I could be a wooden chest with the burning offering of prayers to the One I love. The peaceful solitude I find when just sitting and taking in the aroma is transcendent. No wonder the scriptures talk about the thoughts of our hearts are like a sweet, sweet smell in the nostrils of an attentive Father. How else could we connect with what it must be like when we humble ourselves and speak from the deepest most insecure part of our being to the One of Being.

May the altar of our lives burn daily with our prayers to the Most Holy One.

charting the Great Trail

2007-01-02T07:38:00.000-08:00

This is the real beginning of a new year. Wow, here we are January 2 and things are heading in a signifigant direction. For so many years Darla and I have planned to make changes in our life after the New Year, but this year is different. Two months ago we began to take a hard look at our finances and the way we spend our money. As a result, we opened a second account for savings and taxes; we talk about purchases with each other before we make them and we are looking for ways to save money so that we might be in a better position to help those who are in need. Two weeks ago we began to take a hard look at our physical condition. We are talking to each other about what we eat and why we eat it. I am drinking more water than I ever have. Losing weight for me is secondary, my real goal is to establish the spiritual discipline of self-control. Darla and I agree that spending, eating, sleeping are all spiritual activities. Meaning that behind each decision to buy, consume, or engage in any activity there is a deeper connection to our inner person.

A wise sage once said, “We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

For the last year or so I have a couple of things emailed to me on a daily basis. One is a daily life lessons from a messianic Jewish rabbi who looks at each day of life from the bifocals of Jewish culture and Christian heritage. Click here to get it emailed to you. Today he used one of my favorite quotes: “Write down the vision clearly on tablets, so that even a runner can read it (Habakkuk 2:2).” I can’t think of a better way to start off the new year than to write down the things that you would like to change, build upon, or start new. I need reminders to help me remember what it is that I am doing. As a person of faith, remembrance is a life practice. To really live is to remember.

The second thing I have emailed is the daily lectionary readings, which are read by the people of God all across the world and across many denominations. Over a three year period, these reading will take one through the entire sacred history lived through people for thousand of years. click here to get it emailed to you. One of the passages today was Genesis 12, the beginning of the Abrahamic journey, a journey to become a blessing to all the nations. The journey was never a journey to become an exclusive people to themselves, rather it was to become a people who were readily welcomed because of their incredible forgiveness, generosity, and hope in the lives of every family in this age and the age to come.

When I read these two emails, I was encouraged that today is a beginning in many ways, and it is a reminder that we did not just begin this trail today but have walked on and off it for many years.

An experienced journeyman once said, “the only way to keep a trail fresh is to walk on it.”

May you find your feet walking the Great Trail and know that it is not found by any man made maps but is written on your heart.

the wonderful unknotter

2006-12-31T08:39:00.000-08:00

My daughter came in this morning and threw one of her barbies onto darla’s lap and said, “please get the knot out of my Barbie's dress, you are the best unknotter!” I thought to myself that is absolutely true for me too. After reading darla’s post today, it is obvious that both of us have been grappling with the same issues. I wrote in my journal yesterday to God that I was mad at him for dropping us in this spot: this spot where we are not pleased with our current position even though this is the spot we have been placed for a reason beyond our understanding. Honesty, I think that is the thing God wants from his children. I think he is big enough to take my blaming and complaining. I don’t want to stay that way for long. I think that is why he has placed the wonderful un-knot-her in my life. You see yesterday I was twisted up in knots after two days of wringing my thoughts over how lonely it seems to be in this place we currently find ourselves in. Last night in a moment of sheer exhaustion and desperation, knowing I could not undo the knot I had twisted myself into, I threw myself onto darla’s lap and without words asked to be unknotted.

This morning I awoke and realized that the knot has been undone and I am not as anxious. Yesterday, darla tried to ask what was wrong, but I was so twisted inside I couldn’t even verbalize it. I made the most foolish statement. I told her I didn’t want to tell her because I didn’t want to bum her out and besides she couldn’t do anything about it anyway. What a load of crap that is, today I realize that she is the one I can tell and share my pain, fears, and doubts with. In trying to protect her from the pain that I am going through, I am hindering the thing that the Spirit of God would use to knit us closer together.

I am forever grateful that the One Who knitted me together in my mothers womb has given to me my wonderful un-knot-her.

dawn comes everyday

2006-12-25T14:21:00.000-08:00

it is not a question of if or when was Jesus was born, rather it is that he was born. does anyone know exactly when the sunrises? or is it that we know that everyday the sun does rise.

get it out in the open

2006-12-17T14:13:00.000-08:00

“Prayer is elemental, not advanced, in language. It is the means by which our language becomes honest, true, and personal in response to God. It is the means by which we get everything out in the open before God.” Eugene Peterson (intro to Psalms)

My thoughts:
If prayer is me being honest before God, in response to God, it is assumed that God has spoken first. I think I have approached prayer first as me speaking to God upon my terms, but in light of Eugene’s concept of prayer maybe when I come to the point of thinking of speaking to God, it is actually my inner being responding to a divine prompting that I wasn’t even aware of. So maybe a new understanding of prayer might be to first listen, or maybe before I open my mouth, I should open my ears.

Listening to my life:
Today I found myself all wound up, meaning I was in a really foul mood. Sometimes when I get in moods like that I start cleaning the house like a madman. As I clean, I grapple with the issue. Sometimes the cleaning makes me more frustrated than I was before I started. Nonetheless, today I was mad. Here were the series of triggers:
I learn of friends who have found themselves wanting to serve God, yet don't have a clear sense of what that looks like. They are in limbo. (It reminds me of the struggle I too find myself in in our current position.)
Another friend has purchased a building and is looking to start a church. (This frustrates me, because I can’t come to terms with the fact that I –me- can’t just conjure up this thing called church. It is too sacred, it is such a precious gift, how can I be so pompous to think I can just start “label x church.”) I haven’t been together with fellow travelers of faith in some time. I miss that.
Things are just out of order in my inner life. I turn and look and the house is in somewhat of disarray. Then it all comes crashing in; uncertainty leads to frustration, frustration leads to bitterness, bitterness leads to burning anger.
All of this happens in the span of about 2 minutes.

I am so thankful that my wife gives me space to go off on my little stinky tantrums. She asks, are you ok? NO! I AM MAD! What are you mad at, she asks. Now, I could respond, no one helps clean around the house! That would be BLAME. That is not what has got me worked up. No, it’s really me. I respond, “I am mad at myself!” She replies, “Why are you mad at yourself?" Stinky under my breath I respond, “I don’t know. I haven’t figured it out yet!” I think to myself- leave me alone, I am just stewing.

If I am really honest, I am mad because I have chosen other things over spending time journaling with God, which I really love to do. But this week things have just come up. I am mad at the fact that I have gotten so mad so quickly over something I don’t have any control over. I stop cleaning and sit down on the couch with Darla and explain the triggers that have led me to this point. In doing so, we communicate openly and honestly. I can sense that she isn’t mad at me being mad and wants to walk through this thing with me wherever it leads. I love my wife. She reminds me of God’s latitude of grace towards me. We are moving closer to living our complete life out in the open with each other, and if that is the picture of our marriage, then how much more are we open before the One who knitted us together once in the womb, and then again in relationship to one another.

I am not mad anymore, in fact, I am actually filled with awe, wonder, and love.

a full life in the emptiest places

2006-12-13T07:06:00.000-08:00

"If you are generous with the hungry and start giving yourselves to the down--and-out, Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness, your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.

I will always show you where to go. I'll give you a full life in the emptiest of places--firm muscles, strong bones. You'll be like a well-watered garden,a gurgling spring that never runs dry.

You'll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past. You'll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again."

God speaks through Isaiah (58)
to the people who follow "the Name."

nativity of the Jews

2006-12-11T10:47:00.000-08:00

"From the story of the nativity of the Jews, we learn that life is inherently arduous but also sacred; our task is to repair and perfect God's creation. What challenges do Christians undertake from the Gospels' Nativity stories? Perhaps Christian faith in Jesus will be understood as the faith of Jesus, so the Jewish values of education and social responsibility that his parents inculcated in him will be renewed for Christians in their celebration of his birth." Read More Great article from MSN.com hosted by newsweek.com

This is timely as I am reading Brian McLaren's book a Generous Orthodoxy subtitled Why I am A -Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-Hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished CHRISTIAN.

I skimmed this book at the book store when it came out last year. I wasn't ready to read it then, but now seems like a good time. I checked it out from my local library, In the first chapter he discusses how his idea of Jesus has been shaped as he has moved through the various denominations of the Christian faith. It is a kind of brief overview of church history from a personal experience. He is very hard on conservative evangelicals, but that is because he was raised in that environment and found it lacking. His ideas are not to persuade one to accept one particular viewpoint but to ignite discussion and dialogue about the way things have been presented related to the "Gospel" or good news by the various denominational doctrines.

I read McLaren's the Secret Message of Jesus this summer and I really enjoyed it. It is one of those I hope to read again.

could i get a map, i seem to have misplaced myself

2006-12-08T06:29:00.000-08:00

During the time that Rabbi Schneur Zalman was imprisoned in Petersburg, one of the czar's miniters asked him to explain the verse (Genesis 3:9) "And G-d called out to the man and said to him: Where are you?" Did G-d not know where Adam was? Rabbi Schneur Zalman asked the minister: Do you believe that the Torah is eternal, that its every word applies to every individual, under all conditions, at all times? The minister replied that he did. Rabbi Schneur Zalman was very gratified to hear this, for this was a basic principle of the "subversive" teachings of the Baal Shem Tov, the propagation of which was at the heart of the accusations leveled against him.

"Where are you?" said Rabbi Schneur Zalman to the minister, "is G-d's perpetual call to every man. Where are you in the world? You have been allotted a certain number of days, hours, and minutes in which to fulfill your mission in life. You have lived so many years and so many days -- Where are you? What have you accomplished?"

i love my brothers from the Jewish faith, they have such a way of capturing the basic questions of life and forming them into a querry that stirs one to action. for me asking the question, "where am i?" is more about not being so focused on where i am going, who i am in this place now. it is a shift from destination thinking, to a current location mode of being. the question is not where am i going, but who am i in the place where i am today.

ask the question

2006-12-04T19:24:00.000-08:00

“the tree the tempest with a crash of wood
throws down in front of us is not to bar
our passage to our journey’s end for good
but just to ask us who we think we are.”

