life in slow motion

A Sunday Blog

2009-10-11T17:26:00.009-05:00

I was about to lead a group. I came into the day room. A bit nervous but confident in the material, no big deal. She came up to me, angry and tearful, she was angry at me. I had turned off the phones in the room from the office, cut off her conversation with her husband who was calling in Iraq. I ended their conversation. She made her point to me, I had ruined her phone call. I tried to fix it, nervously telling her maybe she could call him back, she can use one of the phones. It was a weak, scared attempt to fix. She walked away tearful, me left in front of several of the patients in the room who are waiting for me to lead the group. I was exposed, in the wrong. I felt like shit. I felt like an idiot, unable to fix, stupid, inconsiderate. I'm an idiot. I'm an idiot. I'm an idiot.

So harsh. So harsh. The me inside of me wanted to punish. I will make up for it by berating. I will do whatever you ask of me. I will suffer, I will be nothing, just to make things nice again, just to not look like an ass.

I'm not worth paying attention to now. Why am I leading this group. They won't want to pay attention to me....

Wait. Wait. Wait. Slow down. Slow down. Slow.

Slow.

Slow.

Slow.

Look at me. Look into my eyes. Look slowly, softly. Feel. Don't spin. Feel.

Have I not already told you? Have I not made it so evident? You will fail. You will be stupid, you will be an idiot, you will be an ass. You will be an ass. Thank you Jesus you will be an ass. An ass can know forgiveness. A tightass who has everything together doesn't. When you berate yourself, when you punish yourself and try to fix, you deny my Cross.

Somewhere out of what I have known, a strong feeling, a rush of grace, came in. I made a mistake, but it would not require me to berate my very dignity as a human being any longer.

He will never break your dignity. He may break you. He may call you out. It may hurt. You may have done something foolish, stupid. You may have been an idiot. Your nature is not idiocy. He will never degrade your humanity.

He will never be reckless with your spirit. He will never abuse your spirit. He will only be reckless in his pursuit, in doing everything, whatever He can to get through deaf ears. His reckless pursuit has a strength that is so soft, it will break and then hold every piece, have every piece held and known so deeply, He could never forget one piece. He is not violent. He is not an abuser. He is fierce. Fierce in softness.

I wanted to abuse. I wanted to berate. I wanted to kill my spirit. I was spinning. I was in need of slowing down. I needed a face. I needed humanity. I needed to know it was already done. And that is so sad, because He has died, He has suffered, He has taken it on, all of it, all of my shit. It is done, all of it is done. I still don't believe it. I still want to punish, I still want to kill. I still want to deny my ass-ness.

I am an ass. Thank you Jesus. Amen.

Church

2009-10-11T15:37:00.005-05:00

I'm attending a new church, I have been for several months now, and there is a lot of hope there for me. I was skeptical at first, and now am sold that this will be the place for the next while in seattle. It is called Bethany Community Church.

The pastor is probably the highlight for me among many others. He speaks honestly, not condescending/patronizing. He seems to get the complexity of issues and is always thinking about culture. He also has a great sense of humor and speaks in stories, he is a great story teller. There is a sense I get when he speaks that he is not bullshitting me, that whatever he is talking about he has at least struggled with in part. I'd say he's got one foot in nerd and another in cool so you can't fully peg him or label him.

His blog is http://raincitypastor.blogspot.com/.

Joy and hope are two feelings that swell up in me there, good feelings to pay attention to.

Narcissus

2009-08-24T18:33:00.006-06:00

I have started accruing my client hours for licensure, and have been lucky enough to find a supervisor that charges a reasonable price and also knows what he is talking about.

A particularly poignant experience/thought I brought into my session with him a couple weeks ago. I thought it really interesting that the most disorganized, screwed up, sitting in unpleasant feelings kind of day on the adolescent unit for me was also one of the days I felt most connected, most able to enjoy the adolescents.

After some thoughts on narcissism's play in all of this, my supervisor brought up the original story of Narcissus. The important point he spoke was that it was not simply that Narcissus fell in love with how beautiful he was, but that he fell in love with himself.

Put differently, the main function of narcissism is not just about looking good and perfect, it is also about never acknowledging any type of same-ness with others. Falling in love with yourself keeps you from ever having to genuinely move towards someone else. If you are all good, if you are perfect, why ever get contaminated with another's gross, disorganized mess?

Thus the narcissist lives in blissful denial of any of their own shit, projecting this mess onto others who are then called disgusting.

A bit of my narcissistic bliss had been dismantled the following day in counseling. I came to work more than a bit disorganized, humbled, humbled well by my own apparent mess. I could approach these adolescents, I could understand a bit more what their struggle was, because I wasn't in denial of my own. I even held a sense of honor for them. They are at the pinnacle of disorganization, hospitalized for their present mess. They are on the edge of survival, such a tangible display of life and death.

So easy to shift from one perspective to the other. A patient can look like a deteriorated, blabbering nuisance or a fighting, courageous survivor; context paints each view. Context is being at least remotely cued into your own story and theirs. One with no story, one with no idea of who they really were, what life has really been, how they really bring themselves today; they will inevitably see a blabbering nuisance who needs to get his shit together.

And it cycles...someone who tells another to get their shit together has never had the chance to really let their shit be seen by someone else. One who has never been able to express need will inevitably despise the need of another.

"This is very important stuff. This is grounds where very good work will take place." The discussion had left me soft, soft enough for me to feel like a sponge, slowly and deliberately soaking in those words. Life in slow motion. Hard to describe those moments other than being spiritual. Time slows down. Senses feel alive. Things have weight, but the opposite of the weight of a burden. Weight as fullness, depth. I see people and the slightest facial expression feels honest. Their motivations feel honest.

These moments I step out of my critical eye, judgment no longer holding the reigns. They still don't last long, but that is ok, don't want to judge my own judgment...I know how vicious that cycle is.

Yo Mama's Cleats

2009-08-13T14:59:00.003-06:00

Despite a tumultuous attempt to round up the troops, it looks like the birth of a fall soccer team has just begun. Getting at least 15 people to commit and pay lots of money to play soccer is a feat only those who live for this stuff should undertake (thank you craigslist).

After watching the highlights of the US-Mexico World Cup qualifying match today, I am keenly reminded that I am one of those people. Watching those goals, every one has an epic feel to them. Every one takes my breath away. Taking another look in slow motion obviously captures it the best, revealing every attempt by each team to either get that damn ball somehow in the back of the net or once again get that last touch that is just enough to push the ball wide or over the top.

And when that ball does get in there, when that net moves, the degree of elation that I know so well from my own days playing is like witnessing the impossible just becoming possible. I think that is part of the celebration, the fans and the players release that tension, that feeling of “holy shit, it actually went in!!! oh my God, that’s amazing!!!”

While we will obviously not have the intensity of a World Cup qualifying game, I can’t wait to carry some of that intensity that soccer has always held for me into the season. Yo Mama’s Cleats has begun.

Images

2009-07-24T13:39:00.006-06:00

I welcome images.
Let’s spend the day together.
Let’s visit these spaces.
Where visions precede words.

I dream of my mind as a canvas, a canvas that illuminates the colors, a canvas that does not erase, does not filter, does not correct. This canvas an endless space of images, thoughts, feelings that are watered, that are listened to. They sprout, their roots grow wildly, every direction.

The canvas is not just pretty. There are dark images, dark things. They are awful, disgusting. They hate, they want to kill. They move sharply, they have weight, density that crushes.

I dream of full strokes. Whether of beauty or horror; they are full. They are true.

How sad is one who has no words for what festers in the soul. How sad is one who has no medium, no canvas to paint. We are creatures who must paint.

We must paint before we know what it is we will create.

How can I have eyes to see another’s canvas if mine is so tightly constrained, with only pretty pictures with half of a life to them?

Slow down the space.
Where visions precede words.
It is here.
Visions are painted.
Without the voices of fear.
Visions before words.
Are the purest form of life.

Come Home

2009-07-17T16:17:00.001-06:00

Come home

Do you think you need to be one more thing?

Remember

who you have always been

He waits

He has waited from the beginning

His patience

and longing

together

He waits

for you to remember

who you have always been

Flash

2009-06-26T14:36:00.006-06:00

Wanted to share my last piece of work from my last class at Mars Hill, called Selected Readings, a class where the professor is given freedom to teach in areas of their own special interest. The last day entailed each of us giving a 10 minute creative presentation on our experience of it.

One of the main ideas of the class was paying attention to that initial feeling that comes up in you when you sit with someone. Knowing how quickly that initial feeling comes and goes before thoughts muddy the waters, I often had the image of a flash of lightning and the thunder that follows. I juxtaposed that image with my own questionings and fears of who I am becoming, particularly the fear of such a strong pull to become cynical as my own ignorance melts away.

The writing ends with hope in the reminder to never forget how to feel, especially cry.

(I also played a song at the end, Fix You by Coldplay, a song that always thrusts me into feeling, and has such deep words of wisdom in the phrase, "tears stream down your face, when you lose something you cannot replace.")

FLASH

“The cynic and the optimist are the same thing,” he told me, confidently defending the former, speaking against the less popular vote these days. And while I despise conforming to shallow popularity, I wonder if I am destined for that fate, as if a black hole is and will forever be sucking me and everything else into its bitter core. That black hole, making cynics out of anyone and everything that even hints at releasing their tight grip on ignorance. I envision my diploma, held pristine on the wall behind me for all my clients to see: Master of Arts in Cynical Psychology. I wonder if my progression through Mars Hill can be best described by the fact that I now swear out loud instead of under my breath. Have I simply moved from one pole to another, the optimist to the cynic?

I remember the thunderstorms of the Midwest. I am tucked deep beneath my covers, buried within my dreams. Until the flash of light. My inner world lit up. A few moments of silence, followed by thunder.

I always wanted to see the flash. I always wished I could freeze time when my fantasy world would suddenly brighten. My tired eyes could never stay awake. Instead I would get the aftermath, the translation of light into sound, the second best, the thunder.

The thunder spoke of terror. It said, “Get the fuck away or you will surely die.”

The thunder only spoke half the truth.

The flash is terrible, this is true. The flash is also one of the most beautiful things one could ever see.

Both the cynic and the optimist are scared shitless. Long ago they stopped believing the beauty of the flash, and now hear nothing but thundering terror.

In their fear, they try to fix, mend, make sense of such terrible beauty. They are the best fixers in the world, and the worst healers. Because they have forgotten how to feel. They opt for a meek translation into their endless thoughts that try to fix what can never be replaced. The cynic and the optimist have surely forgotten how to cry.

Random, Mundane Experience #2: Safeway Bagger

2009-06-10T12:19:00.004-06:00

I've never been one for casual conversation, especially with those I don't know, the people I would never meet if it were not for my groceries, the restaurant, the bus ride. Most of my life I have moved through the check out line of the grocery store treating the bag lady or man like the credit card reader; a simple means to an end, the necessary automated requirement for my being able to bring my groceries home.

There has been a change in me as of late, however slight it may be, to really enjoy these exchanges. Not every one, as most of them are still quite lame, more than uneventful, and that's fine. But I have grown increasingly grateful for the moments when these simple exchanges and these random people have had the capacity to make my day.

Checking out of my usual safeway line at the usual safeway by my house, a dark-skinned male, probably in his late 30s, most likely of an African decent, was bagging my groceries. I didn't really notice him at first, thinking about other things, my usual mindless stance.

However, I am happy to say I was able to see and receive a subtle invitation, however small, mundane, foolish one may assume such an exchange to be. Once finished with my two plastic bags, he brought the two holes in each bag together to form a single hole for me to grab, lifted the bags up, and offered a smile of delight towards me. I remember his face. Lit up. This was not a small offer.

I can think of a past response of mine; maybe a feigned smile, a look that says, “ok ok just give me the bags before you make us both look stupid.” A perfectly effective way to shut down any mutual exchange of joy. And, of course, staying away from any possibility to be shamed for delighting in plastic bags.

However, I'd like to say this exchange had a very different ring, as I was aware enough to notice, aware enough to receive his blessing. And I know this is true because he made my day. I remember driving away in my car, a gratitude that lasted, a gratitude that grew, lingering around, gathering strength and mass instead of a quick vanishing into thin air. It was ok to allow this exchange to make my day. Even more than that; it was great. I felt great.

My spirit was lifted, a spirit that was in a sense redefining, however small, in that very moment what I thought of people. A man I had never met, from a culture deeply foreign to me, in a grocery store, making my day. I didn't have to be in church with a mass of white people and a moving sermon. I could be blessed by this random, mundane experience at Safeway on a weekday afternoon.

My gratitude lingers even now. A man who can joy in the simplest of things is a strong man. That is not a small deal. Joy is never a small deal. Especially with plastic bags.

Graduation

2009-05-12T14:12:00.012-06:00

My favorite picture from the graduation weekend, taken by my parents who happened to pick seats almost directly across the aisle from where I ended up sitting. It was a special surprise, and was the signifier that they were now in my space. Once 2,000 miles away when everything was going on out here in the northwest, now right across from me and my entire class at our graduation, witnessing a piece, the end, the culmination of my time at Mars Hill.

Surprise would describe that end pretty well. I wasn't expecting anything terribly moving from the ceremony. But it was good. Culminated by Dan's words, speaking of the program, the cost of moving through. It felt like finally those who heard about it got to see first hand, witnessing what Dan had to say. A crowd of witnesses. Validating to say the least. Something so powerful about public witness. I guess that's the opposite of things lurking in the dark, the truth being kept hidden in silence. How good it is, whatever it is, to move into the light, into the presence of another person, another body of people.

And for one of the first times, I felt a unity with my class I hadn't before. And I wonder even now, why didn't I feel this through the program? Why didn't I let myself feel this? (And if I've learned anything it is how I have played my own part in this...) Maybe the cost of the program, the cost of not having things tied up nicely, the cost of difference, the cost of not everyone getting along because that is reality? I don't know, but it felt pretty damn good to end with some sense of communal holding of what was, what is, who we are, what we went through.

And to end, a video from the last scene of the episode of Scrubs that signified this longing to be connected, to really be a part of a group that allows for great play, for great foolishness and acceptance and of course, love. I was in and out of watching the show, but came back in the room at this last part, and it was one of those moments where I instantly know there is something here for me.

It may be outside of reality, it may be nicely tied up, but hope has to take me beyond reality. I can be irrational with hope. No, I must be irrational with hope. I must hope like a fool. That kind of hope keeps me from stale reality, and moves me into a reality that is enchanted with whatever the hell my imagination that needs to dream wishes to dream. My heart needs much more than reality. I am much more than that. I give myself permission more than ever to have the imagination of a child.

"Who can say this isn't what happens? Who can tell me my fantasies won't come true, just this once?" - JD

Another look at prayer

2009-05-08T14:38:00.003-06:00

The best teaching on meditation I've listened to by far.

One of my favorite lines was him describing how going throughout our day without really checking into ourselves is like the Philadelphia Harmonic Orchestra playing Mozart without tuning first.

Another thought that stood out: Awareness is like the still depths of the ocean floor. No matter what storm is raging at sea level, awareness is the stillness underneath it all.

A look at prayer

2009-04-24T21:58:00.007-06:00

It is not a surprise to me that the dynamics of my everyday life come into play in my attempts at prayer and meditation. When I begin to enter this space of prayer, there is an anticipation in me, a desire that is also very closely linked to a demand to have intimacy. Desire can easily be confused with control.

I sit, I wait, I want something to happen. I want to feel the presence of God. I want to feel freed up. I want. I want.....I demand. Wait. Now I'm demanding. God. Where are you? Why aren't you meeting me in this time? Meet me here. I'm annoyed that you're not here. Why don't I have peace. Give me some f-ing peace, damn it...Okkkkaaayyy. Let's try that again...

And there you go, the anticipation of a space of prayer, peace, and relaxation morphed into a time of contemptuous annoyance at life. Control disguised as desire.

