Life Anthemic

The True Self

It's been beautiful, the mornings particularly so.  Lately, I've found my way to the park by our office, where a grassy field columned by a few slender trees offers a view of the Snoqualmie.  I'd forgotten how much I love the river, and how peaceful I feel there.  When I was a kid I used to find a large rock to perch on and sit for hours.  I was drawn by a sense of connectedness and meaningfulness that I couldn't articulate. I'm not sure that I'm much better at explaining it now.  When I sit still for a moment I become aware that there is something profound outside of me, calling to something profound within me.  And without being able to will it so, I respond. 

I wish that I had a lens through which I could look at this call and response, a context that could somehow not bring with it my modern-american-christian mindset.  "Christian" is a word that carries with it some fierce connotations, in America today.  Hence I wrestle with the gap between wanting to articulate my sense of self and meaning in light of who Jesus is, and the near-impossibility of avoiding the cultural-christian baggage that comes with Him.

What do I mean?  I mean that in our day and age, simply sitting by a river and appreciating its beauty and admitting that we feel a deeper connection calls into question our spiritual health from a variety of corners: the rigid box of orthodoxy, the voice in our heads which cautions us against expressing faith in any way that could be identified as eastern or mystical or outside the lines; the political voice, which decries a "tree-hugging" liberalism from the perch of religious conservatism; my culture, which tells me that I am a being of commerce and not one of contentment.  These are just a few of the voices that impinge on my ability to appreciate and discover meaning.

Somehow the still small voice cuts through the static, and peace flows like the river: slow and deep.

Lunatics

“A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.” - C.S. Lewis

While I don't think we all deserve to be called lunatics, there are some of us who can relate to being trapped in a cell, and obsess over the darkness we find there.  Worship opens a window into our hearts through which we can begin to see the sun; even on a cloudy day, light finds its way into the deep places.

New College and Career Time!

We're changing our time to immediately after second service on Sunday, around 1pm.  We'll bbq, have a little post-message discussion, and possibly play volleyball if we get enough folks to form teams.  See you guys then!

Life Well Lived

I was asked to perform at a funeral last week, for a member of our church I had never met.  Last Saturday was the day.  The man's name was Dennis, and he left behind three sons and a daughter, thirteen grandchildren, and his wife, Joan.  I didn't recognize Dennis' name as belonging to anyone I knew, until I saw the program on Saturday morning and saw him posing as a coach for Mt. Si Basketball.  Then I remembered.  As a high school student you recognize people who surround your life, people who stand out  without ever having made conversation, about whom you form opinions based solely on their demeanor or a random smile.  Your paths never intersect, but just sharing the same space, the same community, you know something about them.

Dennis, I remember, was genuinely kind.

Watching the video of his life, clips accumulated from first steps with the children, parties and graduations and weddings, kisses for grandchildren and Joan, I grieved that I had never sat down with this man.  I'm sorry now that I can't recall his voice.  I wish I had a story to tell about him.

I remembered on Saturday that people are truly an expression of God's creativity, and when we delight in our fellow man we delight in the One who created all of us.  How often do I view people as obstacles or duties? 

Later that day I performed again, this time for a wedding.  It was an exhalation of a long breath.  I watched two dear friends join together.  They were nervous, excited.  The future is ahead of them.  I sat there in my seat and smiled until my cheeks hurt, and felt happy.  It was a moment made all the more poignant by what I had seen and imagined earlier; life is fleeting, but it is infinite.  Death has lost its sting.  Who will we all be when we sit down together in the future, to laugh over stories about one another?  Paupers amidst riches; weary travelers before a feast.

College and Career

For Father's Day, no College and Career this week.  We'll start back up on the other side of Dad's day.  There IS basketball, however. 

Good Morning Vietnalmie

Snoqualmie is about as far away from a battle-zone as I could imagine, but sometimes just dragging a comb through my hair feels like a pitched battle.  Little things can be hard.  Little chores can wear you down. Little responsibilities, day in and day out.  These things follow us wherever we go. 