Robert Frost –
the poem “On a Tree Fallen Across the road”

in the book Learning to Fall.

shopping for God knows what...

2006-12-03T09:43:00.000-08:00

Consumer Reports advise:
Look through the ads, shop for the best, find the one you like… then, BUY IT!

Maybe we have settled for a sort of false advertising. Maybe in our consumer mindset we have thought of the current model of the church as a product of the primary expression of the kingdom. We have purchased this way of thinking and now we are experiencing a sort of buyer’s remorse because our perception is that the product has failed to deliver.

The reality is, the church hasn’t failed; it is our expectations and preconceived ideas about it that were incomplete. Our disillusionment has led us to return our purchase and we are now seeking a new product; a product that we are finding is not available in any one particular store. In fact, it is not even a product or a service. It is simply a way of living.

The gospels tell us:
Look first, look with intensity, look as though the fate of your life depends upon it, look for the kingdom first.

I have noticed that the gospels do not tell us to look for a church first and then the kingdom. The kingdom of Heaven is to be first. The kingdom takes place in and around your ordinary everyday life. Your everyday life is the optimal realm where the ruling and reigning of God is made known. It is the place where God wants to inhabit.

When seeking the kingdom expressed in everyday life, it becomes the central approach to thinking about the God-big-picture. That thinking will help relocate what the church can look like on your God-life map. Kingdom living is living in the God-life rhythm of everyday life, working, eating, etc…

"So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life--your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life--and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him." Written to the people in Rome by Paul. (Romans 12:1, the Message)

A great example of searching for the divine in the ordinary is Reap What You Sew Generosity Project. This article was orginally printed in the San Francisco Chronicle December 2, 2005.

Once you begin to live searching for the kingdom first, then secondary will be a desire to gather together with others who are living from that the same understanding that kingdom (everyday life in relationship with God) is best understood in relationships with others. Just as love is best expressed when it is shared between two people, not towards an object, so is kingdom living expressed between two people. A gathering of people who are genuinely seeking to center their life on this understanding will naturally become an expression of what Paul thought of when he said, “When you gather...”

This will be a huge shift in thinking for many people, because we have thought of the kingdom expressed in terms of the gatherings of Christians as the essential expression of the kingdom. Although it is one part of the kingdom, it is not the central way. The number of hearts who are in such gatherings are just a token representation of the hearts that God is moving through in the world. To think that gatherings are “the ends” of what God thinks about his kingdom, is limited in scope. Gatherings are just one of the expressions of “the means” by which kingdom can be viewed.

This shift may explain the long return lines in the religious goods and services department stores across the country, or as seen in the mass exodus of people from the current church model in the West.

So what do we do next? Search, search everywhere. Search for what? Search for expressions of the kingdom at work in all the nooks and crannies of the marginalized, the forgotten, and the ignored. That is where He came and walked before. I don’t think he has changed his route. Jesus told us in plain language the way is narrow and few find it. I realize that I have been looking for something else. I was looking for a product or a service that would satisfy my need for what only the kingdom (the God-life expressed in relationships with others) can fulfill.

After listening to and contemplating on a series of talks by Euguene Peterson, Dallas Willard, and Todd Hunter entitled Spiritual Formation hosted on Alleleon.org, I am forming a daily question that is helping me put this into perspective: What does my life relationships with my spouse, kids, co-worker, friend, or the guy at the coffee shop look like now that I understand these relationships are the space where the kingdom emerges?

Is there an answer? Is there a solution? Yes and no. There is no quick fix or simple formula to follow. There is only a mode of living to be explored and shared. It is a life that is constantly searching for the divine in the ordinary.

soil of character

2006-12-01T12:43:00.000-08:00

Silence and solitude
Silence and solitude

The sound of breathing
The flicker of the candle
The warmth of the fire
The scent of incense
All the reminders that you are near

Take us into you
Take us into the real
Take us into the center
Take to the place
Where we end
And you begin
Let us tremble
With knees wobbling
And stumble into grace

Your light shines in the gray
Your light shines bright in the day
Your light shines bright in the night
Your light shines bright in my plight

Bring us out into the open
Where faith and sight
Join hands and fight
The good fight

No one has ever seen the love
That grows from the One
Who is the beginning of everlasting

If I were to hope again
What would my heart hope in
I would hope in you alone
I would that you find me
Find me longing for thee

Can I know the ways of the One
Can I know the face of hope
Can I know the touch of grace
Can I know joy
Can I know the peace of life

Who can know these things
Who can know the hearts of men

Can the flower that falls
Still find hope in beauty

Can the leaf that turns
Find the hope of green again

Can the ones who have turned away
Find their hopes again

Can the pieces of the broken
Be put back together again

Can the One who makes the hard
Become soft move in and start again

I wish that these things would be
I wish that these things would be
I wish they would grow on the trees
Like fruit ready to be
Ready to be ripe to eat

Can you the great gardener
Bring the fruit of life
Bring it out of hiding
Bring it out of hiding

The roots of the tree
Go down and down to thee
Deep within the toil of the soil
Roots reaching deep
Roots reaching deep
Deep into the life source
Tap the root
Fill the branch
So that the tree would be
Once again into the orchard of me

crossing the finish line

2006-11-30T08:16:00.000-08:00

Wow, I can not begin to tell you what an incredible day today is! Being a creative type person as I am, one thing I sometimes struggle with is completing a project. Today is a winning day! I have completed a monster project; while sitting in my local library, I have crossed the finish line of writing my 50,000 words.

The last 30 days have been some of the most incredible soul searching moments that I have endured. Thank you to everyone who has encouraged me to write. Thank you to my wife who gave me space to say the things I wanted to say from the secret closets of my soul. I don't have any expectations of what will come of this writing but I will never forget it.

Next Monday night, December 4 at 6pm, there will be a celebration party for the National Novel Writers of Tallahassee at the Grand Opening of The Coffee Pub, a non-profit coffee house on the corner of Thomasville and 5th st. I can't wait to meet up with my fellow writers and share in the celebration. I look forward to listening with my whole heart to the excerpts that will be shared that night.

Writers Rock! I join a long list of ancient travelers who have recorded many Adventures Along the Great Trail. Hmmm, that would be a good title for a book.

missionary vs. living missional

2006-11-22T07:48:00.000-08:00

Excerpt from 50,000 words

Thoughts from a visit to Mission San Luis

Walking about the Mission grounds we visited the tanner, the blacksmith, and the friar, a seamstress, and the wood carpenter. As we sat down and listened to each of the costumed interpreters tell their story, I began to hear a pattern taking shape. The man working with wood was making a broom handle for one of the women in the mission. The woman sewing was making an apron for the blacksmith from a hide that the tanner had given to her. The black smith was making hinges for a breadbox for the Friar. Each individual was developing their birthright gifts and were giving them in service to benefit the collective needs of the mission. Mission life in the 17oo’s might have meant sharing one’s time, resources, and abilities to help meet the needs of your neighbor. I see the Mission as a village-of-one-another-ness. This spoke in such contrasting language to the self-centered life that has built itself around this beautiful time capsule in the middle of a growing metropolis.

In our metropolis the motto might be, take what you got and hoard it all for yourself. Mission life today for some people might be, a mission in the sense, to divide and conquer taking all the spoils of war for oneself. Now, not to say that there might be little pockets of people scattered all through out the city who with their everyday eating, sleeping, and going to work/school life look to help meet the needs of others before they decide to have two of something, but they are the few.

Seeing the people of Mission San Luis has been stirring in me for sometime. Recently, I have had the opportunity to interact with a friend who is living in one of those little pockets of people here in Tallahassee. Because our city has sprawled out across miles and miles this pocket is and isn’t in one location, it is comprised of little circles of friendships that over lap one another. Here is a real example of how this pocket of people seem to live out the definition of mission as seen 300 years ago.

One guy has a house with a garage that is not being used except to store stuff, so he decides to renovate the space into a music studio because he has some other friends who love music but don’t have a place to play or record. Now there is another guy in another pocket who has some equipment but has no place to put them up. Then there is another guy who has little or no equipment but he knows how to run the equipment because of his time playing in bands and running sound for bands. So all of these music lovers are searching for ways to get together so that they can play. Now that is a picture of desire to form community. They are a community of musicians living missionally to help meet the needs of one another.

That is just an example of one of the little of pockets of people who are naturally gathering around something and using their birthright gifts to have fun and help out their fellow traveler on the road of life expressed by music.

This begins to redefine for me some terms, coming from the institution of church, like missionary. I have thought of a missionary as one who leaves the country in order to become a messenger of particular set of doctrinal beliefs. I have heard of people who thought they wanted to be a missionary, go to some training where they were taught how to get on a plane, go overseas, and take a message to the people. I think our American culture has been so completely altered that it is no longer necessary to board a plane to be in a completely foreign place. I am beginning to see my life as a missional life. Missional meaning to developing one’s individual life for the sake of giving or to benefit the larger community to which I have regular unplanned contact with as well as those I meet with intentionally that we might all grow in the same endeavor.

So mission is not one model that is meant to be reproduced like a factory, rather it is a mode of living that is cultivated and shared with others who are curious about living in a more connected way with their fellow man. It is spiritual. It is physical. Those terms are not separate. Missional is a life lived completely integrated spiritual and physical.

Mission San Luis has reminded me...

I need to relearn how to live;

real life is missional.

reading is a journey

2006-11-20T19:03:00.000-08:00

"wounds don't heal until you feel them"

Donald Miller

I can so relate to that statement. The last few months have been one of the most difficult seasons in my life. I can say that I have felt the depths of many wounds. Some doctors may say Zoloft is the way to go, but this is so real. I'll take the pain; at least that's real. Thank you to those who have stood by me during this intense time of intropsection.

wrestling with the man in the middle

2006-11-19T14:31:00.000-08:00

Excerpt from the 50,000 words...