And yet desire cannot be feigned. Control trying to be desire will always end up short, demanding what cannot be, what can only be given by being. And true desire can only be.

Which is where in my time of prayer there is a turn. When I know I cannot make something happen, I can only wait and allow for whatever will happen to happen. When I stop demanding, and just sit, still enough to be able to hear a whisper. The Spirit speaks in a whisper.

A mindfulness podcast spoke of scientists who oddly model the spirit of meditation, because they are continually studying and researching to uncover that which they do not know. They are always on the cusp, waiting for what has not yet become but soon may be.

So similar to prayer; the space where we learn to be ok with not knowing. And this is different than simply forgetting the whole thing. That is just avoidance, resignation. Prayer is the space where one waits, where one wants, and allows this want to take them to the eager expectation of what soon may be. Waiting for the next scene to unfold. It's easy to be on the edge of your seat in a good movie, caught up in those defining moments, those points everything so far leads up to and everything past will be affected by. Much harder to be caught up in the small, in your breath, in the sensation the moment offers. And yet it is in those moments, those supposedly dull, mundane moments, where the Spirit speaks, "There is more for you right here, right now, than you can dream of, if you would only let me bless you with it."

Prayer then is receiving, the receiving of blessing, and any blessing can never be given in coercion and control. It feels like a paradox, as I create space, taking an active part in allowing. Actively receiving.

Desire and control, they come off so similar. But get closer, and it becomes obvious that true desire cannot be feigned. A poor attempt at faking desire will end up looking like a frustrated, whiny, irritated, adolescent temper tantrum when things don't go the way control wants. Prayer is the practice ground, working out this old whiny self. Instead of screaming with my hands covering my ears, I breathe my way through what is being offered this very moment, and the next, and the next. I believe laced within these breaths is the whisper of the Spirit that waits, without coercion, to see if I am willing to listen.

Sun (Room)

2009-04-21T21:39:00.005-06:00

The last two days have been 70 and sunny. Hallefreakinluia. Three days ago my sinuses were throbbing from my fourth cold of the winter season. After two days of sun, my symptoms are minimal. No, not a coincidence, it is one more piece of data that I am allergic to cold and an addiction to airborne isn't cutting it. I need sun. Thank you Jesus it is on the rebound with summer approaching.
The biggest sign of this in my house is my recent activity in the sun room. My favorite place of the house really. As you can see in the picture, seveal big windows that look over the neighborhood, and in the distance even the Olympic Mountains. This room lay dormant in the winter, an icebox not worth the effort of warming up to a respectable room temperature. Soon the sun will provide more than enough warmth, as it did today, allowing the perfect space for good reading, conversation, contemplation, and writing blogs such as this one.

There is one other upcoming event; graduation. It feels much easier and safer to write about summer, which provokes much fewer emotions, especially those that are conflicting...

MSU vs. UNC

2009-04-05T20:43:00.008-06:00

I've waited to post in fear of a skeptic's jinx that any rabid sports fan would fear ensuing after one talks about their favorite teams before they play...but at this point, what is there to lose??? What has just transpired in the past couple weeks is what any sports fan dreams of all their life; both of my favorite college basketball teams have made their way through the tournament and will now meet in the championship game Monday night.

The championship game. And I can sit back, relax, and soak in the experience. No need to scream at the refs, get infuriated with the little things that just don't go my team's way, and raise my cortisol to near toxic levels. Ladies and gentlemen, this time I'm going to enjoy the ride. I will now wait for one of the strangest moments of my sports life as I watch one of my teams lose the title, and one of my teams win. And don't worry, I'm definitely going to focus on the latter.

I have to say that I will definitely be biased towards Michigan State, my alma mater, maybe unconsciously because of the fact that any of my fellow Spartans whom I spent my time with in East Lansing would have my head if they knew I was cheering for North Carolina. Bros, be assured that I'm going for MSU.

I mean, what a story, the Spartans beating an incredibly good 10 seeded USC team (who won the Pac-10 tournament), the Big 12 winner and defending national champ Kansas, followed by Louisville, the then deemed best team in the country who was beating teams by 40 points. Next was UConn, another one of the Big East's best teams (the Big East was called one of the best conferences ever this year...to beat the two best teams is incredible). Imagine now, if they could pull off the championship by beating UNC, the pre-season #1, predicted to win it all before anything began. In and for a city and state that sums up the economic down turn. Doesn't get any better than this.

And they can do it. If they play like they have, they will win. Simple as that. And if they lose, well...shoot, my other favorite team wins it all...life is rough :)

But GO STATE!!!

Note to self: Play lots, like all the time

2009-03-14T17:56:00.002-05:00

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/stuart_brown_says_play_is_more_than_fun_it_s_vital.html

A great explanation of the benefits of play (from a really cool website for intriguing talks like this one - TED.com).

I should listen to this every morning before I start my day. Play makes us smarter, creates the context for more trust, and even greatly improves the workplace. Oh yea it's also fun!

Safe

2009-03-08T17:24:00.002-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7aMrkGBDBQ

(unable to put actual clip on here, just have to click on the link)

This clip reveals something deeply significant about what is real safety, and what we really need as human beings.

The little girl in this scene is scared. Rightly so. Her dad has been out working late, leaving his 5 year old daughter alone in a scary neighborhood. He finds her under the bed and wants to assure her that she will be ok.

Every parent has found themselves in this situation. And it is what he does that is so brilliant.

He could just tell her that she needs to get some sleep, forcing her to get out from under the bed, very easily shaming her for being scared in the first place. This shaming would lead to a feeling of being missed in her fear, leading her to accuse herself for having any kind of feeling in the first place. She is left feeling alone. She is scared and alone. Now that is scary.

But what he does is not only validate her fear, he engages her world. He leaves the rational world of adulthood and moves into the heart of a 5 year old girl. How does he do this? He uses her language. He uses her imagination.

And this is what the girl needs. To simply be told that her dad would protect her is one thing. Her 5 year old brain would maybe hold some of those words, for maybe one second.

What he gives her is relationship. She is known by his ability to dream with her. Her protects her by inviting her to imagine.

That is safety. Not the circumstances. Not the facts. But whether you are with someone who can enter your world and know you through that. Safety in being known.

Safety is a space where words can be put to our experience. We need words. We need symbols, symbols that hold the medium of imagination and creativity, making meaning of what is going on instead of an unnamed dread. When we cannot make meaning of experience, it festers inside our bodies as a blob of confusion, like a parasite we cannot see but know is there because of its continual growth and disruption.

Leads me to think about artists. Often the most talented are the most neurotic. They're trying to work something out, something that is unnamed, something that needs to be expressed. And what better way than painting or making music. Unnamed meaning moves their bodies to create, funneling their confusion and desire onto a painting or into the keys of a piano or strings of a guitar. Thank God. Their work touches so deeply our own stories of confusion, allowing us to meet over something that names so well what we feel.

That is what makes the scene so touching. A man who enters the imaginative world of a child. And because of this she is not alone. She is safe in being known.

Slicer

2009-02-19T23:52:00.004-05:00

Random, mundane experience #1: Cheese slicer

Happened to be in Fred Meyer with Eden looking for a spaceheater for her when I ran across the aisle of kitchen appliances. Cheese slicer quickly came to mind. My trip back home in Michigan reminded me of how much I loved these things. And now was the time to capitalize.

We got back to my place where I proclaimed my victory to the roommates, upon which one of them quickly opened the kitchen drawer and pulled out her own cheese slicer. I was unaware we already had a cheese slicer.

Sooo I kept the cheese slicer because it was from Good Grips which is always a good choice. And I must say, this little piece of metal and rubber has doubled my lunch satisfaction. Amazing how cheese sliced a little thinner makes all the difference.

Usually I would say this is stupid, why am I getting so excited about thinner cheese? Stupid to get excited about little things. Stupid to get excited. Better to get excited about the big stuff. The big trips. The weekends. The holidays.

Thing is the big stuff comes and goes and almost never is quite what we wanted it to be. Either too short or thinking about how great it is so much and how much it will suck when it's over that it gets over way too quickly.

Thus my proposal. Get lost in the sweet glory of a cheese slicer. Allow for celebration. Stupid, glorious celebration. Celebration that doesn't need to wait for the grand vacation getaway. So great getting excited about the small things. It's like singing in the shower, like dancing in the kitchen, like letting out a little shout that you made the street light just in time when you thought there's no chance.

And what's even better? Someone to enjoy you in the midst of your glorious over-excitement. Who loves it and joins you well in the midst. The adverse is obvious: someone telling you to stay in line, ship up, stop acting like a fool, why the hell are you getting so excited about a cheese slicer. And I would like to tell those voices that it is sad that your envy carries itself so far as to want to ruin someone else's day because yours is so boring.

Knowing very well how boring I can make the day to day, I call myself to repent to the sweet glory of slicing cheese. I invite you to join.

Wolves

2009-02-04T01:33:00.007-05:00

"They tumble and fight, and they're beautiful
On the hilltops at night, they are beautiful
Blazing with light, is the whitest and the tallest and the biggest one
She's muscled and fine
When she runs"

Wolves are in his house, in his mind. Haunting. Hovering. Invading. Disrupting.

And then the most haunting statement yet. He describes them. Beautiful. These creatures, these creatures that haunt, they are so beautiful.

Maddening. And thus is beauty. Beauty is maddening. Scandalous. Seductive. As if it gets away with too much. That too much haunts us. Beauty haunts.

Even the way you say the word, the letters that comprise it, the first three from the beginning of the alphabet, the last three from the end. As if the letters are describing the range of life beauty is able to hold. Beauty is good and it is bad. It does not allow for a split, instead holding a complexity and spectrum of experience that will never be defined in simple terms.

We want to split, casting beauty in an over-sexed, denigrating, violent objectification of women, or over-spiritualizing beauty that is naive and out of touch with the real world, a world without real desire, pain, heartache.

Beauty is not perfection. Perfection is fragmented. Beauty is wholeness. Beauty is the mysterious winding of flaw. And one who can bear their own flaw is a beautiful person. These beautiful people are so wonderful to be around.

Beauty is dark and light. One needs the other to create, and beauty the medium in which they dance, the canvas in which one dares allow their mixing. No wonder any real creation involves risk.

These wolves. They are terrible. And they are amazing. He fears them and cannot keep his eyes off them. Thus is beauty. Thus is life.

Come with me

2009-01-13T01:17:00.001-05:00

...get closer to that story - the story that is the story of all stories - it is the best story - it is the worst story - it is THE story - it is the story that is uniquely yours, that only you can tell - that in your telling you share in the story that encompasses all stories - the story of God - it is not whether or not it is a good story - it is whether or not you dare to tell it - evil hates the real story - evil fabricates - evil distorts - evil hides - evil lies - evil trembles when you begin to tell the truth, because you are at the center of the truth, because Christ is at the center of the truth

come - let us tell the stories that haunt us with their darkness - come - let us tell them in the light, that we may not bear the burden, that we may not bear the weight on our own - one should never have to tell their story alone

come with me into the light, i have a story i've been wanting to tell...

Years Best

2008-12-30T16:12:00.006-05:00

A few of my favorites, highlighting the artists that I turned to the most. The first is Ben Sollee and his album Learning to Bend. His voice and brilliance on the cello are the perfect match. Every song is good.

Secondly is the Walkmen. Their music brings lots of sound, lots of different, unique sound.

Thirdly, M. Ward. His lyrics have an unfinished quality that makes you believe he threw down on paper exactly what he was feeling in the moment.

Finally, what I predict will continue to be one of the most listened in the new year: Rural Alberta Advantage. A very healthy dose of angst. Never had the angst-ish personality before to get into this as much as I have, but I think I'm long overdue to pick up an edge, and this album definitely helps with that. (No YouTube for them, have to check them on MySpace if you want a listen.)

Sense (Part 3)

2008-11-25T19:02:00.005-05:00

"...I have a tape of a Tibetan nun singing a mantra of compassion over and over for an hour, eight words over and over, and every line feels different, feels cared about, and experienced as she is singing. You never once have the sense that she is glancing down at her watch thinking, "Jesus Christ, it's only been fifteen minutes." Forty-five minutes later she is still singing each line distinctly, word by word, until the last word is sung.

Mostly things are not that way, that simple and pure, with so much focus given to each syllable of life as life sings itself. But that kind of attention is the prize. To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antitode for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass - seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colo-rectal theology, offering hope to no one..."

- Anne Lamont, Bird by Bird

I would say one of the most common responses I have to my clients (particularly the adults) is a feeling that we need to slow down. As if counseling is a race to get as many words out as possible by the end of the session, that as long as the week is purged into the room something may miraculously change. A sprint to the finish. Thing is that instead of a nice energizing run, this kind of sprinting feels more like running with our heads cut off, leaving us both exhausted. And not a good exhausted. An overkill, burnt out exhausted. Instead of a connected session, I end feeling as though I just came out of a manic episode.

How often my work so far has been to kindly interject, and ask for us to slowly step into just one piece of what was just ejected my way.

How can I move us into our senses? What if we said the same eight words over and over? The awkwardness alone with leave us ending up with more connection, more levels of being, of seeing, of hearing, of experiencing each other than the manic states could ever create.

The same eight words, refocusing the attention from content to process. From mindless chatter to actually experiencing and noticing what it means when two people exist simultaneously in the same room. To give space, to give care to each moment, to each expression, each nuanced, delicate expression that speaks of the heart more loudly than any words ever could.

That is not easy work. But it is here I feel that I am actually doing work. Only then do I feel as though I just went on a good run, blood flowing, breathing heavy, endorphins kicking in, connected to my body. It is not easy work, but it is good work. And again, it is kind work. I don't feel as though I just had to run 20 miles in the freezing rain with a t-shirt on. I went on my time, paying attention to my body, what I needed, what I wanted. A good run. Good runs are so good.

So is a good session. It is so good. Existing in such a deep simplicity of the moment with another human being. That is why I am in this work. For those spaces. To have the privilege to be in those spaces. That is a gift. And as Lamont says, I pray I can remove my narcissistic head out of my own ass so I can look up and have the privilege of truly seeing, and truly experiencing that gift.

Sense (continued)

2008-11-10T23:27:00.009-05:00

"On a dark afternoon - I was ten or eleven - I was walking on a country road. On my left a patch of curly kale, on my right some yellow Brussel sprouts. I felt a snowflake on my cheek, and from far away in the charcoal-gray sky, I saw the slow approach of a snow storm. I stood still.

Some flakes were now falling around my feet. A few melted as they hit the ground. Others stayed intact. Then I heard the falling of the snow, with the softest hissing sound.

I stood transfixed, listening...and knew what can never be expressed: that the natural is supernatural, and that I am the eye that hears and the ear that sees..."

- Frederick Franck

Sense

2008-11-09T17:48:00.000-05:00

I bought a Dialectical Behavior Therapy book online to prepare for upcoming clients at my internship. My school doesn't teach this orientation but the psych hospital does and most of my patients at the agency are not exactly ready for psychoanalysis, nor does the medicaid system allow for the long term psychodynamic psychotherapy I have been learning the past 3 years.

It's mostly exercises, many involving some kind of meditation. I've been trying them out, especially the ones I may be using and teaching the clients. Several come off to be painfully trivial. My mind and body resist such simple tasks, thoughts whining "this is stupid, this is boring, this is so painfully mundane."

I'm supposed to breathe deeply, then touch and describe an object in the room, what it feels like, color, shape, smell. Or simply breathe and listen, picking up every noise in the room. Or simply breathe, just breathe, counting each breath.

It is boring. It is mundane. It is incredibly simple. But why then is it so hard to do? It's so hard. Even counting my breaths. It's painful. I can't do it. I lose focus, mind wandering to anything but the moment.