Last Sunday we had a baccalaureate service for the graduating high school seniors from the valley.  I was sitting off to the side, listening to student after student talk about how great high school was, and how afraid they were to go into an uncertain future.  Many of them talked about how God wanted to paint a picture with their lives, and how they wished God would appear in a burning bush like Moses and tell them just what colors to paint the world with.  I remember feeling these things, too.  I'm learning now, though, that after a while in the wide world you begin to realize: oftentimes, it's more important to notice what God has painted already.  Notice, rather than worry so much about what we'll accomplish.

So I've been discovering the great beauty of simple moments.  It sounds pretty hallmarky to say that, but it's true.  A switch went on for me during a recent drive, where I stopped thinking about where I was going and thought to notice the color of the sky.  And today, here in the office we discovered that you can type anything and your computer will say it in outrageous accents.  Here are two of my offerings to the staff--

"Jan, please bring me a topical cream for my itchy area."

"Ashley can be a real pain sometimes.  It's not enough that she's sloppy at her job.  But she continues to harass me whenever she gets bored, and I think she has a lazy eye."

It's these sort of things that make the day to day become miraculous.  Or at least, interesting.

Macy's Marathon

Joy of Engagement #102.

Hannah and I spent thirty minutes last night debating over kitchen utensils.  Given the length and breadth of our deliberations, you would think that we were about to choose a spatula that would outlast us into eternity.  In the end, I agreed that Hannah's choice was the best practical decision, but when her back was turned I pointed my laser gun at the shiny silver burger flipper with the wave design and whispered, "I love you."

Fortunately there were other things that we could both agree upon without too much thought: no, we don't like Mickey Mouse on our fine china.  Yeah, Martha Stewart may be evil incarnate, but have you seen these sheets?  We exclaimed over some delicate yellow bedsheets with a nice muted pattern, what I imagine Martha must gather about herself as she swings fitfully from her unholy belfry at daybreak. 

In fact, much of Martha's collection was just too cute to pass up.  This phrase, coupled with my girlish "oooh!" at the sight of a set of brushed metal cutlery, doesn't bode well for my ability to father children. 

I hope Hannah's happy with that casserole dish.

And now for something completely different

I've been toying with the idea of changing the site layout for a while now, but one thing about typepad is that most of its offerings are a little plain.  I would like to customize more without having to know HTML.  To me, that stands for Hard To Make Look (Good).

Movin' On Up

I watched Hannah get pinned yesterday, a ceremonial sort of thing the faculty does to let nurses know that they've really accomplished something, unlike the rest of us, for whom a four hour graduation is overkill already.  I remember my graduation ceremony being interminable, dominated by memories of clear plastic ponchos and a speaker whose basic message was, "you haven't done anything with your life yet, and you probably won't."  I don't think that was the message he was trying to convey, but that's how it sounded to my relatives, who were depressed by the whole event.  It's hard to watch the fruit of tens of thousands of dollars walk down the aisle with the words "life stinks" echoing in your ears.  It makes one feel rather Ecclesiastical about chasing after the wind, or throwing a hundred thousand dollars into it, as the case may be.

Of course I know that it was worth it.  But there is a feeling about these sorts of ceremonies.  I had spent so many hours, days, years dreaming about graduation and being a real boy, and after countless papers and registrations and seminars and lectures, tests and scantrons and crushes and moving days, it had all come down to this: four hours in a football stadium, drenched to the bone.  My name was called, I received an empty binder (the real degree came in the mail), and I moved on into my bright, stellar future.

I remember it being a day of black depression, uncertainty about the world ahead of me, the disintegration of life as I had known it.

I think Hannah is going through similar disquiet.  She's been busy about the house this morning, spinning her wheels a bit.  She needs me to take care of her.  I made her coffee too sweet, and now she's asking why I'm typing on a blog instead of getting in the shower.  But I can sympathize.  It's not easy to watch your world fall away from you, and the infinite future descend.

Slimy Math

It's raining today. 

I'm wearing flipflops. 

When I make my footwear decisions in the morning, I use a complex mental calculation to decide what particular pair to wear.  This morning, the formula looked like this:

Rain + Time Outside + Flipflops = Slimy Toes
Time Until Meeting - Time to Tie my Shoes = Late

On a sliding scale of inconvenience, Late > Slimy Toes.

I'm completely aware of how ridiculous this is.  And at the moment that I'm slogging through puddles and feeling my feet slip around inside slick sandals, I curse my hasty decision-making self.  Fortunately that self is always previous and regains control whenever my toes dry out.