This weekend the girls went to Panama City. Just before they left Andie was playing with a new Barbie and she was very excited. She came to me and asked if she could take the bad man. I didn’t know what she was talking about. After a few minutes I realized that she was talking about the Aragorn figure I have from the Lord of the Rings that I keep in my closet. I wonder why did she call him the bad man?

Compared to her fair-haired beautiful princess, Aragorn does seem dirty, nasty, and just plain old bad. But the reality is that Aragorn doesn’t have any issues with the way he looks on the outside. He is on a different road. He is on a road to find out what his place is in the world of men. He is guided by the ache in his belly that something is not right. Part of his ache comes from the wrongs that his father has done. His father was once a king of the race of men and held the power of the ring to bring harmony back to the people of middle earth but he was captured by the grip of evil pride and wanted the ring for himself. The shame that came from this family curse drove Aragorn underground in many ways. He hid his true identity from the world because of the shame of his father. He no longer went by his name Aragorn, but was known as Stryder. He was, in fact, the rightful heir to the throne, but he was not acting like it. He was not being who he was created to be.

I too have had my share of hiding from my own identity. When I was about the age where most boys come into puberty, I had come into the world of naked people. I had no idea why the magazines were so open about the nakedness. I knew something was not right, but nonetheless I found myself aroused by the women in them. During this time I began to chase girls. Chasing was chasing for the sake of capturing and claiming; claiming as one who claims a prize at the end of a great battle. Looking back I really didn’t care much about them as a person, I just wanted to see them naked. I wanted to touch in the real world what I had only dreamed about in my magazine fantasy world. Because of this driven desire to feel the breast of a girl, I quickly was named pervert in middle school. At first it didn’t bother me, because on one level it was like being called a name that was normally associated with grownups. As a preteen boy, I liked being named a manly nickname even if it was nasty and twisted. But with the nickname came an identity that I did not know. I didn’t realize the identity of this nickname was so damaging.

A year later, I remember turning a corner and not being so driven by the desire, but rather became more interested in having someone who really liked me for who I was. Well, this was rather difficult because in the world of girls I already had an identity; I was a bad boy. I began to understand and to resent my foolish actions as a boy. I wanted to get away from that part of me.

I wasn’t ashamed so much as I was mad at the fact that now that I wanted to change, but the perception of the pervert was still there. I was stuck in a real dilemma. I did the only thing I knew to do; I had to recreate myself. It came at a perfect time. I was leaving middle school and entering the ninth grade, so I changed my name from David to Michael. I had associated the name David with all the accusations of a dirty little perverted boy. I wanted to escape that part of me, so I abandoned my middle name and began to go by my first name.

For my family, changing my name was a huge thing. David was a family name. My uncle, my grandfather, his father, and my own father all had the name David. So switching from that name meant a real sign of rebellion in the family. I was stepping outside of the family name in a way. I would later in life come to find out that the twisted view of sex was handed down from generation to generation just like the name was. No wonder I wanted to escape the heavy burden of the name. It was a generational curse.

With this new identity, I was free to explore the new me. It was great to have people call me Michael. It was so cool and so freeing. I had associated this mental picture that Michael was a person that people looked up to, a person of good social standing. With the name Michael, in my mind, there was no “bad boy” association. Life was good.

Looking back now I think it is interesting that I was stepping away from the “center” of my name. David was the name that was in the middle of my full name. Maybe going to my first name was like moving from the center and taking the elevator to the surface. Maybe Michael was just the surface part of my identity.

Dang this is some crazy stuff. Lord please help me to walk through this and not give up; grant me the courage to keep going.

Now it is not that Michael is not who I am, because it is a part of who I am. It is just not the full person of who I am. Since high school I have continued to be known as Michael. I really hate it when people call me Mike: One, because it is the name that my dad goes by, and I am not my dad; second, it is a shortened version of Michael, which on some level says to me you really don’t know me at all. If you did know me, you would not call me Mike.

My full name.

So Andie wants to take Aragorn with her on her trip with the girls to Panama City to visit with grandma. Grandma has also had a change of names. Last year the girls decided to change Grandma to Memaw. This was kind of weird for me because I called my dad’s mom Memaw. It was Memaw that knew me as “little David.” So I really had an awkward time calling Darla’s mom Memaw. I did love my Memaw with all of my being. She would always send me birthday cards with money, but even more she would write these incredible words of encouragement on the inside of the card. She would write of how every day she would pray that I would grow up to be the man that God had created me to be and how proud she was of me. I would be so encouraged by the cards, and some years I would be incredibly ashamed by how much I was not being the man that God had created me to be. Remembering her is remembering the internal battle of identity that would rage inside my being. May my Memaw rest in peace and may her prayers be answered some day soon.

So Andie, who is my last born child, carries with her the figure of Aragorn, a man struggling to find out who he really is. I can’t help but to wonder what significance that has. You see, Andie has this funny way about telling people her name. For some reason as she has grown up I have called her not by her first name only, but by her first and last name, Andie Winn. It is not that I have neglected that middle name. In fact, that middle name has a very special role in my family too. Her middle name is Renee. Renee is my aunt. I first met her on a trip to Panama City where my grandparent’s had moved when I was going into the eight grade or so. She saw me with innocent eyes. She too called me “little David.” This wasn’t a putdown like I was small in nature. It was more of a term of endearment because she was dating and would soon marry my uncle who was "her David." I looked up to my Uncle. He was the coolest man I had ever known. He was and is very creative. He was so outgoing. Everyone liked him. He and I would always hang out late at night when I went over to my grandparent’s house. I remember he made these beautiful stained glass pictures. Ahh, he was just magic. So to be called “little David” by Renee was for me to be named by someone who is being who they were created and called to be and to follow in the footsteps of someone you admire.

Again, Andie is carrying with her to Panama City, the place where my family is deeply connected, a man figure who she sees as dirty, but nonetheless wants to take him along with her. I can’t help but to draw on the idea that she, as one who goes by her full name and has no associations with that name, is carrying with her in a symbolic way a token of me. For I am a man, who is struggling with and coming to grips with who I am, and who I am to be in the world of men. Maybe there is hope in the innocence of youth.

Throughout the sacred stories of scripture men have wrestled with their identity, so I am not alone. Jacob, Isaac’s son, grandson of Abraham, was the one to first tell the story of his wrestling match with his true self. For years as a young man, he wanted something his brother had. He deceived his father to give him the birthright and later the blessing of the family that was rightfully his brother's. At one point, he has told his name as Esau for so long he has forgotten who he really is. But one night he comes face to face with the One who created him. He faces the One who knows what his shape is to be in the world of men. The One knows the real Jacob. Two times the Angel of the Lord asks Jacob, what is your name. Jacob returns the question, who is asking, and both times he is reminded of the times that he has not been Jacob. The third time Jacob responds by telling the truth; he is Jacob. It is at that time that the One who created him to be responds and tells him the fullness of his name will be realized in a nation of men. His full name is inside; his name is Israel, the people of God. Now that is finding out one’s true identity.

So I am David, the boy who was taken advantage of and who took advantage of others. I am also “little David” who is a creative and caring person to those who need a mentor. I am Michael, the one who goes out and seeks new ways to reach the desired location. And I am Michael, the one who faced the darkness in order that I might see the light. In the Hebrew language, Michael is one who is like unto God. And David is the beloved one. I am in the fullest sense, in the acknowledgement of the past wrongs of my family, reconciled to the One who restores all things, I am made in the image of the First and the Last, I am son to the Father of all men, I am Michael David Winn.

Today Lord I have come before You in the awesome power of your grace and I have confessed my life before You. May You now take me and restore my soul that I might be Your signet ring in the world of man where your Kingdom reigns and rules. May you write the rest of this story. Thank you for your incredible forgiveness. I have forgiven myself and those who have hurt me. May you release them from the bondage that I have kept them in; my father, my friend, and those who knew me as the boy. May my family know first the real me. May I be a blessing to the ones I hold dear. For what might have destroyed my family You have given to me as a redeemed story of grace to bind together in love the strongest cords of hope. Bless your Name. I cannot say enough. My heart is full of Your presence. I sense that you are here with me in this quiet space and have spoken to my heart as I have typed out these words. These are the truest words from my soul. You are the One who holds my soul in Life. You have given me true life. May I no longer strive to please men or to be held by the need for their words. For You have said that I am good and You have picked me up when I have fallen and You have brought me to the mirror of myself and have given me eyes to see the full image of me. You have given me the restored identity of Michael David Winn. You are completeness. You are real soul seeking. You are the place of brokenness made whole. Keep me centered here in You. Help me to speak from my full name, the name that You gave to me. This name is not my own but was given to me by my Lord. May I give back in service of gratitude to the One who gave me breath. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me. Bless Your holy Name.

I cannot express how incredible this time has been writing down this stuff. It really doesn’t matter if this piece of work becomes something. For I have already profited by this work in ways that I cannot express. I will look to see how I might give back to the Lord what He has produced through me. I will seek to give back a portion, a symbolic token of this restoration story. Lord grant me Your powerful creative words to tell the story to the ones who think they know who You are but have no idea because they have not been willing to look at themselves acknowledging the dark so that the light may come in. You take these words, Your words, and You bring them to life. For You are the One who is the Word, the Word made flesh that came and dwelt in the full presence in the world of men. Amen.

am I project or a person?

2006-11-17T09:34:00.000-08:00

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.

whats the problem here?