It is painful. And it is so good. In the midst of the exercise I feel something soften in me. I feel something loosen up, calm, ease. I feel kindness. So much kindness. Kindness that allows for the moment, the moment that allows me to once again be a child. To live again as a child, existing in my senses, in the moment. The child that only knows its body. The child that only knows touch, taste, see, hear, and smell. Its like going back to the fundamentals. Going back. The humble, kind task of going back before going forward.

It's crazy but it's like I can hear this voice speak to me. This voice that slowly, softly speaks, "it's ok... it's ok...it's ok..." It is so soft. It is so strong. It is so kind.

The exercises feel like confession. They feel like repentance. I feel a soft grievance of the years and years spent in a mind/body split, the years spent moving so fast I can't even think. To be talking to someone and be ten steps ahead, to feel like I'm looking from a bird's eye view instead of right across from you. I'm gone. I'm not there.

That is not cool. And that is why doing the mundane, painful exercises that call me to the moment, to the details, to the rhythm of my breath, to the still sounds and calmed eyes that take a moment to stop and look; that is why these exercises feel like repentance. I am confessing my absence from the moment. My years of absence from the moment. My years of absence from myself. My years of absence from you.

These exercises coax me into the mundane. I confess and repent how I have called the mundane unholy. It has always been the fantastic, the perfect worship song at the right time with the amazing insight and revelation where holiness was found. Why can't the holy be in the mundane, in the practical, in the moment? Why can't it be in the simple? Why can't the holy be in the touch, in the smell, in the ability to hear the stillness, to hear the sounds that can only be heard when you really listen?

It feels so kind. So kind. To be in the moment. It is repentance. It is holy.

"Will you stay with me in the moment? In the simple. In the touch. In the look. I miss you there."

Hello Mac, My Name is Michael

2008-10-26T20:05:00.006-05:00

So last week I went on a date. With my roommates Mac. It was all part of the process of seeing whether I should make the switch. You know. PC to Mac. As you can see from the pictures, it wasn't even a contest. Look how engaged we were! Laughing, getting serious, and my own personal favorite moment of the night, when I gave her the eye. I didn't even try, it just happened. Caught up in the moment and there we were.

Two days later, my own is on its way in the mail. Haven't been this excited in a looooong time.

Festival

2008-10-20T17:06:00.004-05:00

(not the real video, just using it for the song)

I know little about speaking in tongues, but it came up after church the other day. Whether or not I agreed with it, the conversation moved towards what it possibly could be. That is, the times when you feel so deeply moved that waiting for the full articulation of words seems like an inconsequential need to the weight of the moment. Instead what flows is the candid, unfiltered, spontaneously passionate language of the heart. As if the use of words breaks down at this level of being, this depth of existence. They melt away and all we have left is this spirit, pulsing with the purest form of life, of being, of what is true. It is here that spirits communicate. In spirit language.

I was listening to the new Sigur Ros album and came across the song Festival. Then it hit me: this is what speaking in tongues should be. The song was doing exactly what I was talking about a week ago. It got in me. It made me weak. Cutting through the familiar surface of words. I had no defenses for this level of engagement. My lack of understanding of what was being said compelled me to an understanding no words could convey. They would simply stifle, box in, limit this level of beauty. Ineffable beauty.

Lifting, moving, heightening, softening, inflecting sound the only medium that can express what is and what always will be, forever unchanged but always changing so that it may never be chained, love so deep and wide and full that it can only be known in knowing its being. This song captures that being, that Spirit. I should say, it captures it in letting it be what it is and always will be; free.

Gimpy

2008-09-30T14:38:00.011-06:00

So, little did I know how much a beating up on the 2nd years in flag football would take its toll on my now 28 year old aging body...

Quarter way through the game, I got my flag pulled/tackled to the ground by two 2nd years, tearing my shorts, a knee slamming into my thigh. Leg throbbing, I slowly got to my feet, hobbled away, tried to shake it off and returned a few possessions later. We went on to slaughter the youngins by 19 points :P

More than a week later I'm still gloating over the win while simultaneously disturbingly humbled by my throbbing, still swollen thigh. I wake up middle of the night with a monumental ache and think, "seriously? no really, seriously? a charley horse hurts this bad?"

I looked online and felt a sense of community and place to grieve the charley horse pain, to post the absurdity of the pain and needed time of recovery. I seriously felt a sense of relief that I was not alone in this experience...this site brought the most satisfaction. I am not alone...

In It

2008-09-04T18:53:00.001-06:00

A soldier fighting on the battlefield tells a much better story than one who hears about the details on the news.

Work was hellish last week. It felt like the battlefield. It felt like blood and sweat, muscles aching, raising my loaded gun at the apparent enemy, wielding my weapons that can do serious damage. My desire scaring me. I wanted to jack some patients right in the face. Engaging at a psych hospital is dangerous. I am dangerous. Yet even more dangerous is the belief that I am not.

That to say, it is good to fight. Goodness. Goodness is bloody, angry, grieving, joyful. Goodness is instead of looking on from miles away, getting close enough to bleed. And no one can tell better stories than one who has the wounds to prove it.

I want to tell better stories. I want them to be less anesthetized. I want them to be more personal and more dangerous. Only then will they be stories of real life. Only then will they play a part in the grandest story of all.

"When you tell the story, the way you were in it, when I can smell your breath in the details, you tell a damn good story."

Music Week

2008-09-03T23:31:00.010-06:00

It was Joe Purdy on Monday night at Nectar's. He didn't have his band with him, so it was an acoustic, melancholy performance, similar to the video below. Such transparency in his music, this song probably at the top of that list. He's a great story teller. This is his story of loneliness, which in his telling seems to bring intimacy. Funny how that works...

...followed by a list of performers on Saturday at Bumbershoot. The main performers I caught were Thao, The Walkmen, The Round (with Damien Jurado and others), Band of Horses, and then Beck. I highlight Thao below. Amazing performer, she gets lost in her music on stage. And her new CD is fantastic.

Leaving

2008-08-18T17:24:00.006-06:00

"Would you like to invite me in when you are left alone?
Or would you rather be left alone in your aloneness?

The real loss will never be whether or not she leaves.
It is in your refusal to come to me when she does."
- God

So spacious is he...

2008-08-03T23:07:00.010-06:00

"He was supreme in the beginning and leading the resurrection parade he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he's there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe, people and things, animals and atoms - get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross."
The Message - 1 Colossians 18-20

Can our screams return in harmony?
Is there a place for all our rage?

So spacious are You
Even the cacophony will echo in praise

Carolina 08

2008-07-14T20:38:00.015-06:00

Some pictures and comments from the 4th spent in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina...

Another overnight flight on the way out, this time in the middle seat. Thank God for the little flaps that came out of the head rest. At 4 in the morning the body gets desperate and is willing to do anything and at that point it was going to be my neighbor's shoulder if not for the head rest.

The river was really low so no tubing this time, but fishin and chillin was good enough. The highlight was Ira, the 7 year old girl who was staying with my sister Beth for 6 weeks. She didn't speak English but more than learned to get by on non-verbal communication and laughing. A great fiery spirit can be translated from any human being to another and that is what she brought us. Every glance her way brought perspective, of life in america, of what life is like in Belarus, of a spirit that knew what it meant to have 6 abscessed teeth (and to have that no longer!), of a spirit that would eat a whole watermelon if we let her, of a spirit that would turn keep-away into tackle football, of a spirit so excited about a digital camera she would capture every angle of every one of our faces (along with the closet, stove, fan...). It was blessed, holy foolishness.

I love the Smoky Mountains. While it's pretty cool to come back home to mountains here in Seattle, I miss the soft, misty fullness the Smokies offer. Like the humidity, they hug you, keep you close. They got me a long time ago, the West didn't have a chance.

Can I Be Known

2008-06-12T14:19:00.006-06:00

In the confessional cry
In the repenting proclamation

That I have nothing without you
That I am nothing without you
That I am nothing
Nothing

I am
No
Thing
Without you

I am suddenly opened up
To the fullness
Of everything
The world comes alive
And with new eyes
I see everything

With new eyes
I see the fullness of
Every
Living
Thing

When we meet
Face to face
When you see me
And I do not to look away
And I choose

Nothing

No illusion
No vanity
No comfort
To cover my countenance

When I choose your searching of me

My beginning and end

When I choose
No
Thing
But you

When I choose
You

This world does not diminish
Instead

This world pulses

It breathes
It speaks
It reveals
It proclaims
It glorifies

It lives in the fullness
Of seeing face to face
It lives in the fullness
Of being fully known

“Now we see but a poor reflection in the mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” 1 Cor 13:12

The kingdom is here. Our bodies are screaming to be known.

Spirit

2008-05-20T17:16:00.010-06:00

"The Spirit is like the wind, it blows as it pleases, it cannot be controlled."

Reading a book for class awhile ago on the Spirit, I was reminded again of its unpredictability, its tremendously passionate way of refusing to be kept locked up and controlled. To those who like control (me) this carries with it a reckless intimidation.

"The future really is unknowable. Otherwise it is a play of the past."

I am a master of prediction. I calculate what will happen. I measure the ins and outs of the day, the conversation, the meals, the places, the sleep. Because I don't want to let go of the past. And because I don't want to let go of it, I don't allow the future. To live not knowing the next move, to live with my hands open instead of in a fist, to live embracing instead of bracing - that is reckless.

That is life with the Spirit. The reckless Spirit that moves in unbounded freedom, in imagination run wild.

I think of a dog that gets abused by its keeper. It gets hit enough times, the dog will turn skittish, scared to death at the slightest motion of the owner. It's been taught, and it has learned well, to be wary, to keep an eye out, to watch for any movement, any sign, to always be ready. Don’t let your guard down, or you’re done. Stop for a moment and your ass is beat. Any motion and the dog flinches, ready for the blow. The dog's reality of the world has been shaped by the past. Its future is set. Its future is clinched.

I think of my past, the past that has shaped my reality. The past that has shaped my future. The past that has set my future. That past that has clinched my future. If I continue to live in these paradigms, these realities that appear way too real, my future is set. It will be what it was. What was always will be.

What was always will be. That just sucks. That is so boring. That is like the weather always being the same. Not just the same, but always cloudy. A calm, safe, 50 degree cloudy day over and over. There is no waiting, no hope, no looking forward, just the same. What was always will be. There’s no need to think. There’s no need to wonder. Just the same damn thing.

Unless. Unless there was something that was not bound by any single reality. Unless there was something that named its own reality, a reality that said it could never be owned by any single reality, that it would never be bound by any stifling, dogmatic system to keep it in line, to keep it under wraps, to keep it from being to much of a hassle, to keep things safe. Unless there was something whose very nature held freedom, gave freely, whose very nature was to live into and engage the unknowing. Unless there was something whose very nature did not seek to control power, but to enable, to empower, to bring intimacy instead of exclusion. Unless there was something that did not coerce you into some conformed pattern, but instead joyed in your uniquely spontaneous humanity, that allowed you to express and feel and fail beautifully.

Unless there was something whose very touch upon you stopped you in your tracks. A Spirit that made you take a step back. A Spirit that made you think. Not in the sense of a mind racing a mile a minute, but a mind that could be still, and really think. A mind that said, wait, does it really have to be this way? Why do I live in such fear? Why do these things still have such a hold on me? What am I so afraid of? What if I didn't have to be looking around, waiting to get hit? What if I didn't have to flinch at the slightest motion? What if I could sit? What if I could close my eyes? What if I could still my body? What if I could actually engage the moment, without the static of the past, without the worry of the future?

I believe that when these questions are met with the imagination of the Spirit, the fear and shame that have bound us with their rules are scared shitless. They don't know what to do. They are being engaged by the Spirit that that knows no confining paradigm, that dreams without limits, that is bound by no past.

The ever-present Spirit leading, senses engaged, mind stilled. The only place where true beauty can be known and experienced, where one is still enough to sway in awe of the haunting cadence of life, where the rhythm of the Spirit meets the rhythm of the human story. I believe it is in these moments, in this stillness, where the only sound one can hear is heaven crashing into earth.

Beard Man

2008-04-24T17:40:00.007-06:00

Yep, I got a beard. I think it's pretty cool. It just crept up on me, no plan, just took it day by day, and each day said I would give it another. And there ya go.

Not gonna lie though, its starting to drive me nuts. Definitely not used to this much hair on my face. I may break down soon.

But we'll see, I mean I do enjoy it and feel old, a distinguished old, like I know what I'm talking about kind of old, not a beer belly old.

Ok enough beard talk. If I end up working just the stash for a day I will post that look for sure.

....Updates!

Cat

2008-04-12T12:17:00.024-06:00

An interesting Cat Power show last night at the Showbox. Interesting holding deeper connotations, with the descriptor used most after the show being 'disturbing.' I agreed, and at the same time I can't help adding the word enchanting to the list of my experiences of this woman. But as for the disturbing consensus...it was obvious we were dealing with a very complex, mysterious woman to say the least. I think what we all wanted the most was for her to just stop moving up on stage, put the mic on the stand, center herself and just play the song the way we know it so well.

Instead, she was all over the place, each intonation in the song met by an erratic movement with her hands, arms, entire body. Some of this was enjoyable, I mean I was happy to see that she was trying, but I think the internal disturbance we all felt was our reaction to this woman who was trying so deeply hard that it hurt. It climaxed near the end of the show when she started apologizing, first about some of the minor sound mishaps, and then just apologizing for no reason. Then saying "fuck I just want to have a good show, that's all I want." Knowing any bit of her story is to know her rocky history with severe stage fright, ending shows early, some due to alcohol, some due to her self-perception that she was simply not playing well enough.

At the same time disturbing does in no way meet my full experience of her. Somehow she was also amazing. She provoked such a deep wonder, enchantment, beauty in bearing so deeply the marks of a woman. A woman so caught up in the struggle, you see it, right there, in her wanting to just have a good show, to not mess up, to sing out of this angelic voice of hers that embodies beauty. In a sense I feel like I get all the spoils, I get the music, the beautiful voice and music and lyrics that comes out of her pains, her longings, what she bears as a woman. I don't doubt that is one of the main reasons I love her music. Her brokenness is tragic, saddening, and at the same time, so alluring, so captivating.

A Good Friday One Year Ago

2008-03-20T00:32:00.005-05:00

I quickly rushed to church after work on Friday, mind everywhere, a tense day with some tough kids. I remember coming into the dark room, sitting down by myself near the back. There were less people attending than a usual service but still enough to fill spaces. I was aware of where I was sitting, how I was sitting, who was around me, the plans for the rest of my night.

And then, like hearing the striking beauty of a melody I know so well, I was taken back. I stopped. Not just physically, but mentally. I stopped inside.

A girl took the mic, and began to talk about Jesus. But it was a different way of talking about him than I had ever heard before. She didn't speak about what to learn about him or how to live like him.

She simply spoke of him. She talked about his life. She talked about the things he did. She talked about the people he hung out with. She told stories. She spoke about the life of a man who lived on this planet, who ate and drank and slept on this earth. She talked about the ways he laughed and the ways he got angry and the times he cried. She talked about who he was.

And I suddenly felt like I was at his funeral. I felt like he was just here. She spoke like he was just here. She spoke like she knew him. She spoke like she missed him.

Her voice led me into tears. I missed him. I wanted to be with him. His loss was palpable. His loss was weighty. It permeated the room. And strangely enough his absence soon turned into what felt like his presence, sitting right next to me. The absence turned into a presence of a God who was joining me in my tears.

I remember my mind wanting to switch on and say “easy feelings, not too much now, don’t want to draw too much attention.” And then centering back on her voice. And this time my mind didn’t take over. It was too real. This time shame wouldn’t take away such a time to honor. Damn it not this time. Not when you feel like you have the living God sitting next to you, weeping right there with you. Not weeping for you, but weeping with you.

I didn’t want to be wept for. I didn’t want Jesus to have it all together and have to cry for me from some high place. I wanted him to be here, next to the earth, sitting in a chair, weeping alongside me. And that’s what it felt like. It felt like he was sitting next to me, weeping because he wanted to be with me, because he missed being gone, because he knew something of what it meant to feel alone. He knew something of what it meant to live on this earth. He knew what it meant to die on this earth.

This was a time to honor that death. This was a time to weep together over that death.

This was not a day of despair. Tears are not despair. Numbness is despair. A stone-face is despair. Having it all together is despair. Tears are hope. Tears were not the absence of God that day. They were the presence of a God I was weeping with – a God who had died in order for him to be able to sit and weep right next to me at his funeral.

Everything. No, really. Everything.

2008-03-10T21:49:00.000-05:00

I get this feeling every time I'm really excited or laugh really hard or let myself simply feel a lot. It is the feeling of expense, the feeling that I am going to exhaust all of my resources, that if I keep this up I will surely run out, left empty with nothing but regret for the frivolous use of who I am. I fear I will run out of desire.

I have this song I've been listening to. It starts off slow, a woman singing in a soft voice, sounding somewhat timid and modest, and then quiets for a bit, her voice softens even more, the music halts.

And then there is an explosion. She screams out, she belts it. Nothing held back. She is in. All of it. There's no worry about expending energy. There's no questioning about breaking rules or being foolish. Just a woman who is all there. Every bit of her, nowhere but the present moment, set on the emotion, the expression, the desire emanating out of a passion in her that says this is worth it.

I was looking back on my journals. There is one in particular, my favorite writing in the past several years. It was written the day after my world was shaken by my counselor, when everything I was learning in the counseling program, everything that was in my head, all the intellect, finally slapped me in the face and slammed into my heart.

That day, I wrote that I was worth everything. I wrote that this work that I would be doing was worth everything. I wrote this work was worth my life. Worth going all in. Worth not looking back. Worth getting bloody, beat up, ticked off, torn up.

Worth dying for. This work was worth dying for. It was worth a life. And I think I felt that because I finally came head to head on with the reality that I was worth dying for. I was worth every bit, every ounce of someone's life. Every ounce of someone's desire. I was not an inconvenience of someone's time, a nuisance with too many needs. Not someone to be avoided, not someone to be silenced. I was worth being sought after, longed, ached, wept for, pursued with a desire that would never run out. Never. I'm talking never. That's what it felt like. It said don't worry because this desire would not be quenched.

It would stay when I was too much, when I said something really stupid, when I sung too loud or awkward or just plain weird, when I wanted to hide because no one wanted to talk to me, when I didn't know what to say, when I did something so shameful I wanted to hide for days. It would stay when I just wanted to be a fucking kid and be goofy as hell. It would allow a fucking kid to be what a kid is, which is spontaneous and unpredictable and full of life and quirkiness and desire.

That is the desire I wrote, the desire that said that you are worth everything. A desire where fuck is a holy word because it carries a desire stronger than shame-based rules.

A desire that would lead to the cross, a desire that would not be quenched even by death. Because I was worth it.

It is easy to say that Christ died for me, but much, much harder to carry the weight, to know the full reality that I am really worth it, That just calls me to way too much glory, way too much possibility, way too much hope. Much easier living a life thinking I am worth nothing than living a life holding an immeasurable glory.

Inherent Images of a Scandalous God

2008-02-12T17:50:00.005-05:00

“What if there is something inherently delightful about you?”

Something about the time it was said, the right moment with the right expression, me in the right place to hear it – the words carried a weight with them, a punch, a cut piercing through my defenses, past all the filters, the walls, the intellectual rationalization.

Delight is a scandalous word. It is risky. It is near. It is seen, exposed, known. And it can be described in no other way than with the word grace. That moment where the unexpected, what you would never think or believe could or ever would happen, actually coming about.

It feels like a girl who you notice, who just makes you weak. It has nothing to do with what she says, but how she says it. It has nothing to do with what she does, but who she simply is. You delight in her. But you pretty much think there is no way things could happen between you. Or don’t want to hope that much because it hurts too much to hope like that, that someone you delight in so much would actually delight in you. And then, out of nowhere, she comes, and she says that she doesn’t simply think you are a nice guy, or do nice things. She says she is made weak by you. She says that she just can’t seem to control herself, that you make her anxious, you change her breathing, that you move her. Not in something that you do, but in simply who you are. She says that she delights, in you.

That is where you say, “Wait, hold on. This can’t be happening. This is too good to be true. I don't know if I can simply sit in this joy. There has to be a catch. I’m just not that great. I just don’t think I could actually be delighted in, especially by someone who seems just so delightful. Me? Really?”

"Yes, you. What if there is something inherently delightful about you?"

That is a scandalous statement.

Glosoli

2008-01-17T18:24:00.000-05:00

I saw this video last year sometime and again during a presentation for my theology class before break. The second time brought me to tears, mostly due to one scene that won't leave.

Near the end, they are about to run and make the jump. Lined up, the boy in front with a girl at his side. He is pounding on the drum, the music rising, moving towards the climax. The rest of the group is behind them. It shows several of their faces. You can tell they are deep in their head. Thinking like crazy. Analyzing, measuring, weighing, options flying in and out. And then back to the boy, and you can see the excitement, the increased clarity and focus, the rhythm, the drum holding desire with each beat, as if providing a steadiness, a security in the face of the rest of their disorganization.

And the moment that won't leave me. The boy starts to run. No, he takes off. No wondering, weighing, measuring. And he doesn't just set the drum down, he throws it. The girl, she doesn't carefully remove her hat, instead she rips it off her head.

Why I think that image won't leave me? I know the questioning of the rest of the group, I know the looks on their faces well. The calculating, the safety measures. And when I'm caught up in my mind, like their questioning, I know that counseling is impossible, that it is way too much, that I need to get out before I get really hurt.

And then that moment. I see him throw the drum. I see her rip the hat off. And then my tears. Tears bringing hope and impossibility face to face. Reason and desire colliding. And desire blowing the hell out of reason. Logic fails.

And then human beings flying.

That is hope.

Back Home

2008-01-03T23:29:00.001-05:00

It was hard to leave home. I was there for awhile but definitely could've spent more time with the family. Five nieces and nephews running around the house was a pleasant change from bachelor life in Seattle. A quick summation includes Play Station 3 (which my nephew Jacob said to Matthew, "why is Michael beating you at this game if you own it?"), Nintendo Wii, plenty of movies, a good college friend's wedding in Chicago, a couple nights out on the town (including new years where I vowed not to have anything to drink because of a bad cold, yet was forced into a couple games of beer pong at the end and got schooled off the table - I can't help adding the grossest story of the year so far - my partner was sick and she spit several times into a cup on the side. well, that cup somehow got into play on the next game. ouuuuccchhhh. thank God i lost and didn't learn that the hard way like a friend of mine did...). We also revitalized the game Taboo, did some skiing, had some good talks with the brothers and sister, and of course, hung out with the kids.

Rest

2007-12-21T23:46:00.000-05:00

Maybe it is no longer just making it through the week, pining for the end. Maybe no longer ten steps ahead in conversation, looking from the outside in. Maybe no longer an escape from inevitable confrontation.

Rest. Maybe rest is no longer dissociation.

Maybe rest is being me, which I think means showing up to fight. Sticking around, not leaving, acknowledging that you affect me and that I will stay. Rest is saying that this is ok.

Rest then is seeing all of you. It is slow motion, it is sensual, it is feeling. It is your glance. It is your face, captured, illuminated, soft, strong, harsh, tangible, whole, human. In rhythm, in joy. Rest then is this delight not having to turn to shame.

Rest is sitting beside you, and becoming myself.

Look Who's #1

2007-12-08T20:54:00.000-05:00

I just have to say that I feel blessed. Many factors contribute, one being college basketball. Not very often that your favorite team is number one in the nation. Although I have to say being a North Carolina fan your chances are higher than most ;)

And your other favorite team, Michigan State, is looking very promising at the #10 spot, their only loss a heartbreaker to the #2 team at the time, UCLA.

This is the current case, and it feels wonderful.

(I do realize that simply posting on this puts both of my teams in jeopardy of a major slump like jinx, but I can't resist).

This is Story

2007-11-15T00:29:00.000-05:00

I met her at a show.My hands slipped through her hair.She listened to my story.Said I've heard all about you.Well it seemed she was sincere.But the conversation fled.He spoke through the prophets.Crucified for our salvation.He suffered and was buried.And on the third day he rose born again.She held my hand.Now wrinkles are for thinking.Old and weak I've become.The saint became a poet.That poet wants to fly.So show me the Kingdom.Where the angels come undone.As they marched into the rainbow river sky.Heal the wounded singer.Now he's on his way.They were dancing to the music.The shadow of the season.We tango'd through the sacrifice.Climbed the virgin hills.Walked straight up to the sunrise.Never had a reason.We released the blood upon the peasant land.She held my hand.
~Steven Delopoulos

An entire book can describe someone's life, but only a few lines of poetry are needed to describe one's experience of it. And only there do we find the real story.

You can sit with me for two hours talking about your past, but it will be that look on your face that can only be yours that tells me your experience of it. And in that look I find the real story.

Walls

2007-11-05T00:09:00.000-05:00

The time change offered me another hour in the morning before church this sunday to finish up my sexual development paper. I hashed out the last bit of the sticky, rather-not-be-talking-about-this kind of paper and headed to church, still very much in it. The major theme that kept coming up was relational distance - what felt like an impenetrable wall separating me from the rest of the world.

In the room, in the people, in the singer, the words of the song, all came head on with the blockage, the feeling like no one had gotten through, the feeling that no one will ever get through. All a part of being so caught in the moment that certainty was bellowing from the room, but not a certainty of being right, but of hoping so much in what will be that it felt like it was already here.

The words spoke about a veil being torn, and that it is done. The symbolism slapped me in the face, and a feeling, or a voice, speaking over and over that it does not have to be this way. There was access. Intimacy was possible. To be known was possible. The wall has been blown to pieces. There is access and there is intimacy, and things do not have to be the same, because it is done.

Nelly Sayin It Right

2007-10-26T14:55:00.000-05:00

Ok, some deep stuff came from an odd source as far as the topic goes. Lyrics from Nelly Furtado’s song Say it Right held some weight the last time I heard them.

From my body
I could show you
A place
God knows
You should know
Space is holy
Do you really
Want to go

I don’t want to go. And know few who do. I work at a psych hospital with patients doing everything they can to escape it. The arms of the adolescents sliced up, the adults detox-ing, eyes bloodshot. Their experience has not gone well. They went for it, massive disappointment came in after. Now slicing open their arms or poisoning their body to cope with the aftermath.

Of course I’m not that far off. Right away I think of the girls that get me, that make me so vulnerable when I’m around them, causing me to long, to remember, to think about what could be, and at the same time what was there in the past. Engagements so loaded. My heart skips, like a skip deep back into desire. Though the desire doesn’t exactly feel sexy. Even writing these words, revealing some of my desire, feels foolishly vulnerable, and I want to silence it all. The heart of desire carries with it the heart of pain.

Writing, feeling just a taste of the pain, I think of the most intense desire ever lived. It fits that we call the experience of the cross the passion. Desire taken to the heart of pain, and the way of redemption, and the way of resurrection. I can’t help but see how longing calls me to die – not just to die in an abstract sense, that sounds too sexy. But to really die in relationship, to actually feel like a part of yourself is about to implode in vulnerability with another. Falling forward, letting the rush of love surely disappoint, and in the center of that disappointment, redemption.

“It is always nice to hear how God has made your life go well, but it is when you have no reason to love God that when your talk of the love of God moves me to the core.” Dan Allender from the Wounded Heart

Sense of Touch

2007-10-10T16:25:00.000-06:00

"Mystery is very different from a problem. While a problem can be solved, a mystery is inexhaustible. A problem can be held at arm's length; a mystery encompasses us and will not let us keep a safe distance." -Gabriel Marcel

When I think I know someone, I can know how not to know them, I know how to keep a safe distance. When I allow mystery, I allow for surprise. Mystery does not create distance, but horrifying nearness. Thank God we do not fully know Him, or we would choose not to know Him, for we would make Him all the things we continually want Him to be - money, sex, knowledge, power - anything we can control. The same for you an I, for not fully knowing you allows us to know each other far more than we may want to imagine. And that is what we don't want, and that is everything that we want. As spoken in the first words from the movie Crash:

“It’s the sense of touch. In any real city you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.”

The Brothers In Town

2007-09-29T15:09:00.000-06:00

Matthew and David in Seattle. Two different worlds coming together made for a great weekend, which definitely climaxed at the party saturday night. To have so many people I know meet the brothers was the coolest experience I've had in a long time. We thought about going out at some point but had too good of a dance party at the house. We stepped it up several notches - there was no need to dance anywhere else.
I hope I gave them a pretty good experience of Seattle. Running around Green Lake, Zoka's and Peete's, East Lake Bar, Sushi, Pike's Market, Golden Gardens, volleyball, and some good views of the city happened. Sleep didn't happen...mostly because two of us were sleeping on the floor every night, a cheap trip for the bros but not exactly plush. But we hadn't had that kind of time together in a long time, and I'm thankful for that. It was special to have family come to where I was instead of heading back to see them, which made Seattle feel a little closer to home.

Grandma

2007-09-16T17:00:00.001-06:00

I felt led to write and to continue to remember last weekend, to remember my grandma who passed away last weekend, to remember everything about who she was and what she represented in our family.

Matthew came up with the idea of writing down memories of Grandma for my mom, and I was writing at the airport on the way to Louisville. I just started writing 'I remember' at the start of each sentence, and with each sentence came more and more stories and scenes, and all of a sudden my heart was swelling and the tears came. My mind entered back to the house, the kitchen and the living room, and the yard, and the trees and the street. I was struck how much I remembered that house, the trips in the summer, the place where I grew to know all my cousins, the place where family grew in each of us to hold so much importance.

And then, the same family all met again at Grandma's funeral. And I continue to think about that service, and looking across the pews and seeing every one of us in tears. And there is something about that moment that feels holy, and it feels like the greatest honor we could give her. And at the time it was all we wanted to do. I could see how much we all wanted to grieve, how much we wanted that space to be able to do so, to allow our hearts to take over, and allow us to honor everything she was. There is nothing worse than the pretense of being ok when all you want to to is grieve, and I am thankful that we could grieve, and hope we can for a long time and to have that be ok.

I am reminded of the importance of remembering, how in remembering my heart grows soft, how longing for what was inevitably causes me to then long more and more for what will come.

We Painted!

2007-09-01T22:36:00.000-06:00

Finally! Knocked it out in about 4 hours. The color turned out so well (called Ryegrass). And the room looks sweet. We made some changes to it, and cleaned all the areas under the couches and such that have not been moved and cleaned for quite awhile, so we all feel like brand new. Good to have a little something different before the upcoming year begins next week.

Narcissistic Illusion

2007-08-28T13:36:00.000-06:00

Some reflections on narcissism...

An emaciated soul
Is one that has run for so long on narcissistic illusions
That it can do nothing but vomit up any piece of reality and wholeness
One that resigns and sacrifices any fragile self left for the comfort of illusion
One that sacrifices any life left in place of the controllable, mundane, and ordinary

There is no sorrow, for illusions cannot be grieved
In place is the high tower of narcissism
Where no other soul can get near
Looking down everything is small, the size of this life, the size of this self

Its perfection ends up simply being the case because of its utter minute being
It knows not life, but instead what it means to be so safe as to be nothing
In attempting to hold onto something it has essentially become nothing

And the sheer madness of it all, what is so infuriating
Is its perfection in illusion that provides the appearance of such grandiosity, such supposed wholeness, which could not be farther from the truth
The madness is the irony - a perfection so attained that it has finally attained nothingness

I wrote out those words, and what hit me was the continual reference to perfection, and the paradox that comes out of having something so together that you essentially have nothing. There is something about anomaly and imperfection creating more life and not less. Yet how often in relationships I want to be something else, something not human, hold onto narcissism, and consequently end up living a small, pretentious, and mundane existence. The more I desire to not be human, the closer I get to be nothing at all.