2006-11-14T13:03:00.000-08:00

"Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people."
Richard Foster - Celebration of Discipline (1978)

How far have we progressed in 30 years Richard?

being true to the real me

2006-11-13T12:09:00.000-08:00

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all entanglements, and lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, and irredeemable. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
C.S. Lewis – The Four Loves / Chapter 6

There it is. One of the most influential writers and champions of truth claims it from the rooftops – to love is to be real! At this time in culture, the cry for authenticity is the banner of a whole mass of people. Things are not as they seem because everyone is pretending to be someone that they are not. The have become these personas because everyone else is wearing a mask. Wearing the mask helps us as a people to avoid the risk of being mocked, ridiculed, or jabbed for being the ugly duckling. The longer we put on the masks the further we push down the real us. Our identity is buried so deep, we have no idea who we really are. The scary thing is that the personas work so well in the façade of this charade of life, that we don’t even consider looking beneath the mask. The mask has become our view of ourselves. We have accepted our own deception as the truth.

writing like crazy

2006-11-12T12:47:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine told me that November is the National Novel Writers Month. The challange among writers is to take the month of November and commit to writing 50,000 words. That was all I needed to take the challange to get on paper some of the amazing things happening around me. Since November 1st I have tried to write at least 1500 words a day. As a result of this crazy mad writing, my blog entries have been somewhat limited. I am a little off track, but the thing is, I'm currently at 13,500 words. Here is an exerpt from my writing today:

"Over and over I have this continuing conversation with myself of what does it mean to center on something. People meet for all kinds of reasons. They meet to plan for the next session of Congress, or the next budget meeting. But what if you met for the sake of speaking the truth? I don’t mean speaking the truth as if it is something that you can argue, is it true or not. I am talking about speaking the deepest truth that you know that is from your heart of hearts.

Maybe this truth could be called soul speak, or maybe it is just being real about your faith and fears, your dreams and nightmares, your successes and failures. Some people might be afraid to hear their own voice speak. Afraid for what they might hear. I think for me, the reason why I have continued to blog beyond the point of it being a fad is because it has become an outlet for me to write the thoughts and words that are wrestling around deep within me. When writing a blog, there are no blockers, there are no walls; I can simply write or express what is beneath the surface. Having comments are fine, but when I am writing the thoughts that are playing ring-around-the-rosy in my soul, I need to be able to turn the editor off. As I write, I am not considering whether or not anyone will comment, but more importantly saying what I need to say is preeminent.

This is an important understanding. I must come to a place where I can speak/write what is on the inside regardless of whether or not I will be complimented or criticized for the words I write. Writing with this purpose in mind is the starting block for me to explore the question of who am I? Exploring this person through writing is vital. Can someone be who he or she is on the inside without being shaped by the external forces of the accolades of men? What things or experiences occur that shape or deform one’s being? That is the journey that I am on. I find myself on this journey and it is a journey that is a lonely one. It must be a lone walk, for it is only I that can walk down this path. Sure there are others that come in and out along the way, but ultimately some roads I must walk alone. It is this solitude that causes me to look deep into the mirror of the soul.

Once a person has spent time in solitude wrestling with their own angels and demons, I think they might be better equipped to cross over into the world of others. A silent retreat is the marinating place where someone can journey to the center of life. More and more I am thinking that this is the place of peace that transcends all things. I am beginning to understand the benefit of solitude.

Many times when I talk with others, what happens is I am looking for other people to either validate or contest my thoughts that are expressed in the conversation. I have never realized that in that context I am more interested in what people are thinking about my thoughts and ideas rather than me actually listening to my own voice. It is really kind of sad that I take the comments of others to determine whether or not what I am thinking or saying is right or wrong, rather than listening to my words to determine whether or not it is real or just something that I am reacting to because of the circumstance or situation at hand.

Jesus addressed this external focus when addressing a group of people who were supposedly experts in the way things are supposed be. He said, "All you think about is the outside of the bowl, when all you are on the inside is dry bones." Well, of course they were dry bones on the inside; they were trying to live an external performance rather than an internal cleansing life. One of the apprentices of Jesus gives a very practical illustration of what it looks like to live an internal cleansing life in this world. My understanding of what James writes in his letter is this: Make this your common practice: Speak your inside brokenness to each other and take new cleansing thoughts and speak (pray) to (Yahweh) the center of Complete Wholeness; in doing this you can live together whole and healed.

Could this be a picture of what Jesus spoke of when he said that the people of God are to be the salt of the earth? Salt by its character brings out the flavor of all kinds of food. In steak it brings out more steak; in corn it brings out more corn. Salt does not try to get the steak to smell or taste like corn. I have been guilty of thinking my salt-ness has been just that, trying to make every thing smell and taste like salt. My Christianity has been the same thing; I have tried to make my views the views of others. And that position comes from the thing which I said earlier, that I want someone to validate what I am saying so that I don’t have to question my views.

If there is to be any litmus test to real life, it could be to put them against the stories of others who have lived their lives in pursuit of real life. These stories are not just stories that happened to some people thousands of years ago in some faraway place. What would make these stories powerful and life-defining would be their ability to speak to lives in generations of people who walked this earth many years after they are gone. So the evidence of whether or not these stories were real is not that they happened, but that they continue to happen today, and that they will happen tomorrow. The only way to know whether or not you were living this story is to know your story, as well as to be familiar with their story going back as far as the stories had been told. The best collection of these thoughts and lives lived is recorded in the journey of the people of the Bible."

Well, that is what I have to say about that today... I don't know if this is actually a novel that I am working on. I am excited that I am getting these thoughts and ideas down on paper. I am on my way to 50,000 words.

taking deep swings at old walls

2006-11-06T15:25:00.000-08:00

I have this weird idea that everything we do in the physical world does have some translation in the spiritual realm. I say that because we are made from dirt given breath from the Creator of Life who is the Spirit of all things in Heaven and on earth. So we are in fact fully human and fully spiritual. Fully integrated. I guess some people might then classify me as a mystic. I don’t really care for the labels but I am very interested in how things are connected on the various levels.

Yesterday I was working on a little home renovation project with a friend. It is rather interesting that this house is not just some house that we are flipping for the sake of making a profit. This house is his old house.

Swinging a large sledgehammer during the deconstruction, I realized one must have above average strength or inner determination to make a mighty swing with the heavy duty tool. We joked with each other about tapping into some repressed anger to give energy to swing the hammer. It's funny that when we make jokes like that we don’t even realize how we have just connected the spiritual with the physical.

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense, what on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of- throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity, Book IV Chapter 9

walking barefoot

2006-11-03T05:46:00.000-08:00

"The journey toward inner truth is too taxing to be made solo: lacking support, the solitary traveler soon becomes weary or fearful and is likely to quit the road.

The path is too deeply hidden to be traveled without company; finding our way involves clues that are subtle and sometimes misleading, requiring the kind of discernment that can happen only in dialogue.

The destination is too daunting to be achieved alone; we need community to find the courage to venture into the alien lands to which the inner teacher may call us."
Quoted from Palmer Parker “A hidden wholeness”

So there it is, said by a professional, or better yet, a seasoned veteran of the journey of the soul. It is a journey that is best taken with others and not alone. I think this is really profound. It is not just a whimsical dream to want to be on the road of life with fellow travelers. The daunting question is where are the real travelers? Where are the ones who want to explore life, faith, doubts, success and failures, with a few close friends?

I continue to pray that the Great Conversationalist will bring forth into our lives the real ones who want to walk along the Great Path that leads to restoration.

Can we walk together?

I have never been one to go barefoot. I have always preferred the feeling of a pair of warm socks even on a hot summer day. Maybe it comes from a couple of bad experiences I had as a child. I remember when I was very young, maybe 4 or 5, I was playing barefoot in the back yard of a friend's house and I stepped on a bee. It was the most painful thing I had ever felt in my life. My parents freaking out over the incident didn’t help things either. Maybe it was because I was their first child. As a parent myself, I know that with your first child everything that happens is on a heightened level whether it is their first words, first tooth, or first fall. I must have sensed in my parents that there was something serious about the stinger. I remember them making up some baking soda paste trying to get the stinger to rise to the surface of the skin so it could be removed. I guess they thought it was a killer bee or something. Really what was all the fuss about? Needless to say, that was the last time I played outside without socks and shoes on. I was not going to leave myself exposed at the foot.

The second lesson that helped me develop the need to wear socks was an event that occurred inside the house. I must have been around 7 or 8 and we lived in an older house that had the air and heater vents on the floor of the house. I remember it was a cold winter month and the heater was turned up to keep us warm. It was late at night and I was walking across the hardwood floors and all of the sudden I stepped on what felt like what can only be described as a row of a dozen red-hot butter knives sticking straight up. I must have screamed bloody murder. That was it, I would never go barefoot inside or outside with out socks or shoes on.

I can’t help but to wonder if for some people when they have experienced pain that is somehow associated with trying to be open and vulnerable it causes them to, as I did, put on a layer that protects their bareness? Seems like a very natural reaction when traced back to the original source. But at what cost does this covering up come?

For me this foot issue has taken away things I know that others have said are really beautiful moments of being connected with the ground that our feet are connected with. To this day it is a real stretch to walk in my front lawn barefoot even though I love the inviting appearance of a nurtured lawn. I can watch my children run and play in the grass, but to me the blades of grass are like small prickly leaves that make me want to go put my sandals on.

Another sad result of this condition is missing the cool sensation of sand and surf when walking on the beach. For years I would wear those mesh like wet-socks when playing at the beach. I think this summer I went to the beach for the first time and was completely barefoot and I was ok. In fact I had an amazing time.

Little by little, I have tried to walk out this fear or discomfort with leaving my feet exposed to the environment. I guess I am going through life therapy like Bob in “What about Bob?” I am taking baby steps to being ok with my feet.

I wonder if there is any connection to becoming bare and vulnerable in order to really engage life in the fullest sense. I wonder if Moses had a foot sensitivity issue? I wonder if he really had to think long and hard when the Voice of Truth said, remove your sandals, the ground you are standing is hallowed ground?

Can we walk barefoot together?

what to do with this sadness?

2006-11-02T06:43:00.000-08:00

What does one do when they realize the pain in their heart comes from a sadness that is beyond their control? My sadness comes from the condition of so many people like myself who are wondering like exiles in this land. My sadness is for the broken hearts that long for the people of God to be who they were created to be. How long will we wait for our hearts to melt like wax before we like the first people of God turn around and come home. But we ask ourselves how can we return home when everything has been trampled and burned to the ground? How can we return to what doesn’t exist anymore?

The dwelling place of God left buildings built by the hands of man and has been searching two centuries for a new dwelling place – the hearts of mankind.

This feeling of sadness might be named as depression to some of the medical profession. Depression might be the oldest plague of the heart. When the plague of darkness fell upon the Egyptians because of Pharaoh’s hard heart, the world might have experienced the first massive regional outbreak of depression. And what brought this on? God was trying to lead his people into freedom and liberty. Liberty to be the people of God. Liberty to love all the people of the world. Liberty to proclaim the good news to the captives of the hopelessness. Liberty to live in harmony with one another and with YWHY.