Reminded on Living

2007-08-14T12:20:00.000-06:00

I came across this writing the other night, a section of a book on Jim Elliott, a missionary who died and left us with a number of beautifully written journals. The one that always stuck out to me the most I read again last night. I am always moved by his passion. As the veil is lifted here at school and I see so many things that have been hidden, in a strange way I find myself wanting to be my own God. A miserable way to live. Especially when I am reminded of the passion of a heart that is caught up in delight with the real thing. Here's a bit of his passion. What a glorious way to live.

"Because, O God, from Thee comes all, because from Thine own mouth has entered us the power to breathe, from Thee the sea of air in which we swim and the unknown nothingness that stays it over us with unseen bands; because Thou gavest us from the heart of love so tender, mind so wise and hand so strong, Salvation; because Thou art Beginning, God, I worship Thee.

Because Thou art the end of every way, the goal of man; because to Thee shall come of every people respect and praise; their emissaries find Thy throne their destiny; because Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands to Thee, babes sing Thy praise; because Thine altar gives to sparrows shelter, sinners peace, and devils fury; because 'to Thee shall all flesh come,' because Thou art Omega, praise."

Dust

2007-08-03T16:12:00.000-06:00

Coming into the local coffee shop, opening up my laptop, usually the first thing I notice is it's covered with dust. It doesn't seem dirty in my place. Something about the lighting, the atmosphere of a new place, provides the right illumination for me to see how dirty it really is.

Experiencing this the other day, right away I related it to my interaction with people. I can be going through the entire day, week, month, doing my best to not be seen. Then, at the right time, that person chooses to bring the right amount of light to step into my world, inevitably naming the things I don't want to name myself.

The person I experience this exposure with the most; my counselor (he does his job well, not always a fun thing...) The image I have is back in elementary school where we'd make the little volcanos erupt. The drop of baking soda into the mixture ignites the reaction. And I feel like I can't step into that office and sit on that couch without there being some inevitable reaction.

It is really more what he doesn't do than what he does. Usually I am doing everything I can to keep from being the one that casts that light, never wanting to create that awkward confrontation. He is there, speaking into what he sees and feels, not hiding, not blaming, just there. So often I feel like I have to be doing so much, but I see more how it's what I let myself not do that is needed - if I want to expose or be exposed - if I want to cast that light. A big if. It cuts, but the cut somehow brings life. And that is a blessed wounding. Blessed are the wounds of a friend.

Updates, Comments

2007-07-22T18:43:00.000-06:00

The first thing to mention is a phenomenal Patty Griffin show. I think she mesmerized everyone with her stage presence and her strikingly powerful voice.

Well one of the highlights for me was nearly running into Dave Matthews on the way to the bathroom (small bladder finally paying off). He gave me a smile and I probably reciprocated with a confused, stupor-ish look. He ambled away with a very pronounced limp, and that was that.

As for other notes, I watched Peaceful Warrior this weekend, a movie that held some eerily similar views that the program here at MHGS has. Nick Nolte played this guy named Socrates, who consistently strummed off one liners of considerable depth and meaning. I think my favorite was the idea that a true warrior is one who knows how to sit in 100% vulnerability. Paradox, things never staying the same, and fully experiencing the here and now were a few more of the themes.

I also watched Freedom Writers. It was well done with a great, true story that seemed fitting for me in taking the Multicultural class I'm in. I've been reading this book on the history of multicultural america, and it is rediculous. It is so hard to read, because it is the truth about our country. Whites who conquered and viciously abused anyone who got in their way, naming their actions as the 'destiny of God.' Starting with Native Americans, then African Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Irish...the book is very weighty, and even saying that seems so trivial. So many stories that are worthy to be grieved over for centuries. How to even approach this?

I guess my two cents about what's going on in class that I don't like is when we (me and my caucasion classmates) try to defend our own racism today, when we want to give ourselves a voice instead of sitting in the discomfort of being wrong. Even when people say they are angry at the racism today, that just kind of erks me because in a sense then, we are attempting to say the right thing, and be the right ones in class, who aren't racist, who just need someone to hear us and know why we act this way or that. I think bottom line, we just need to sit in being wrong for a little bit at least, and know what it feels like to be the wrong ones for once - what any other race has to experience every day.

Carolina

2007-07-12T11:17:00.001-06:00

"I had a dream last night, stood beneath an orange sky, with my brother and my sister standing by..."

The whole fam got together at our rustic cottage in the smoky mountains of north carolina. I think it was the most active week I've had in quite awhile, a good break from sitting on my butt in class, reading, or writing. They stocked the river soon after we got there, Matthew and I pulled out 7 trout each in a couple hours the first time down there. We were pretty good at forming somewhat of a schedule, a good set of rituals, each involving either playing or eating. Often started the morning out at the coffee shop, then got ready to head down to the river for fishing or tubing or volleyball. After dinner was back into town for ice cream, then came back to the cottage for a fire, listening to ray lamontagne, passin' back a couple beers. That's a pretty dang good routine if you ask me.

This was the first time being with the fam since the counseling program really shook things up in me. Interesting how seeing things in a way made me feel more distant, more removed, things not as I so often perceived them to be. What appeared in the past to be connection was really distance. However, ironically, this entering into reality, this seeing the distance, actually makes way for more connection. Seems like sometimes you have to get farther away to get closer.

Just one paradox after the other if you ask me...

Vashon

2007-06-21T20:14:00.000-06:00

I'm about done with my time on Vashon Island, after two months spending time with a kid with bipolar disorder. It has been fun, and hard, and then not so hard....at least a lot easier than most of the autistic and behaviorally challenged kids I've spent time with this year. That is in large part due to the context I get to spend time with him on an island, on a large piece of land that surrounds his house, including a bunch of chickens, goats, cows, and turkeys (I forgot how much I like animals). After tutoring (which is the hard part emotionally during the day), the second half of the day involves planting on their small farm, water balloon fights, airsoft guns, forts, and painting among others. I also really enjoy riding the ferry over there every day. I will really miss this place. And most importantly, I'll really miss this kid (have to be ambiguous for the case) who I've just really started to get to know. Both in our connection when we laugh and play and in the recognition of his despair and hopelessness; the tough times when I get a glimpse into the war going on inside. Again, that's probably all I can say legally, but I am thankful for the time and sad it will end.

I Love Summer

2007-06-03T00:04:00.000-06:00

Looks like I've found my home for the summer: the beach at Golden Gardens. After our hip-hop class we got something to eat and headed over to the soft sand and surreal views. I don't think I could ask for much more than sand volleyball on the water with sun setting on the mountains as a backdrop. I guess waves and warmer water would be even more of a bonus, but this more than works for me, and spending my whole weekend there was a telling of the many times to come this summer.
(Though I have to say that I have not tried Alki beach, located on the other side of the Puget Sound, which instead of the mountains, has the Seattle skyline as the backdrop.)

Portland Revisited

2007-05-21T21:59:00.000-06:00

Another weekend in Portland. Eden played a show at the Hawthorne Theatre, a great place close to Mandi and Kathy's where we stayed.

On the way down we ended up talking a lot about the Object Relations book we're reading (grad student nerds), but it really led to some amazing conversation, which will probably make it to another blog...invaluable to be discussing this stuff as we're going through it. I am grateful to have friends to really be able to do that, who are as excited to talk about this stuff as I am, who don't just want to coast through this program. Could not be any more different than undergrad for me.

We grilled some burgers and had some drinks before Eden played (btw it's spring and I need a grill) and then after the concert we came back and grilled some more.

For sure the biggest laugh came on the way back, where we ended up at a fairly confusing stoplight/train track. Long story short, we ended up somewhere in the middle of where we were supposed to stop and the train tracks. Red lights blinking, I looked up to see the train gates directly above, descending quickly. We all froze as they landed on top of the car. Lynn backed up as the antenna held one of the gates, eventually letting go, flinging the gate back and forth. The train passed and we went on our way. A little scary how close we got to the train, but also probably the most I've laughed in a long time.

In a Nutshell part 2

2007-05-07T22:44:00.000-06:00

Thought I'd give a short summary of what the past trimester has been for me. Instead of the string of statements I set out last time, I wanted to share what has been the highlight for me, my practicum II class (for those of you that don't know it's where we counsel each other). Right from the beginning there was something special about the group of 10 people.

So amazing to really feel like you were cared for, like people really wanted to see you, and that set up the possibility for each of us to risk enough to actually allow something greater than ourselves to happen. It was a taste of true community, and whenever that happens you are always left thinking how sweet that is and how little it happens in everyday life. Even thinking about it now, remembering, it feels to die for. Evokes so much longing.

It was culminated in our last meeting, where we each brought in something reflecting our experience with each other. I decided to write something of a poem. When it was my turn, I looked down at the poem, and I was struck by the depth of the words in front of me. They were so weighty. So packed with experience and meaning. I tried to speak them but could not. Instead came the tears. Eventually I got going, and slowly made it through, pausing often with each swell of emotion. I felt so vulnerable, so exposed. Though that did not feel like shame; instead I felt so much strength in speaking and naming the beauty held in each sentence, in each story, in each person. I was claiming the beauty I saw. Speaking into life and not allowing shame to come in and snatch that life away from me. To be given the space to speak and name the beauty of what we had was, as I said above, to die for.

I thought I'd share a bit of the poem, though only the beginning and the end due to confidentiality of posting online - the middle section highlights each of the individual experiences of the group. In place of the middle section I thought I'd put a picture that seemed to symbolize to me the beauty that comes out of wide open spaces. When we allow the space for each other to truly show up, when we don't let shame come in and take away our glory, something beautiful happens. I call the picture 'unashamed sky.'

"Those who function out of fear, seek security. Those who function out of trust and risk, seek freedom." - William Hurt
We came seeking freedom, and grew to know the great cost that freedom calls forth. Risk, trust, tender tears, harsh tears, fierceness, feistiness, much space, little space, familiar safe camps, unfamiliar darkness, eyes closed, hands held out, risk, and more risk....

...We speak on behalf of freedom. Freedom to risk that we may utter the words of our true selves. For to speak the true words of our heart is to speak the words of God. We have seen glimpses of each of our hearts, we have seen the true words, and they hold the treasures of the Kingdom.

Portland

2007-05-02T21:53:00.000-06:00

A couple pics from the trip down to portland where I stayed with my friends Mandi and Kathy, to add to Justin's post. Good times. The way down we got to be one of the first to hear Eden's new CD coming out soon. The highlight though had to be when Eden and Justin and I were sleeping the family room, and in the middle of the night, pitch black, I wake up to hear Justin reciting something that had a little taste of our faith, hope, and love and marriage and family classes. It was something the like of "The family, not my loss, but their glory." Even in his sleep J trying to grow glory.

The pics...Justin wearing Eden's cardigan (I forget how that transpired), me testing out a few drinks, and Justin with his leftovers contained within a sword made out of aluminum. It was good to get away. Hopefully next time it will be to the mountains.

More Quotations...

2007-04-10T13:23:00.000-06:00

"Every woman is in some way searching for or running away from her beauty and every man is looking for or avoiding his strength. Why? In some deep place within, we remember what we were made to be, we carry with us the memory of gods, image-bearers walking in the Garden. So why do we flee our essence? As hard as it may be for us to see our sin, it is far harder still for us to remember our glory." - Brent Curtis

I feel like it is far easier for me not to think of the glory you hold in who you are, because then I don't have to be disappointed when our engagement with each other is much less than glorious. When I really don't like who you are, it is much easier to say that you don't hold much value than to take responsibility for the ways we have disconnected. Contempt for you is so much easier than mourning what has not happened.

To truly know and believe in the glory you hold calls me to pursue that part of you, to love you in a way that calls both of us out of our hiding, where we have to decide whether to show our face or not.

How many times I have written off and been written off by others as uninteresting or inconsequential. To feel the depth of glory in every human being calls me to continue to pursue you, because I know that underneath my assumptions of who you are there is so much more. There is enough beauty and creativity and sweetness and strength in your heart to deeply move and shake mine. How hard is it to know that when we don't like each other! Assumptions are much easier to live in than glory.

And it is far easier to think of what is than what we were made to be.

Liminal Spaces in Time

2007-04-06T22:30:00.000-06:00

"If thou dost more rely upon thine own reason or industry, than upon that power which brings thee into the presence of Christ, it will be long before thou become enlightened; for God will have us perfectly subject unto him, that being inflamed with his love, we may transcend the narrow limits of human reason." Thomas Kempis

I came across this reading the other day and it evoked these thoughts in me. Thinking of counseling, I was reminded that despite my attempts to get the right words out there, I do not reason with someone's soul, I engage it with my own. It is in knowledge and reason that we know of time and limits, and it is in love that we know of eternity held in a moment, of expanses of depth and meaning and beauty that transcend any reason or formula. We were made for those moments, those liminal places, where the boundaries between what is now and what will be are blurred. It is in those liminal places where the kingdom is as here as it can be. And still not quite yet.

Risky Worship

2007-03-29T22:55:00.000-06:00

"Even the most courageous among us only rarely has the courage for that which he really knows." - Nietzsche

In Isaiah 30:9-11, the people ask the prophet for illusions. They want to hear 'pleasant things', things that will make them feel nice. They don't want to hear the truth. They want lies. They ask for pretense.

And that is me. Because I know that if I really were to let myself express the deeply hidden, tender wounds of my heart, I would most likely weep uncontrollably - and if I really let myself go, I would probably destroy the very room I am in. I got to experience a bit of that feeling of truth this past week, and it felt like grace to have someone say he would vouch for me in my desire to throw a chair through the wall. That my story is worth more than a room was new to me.

It is even more new for me to hear that God would call that worship. I'd much rather take the easier route of worship and sing songs on Sunday than take the risk of valuing my story enough to actually let it affect me, and those things (or people) around me.

Severe Rush of Life

2007-03-22T12:09:00.000-06:00

Self-portrait

It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
Or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
Abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
If you are prepared to live in the world
With its harsh need
To change you. If you can look back
With firm eyes
Saying this is where I stand. I want to know
If you know
How to melt into that fierce heat of living
Falling toward
The center of your longing. I want to know
If you are willing
To live, day by day, with the consequence of love
And the bitter
Unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have been told, in that fierce embrace, even the gods speak of God.

-David Whyte
From Fire In the Earth

Can I speak of a God who creates a love that He cannot even control? Can I know a God who allows His own self to not know, to wait, expectantly sit, and let His creation experience the beautiful and dreadful tenacity of love? In that moment, even the gods speak of God. Where God takes a deep breath and experiences the severe rush of life.

If this is not the case, can God not be moved?

Caleb

2007-03-19T17:00:00.000-06:00

This weekend at class we got into some good niece and nephew moments, and I brought up one of my favorite ones I had heard of from my nephew Caleb, the coolest 3 year old around, a little miniature, uninhibited version of my older brother.

Caleb came out of the bathroom with no clothes on, flailing around, shouting, "mommy, mommy, look at my penis! It's huge! My penis is huge!"

Raw, uncut Caleb right there. How cool is it to see the freedom in pronouncing whatever it is he is excited about. How cool is that and how sucky is it when shame comes in. I think I have some serious envy in that freedom of self-expression. He cracks me up so much. So joyful to see his face light up, his playful side completely illuminated. I delight in his foolishness. How much I wish I could delight in my own foolishness.

What a stud.

Rich

2007-03-04T03:24:00.000-05:00

More and more I see how it is in the surprise, and not formulation, where life's richest experiences lay. How often is it that in the conversation where you really see the other person, it is not formulated by control, but in the letting go to let yourself be who you are. In the risk of allowing yourself to really be seen, to really be known, and to have someone delight in that presence - that feels like really living.

I believe that it is in the idiosyncrasies where we fall in love, the little things that can only come from the whole of who we are - it had always been that look that could've only been hers when she had my heart. Sitting with close friends, it is not the topic of conversation, but simply the people you are with. And it is not in the joke, but the ensuing laugh that can only be yours that makes the moment.

It is surprise, it is the grace that comes in not because of what you have done, but what you have allowed there to be. Strange how it feels like grace for me to actually allow myself to enter into conversations with people who will simply enjoy the part of me that is really me. And those relationships feel like grace, because they are so rich, and they have so much life.

My Inner World

2007-03-02T01:26:00.000-05:00

True freedom for me has everything to do with my ability to believe in the fact that I am worth it to be free.

Triple Door

2007-02-26T01:33:00.000-05:00

A couple weeks late, but thought I'd still post the night with Joshua Radin and Schuyler Fisk. A good show at an amazing venue (The Triple Door). I have already introduced my appreciation of his music in a previous blog (Creative Perfection) so no need to go any further. Though I see why he tends toward the whisper in his songs. He does not have the range with his voice to amaze in his live shows, but still put on a good performance.

The Word

2007-02-16T19:58:00.000-05:00

"Thus to speak a true word is to transform the world." - Paulo Freire

How crazy is it when words have such meaning, yet they cannot penetrate, they cannot incite, they cannot reach your guts. And then in that moment, in that right time, they carry the weight of the world in their utterance.

I am beginning to see the difference between that which is simply verbalism, and that which is the spoken word that enters into the soul of the other. To speak the latter is to 'transform the world.'

It is the difference between actually living in the world or simply watching it go by, the difference between actually seeing someone or being surrounded by strangers. The true word, if we will take the risk, if we will choose to show up and speak it, will transform our worlds.

Dying to Live and Living to Die

2007-02-10T11:34:00.000-05:00

A head on encounter with my own self in the past several weeks has led me into what seems like a paradoxical locus, a place where once again two apparently opposing ideas must be embraced at the same time.

The one side is where I find myself in practicum, the side that continually looks into the heart of my own self, the part of me that is truly me. I thought I knew who that was. But as my facilitator breaks down the paradigms that have clouded my own perception of me, I have begun to see the very raw parts of who I am.

Over the years of people pleasing and worrying about what others think and say, by conforming to what I ‘should’ do instead of what I desire to do, I have forfeited my own voice and lost my own self. This loss of self has often been compounded in the Christian realm, where I am even more susceptible to be led into areas of conformity and comparison. Even more than that, Christ calls us to ‘die to ourselves,’ and this phrase can be used to create a context where there is so much ‘God’ that there is no real place for a person. God’s will can become so infused in our thinking that we believe that this transcendent, mysterious God is all we are, yet forget that getting to our true, personal sense of volition and desire is exactly where God is.

Sitting in my counseling session last week, I was asked how I felt, and I responded in all honesty that I really did not know. For the life of me I couldn’t put a name to my feelings, because I wasn’t feeling anything. The next question was why I was not feeling anything, and then I realized again that I had been so conscientious to follow the lead of the instructor, so careful to please him and do what he would think is ‘right,’ my own self was lost and all of my feelings with it. I was lost. I was caught in the idea that a good Christian is kind and makes sure that no one gets upset. My own version of dying to my self often leaves others trying to communicate to a robot.

What do I do with the fact that I am to continually die to my self as Christ calls me to do, and at the same time fight for my own volition, my desire, my wants and my needs? This seems to be the locus, the place where dying and living are fused together in contradiction.

How do I carry both of these at the same time? I think the first step is to deconstruct my own paradigms of what dying to my self and what it really means to live. It is not a weak, self-pitying, indifferent disposition that forfeits my side. And at the same time, truly living is not a pompous, selfish greed that takes whenever it wants. It is so easy to polarize, to end up on one side, and so testing to sit in the tension of both living and dying. But knowing where we have formed our conceptions of each side is a place to start, and that seems to be where I am sitting right now.

Broken Beer Bottles

2007-01-30T00:00:00.000-05:00

After the last set of marriage and family therapy intensives last week, I left in between feelings of doubt and excitement. Dan Allender, in his customary dramatic manner, spoke often of the hostile environment marriage counseling produces. He likens it to two arenas: a mud wrestling match or a bar brawl. “Have you ever been in a context where someone is trying to take a bottle that they just consumed and split your head open? Have you ever been hit in the face? Have you ever been knocked down? Have you ever been kicked in the stomach? Again, these are metaphors. Maybe.”

Good Lord. This is not what I signed up for. I picture myself in control, the couple attentive, amicable and agreeing. Dan makes me feel like I better bring a bullet proof vest to work everyday. Maybe I should’ve stuck with engineering. Math problems are much easier to solve than human beings.

To compound what feels like a monumental task is the fact that I would characterize myself as a ‘nice boy.’ This is part of a typology we have used in class, where a nice boy steers away from confrontation, one who will often agree to avoid conflict. Where does a nice boy fit into a bar brawl?

This is what I was left with, holding both a discouraged and excited self at the same time. Yet while I have a lot of work to do, and while I may be a ‘nice boy,’ I know there is a drive and passion that dismisses me from that same label. And Dan has reminded me of the call to step out of safety and into war.

I am reminded that Christianity is not an escape to a peaceful heaven, but a call to engage in the horrific injustices of this world. You will have to fight and lose terribly, get bloody and angry and suffer and scream at God, and actually feel something for this world, rather than pose an indifferent smile. How often I want to forget this. How often I want to turn down the knob of reality. How often I want to escape into a 'spiritual' place, yet I forget that my flesh and blood is spiritual, and we are called to engage in the flesh and blood of life.

Room for Glory

2007-01-20T14:55:00.000-05:00

I am obviously entrenched here at Mars Hill in the study of psychology. It is incredibly interesting and so valuable for me to engage in, to really get a better picture of my own self, why I do the things I do, my motives, etc. It has uncovered a great deal (though I have only scratched the surface I’m sure), and I think anyone really going into ministry, whether a pastor or a counselor, should know more deeply who they are, to be attuned to the entire operating system that is continuously in flux below what we know as consciousness.

However, amidst all of the psychology, all of the explanations of life, I still feel there’s much space and mystery in me that cannot be explained by science and psychology. Psychology does not fully encompass and portray the complexity of the human condition. Psychology does not define me as well as Christianity. I do not come alive by psychology – I come alive when I experience the spirit of Christ. Why after spending so much time in the books, reading about who I am, do I never get the feeling, the rush of life and confidence about who I am as I do when I feel moved by the spirit of God in worship? Last semester, in my counseling sessions, I would often try to bring much of what I have learned in class, psychological principles, etc, to my time. While that would help, it would not compare to the presence I would bring when I felt moved by the Spirit, when I really felt like I was walking with the Lord. My facilitator would be taken aback by this presence, very noticeable and different.

Quantum physics seems to reveal this same mystery that traditional science and psychology cannot explain. Much of psychology wants to be able to explain every action by a causal relationship down to the biological event that takes place. They want to reduce every emotion and movement to the root, which they say starts with the neurons that fire in your brain, bringing a chain of biological reactions that lead to your action. This is what you would call a reductionistic approach, where all explanations of life and consciousness are reduced to the operations of the 3 pound chunk of brain tissue in your head.

And here is where quantum physics is revealing something different. They are finding that the further one tries to go down the scale of physical reality, the less material there appears to be. In fact, the farther we reach into the minute space of quantum physics, the more reality seems to consist of nonmaterial information. Instead of something physical, there is space and mystery, more pure potential for matter or energy or something of the like but they are not sure what. (What the Bleep Do We Know attempts to explain this)

Thus the mind is being revealed as something that is greater than the sum of the parts that support it. The whole – that being human life and consciousness – is more than the sum of all the biological parts that make up the human body. There is mystery, there is room for the spirit, for that which is greater, to dream up a world outside of that which is caused by neural firings.

So the point of this, for me, is to again by humbled by my own endeavor to learn all that psychology attempts to explain about my own self. There is more than me knowing everything. Information only gets me so far. I can gain all the knowledge in the world, yet this same knowledge will be my downfall, for I will be too arrogant to be able to simply engage in a genuine way that will really create transformation in the other person. There is learning, and then there is being. Psychology focuses more on the knowing, and the gospel focuses on the spirit, the attitude, the engagement and presence. The learning focuses on reductions, which is helpful and needed, but can be rather anemic, fairly dull, tedious. Being, on the other hand, is rich and beautiful. It is art. It is life. It is greater than fact. Being leaves room for Glory. And Glory is the richest life has to offer. And if we have hearts to engage in this spirit of being, we can then see the Glory that exists, the Glory that is pulsating out of all that is. This picture reveals both Glory and information. But it encapsulates life much better by the sum of the colors and objects laced together as a whole, than what any of them reveal on their own. As a whole, this picture reveals Glory. It is packed with expression of that which is greater than itself.

May we have eyes to see Glory, may we see through the lens of being, of wholeness, may our spirit bring a greater presence than what we know. Instead of simply talking with each other and exchanging information, may we engage in a way of being with one another that reveals the Glory of God. May our hearts have much room for Glory.

Classes

2007-01-16T21:01:00.000-05:00

I thought I'd share to those outside of the school the new classes of the semester.

Practicum II - where we counsel one another and have the rest of our group watch. The best word to describe the experience was spoken by a classmate during our orientation: nauseating. It is intense enough to counsel someone, let alone having an entire group analyze you as you do it. We also meet outside of class to counsel each other on our own, and meet with a staff person to be counseled. That's a lot of counseling...(i think about 6 hours a week)

Marriage and Family Therapy - We get Dan Allender again, and the first set of intensives last week were good, though didn't quite have the punch that Faith, hope and love did for me. Still very good though. The first paper this week is on gender, God's design on this, specifically applying it to marriage. Definitely a difficult topic today, as we saw last semester with the people against fundamentalism attempting to protest against some of Mark Driscoll's comments on women.

Impact of Abuse - I'm pretty interested in this class, where for the first time I will really start to get a picture and engage in the harsh realities of domestic violence in the world, its affects and how to care for so many who have experienced the devastating consequences. Sexual violence, oppression, racism; all topics that cry out for one of the key themes of the Gospel, which is justice.

History of Therapeutic Perspectives - I don't know much about this yet, it just looks like it covers the major counseling theories and the men and women who formed them. Lots of psychology.

Celtic Spirituality - a one credit 'spiritual formation' elective that I needed to take that meets just one weekend. Interesting but probably least excited about this one.

Thin Blue Lines

2007-01-07T17:51:00.000-05:00

I have been moved to express my two hour experience of church this morning. And once again, as has been the case every time I sit down to write - the onerous task of transferring experience into words on a page, providing the reader a little bit of the fullness of what happened. The joy and art of words and language...attempted again today.

In the midst of what I have described before as death in this deconstruction here at Mars Hill, this morning I found myself worshipping in the midst of life and what I know to be true. My certainty was found in these moments, within a spirit lifted so high I felt all but a thin line between me and heaven. Lost in the moment, my body open to move and sway wherever it pleases. Where I was given the full sense of what it means to be a man. Where I was given the fullness of what it means to feel.

All of this centered on words bellowing out by those around me, singing,
“All my delight is found in you Jesus.”

The power of those words in that room - ineffable yet indelibly formed into my memory.

There may have to be doubt for there to be faith, but there is also a certainty in His presence. How can one argue with a heart that is made fully alive?

In a Nutshell

2006-12-19T00:23:00.000-05:00

Thoughts at the end of a full, long, emotionally exhausting, disrupting and beautiful semester:

Being a part of a community of people for any extended period of time is an arduous journey and at the same time everything I desire.

God will use those who 'dont know' to teach those who 'know.’

Truth is relational (but not relative).

Modernism is not the enemy, and neither is postmodernism. They are simply the ways things are (or were), and each are both healthy and unhealthy lenses used to draw meaning.

I don’t bring my full presence when I meet you –I don’t know if you or I can handle that – or can we?

How do I live out the gospel in the midst of preaching it so passionately to you?

Transformation does not happen through information, but by encounter. People will not change by nice sayings and theory, but through experience, through engagement.

People come into therapy for a solution to their problem. We are to be involved in a process of translating the human heart into the language of the Gospel. This is not for me to simply say ‘God is good’ but to create a living experience of this truth with them.

A rough run in relationships for the past 5 years has made me want to give up hope - just in time came faith, hope, and love, and I guess I’m supposed to keep at it…hooray for hope.

“Father sing me into feeling.”

My heart frightens me in its deceitfulness and amazes me in its desire.

Spiegel im spiegel

Language. Writing. Being able to hold all that could and had to happen.

Snow on the ground = four hour gridlock.

My cash-flow is not ideal at the moment.

Life is not ideal. Changing a tire in the pouring rain in the middle of rush hour traffic on the last day of class…not ideal.

I have been blessed by the entrance of some people into my life. The unpredictability of a God that surprises us with something that is sweet, where for a moment, the true fullness of ‘taste and see that the Lord is good’ is felt. That is a blessing, and I am thankful.

I am continually drawn into repentance, my knees to the floor, by one thing: beauty.

Upside Down Kingdom

2006-12-10T16:43:00.000-05:00

Taking a break from my faith hope and love studying earlier today, I had some lunch and in doing so came across a scene from Philadelphia that seemed to sum up a part of what this semester has done in me.

Andrew (played by Tom Hanks) is a gay man in the movie, talking to his lawyer, Joe (Denzel Washington) when in the background, an opera comes on. Andrew walks over to the stereo, turns up the volume, then leads Joe into the meaning, expressing the heart of the beautifully spoken words of the female opera singer as the song plays. He enters into her heart, eyes closed, ready to catch every nuance her voice projects. He describes her initial longing, and the suffering and loss that follows in the song, and then the increased desire that the woman says will be now open to experience with another, and then at the end, when the female opera singer is at the climax, he begins to weep, completely absorbed in face of love.

It was fitting. I sat there amazed, even startled. Right after reading so much on faith, hope, and love, I was led into the experience of the heart of the concepts by a gay man. The similarity between the scene and what I just read was almost eerie.

Someone so easily written off as a 'sinner' led me passionately into the love of God. Such seems to be the way God works, what the Kingdom looks like.

I thank this school and the people here who have shown me the humanity and the divine in what so often in the past has been seen as 'secular'. I have been humbled this semester by those who do not seem to 'know Christ' yet seem to reveal Him in such a profound way. Watch this scene and tell me this man does not reveal the glory of God.

The Face of the Other

2006-12-05T01:08:00.000-05:00

I was just reading the interesting dialogue we have going on here in Seattle between Mark Driscoll and a pastor in the area(among others), Rose Madrid-Swetman.

It was great to read her comments about what went on in the face to face meeting. What most struck me was her comment:

"Words on a blog or on a paper are one thing—people in a room who those words touch are quite another."

With so much rhetoric on both sides of this dialogue, it is good to remember how easy it is to call out the 'other' when you are not sitting face to face, looking into the eyes of another human being.

How are we living out the gospel in the midst of our passion and ensuing differences about this same gospel? It was great to see both sides here appearing to act in the same love they so passionately preach.

Creative Perfection

2006-11-27T15:42:00.000-05:00

Listening to a new artist, Joshua Radin, whose music caught my attention right away.

The thing that got me the most is the way his voice moves with the rhythm of the song (I would say in particular his song Winter). It shifts and sways in a captivatingly smooth conduct. Such a way that you feel he is singing it the exact way it should be sung, as if the song was inspired, like he is awakening something, bringing life to something in the very way it was supposed to be, expressing a beauty that is already written, waiting to be given life.

We have the ability to give life to things in song, give life to the things that God is waiting for us to create, to do so in a way that it feels as though the words and rhythms are said the exact way they were supposed to be. This composing creates a holy, sacred sound.