I look to heaven wondering how long God must I wrestle with my thoughts and everyday have sorrow in my heart? How long? How long? How long?

Was this the agony in the hearts of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Ezra, and Nehemiah? Were their hearts broken over the state of the people of God? How did they not just want to give up? How did they remain faithful to the One who brought his people out of the jail of oppression when it seemed like there was no hope for rescue?

Something about this song touches the heart of what I am lamenting.

"Did I disappoint you or let you down?
Should I be feeling guilty or let the judges frown?
'Cause I saw the end before we'd begun,
Yes I saw you were blinded and I knew I had won.
So I took what's mine by eternal right.
Took your soul out into the night.
It may be over but it won't stop there,
I am here for you if you'd only care.

You touched my heart you touched my soul.
You changed my life and all my goals.
And love is blind and that I knew when,
My heart was blinded by you.
I've kissed your lips and held your head.
Shared your dreams and shared your bed.
I know you well, I know your smell.
I've been addicted to you.

Goodbye my lover. Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.
I am a dreamer but when I wake,
You can't break my spirit -
it's my dreams you take.
And as you move on, remember me,
Remember us and all we used to be.

I've seen you cry, I've seen you smile.
I've watched you sleeping for a while.
I'd be the father of your child.
I'd spend a lifetime with you.
I know your fears and you know mine.
We've had our doubts but now we're fine,
And I love you, I swear that's true.
I cannot live without you.

Goodbye my lover. Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.
And I still hold your hand in mine.
In mine when I'm asleep.
And I will bear my soul in time,
When I'm kneeling at your feet.

Goodbye my lover.Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.You have been the one for me.
I'm so hollow, baby, I'm so hollow.
I'm so, I'm so, I'm so hollow."

Here is my response:

I long to be in love
long to share my life
with the real ones
with the ones who live the Name
to live my life with no shame

I’m still holding on.
I’m still holding on.

I’m walking in tears of hope
one day I will hear, I will hear
the horns blowing,
blowing in the distance
calling the wonderers home.

I’m still holding on.
I’m still holding on.

I have fallen
Fallen on my hands and knees
crying will we once again
know the warm embrace
of thee.

May the One who calls out to the lonely hear your cries. And may his Face shine upon you. Peace to you. May the Exiles find their way home.

dreaming?

2006-10-31T04:12:00.000-08:00

Maybe the dreams that we have are nothing but illusions of the mind performed to pass the night away. Maybe some dreams really are messages from the divine One. How does one know the difference? Can we know the message? Can we know the meaning? What people, places, or things in the natural cause the dreams to come alive and find their place? What do we do with passages in the Bible like Daniel who was given the ability to know the mysteries of the king’s dream? What is the purpose of the mystery? Is it to know the dream or the Dream Giver?

Have you ever had a weird dream that came true?

the deep roots

2006-10-30T07:04:00.000-08:00

How long does it take to see the shape in the thing that is right in front of my face? When will I be able to see the outline of the truest form of who I am? Wrestling with the roots of my own life, I want get down to the core of me.

Live generously. Ask yourself what do you want people to do for you; then take the iniative and do it for them.

May you as you struggle to look deep into your roots see the wounds and pains that have shaped you and find that just beyond the scars there is the One who is wholeness. May you find the One mending and repairing the truest shape of you. May you recognize yourself for the first time being made whole. This is the sound of Life coming from the deep.

the rhythm of everyday liturgy

2006-10-15T08:54:00.000-07:00

today i went to service with a very close friend of mine. i haven't been to a liturgical service in many years. there are some beautiful elements of this expression of faith.

today we read responsively psalm 90. i think i was more engaged in this portion of the service than anything else, besides communion. i loved reading in response with others the desperate cry of Moses as he laments for himself and the people of God. the practical expression of faith displayed in the congregation engaging the sacred text with one another is so beautiful.

i left service and made my way home. as i drove i thought, as beautiful as the service was, if that is it, just one hour of one day once a week, no wonder so many people have walked away from church buildings and church services. if church is only about going to a place, or attending a service, or listening to someone speak, how does that really intersect our daily life?

i have been thinking more and more about the people in whom i have unplanned routine contact with, and yet i have no meaningful conversation with them. i have also been thinking about the many people who are wandering around this city asking themsleves, where are the "real ones"; the real ones who want to serve and love God and naturally display that devotion in service to others.

therefore i must pray the words that have been prayed for generations by those who hope that the divine is best seen in the ordinary events of the average day:

"Clean the slate, God, so we can start the day fresh!Keep me from stupid sins,from thinking I can take over your work; Then I can start this day sun-washed,scrubbed clean of the grime of sin." psalm 19:13 the message

"May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer. " psalms 19:14 NIV

And so the service continues today as i move onto the next expression of faith in my everyday liturgy: kickball in the yard with the neighborhood kids!

peace to you

in the beginning...again

2006-09-30T08:08:00.000-07:00

Here we are at the beginning, again. My brothers in the Jewish faith maybe onto something in celebrating Rosh Hashanah, the New Year. It has been said that life is a series of cycles. Those who live well are the ones who can recognize the cycles and learn to live them more skilled than they did the last time. Finding it a challange, they look forward to the trials and difficulties hoping that this time around they might choose "mitzvoh" the good deed. Each good deed is in some way bringing about a more complete circle of the way it is in Heaven.

For some life is a divine service, for others life is a race to buy and consume all that can be had.

I think over the last decade I have unfortunately been in the later camp. But maybe this time around I will choose a life of divine service. Darla and I began our journey together almost 17 years ago in small town called Panama City. It was from that town that we struck out to make a life for ourselves. Today we find oursleves back in Panama City ready to embark on a new journey. Over these last few months we have introspectively looked at where we have come from, it is from this vantage point that we move forward. The past has served as a road map to the choices we have made with our time, resource, and thoughts. As a result of some of those choices, we have found ourselves in a trap of commitments wieghing us down. The weight of these commitments are such a heavey burden, we can barely take more than two steps at a time. So as we go back to the beginning again, we hope to make different choices with what the One who gives neither proverty nor riches but only our daily provision.

Living in the daily, we no longer must carry the weight of tomorrow for tomorrow will take care of itself. Realizing that our daily needs will be met, we can then be looking for who might be in need and become a hand of the Divine to meet those needs. Maybe it is the beginning of living the giving away of our lives for others, not in obligation, but in joy to be in harmony with the Great Song of Restoration playing in our ordinary every day living.

So here is my prayer today, let the shackles of the exiles fall off, and let the horn of freedom sound, and may we step out into the new day!

searching for Life

2006-09-29T11:07:00.000-07:00

What if I had the words to say what I was feeling on the inside? What if I could articulate the journey that is taking place beneath my skin? It is as if I am caught under the ice and am grasping for breath hoping to find a break in the surface that I might burst through. In the beginning of this journey, the One who is Truth seemed to lead me to this phrase…I came that you might have Life.

I have searched high and low and have only grasped a glimpse at this Life. It seems like most of the time it eludes me and at other times I ignore that it is possible. It seems that the Life looks nothing like I thought it would. No fame, no riches, no accolades of men, so what is this Life. The Rabbi once said, “One must lose his life in order to find it.” I think I have found the first part of that verse to be true. I have most definitely lost my life. Meaning the life I have lived over the last decade has completely vanished into thin air over the last few months. No wonder few people intentionally set out to lose their life because is it down right terrifying. When one comes to the end of themselves, it is absolutely unnerving. So where am I? Where is the real me? Can my Rabbi find me and lead me through the valley of this unknown land? Can the One who gave me my first breath cause my heart to beat once again for the purpose of bringing hope and healing into the land my feet daily traverse? And so I wait…

the rhythm of laying bricks

2006-09-19T08:44:00.000-07:00

Another project I worked on this weekend was laying a brick border around the mulch garden beds along the side and back of our house. Once again this is a project that I have neglected to do while we lived in the house, and now that we are selling the house it seems odd that I would put hours of work into something that will be enjoyed by someone else. Nevertheless, I picked up 60 bricks to start. According to the real garden pros I did it completely backwards. I laid the mulch and planted the ferns and then came along with the brick border. As I laid each brick I found it very interesting that the edge of where the mulch ended and where the dirt was the obvious place the brick would lay. It was like the bricks had a certain place to lie, I just had to get down on my hands and knees to touch feel and see where the place was. I remember thinking, God are you helping me with this project today? Do you already know where each brick goes? Why do you allow me to lay the bricks? What if I put them in the wrong place?

Somehow in the humble position bending down, I seemed to enter into the rhythm of the way the bricks were going to go. If I saw some weeds in the path, I pulled them out. If I saw the mulch was too clumped together, I would spread it out or shape it to the path of the brick. Again the rhythm of laying the brick seemed to guide me on its own. Near the end I realized I was going to run out of bricks, so I went and got 40 more bricks. I was really exhausted, but I knew I was in this really awesome brick border grove. I couldn’t stop. My shirt was soaking in sweat. My face was getting sun burned. My legs, thighs, and lower back were just throbbing, but I had to complete the work.

I laid the bricks, brick by brick. With a short pause, I reached into the wheel barrow to select a brick to lie down. So there must have been some connection not only to the path but to which brick would go in what place. Everything seemed to be connected, yet I was unaware that there was a connection. I was just busy with the work.

As I looked up at the end of my toil, I enjoyed the work of my hands. I enjoyed that what was once debris, weeds, and shapeless void had know become a path of growing beauty full of potential. Somehow I found real joy in knowing that one day someone else was going to enjoy the fruits of my labor.

Here is the plain truth. Our house the inside, the outside, the roof and everything in-between, has been completely cleaned or repaired bringing it to a condition better than it was before we bought it some 10 years ago. I can not help but to have this deep sense that now not only is the house ready for its new owner, but we have completed the preparation for the new owners. It is finished.

Who will the new owners be?