And that is what Joshua does. The way his songs travel, the way they move, so effortless, it seems as though he is bringing to life something the amazingly beautiful and creative way it was supposed to be given life. It is creative perfection. It is awakening, giving expression, a revelation of the beauty of God.

Family Time

2006-11-24T17:44:00.000-05:00

Before the family got together this week, my dad sent the bros a picture from a past vacation, a time when we all had much more hair and a much better tan...

My mom didn't know that Matthew or I were coming this time. The night before I flew out my mom was at David's and I needed to get ahold of him, so we went into covert style, with the following text message:

'Roger 1 this is painted squirrel, just making sure that all the nuts are in place for tomorrow, give me a call when the eagle is out of sight - out.'

Operation successful, making for a good surprise and a good birthday for my mom and thanksgiving for everyone.

It was a shock stepping out of the mars hill world, leading to much reflection of the past 3 months of school. I was heavy from the weight of the program, the questioning that seems continuous in every fashion of experience at the school. Indirectly and indiscreetly it takes its toll on every part of me, something I didn't fully realize until I got on the plane and traveled away from Seattle. It is painful, this apparent feeling of an absence of God in the midst of this questioning that goes on. Though painful is not enough to describe it. It is like death. A song I have paints the experience when it says

'your silence is like death to me.'

It feels like death to sit in this deconstruction.

Yet this heaviness was lifted on the last night in Maryland, where a love that cannot be given justice by the use of words was expressed for our mother, whom celebrated her 60th birthday. Matthew made an amazing video that captured our expressions of gratitude and awe, with an ending verse from Colossians 3:14-

"Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity."

Amidst so many questions of what is and what is not in this program, my soul was able to rest in the reminder that love is on a different plane, a higher level of understanding, a deeper wisdom above what can be questioned.

Mirror Back

2006-11-18T00:49:00.000-05:00

An interesting thought was brought up by my roommate when I talked about my guy friends of old, the men who did life with me at Michigan State. I was telling her about them and I was quickly taken back by the great amount of confidence that swelled. This then exposed some of my lack of confidence I have been standing in with my current experience at Mars Hill, the different man here in Seattle than the man who was at MSU.

Why the discrepancy? This is where Eden comes in, when she talked about how people reflect back who we are, both the good and bad. Those men back at MSU did this, they reflected back to me the man that I was, leaving me confident about where I stand as a man.

This was relived the other day, when Kyle, my old friend from MSU said, "Do you realize you are the hottest bachelor is seattle this moment??!!!" It was a rediculous comment, but nevertheless it felt pretty dang good to hear and it gave me the confidence I needed that moment.

And as for this new place of Mars Hill...I'm not sure, I'm more confused about where I stand, what they all think of me. I don't think it is in any way their fault - if anything that is expected when you meet new people in a totally new place - but it definitely has its affect.

The picture is in honor of the man, the myth, the kmac, who always told us to "step it up a notch!' Thanks for the comments Kyle, much appreciated.

Check the Label Next Time...

2006-11-14T23:02:00.000-05:00

This blog needs a bit of humor, so I'll provide the best I can from the past week.

David suggested a vitamin pack that has kept him from getting sick for the past several months. It is called Emergen-C, containing 1000% of your daily need of vitamin C, but also other B vitamins and such to keep you healthy. I took the vitamins after our volleyball game on sunday night, and the ensuing night in bed strangely left me tossing and turning throughout. The next day after class I was talking to my roommate about it and she looked at the packet and pointed out to me the bold letters which read 'SUPER ENERGY BOOSTER'. Not just energy booster, but SUPER energy booster. Ouch. How'd I miss that?? Seriously.

Well, knowing how bad my body responds to lack of sleep, this may have ironically contributed to the fact that I am now sick. Awesome. Hooray for vitamins! Since they helped get me sick, I am holding them accountable now for getting me healthy, obviously making sure I take them at the right time.

Calloused Feet and Too Tender Knees

2006-11-10T15:11:00.000-05:00

I was informed of news of an old relationship that has moved on to someone else
Something I knew that was inevitably going to happen or already was

Yet in hearing the reality of the way things now are, I was really taken back at the degree I was affected, and I sat in the moment, awkward and uncomfortable, and very, very sore

My mind was confused as it compared the past and everything that was shared with what it now imagines is the present situation – and the two don’t fit together, they don’t make sense

My heart is then forced to deal with the swelling emotions, and amidst much wrestling it cannot carry it alone – there must be some expression, some sharing. A deep need, an inexorable desire to divulge, to release this and have it held by someone

This need was met by a friend, someone who took the entire evening off from their own needs and diverted all attention, who took me on a drive, played me a song as many times as I needed to hear it, gave me full presence and space to be what I needed to be.

And finally, who offered me a story about a longing, a longing that my heart ached alongside with as the words were spoken. It was a longing deeper than any relationship with a woman, it was a longing for romance deeper than the reality of this world. The character spoke these words:

“Come, long expected love. Come, long expected love.

Let the sacred finger and the sacred breath stir up the pool.

Here on the lowest step I wait with festering limbs, with my heart in pain.

Free me, long-expected love, from this old burden.

Since I cannot stay, since I must return into the city,

come now, renewal, come, release.”

God, I praise and loathe this burden, this longing for you, this beauty and pain, this immense, enormous hope that you ask for again and again, and this desire implanted that will not leave.

Jer 20:9 “But if I say ‘I will not remember Him or speak anymore in His name,’ then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary of holding it in, indeed I cannot.”

My Boy Brandon

2006-11-02T22:15:00.000-05:00

After spending a couple weeks with the same kid at work, it has been hard not to get attached to the guy. His name is Brandon, he is 20 yrs old and autistic. To be honest, at first I was a little freaked out by him, he can be pretty loud when he talks in what sounds like gibberish, and usually rocks back and forth sitting down or sways side to side standing up. But after a little while with the guy, you're all of a sudden in a very interactive relationship, picking up most everything he tries to communicate, and enjoying his company.

Though I have to say I was not happy when we stepped out of my car at the park and I saw that he had a little accident and his pants were soaked. But then it hits me, and I realize how I am so worried about my car being clean and not thinking at all about a man who just wet his pants. This job is always humbling, pointing out my selfish attitudes and the great need there is for people who will look beyond themselves.

His single greatest pleasure is the car ride, and closely behind that is his love for apples. He also likes to pull his shirt over his head to play around, and this time as you can see from the picture, he fell asleep soon after.

Regina Spektor at the Moore Theater

2006-10-28T23:28:00.000-05:00

To say I was hooked up is an understatement for this night. Eden and Nat got me a belated birthday gift with a ticket to Regina Spektor. And not only that, but as I came from work I walked into the theater to see that a front row seat was saved for me.

Her music is a little different than I'm used to, it has some jazz flavor and I'll admit, has a very girlish feel to it. But that does not keep me from seeing her brilliance. And she is brilliant.

One of my favorite songs is Samson, a beautiful description of relationship, and the betrayal that will inevitably happen in some way or another, but also the beauty in meeting each other in our faults and being one another's 'sweetest downfalls.' Something about weakness that invites another person in. Her accent, which gives her voice a divine, goddess like tone, makes me feel as though something holy and sacred is being said and heard.

Just Another Saturday Night

2006-10-23T20:44:00.000-05:00

So after Eden's concert saturday night, and after heading to the Park Pub and then downtown seattle to a corner hot dog stand and mingling with the shady party scene crowd outside the bars, we ended up back at our house. And I thought the night had come to an end, but my seminarian friends thought otherwise, and a full fledged dance party began, everything short of a dance off. The best way to illustrate it was Eden the next day, describing the night as one big blur, not knowing what was a dream and what was real, yet she realized she didn't have a sip of alcohol the whole night.

Life in Slow Motion

2006-10-22T12:57:00.000-05:00

I have wanted to talk about the title of my blog, Life in Slow Motion, and after writing my Faith, Hope, and Love paper again, I was led into the notes and ideas that inspired the title (along with David Grey’s great song titled just that…Life in Slow Motion).

There is a lot here that has to do with the past, present, and future. Dan has talked about the different kinds of time in class. There is the kronos time, which is the Greek word for sequential, chronological time. And there is kairos time, which is the Greek word for time that is held in the moment. It is the time that we have the ability as humans to hold, where along with the present we are able to engage with the past and future. We operate on this level of time over and over throughout our day, most of which does not hold significant meaning, like remembering what you had for breakfast or knowing what you are doing tonight.

But there are also certain moments when this time is able to hold for us the deepest, most intense times of desire and joy and sadness all together, where the implications, the importance, the magnitude of the past and the future are met in the here and now, as if that moment is a culmination and expression of everything your life has been about or long for it to be. The good and the bad, the heartache of loss and yet the hope and desire and even greater capacity for joy that rises out of that, all groaning towards the hope for what is to come.

Much of the memory I have of times like these have in many ways been found in past relationships, and what I do know of some of those times is when the girl was able to simply be with me, when she didn’t have to do anything or say anything, but we were able to just sit in the moment, we had such a level of intimacy that time appeared to stand still. That intimacy held so much of the past, so much of the longing for someone to know at such a deep level that was finally becoming real. It also provided a glimpse, a taste of the magnitude of intimacy that would be fully met in what is to come.

I look for that in the women I meet around me. I look to see how they sit with me, how they hold themselves. How they react when they think I’m too quiet or for some reason am intimidating, or even have an interest in me and don’t know what to do with it. How do they hold their heartaches and losses and desires and hopes when they encounter all of mine? Will they cover that up with another self? Will they try to be someone else? Will they talk so much just to fill the time and drown out any real meeting and showing of who they are?

All I know is that when I am able to sit and hold all of these things with someone (doesn’t have to be a girl) usually something amazing happens, something that allows for God to come in. When I am in community, when people are able to simply be, when they are present with one another and not trying to be someone else, that is something amazing. That is something that can create the moments that seem to move in slow motion, where time stands still and the past, present, and future convene.

...so after reading A River Runs Through It for class, I came across a section that seemed to paint this idea in the life of a fly fisherman. The character just lost the biggest fish he had hooked before, the moment standing still in time. He says:

"Poets talk about 'spots of time', but it is really fisherman who experience eternity compressed into a moment. No one can tell what a spot of time is until suddenly the whole world is a fish and the fish is gone. I shall remember that son of a bitch forever."

Mosaic

2006-10-17T00:08:00.000-05:00

Today was a long day, in breadth and depth. It really started last night when our house watched Dead Man Walking for class, and the end was very moving. That started the emotion that would continue right up to practicum today, where I told my story.

There were a lot of potential experiences that could’ve happened during the time, and luckily traumatic was not one of them. It was easier than I thought, even though the environment did not seem to bring out the depth of my experience the way I was hoping for. Which was frustrating, but also understandable.

There is just such a longing in my heart for genuine community that I brought those hopes into the room today. This is one of the reasons that I am really enjoying Mosaic, a local church where I’ve been the past two Sundays. The community I have felt there evokes such a longing in me, a longing for something I feel like has been absent since my days at MSU. It has given me what seems like a safe outlet for expression that my heart is ready for. I have been holding back tears during worship the past two weeks when I see so many who are not afraid to express their hearts to God, to really let go and as a community join in praise – there is quite a spirit in that room. It is definitely not an emergent church/mars hill graduate school type church, but does any of that really matter when people just join in community like that? The community is scary, as are any new relationships that really start to have some depth to them. But I am looking forward to taking some risks there and seeing what unfolds. I am willing to take that risk for community.

As I was writing my I and Thou paper, I ran across Martin Buber's idea of what true community was:

"True community does not come into being because people have feelings for each other (though that is required, too), but rather on two accounts: all of them have to stand in a living, reciprocal relationship to a single living center, and they have to stand in a living, reciprocal relationship to one another."

Wave and Particle

2006-10-09T20:51:00.000-06:00

One of the readings from my hermeneutics class was really good. It really emphasized what an understanding of the context in which the text was written (or spoken) looks like. It talked about the oral tradition of the text and how much that meant to the expression of God's Word in Jesus' time. Hebrew holds precise ethical and philosophical value concepts that belong only to Hebrew and Judaism and that are really untranslatable. Words cannot be learned simply as words without their complete historical context. Hebrew as a written language is skeletal, shorthand structure, in which the main process takes place in thought. Here is a quote from the article:

'For most moderns, scripture has ceased to be the guiding companion of life that resides in one's deepest layers of consciousness, influencing one even when one is not aware of its presence. Instead, scripture has become a literary object to be studied and analyzed along with the other literary texts we possess.'

This reminds me to make the text a story that enters every part of my day, something to be embodied, given life to. Not a piece of literature that one would lecture about, but more like a story that is told over a camp fire.

The last part of the article was an amazing example of what this thought can look like. The expounding of the text in its tradition is done with the words from Genesis 1, 'In the beginning.'

In the beginning...
which means:

in archetypal form-
with the power to be something in principle-
like a point which unfolds itself
in wings, in flame,
in all direction,
conceiving the idea of a universe
for better and for worse...

In that time before time and space,
the Being of beings,
the I-They-Who-Are
the One which is Many,
the Ultimate Pronoun.

Drew upon unknowable Otherness,
to convert into knowable Essence
two tendencies of our universe-to-be

the cosmic tendency toward the Limitless:
the ocean of light, sound,
name and vibration-
all that shines in glorious space,
that rises in sublime time

as well as

the cosmic tendency toward that Limited:
a formed and fixed energy which moves
straight toward goals and solutions:
the sense of purpose which we see in
earth, water, fire and air.

In Principle,
In Beginning-ness,

Oneness envisioned the wave and the particle.

Derek and Sandra

2006-10-06T18:22:00.000-06:00

Last night I went and saw Derek Webb and Sandra McCracken play at a local church. Unfortunately Sandra didn't play many songs, Derek took most of the stage, but it was good to see him for the first time. I think I was surprised how much I enjoyed the songs from his Mockingbird album, they seemed to have more substance live. And I was remembered of his poignant lyrics, both from the new album and of old. He is definitely a prophet of this age, calling us to the truth of Jesus' upside down kingdom. The song 'My Enemies Are Men Like Me' does that for me, reminding me of what it really means to love our enemies (how rediculously hard that is - what does it look like to love terrorists, the enemy of our country?), and that I am no better than what I think is the enemy. Here are the lyrics:

i have come to give you life
and to show you how to live it
i have come to make things right
to heal their ears and show you how to forgive them

because i would rather die
i would rather die
i would rather die
than to take your life

how can i kill the ones i’m supposed to love
my enemies are men like me
i will protest the sword if it’s not wielded well
my enemies are men like me

peace by way of war is like purity by way of fornication
it’s like telling someone murder is wrong
and then showing them by way of execution

when justice is bought and sold just like weapons of war
the ones who always pay are the poorest of the poor

Nothing unusual, nothing's changed, just a little older that's all...

2006-10-02T09:09:00.000-06:00

My 26th Birthday can be summed up as good times with good new friends. My roommates set everything up, yea they are great. As you can see from the pics, it was inevitable for the cowboy hat to come out and 'save a horse, ride a cowboy' to be blasted from the stereo. Later at the Havana Club we did some more dancing, and then some more dancing...

I and Thou - You, Me, and God - What will make our encounter genuine?

2006-09-24T22:32:00.000-06:00

I am starting to read I and Thou for class, and while I will not get into the complexity of all this book, I will describe its effect on me.

It has to do with our relation to another.

To have a genuine encounter with another, we must approach one another in all of our humanity, and in doing so, we approach one another in all of who we are in God. When we do not relate to another as genuine human beings, we lose the presence of God. And if the presence of God is not existing in relation to one another, we lose the ability to relate to that person in their full humanity, as a human being, and not as an object. Both God and the fullness of humanity must be present for there to be a genuine encounter with another.