Finally getting around to it…

2006-09-17T20:37:00.000-07:00

What happens when a decade of little worries pile on year after year? Like leaves falling from the huge oak trees of difficulty in our lives, the unsaid words or emotional wounds left to decay the roof of our souls. How risky is it to climb up on the roof and began the cleaning process? Can it be done alone? Or is there someone there to hold the ladder of hope while one climbs onto the severe pitch of the roof?

Pushing the debris off the roof is only the beginning. Some of the leaves will make good mulch, some will need to be thrown away. Once all the debris is down off the roof, and is in plain site, it is really quite overwhelming. This is not a quick job. Keeping one’s roof clean is not a one time event either.

This weekend I spent two days working on this very project with a very close friend. He will never know how much help he was to me. For almost 10 years my family and I have lived in this house and not once have I ever cleaned the roof. Not only did my friend help, but he did most of the work. He was on the roof; I was on the ground. He dealt with the slippery slope of the roof, and I dealt with what was pushed off. I remember looking up at him on the roof and saying this is what real discipleship looks like. It is one person helping another person work through the difficult issues of life. It is the most basic form of real community. It is taking your ordinary everyday life, your eating, sleeping, and cleaning out your junk, then offering it completely to the One who gives the very breath of Life in hopes for a longer and healthier life.

The gospel according to Spiderman

2006-09-13T11:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday in our local paper there was a free issue of a Spiderman comic book. Pete Parker’s life is very interesting. During the day he works an average job, but is it really an average job. Somehow his relationships and contacts in his day job are the inroads to find the marginalized, oppressed, and the victims of society. It is very interesting that Peter Parker goes into disguise when he fulfills the role of hero. He doesn’t seem very interested in receiving recognition for his good deeds in the community.

I wonder if Pete Parker thinks his life is dualistic. Does it seem like his life is compartmentalized into a day job that just pays the bills and another life where he does the work that really matters?

In a time of transition of my own, I find this perspective of the Spiderman story intriguing. I realize that I am a messenger of hope no matter what occupation I find myself, because each relationship and every situation I find myself in is connected to a larger life picture.

It really makes Paul’s letter to the people of the Great Hero meeting in the city of Rome come home:

“So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life--your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life--and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.”

looking with new eyes

2006-09-03T07:53:00.000-07:00

"First we meditate on Jesus, and then we go out and look for him in disguise."
Mother Teresa

decentralized yet still connected

2006-08-29T10:48:00.000-07:00

“In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.”
– James writing to fellow gardeners

I love the picture that James paints with these words. I really enjoy landscaping. I’m not much of a gardener when it comes to flowers and such, but give me an overgrown lawn or a hedge that needs to be trimmed and I am all in. While staying with Darla’s parents, I have had the chance to help out with the yard work. Darla’s father has put a lot of time into cultivating a beautiful yard in the front and the back. Looking from my perspective, I can see the landscaping of the flowers and elephant ear plants in the front that are carefully carved out with a nice edge to allow for good rain water to soak and drain properly. I can also see the beautiful green shrubs that line the walkway in the backyard around the pool. Even though these plants are thriving in there own respective environment, they are unaware of their connectedness in the overall beauty of the property. Nevertheless, each flower, shrub, tree, and blade of grass make up this carefully nurtured parcel of land.

What if this were a picture of a group of people who had this deep sense that there must be something more to life than just doing my own thing? What if they some how felt connected to something larger than just the patch of dirt where they were planted?

Over the years Darla’s dad has given us plants from his yard for us to take back to our home and plant in our garden. And from time to time he has transplanted flowers from his backyard to the front yard and vice versa. Each time the plant is given a new environment to grow is adapts to a new location yet it doesn’t become a different kind of plant altogether. The shrub is still a shrub. The flower is still a flower. It doesn’t change the fact that the plant will be impacted by its new environment, but it never loses sight of the fact that is a one part of a larger garden that has been cultivated by a loving gardener.

what do we learn in home school?

2006-08-16T08:36:00.000-07:00

What do we learn at home?

After making the decision to home school their three children Mike and Dee, set out to give it their best effort to become parent-teachers. Two days into the adventure, it becomes quite clear that unless Mike and Dee work together this home school is going to take them to school. As a result of the challenge of this new home school environment, Mike realizes in humility that he has been very distant from the everyday learning experiences of his children, while he was in pursuit of the dream career life for himself. Mike begins to appreciate through personal experience the incredible patience it requires to be a teacher of two students, much less a classroom of eighteen. Continuing to nibble on his own piece of humble pie, he realizes just how deeply he has completely missed out on the real life, in the process of trying to get everything for himself in order to fill his hunger for meaning and purpose. What is it that drives a man to run the opposite direction of the true life he was created to live?

How amazing is it that in just a few short days the demeanor and attitude of his children had changed? What is the home school? Maybe it was simply the total engagement of Mike and Dee in the everyday lives of their children down to the smallest detail that was beginning to heal the apathetic and broken spirit of their family. Mike and Dee had unknowingly entered the world in which the children lived. Mike and Dee quickly learned that it took their complete devotion and commitment together to make this home school project run smoothly.

During this project Mike remembered times when in the past he had gone to pick up the kids from school. At the time he felt so good about himself, but the reality was he really thought it was an interruption in his very important day or rather it was a really good excuse to get out of work for the afternoon. He wasn’t genuinely interested in their day because he was completely emerged in his self-absorbed life. Grace to be forgiven for such a shallow attempt at fatherhood is hard to accept. Nonetheless, that was exactly the place Mike sensed he was being led. Can a simple act of changing one’s idea from selfishness towards an ideal of family wholeness cause the course of life to change?

In the middle of all of this, Mike and Dee received a call from a very close friend who informed them that there was a great need at one of the local elementary schools. Mike and Dee sat down with the kids and explained the situation and asked how they should respond as a family. The kids decided they wanted to help by enrolling in the school. For the first time, Mike and Dee were making a decision with the whole family and it was for a greater good beyond themselves. Maybe this time when Mike picks them up from school and asks about their day, he will mean it. Maybe when he looks at the papers they have brought home from school, he won’t be just concerned with the grade as much as thinking of what it must have been like, felt like, tasted like to complete that project.

This leads Mike down further down the road of reflection where he sees just how big a load Dee has been carrying when it comes to the education and overall care of the family. He can’t imagine what kept her from just giving up and walking out the door. At that moment he sees Dee as the most beautiful and nurturing mother under what must have been the most overwhelming circumstances. How can he begin to tell her how much he loves her and will stand with her hand in hand as they walk out the rest of their life together. Together they will live the deeply soul connected story of the-two-became-one marriage life. In this life partnership of commitment and promise they must remember the sacred space of the family circle. They vow to strive towards true life together. Keeping at the forefront of their minds eye, how they think about, prepare for, and lovingly discipline their kids, will set in motion an environment of hope and inspiration.

Looking at the man in the mirror, Mike sees himself, as the outline of a changed man, husband, and father. No longer is it an idealistic way to view the family relationship, but it is becoming a reality, that together with Dee, they will meet the challenge to teach their children about life in the midst of the everyday ordinary eating, sleeping, and going to whatever and not just every three weeks or so when they are feeling guilty about the lack of connection with the kids.

And so the journey continues…

While driving in the rain

2006-08-13T20:35:00.000-07:00

One day Mike and Dee’s father were riding in the car. Mike began talking about how he was raised as a child in a passive disciplinary home environment, not that it was the ideal home, but no family is perfect. Now in his own family, Mike and Dee are working out the best they can, learning how to be a parent and a spouse with all the pressures of the world crashing in all around. The new changes in the family are so upside down. Mike has become the man-mommy, staying at home cleaning and keeping things mostly in disorder; while Dee has found great income potential as a legal consultant. In this topsy-turvy family dynamic, everyone is under tremendous pressure. Can this be right? Is this the American way?

Speaking to Dee’s father is very difficult for Mike. Having lost the chance to have any kind of relationship with his own father some twenty years ago, it often takes a little nudging, and prodding from Dee to encourage Mike to speak openly about life issues with her Dad. Maybe Mike is realizing that this healing time is for everyone not just those around him. Early one Sunday morning Dee and Mike, find themselves in a raw but honest conversation about how things are really going. It is a beautiful and difficult moment of discovery. Mike and Dee are realizing that there are little cracks in their souls, and for what ever reason this intense period of waiting is bringing to the surface every splinter. They both admit to each other, if they had it their way they would walk away from this crazy story, but yet somehow they sense there is no turning back.

Later that day they come across a confession of another tormented life traveler, an ancient poet and king, who penned these words:

The opening:
Long enough, GOD-
you've ignored me long enough.
I've looked at the back of your head long enough.
Long enough, I've carried this ton of trouble,
lived with a stomach full of pain.

The closing:
I've thrown myself
headlong into your arms--
I'm celebrating your rescue.
I'm singing at the top of my lungs,
I'm so full of answered prayers.

Reading it together, they both wonder out loud; how does the poet king make it from the opening to the closing. As the air suddenly becomes heavy, Mike can sense deep down inside a cry that has been trapped for several days. No longer able to hold it back, wondering if hope is truly lost or if any rescue is on the way, the tears of his soul break the silence. Streaming down his face blurring his vision, he can barely see to drive. How can he even operate under these conditions? Is there any one out there? Does any one know the pain he knows deep down inside?

In this sacred pause of time and space, Mike touches the wound that he shares with his soul mate. How long has Dee carried this wound alone? Joined by the tears of pride released, maybe today was the day that the two became one, waiting for the rescue while driving in the rain.

Warning! Do not try this at home!

2006-08-11T08:27:00.000-07:00

The story you are about to read is a true story. The names and places of the actual individuals have been changed to protect their identity. Any reproduction or transmission of this story in whole or in part is strictly forbidden and protected by copyright laws.

In our story today, we peek in at the lives of what was an ordinary middle class suburban family living in the south. Mike and Dee are the typical married couple with three children. Trying to make ends meet in an ever increasing credit card world, and living beyond their means for nearly ten years, they found themselves nearly $30,000 in debt. The debt story is the same story for thousands of Americans who because of the low home refinancing rates and constant bombardment of materialistic seduction find themselves sucked into a never ending buying vacuum. As hard as Mike and Dee try, they can’t seem to shake the habit. This is a habit of buying what they want when they want because they have the credit by which to purchase anything they want. They rationalize to themselves that Mike’s next bonus or Dee’s income from the next home business project will bring a chunk of cash of which they will put toward the debt. The fool proof plan fails because something inevitably comes up in which the money is needed and the debt grows with compounding interest.

Mike and Dee’s story takes an interesting turn for the worst when Mike decides to quit his job in search of a more fulfilling life purpose. Selling all their possessions, they decide to move in with Dee’s parents while they wait for the sale of the house. Once again their hope is in one big chunk of cash to set them free to live life as they desire. Mike and Dee have fallen into the trap of the money escape hatch. What they don’t realize is that they have already escaped.

For them it is very difficult to know that they have escaped because they are so close to the situation. The escape is not the difficult part all though it takes incredible fortitude to make the jump from one lifestyle to another, but the real challenge comes when because of the jump you see how messed up and out of order your life had become. Re-prioritizing comes with a great deal of pain, like a drug addict going through detox. It feels like the pain is too much to handle. It would just be better to go back to the old way of living. The problem is when you make the “life jump” there is no going back because you have already seen the truth.

When the desire to spend is gone it is a natural response of the human body to need a stimulus to replace that empty feeling. Worry becomes the new stimuli for the life jumpers. How will the bills get paid? How are we going to take care of next month’s food and gas needs? Once again it is difficult to see when you are in the moment, but worry is really vain superstition. This is a time of raw emotions and self-doubt. It is the condition which requires the warning, “Do not attempt this at home!” For Mike and Dee this internal motive examination feels like the life of a bug under the magnifying glass feeling the heat of the sunlight intensified to the point that external combustion is almost certain. If you have made it to this point in the story, Mike and Dee would like to seriously warn you to keep your ordinary comfortable lives. This is too difficult. If anyone tells you it will be fine you’ll make it through, turn and run for your life. It is impossible to make this journey alone.

Mike and Dee are fortunate enough to have a couple of friends who want to help them through this difficult transformational process. But there is another force at work in this story. To admit you have a problem, is to admit that you are weak, therefore the internal mechanism of pride rises to the top and paralyzes the individual to reach out for help. In a social climate that recognizes and promotes self resolution, humility and meekness is considered useless and ineffective.

Extended family can be a powerful aid in this difficult as well, however the addictions of the family can be traced from generation to generation. Mike and Dee while staying at her parent’s house find this to be true. It is like a double edge sword; in this concentrated environment near the source of contention, it has the potential to completely heal the ailment or to bring about certain death of the life jumper’s spirit. Just one incident that comes close to the original wound can bring you to the edge of the knife of destruction that kills the spirit of hope or it can set you free to live life like never before. Many times in this concentrated environment there are repeated “close calls.”

Once again please, Do not attempt this at home! We must break for station identification and messages from our supporters. What will happen to Mike and Dee? Stay tuned.

To be continued…

this restoration life

2006-08-09T14:15:00.000-07:00

when I was four
I lived life outloud
with toys and more.

the mach5 and star wars
no guilt no shame
for freedom was my game.

what will tomorrow bring?
a day of play or a day of pain?

digging in the dirt
trying to make a way through
what darkness lay around the corner?

the innocense stolen from a boy
when those who are so close
are the ones who have the power
to wound so deeply.

how deep the wounds run
when time runs like sand
how deep, how long, will brokeness remain?
forgotten is the path of pain.

so easy to forget
for to remember is to be afflicted once again
as age grows on, the road to heal fades in the distance
how far away, how closer still, is the splintered soul?

a deeper magic still there is
for there is One who restores better than before
gathering shattered glimmers of light
until all is made whole again.

is this the marvelous light that shines through the darkness
can it be so? Can hope return to free despair?

now the boy become a man
begins to hope again
stepping forth with trembling fear
it is time to look into despair?

for through the darkness light prevails
the buried wound now laid bare
feels the balm of the healing pool of life.

what is the pool of light that heals my wounds?
emerging from the stream of Life
only an outline of the wound remains
for I have been freed to live again.

to live outloud
everyday I am being re-made
better than before.

this is restoration
this is the life
I live today.

the first day of a new month

2006-08-01T20:56:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day of August and it seems as though a new chapter has begun. Our friends Brian and Candace arrived in Honolulu yesterday to begin the process of finding the essentials, living quarters, job opportunities, and schooling for the kids.

We are still waiting for the sale of our house before we can begin planning our departure to the islands. After evaluating what our basic needs are, we have are lowering the asking price of our home from $195k to $188k. Hopefully, the price reduction will bring in a wider range of buyers. We are traveling back to Tallahassee this weekend to check on the house and to turn off some of the utilities. We are looking forwarded to having dinner with some close friends while we are there and to have a few days of solitude to listen to the One who illuminates the path.

We are preparing to home school the oldest girls through an online virtual classroom from K12.com. What an amazing idea, public school online! We will have outlines, text books, computers, and a designated teacher to have available for questions and monthly assessments for the kids, all for free! And the great thing is K12.com is in about 15 states now including Hawaii.

This morning I met with Rob (realsoulsurfer). We sat in his living room and just talked about life and how things were going. It was amazing to me that he would sacrifice his time to talk with me when I have nothing to offer him or his ministry. His genuine care for me and my family is an inspiration. One thing I shared with him was concerning my newly developing awareness about what it means to be the provider of the family. For so long provider meant a material provider, but now I am being exposed to a fuller understanding of the father/provider role. In the past, I gave 95% of my creative energies to my work and only 5% to my family. I am so ready to find a healthier balance for creative energies. I want to love my kids with all my being, not out of obligation but out of a desire to build a creative and loving environment for them to grow. While talking with Rob about that Darla called to say she may have the opportunity to make sufficient income through court reporting and that I should consider staying at home with the kids. Wow, what a chance of a lifetime! It will be such a change from the life I have known for the last ten years.

Over the last seven days I haven’t written one page of the new book project. I have been just talking with people about the concept of the book and listening to what kind of feed back I get. Thank you to everyone who commented on the blog with kinds words of affirmation. The next seven days I am brainstorming the synopsis. A daily devotion of creative wordsmithing, I guess you could say. Tonight I bought a green spiral notebook (at the Dollar Tree- living on a budget you know) to begin the process.

Well that is a pretty good update one what is happening to the Winn people along this journey. Who knows what the next 40 days will hold. I am looking forward with great anticipation!

May you find the One who holds all things together busy at work in the most unlikely places, capturing your heart once again!

Hoping for the 7th Day

2006-07-28T09:11:00.000-07:00

Last night I was watching Over Hauled on The Learning Channel. I think they might be onto something. If you haven’t watched the show, it is similar to Extreme Home Makeover on ABC. The differences are they makeover someone’s car instead of their home, and instead of sending them on vacation while redoing the house, they pretend to steal or tow away the person’s car. Rather than checking in with warm and fuzzy stories with the family and Ty Penington, the person is prank called three times setting up the final scene where they are given their completely restored and customized car.

Last night as I watched the guy squirm both on the phone and in person as the prank calls were made, I couldn’t help but to sympathize with his pain. He had spent the last four years trying to restore, with his own resources, a 96 two door Chevy Tahoe. It looked pretty good from the outside. It was painted, had sweet rims, and was slightly lowered. The guy got a job as a mechanic at a GM dealership just so he could learn how to work on his truck. The guy did not lack for dedication. But with all his dedication and hard work on the outside, the most important things, the engine and transmission, were shot. All his hard work literally got him nowhere.

Thinking about it today, there were 3 prank calls each one trying to get the guy to lose his cool. I guess one could say the pranks were mini-trials of character. The guy was really pretty level headed about the whole thing, but you could hear him agonizing over the situation. While he was agonizing the “design team” was completely stripping down the Tahoe to restore it to beyond its original design. They put in six sub-woofers, custom leather seats, air suspension kit, custom paint including an air brush symbol of a bull dog (the guy had just bought a new puppy), and 20 inch chrome wheels, and a new engine and transmission, and more.

After seven days of restoration (interesting symbolic number), the completely customized Tahoe was ready to be delivered. The host of the show met with the owner of the truck in a last prank with the wrong Tahoe on a flat bed tow truck, trying to get the guy to settle for something other than his truck. The guy said “NO Way!” Finally, the host tells the guy he is on Overhaulin' and takes him to his truck at the makeover shop.

They guy is so humbled almost to the point of tears. He keeps going on and on about how this is so amazing. How it is more than he would ever dream of and how he wouldn’t change anything! He even says, “I think I have died and gone to heaven!” He goes around hugging every single person that had anything to do with the restoration project. Not only was the truck transformed but so was he! He even says, “You have changed my life for ever!” Lastly, his fiancé, who had set up the whole thing comes out, and he just melts in her arms. His mom comes in and she too is overwhelmed by the whole thing.

Could this be a picture of how the Father works, allowing the pressures of the world to close in on us, while shaping our character along the way? All the while, He is completely working out all the details of the dream life project down to the minutest detail. Our best efforts with limited resources pales in comparison to His finished masterpiece, because only the Creator of our souls can restore the inner shape of our being. This put-back-better-than-before life is a life that was meant to be shared with others so that the Restoration Story might go on and on. So that others who feel as though life is cruel and hard might know there is hope around the corner. There can be a day 7 for every one.

My hope is that I am living the Over Hauled story of the restoration gospel. And while I am going through what seems like a cruel prank, this season is just character shaping for the customized kingdom life that is being worked on behind the scenes by the Extreme Maker of all things.

This has to be one of the most difficult passages in the sacred text:
“Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.” Psalm 27:14

May those who read this story know that the One who is total restoration is working in your midst. Be strong, have heart, hope is on the way.

ok FINE I'll write the book!

2006-07-25T11:36:00.000-07:00

Well after many comments here and there, and a chance meeting with the co-author of a book about the spiritual journey while at Books-a-Million one day, I am making the commitment to write a book. I guess one would ask what is the name of this book and what is it about? The best that I can tell now the working title would be:

The Real Zoo: Opening the cages of the status quo to find real life.

Thank you to all the people who have encouraged me to make this leap of faith and tell the story that seems to be taking place all around us. I don't know who would read this book or what they would do with it or why, but it seems like this is the next step in my journey.

I am also encouraged to know that I am in good company with people who weren't qualified, certified, or licensed to do _______, but nevertheless stepped out into the unknown in search of the real life hidden beneath the status quo yet a life longing to be lived.

May it be written.

the yellow brick road to Haight Street in San Francisco

2006-07-14T12:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we spent the day in California with our friends from CRASH exploring Haight Street in downtown San Francisco. As we walked up and down the streets of the vintage clothing shops, smoke shops, and everything in-between, I couldn’t help but to be overwhelmed by the sense that this is a city crawling with people who are searching. We joined in the pursuit of searching for something.
Whether it is a bargain priced pair of polka dot Chuck Taylor Converse, a Mighty Mouse vintage tee, or an ancient fighting dragon tattoo, we are all looking for something. I was mesmerized by the incredible beauty of the vintage shops. Both the interior and the exterior were rich with character and nostalgia.
The towering mini Victorian flats pressed up next to one another seemed to express the cultural relationship of people, proximity, and passion. There is something very romantic about the crown modeling, panoramic window panes, and contrasting enamel color tones of these majestic urban dwellings. One can only image what kinds of stories these homes might tell if they could speak an audible language. And yet without using words they seem to speak quite loudly of life that can be lived if one is truly willing to leave the world of certain expectations behind in search for an authentic life.
And of course the shop owners and patrons were equally unique and intriguing. Freedom of expression is the rule in this alternative fashion district. In a world that seems to dictate the rules of expression and of self identity, Haight Street is a yellow brick road to a sensual expression of the hidden life.

Some may view this little corner of San Francisco as one of America’s dirty little secrets, but others may scream to the rooftops celebrating the departure from the status quo. No matter one’s political or social position, it is hard to discredit the fact that on these narrow streets there is a cultural expression spanning four decades, not to mention the positive economical impact to this San Francisco district.
Darla and I have been dreaming in the secret places of our heart that one day we would open the doors of our own eclectic little shop of expression. We both love unique clothing, memorabilia from the last four decades, and bold expressions of faith. Could our trip down Haight Street be a sampling of what our future may hold, or is it once again just a temptation of a dream that will remain just that, a dream? Can our dreams come alive once again? It is time for this little boy and his little girl who found their hearts playing together nearly 17 years ago to step into the reality of a dream come true. Oh I hope that the One-who-dreams-all-things-into-being hears the cry of our hearts.

In a world of people who are afraid to dream, may we be a story of the ones who risked everything to follow the dream of their heart.

In the words of The Missionary Heart:

Care more than some think is wise.
Risk more than some think is safe.
Dream more than some think is practical.
Expect more than some think is possible.

do you remember the name of this road?

2006-07-03T09:32:00.000-07:00

We are all travelers down some path to somewhere. Throughout ancient time, and the time we call today, there is a road that many travelers have found their way through.

The first mention of this road is from a sacred story of a group of newly freed slaves from Egypt on a long transformational journey to become a nation. As they moved across the land, they unknowingly learned many things about spiritual formation as a community. At one point in the pilgrimage, they came to a road bordered by a long time feudal family, the Edomites. The name Edom in their language translated “red.” Red was a physical reminder of Esau, the founding father of this region.

The community of newly freed slaves from Egypt traveled very diplomatically through this area called Edom. No doubt on some level there must have been a connection with the age old family wound stemming from Jacob and Esau (Genesis 32). This wound began as a small but bitter root of Resentment. I wonder what 400 years of carrying resentment looks like? No wonder this community of newly freed slaves kept saying, “We would have been better off….” They carried the ancient wound of Resentment deep within their heritage.

The name of this road bordering Edom was called the King’s Highway (Numbers 20). It was a road that stretched from Egypt to Assyria. But for this community of newly freed slaves it was the ancient highway to remember the wound of resentment. This highway was well known to many who had traveled before them, but to them it was an unknown road with many lessons to be learned along the way.

What is the life lesson of the destructive power of unresolved family of origin issues to those who are traveling along the King’s Highway? Maybe that is the point of the story; release from physical bondage is only one part of the transformational life of Freedom. The second half is to travel through oppression at the deepest level of one’s soul.

This doesn’t sound like a walk in the park to me. No wonder we find note after note in the sacred stories of history telling us to remember the Highway.

Isaiah said… “A highway will be there, it will be called the Way of the God-purified-Life.” (Is. 35:8)

What is the road that I am traveling down? Where am I leading my family? I am not alone on this journey.

Jeremiah said… “Set up road signs, put up guide posts. Take note of the highway, the road that you take.” (Jer. 31:21)

I would do well to write this journey down, making note of all the healing stops along the way.

Jesus said… “But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matt. 7:14)

No wonder this trek is so difficult, it strikes against the grain of the popular life of success. This must be the True Path of Life. I long to find my community of newly freed slaves, so that we might travel together along the King’s Highway.

wisdom from the sages

2006-06-21T07:32:00.000-07:00

The Lord travels in all directions
at once.

The Lord arrives from all directions
at once.

Wherever we are, we find that
He has just departed.

Wherever we go, we find that
He has just arrived before us.

Thomas Merton

the reluctant conversationalist

2006-06-19T05:45:00.000-07:00

Are you supposed to speak to someone about something? Ever had the nudge on your heart like I know I should go speak to so-and-so. Do you ever have this sense that this conversation is long over due? Maybe it’s time to have this little talk.

Is it possible that future events hang in the balance while we deliberate the “right time” to have the conversation?

As we look back through the sacred narrative of God’s people, do we see any history changing conversations that almost did not take place because of mankind’s hesitation to say what needs to be said? In retrospect, it’s hard not to acknowledge the fact that we come from a long line of reluctant conversationalist. We are a people who are convinced that things will or will not somehow work themselves out. Rather than speaking the words of truth that must be said, we cower in fear of meeting face to face with these life issues for fear of discomfort and what the outcome might be.

The reluctant ancient ones:

Jacob did not want to meet face to face with his brother Esau after stealing his birthright blessing.

Joseph did not want to talk with his brothers in Egypt after they had betrayed him.

Moses questioned whether or not he could speak to Pharaoh.

Ester seemed reluctant to tell the King her true Jewish heritage.

Jonah was completely defiant in wanting to speak to the people of Nineveh.

It is amazing to think of these conversational events as somehow locked in sacred time, waiting until someone would have the courage and faith to have the talk they knew they should have with the person they know to have it with. What was waiting to happen?

Would the wound of a brother remain unforgiven?

Would the heart of a family remain broken?

Would 2 million people remain in bondage?

Would an entire people be executed?

Would a complete city be destroyed?

We now know the massive power of healing and freedom that resulted because the pioneers of faith had the conversations that needed to take place. We know the life changing potential in having the heart to heart talk with those whom we are seemingly at odds with or disconnected with. This must be the tone of the redemptive movement of the Redeemer. Hearing the Voice of the-One-who-holds-all-things-together is one thing, but having the courage to act on it is the difference between really living and barely breathing.

How can one know what to say in those intense moments? Is it possible to be guided by the divine in the conversations of our lives? Is it possible to be so in tune with the sacred rhythm of the Spirit of God to say what needs to be said? What does it look like on earth to live this way?

Jesus Christ

Conversation after conversation, Jesus always seems to “go there” with everyone he meets. Maybe that is why people were so affected by the words he said. His words seemed to shoot like arrows straight to the wounds of the heart. He was the perfect agent of restoration. His words may have seemed difficult to his hearers, but they contained the potential to set the hearer free should they allow the truth to enter into their protected personal world. His words were the balm of healing to the wounds of their soul.

So the question remains, could the words of the young disciples of Jesus contain the same power to restore the decay in the hearts of the shattered and broken? Could they release freedom for the prisoners?

How many days will pass before we bow our heads, bend our knees, and engage in the conversations that could change life as we know it?

While it is still day, may it be on earth as it is in Heaven.

missing the best part of me

2006-06-09T05:09:00.000-07:00

The last two days Darla has been in PC with her parents and the girls so I have been home alone. Locked in our bedroom, I try to go to sleep without being startled by the littlest creek and pop. “It is not good for man to be alone,” it’s the ancient word. How true it is. I am not “good,” when I am alone. Good meaning balanced. These last couple of days I felt like I haven’t been in my right mind. Just off balance. I realize this morning as I read Proverbs 31, how incredible is it to have a wife who fears the LORD.

A good woman is hard to find, and worth more than diamonds.

She senses the worth of her work, is in no hurry to call it quits for the day.

She’s skilled in the crafts of the home and health, diligent in homemaking.

She’s quick to assist anyone in need, reaches out to help the poor.

She makes her own clothing, and dresses in colorful linens and silks.

These are just a couple of characters of the one I call love. You are my wife!

yada' derek

2006-06-08T04:09:00.000-07:00

Put GOD in charge of your work, then what you've planned will take place.

Proverbs 16:3 (The Message)

yada' derek = (knowing the way) by letting it find you [Ps. 143:8]

letting go of yesterday

2006-06-03T06:23:00.000-07:00

Another page of the Abrahamic journey... Step one sell all your possesions. The difficult thing about this step is remembering all the amazing things God has done in the midst of us from this house. Many tender hearts have come through the doors of this house and into our lives to reveal the Great Restoration Project among us.

I have to remind myself that things are only things and that it is through people that the Divine weaves his healing dreams.

I knew the day that Chris painted the trim on the house, that one day soon we would be selling this house. I am so thankful for his act of giving to our family. His wife and family were a refuge house for us when we were wounded from the accident. Even though we are not as close as we used to be, I know that their friendship was a gift. May they know the reward for their tender care.

From family and friends to the youth we have served, we have seen so many lives transformed on the floor of our living room. I pray that this house would continue to be used to meet people where they are and help them find hope in tomorrow.

Although it is hard to say goodbye, we cannot stay here and at the same time go to the place that the One who holds all things together is leading us. May everyone who reads this story find themselves thinking towards the courage to take whatever step of faith you may sense tugging on your heart. May you know the peace of the One who is bringing all things back to the way they were originally intended to be. Amen.