For example. If you come to me expressing how hard the week has been for you, I have three basic choices of encountering and relating to you. I can focus more on you, on God, or hold both of these. To simply focus on all of you, I objectify you. I treat you as an object, nothing more and nothing less. Now when I simply focus on all of God in talking to you, I take away your humanity. I tell you to 'just trust in God' or 'things will all work out for you in the end because God loves you'. This is an abstraction of the real you. It foregoes who you are and treats you as a means in order to find the end in God. This also treats you as an object. It does not take into account your humanity. It doesn't take into account what you think and feel, how your heart aches and longs. Now when encountering you I hold both the full humanity of who you are and the full presence of who God is in you, I encounter a true relationship. I hold all of who you are in God, which is found in honoring all of who you are as a human being.

Everything we are is to be given glory to God. Yet we cannot give glory to God without fully honoring the person. They play off of each other; the relation is reciprocity, a give and take. They must both be held. Where full humanity and full divinity meet, we encounter true relationship. One that honors the person because it honors God, and honors God because we honor each other.

May we hold both of these when we meet. May we approach each other recognizing and treating one another in the very deepness of respect, and at the same time know that this can only be true when we acknowledge the full glory to be given to God.

Coldplay, Dan, Passion, Therapy

2006-09-21T15:23:00.000-06:00

Had another week with Dan Allender's faith, hope, and love…and it was just as intense as the first.

But some thoughts…my favorite song right now is from Coldplay, called Fix You. The song caught me by surprise, as I was driving back from Oregon with a sluggish posture, my body tired, my eyes heavy from the busy week and weekend. I was enjoying the mellowy Coldplay sound. The song Fix You came on and it started out slow as most of their songs do. I was half-listening to the lyrics, due to my half-numb state of mind. I was in a bumbed mood for several reasons, one part of the loneliness that wants to latch onto me once in awhile, and in the same way the questions like what in the world am I doing out here.

Yet suddenly the guitar started to jam out (like the U2 of old), and the tone and pace of the song sparked something in me, grabbed my attention. I turned the volume turned up, with the drums adding to the crescendo, and he then sang out several times ‘tears stream down your face, when you lose something you cannot replace.’ At this point, my mood had suddenly been lifted from indifference to intense emotion. I was immersed in this song. I listened to it several more times, each time absorbing, soaking up all the song had to offer me. I don’t know exactly what the song was initially meant to convey, but by the time it was done, it meant passion. It sang me into passion. It reminded me of the love for all the things that really matter. It could mean something completely different to you, but to me in my story, the song meant passion.

I say this because that is what Dan also leads me into. I cannot sit in his class and space-out with a temper of indifference. And this is one of the main things I have taken from my time with him; a calling to not live in indifference. Not to side with a numb, unconcerned, apathetic, uninterested heart. This is significant for me as I have read some more about the heart, how it wants to go into repression when it experiences pain, a form of safety to never experience the pain it once felt again. Instead of opening itself up again it opts for no feeling at all.

Like the song, Dan leads the class into passion. I don’t think anyone could sit in the class and not feel anything. You would have to either love him or hate him. No neutrality. This has confronted my own tendency to lie in the realm of neutrality. I am a mellow person. Not that I think that is inherently bad. But I think I can often use that to hide from what is really going on. I don’t like confrontation. Like anyone, I don’t like my heart to hurt. And like anyone, it has been, really bad, and I have often opted for the choice to sit in or around numbness.

Like the song, I have been led by Dan into an arena that wars with our emotions, our pasts that lie in the present by memory. I have been led to enter into the pain, not in a way that accompanies pity, but an action that desires to mourn and suffer well, which will ultimately bring out a passion and joy not only now but in anticipation of what is to Come in the future. Most of the songs in the Bible were expressed this way, in acknowledgement that to be living is to be in a sense of pain, but at the same time in passionate joy. This is paradoxical, yet this is life. And Dan has asked us how well we rest in that tension, that of death and life. Will you choose more of one than the other, or neither one, or will you embrace both? Will you choose to acknowledge reality when it seems like madness? We are often not fond of the reality that God has given us. Where do we then turn? What addiction takes us out of reality, turns down the knob for a moment? What is this thing which becomes your idol? Can you take the visible failure in idolatry and let it know what its heart really wants? G.K. Chesterton writes ‘every man who walks into a brothel is looking for God.” Do you acknowledge the desire that God has implanted in you which finds its home in your own brothels? Will you acknowledge that you are looking for God!!! Will you stop trying to numb life through addiction and enter into feeling where you can truly experience what life has to give, and to embrace that well in the suffering and pain that you know will bring you even more capacity for joy.

How have the times when you have been betrayed spurred you to construct gods that are better and more pleasing to you? How have you escaped being an orphan? How have you avoided being a stranger in a foreign land? Do you use wit or just simply talk so much that you keep everyone at an amazing distance, or euphemism your way to escape reality? Our idolatry is an effort to find joy outside of God. What do you kneel toward (good looks, intellect…) to keep yourself from being an orphan, to invert reality? Will we trust that we will not be left as orphans, or will we cling to other saviors? It is not about life working for us, but a preparation for what is to Come. Will we be made ready in our waiting and our trust of what is to Come. Will we live well today in that anticipation. Will we have good wine in a real community that is not perfect, in fact may be very broken, but in that way know how we are all the more waiting well for what will Come.

Where are you desiring His Coming? A brothel? Are you able to see through this? To what your heart desires? Will you wait well? Will you, along with the Scripture, hold both joy and suffering together? This is true passion, true living. Not a passion that wants to escape the world and go to heaven but wishes to embrace all that is right now.

This is what we are to offer in therapy. Not an escape and simple solving of the single problem our client has come to us for. It is always part of a deeper problem. We cannot be plastic surgeons. We engage them into the story of life. Only then can true heart transformation occur. It will not happen if we throw a Bible verse at them. That is using the truth as a weapon, not as a transformative language. We must enter into the language of their story. Only then will the love of the Gospel make sense. Then we can offer them the reality of what faith, hope, and love is. The Gospel is to be embodied, to be spoken with action, and occasionally with words. This is true therapy, giving flesh and blood to the ultimate reality of the Gospel. This is also an engagement with passion.

Wow didn’t expect to go off on that tangent, but just got into my notes from the past weeks and felt compelled to right. Hope you made it through.

Allow me to Process...

2006-09-07T17:24:00.000-06:00

Wow. The past three days have been that word. I wish I was a better writer so I could fully describe to you what I’ve experienced. I will try, but will only provide poor reflection at best. The richness of being in a room where Dan Allender speaks with passion on life is like trying to describe the sunset to someone who has never been to the ocean. Ok a little overtly dramatic but hopefully I got my point across!

I had 12 hours of class this week where I listened to Dan speak on faith, hope, and love, the title of the class. When I first heard of that title, it sounded lame, and I was not real excited about spending so much time on topics I had heard so many times. And I guess that is where the beauty had been all week for me; Dan’s ability to speak in a language that not only brings such depth and life to those words, but also his skill in bringing your own story and experiences into a head-on collision with them. I was completely captured by his exposition of what those three words really mean; how they touch every part of our life - past, present, and future. It was the opposite of reading a definition. It was like taking each word of a definition and defining those in experience and then constructing out of that a theme which best described what the word meant.

He drew out my emotions, some I hadn’t felt in some time and some I forgot I had. I was about ready burst as he led me down the road of pain and betrayal and madness and glory and redemption and the faces we have and the stories that shape who we have become. And again, all these words can only be experienced in the moment, in the context, like any great story. In the setting, the people, and the face and person of Dan. He is the only guy I have heard a girl say has a beautiful face where she was not talking about his attractiveness. It just looks like it has done a lot of life, seen darkness and joy in one experience after another. It is worn. It can quickly change to reveal a new expression that colors his speech. And it has exuded the passion of life and the Gospel for me this week.

The talks were not direct. He did not read his notes like the teacher going through a syllabus on the first day. The ideas were hard to understand, like Jesus and the parables he taught. You had to engage in the story he was telling and relate it to your own heartaches and disappointments and hopes and longing for reconciliation. Dan did not teach on what should be taught or what is more reputable for him and the school. He taught on his life, his story, the stories of so many broken people who have come to him in agony, hanging by a thread. It was life, not what we want life to be. It was more like listening to a song than a monologue. Hearing the beauty in the rhythm and the highs and lows that usually describe experience much better than words.

That was my week, put into words as best as I could in the time I have. Thanks for allowing me to process.

Escaping to British Columbia

2006-09-05T22:33:00.000-06:00

I was lucky enough to get a crew (my roommate Katie, her friend Liz, and Liz's random friend she met last week) and head up north for the labor day weekend, just north of Vancouver. Despite some anxiety from the group during the week about what we were really getting ourselved into, we did come back alive!

It took us about 7 hours at least to get there, due to 2 hours waiting to cross the border, and at least an hour more getting lost in Vancouver. But we finally made it and then soaked in the wilderness for two days.

We hiked the Stawamus Chief. It was beautiful all the way up, and as you can see, the view from the top was breathtaking. I'll just stop typing and let the pictures speak for themselves.

Another Day, Another Taste of Seattle

2006-08-28T18:52:00.000-06:00

Went down to the market today, and took a photo of the most interesting thing I saw. A guy on the guitar twirling a hoola hoop. Unfortunately I wasn't able to capture him while he was balancing another guitar on his chin at the same time. Why didn't we see him on America's Got Talent?

He was able to pull out a rhyme as I took the pic. "I ain't on the cover of rolling stone, but I did get on your picture phone..."

Addiction and Grace

2006-08-26T00:50:00.000-06:00

This is the latest book I’m reading, recommended by Matthew as it was part of his curriculum at Wheaton.

The most significant thing I experienced in reading this is the distinctive link that freedom has to love. I had not really thought of love giving birth freedom in the way it is described here. It is unassuming to me, yet has made so much sense. This really has given me a different perspective on how the Gospel can be lived out. When I am not bonded/addicted to the things that want to usurp my desire, I am then able to direct this desire to its truest form, which is a love for God and an ability to express this love in freedom to Him and others.

This is more or less same idea of sin and redemption, but explained more in psychological terms, which provides a different perspective. Here are the basic thoughts discussed in the first couple chapters of the book:

God has created us out of love, the love that God simply is, for God is love. Scripture proclaims that this love, from which and for which we are created, is perfect.

Our life on earth is lived out expressing this love in a myriad of different forms. Though dimmed because of the fall, all that we do is in one way or another lived out in the actions that express the desire for this love. In many ways it is good – expressed in love for family and friends. And in other ways it is distorted, through controlling, abusive relationships, sexual perversions, etc. However it is played out, it all comes back to our eternal desire and longing to experience the perfect love that we were born into. This yearning is the essence of the human spirit; it is the origin of our highest hopes and most noble dreams.

Our freedom of will is essential for our participation in a creative loving environment. Free will was given to us for a purpose: so that we may choose freely, without coercion or manipulation, to love God in return, and to love one another in a similarly perfect way. So freedom is what is born out of perfect love. The love that creates us is not enslaving; it is eternally present, and endlessly open.

Working against this boundless love that gives birth to freedom is the powerful force of addiction. Addiction is the absolute enemy of human freedom; it is the antipathy of love. Addiction bonds and enslaves the energy of desire to certain behaviors, things, or people, and these things come to rule our lives. In addiction we are forced to worship these objects of attachment, thereby preventing us from truly, freely loving God and one another.

Most true addictions are impossible to get out of by our own willpower. By our own efforts, we are left helplessly unable to escape the bondage we find ourselves in. This also keeps us from attaining the perfect love we were born out of. We are unable to live out the commandment to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. We can dedicate our entire lives to them, but still fail.

Yet this failure is necessary for us because in this helplessness we can most honestly and completely turn to grace. Grace is our only hope for dealing with addiction, the only power that can truly vanquish its destructiveness. Grace is the invincible advocate of freedom and the absolute expression of perfect love.

Grace itself cannot be possessed; it is eternally free, and like the Spirit that gives it, it blows where it will. We can seek it and try to be open to it, but we cannot control it. Similarly, grace seeks us but will not control us.

Finally, a quote that I feel summarizes what the book is really trying to express:

I live a life infused by the bondage of addiction and the hope of grace; I think we all live such lives. Let us pray that our communal efforts will contribute to that primal, eternal desire that we all share with God: perfect freedom and love for all humankind.

First night on the town

2006-08-23T15:07:00.000-06:00

I finally got downtown for the first time last night. My roommate Katie is just trying to start a music career in Seattle and she was playing at an open mic night in a coffee shop located in the middle of the city. A bunch of us went down and met several more students down there. I have to say I think it's so cool that my roommate is doing this; not only do I get to see her play, but it will allow me to easily see what's going on in the Seattle music scene.

The time spent downtown seemed to kick off for me what will be a time of unique experiences in a city that has more of a focus on the arts than most. Last night it was music, and I was able to see a variety of genres, from bluegrass to alternative, and some were really good.

Day 6

2006-08-19T22:39:00.000-06:00

We made it! We left after lunch and took the backway from Yakima which Anne suggested. This took us right by Mount Rainier.

A little while later the city came into sight and soon enough we were at my house. It was very easy to find, right off of the major highway that runs through Seattle. I don't think I could've picked a better location, thanks to my roommate Katie who we trusted with our living situation and she came through. I think I will have a great time with the two roommates I have met so far, Katie and Meredith. The other two will be back tomorrow.

I am obviously in major adjustment mode, living right in the middle of this huge city. It is quite a shock to drive out of my street and be in the middle of everything. Looking forward to this new life here.

Day 4 & 5

2006-08-19T22:11:00.000-06:00

Our last long day of driving was finally complete when we made it to Aunt Anne and Uncle Joe's place in Yakima, only a couple hours southeast of Seattle. It was great to stop for a couple days and enjoy their hospitality and the beautiful place where they live. Quite a view from their deck! It was also good to see cousin Tanya and her family, who were great to hang out with. Joe took on the kids with a squirtgun and I think he lost that fight.

Day 3

2006-08-16T19:44:00.000-06:00

Yellowstone...we were told a couple different ways to get there, and chose to go through a path called the Bear's Tooth. It was the shortest distance from where we were, but basically required going through - or over - the Rocky Mountains. While this was not easy and took some time, the ride through the Bear Tooth Path was amazing; as good as Yellowstone itself. Though half a day was not nearly enough to get the experience that Yellowstone has to offer. A couple days of camping was really needed here.

Day 2

2006-08-16T08:38:00.000-06:00

We continued through South Dakota where we entered rolling hills and sign after sign for the corn palace and wall drug stores. The morale was low as we were getting pretty tired of this state, until we came up on the Badlands. We were planning on going to Mt. Rushmore, but when we asked a guy at the gas station he said the Badlands would be worth much more of our time. After venturing through we definitely agreed with him. Right off the highway, it is a must see.

After the Badlands we finally entered another state, Wyoming, where we drove along the edge of the beautiful rocky mountains.

We ended up in Billings, Montana. We thought we could quickly get into a hotel room right off the highway. To our surprise it was full, and then the next hotel we checked was full, and we ended up scrambling around town to get an open room. We happened to stop in this city when a huge fair was in town. Luckily we were able to get the last room a little farther out of town.

Day 1

2006-08-14T19:49:00.000-06:00

And it began...if for no other reason, my mid-sized sedan was paying off for this trip. The trunk was about to burst. Mom made a comment about 'wants and needs' as I continued to stuff it with clothes.

We started out early and made it all the way to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And pretty much the whole way there, the surroundings looked about the same as they do in Michigan. Minnesota brought some big hills after the Mississippi River and then miles and miles of cornfields. Sioux Falls wasn't exactly a happenin' place. But I was able to read a bit more of Irresistible Revolution, and Chapter 3 is my favorite one so far, where Shane talks about his trip to Calcutta to live alongside Mother Theresa. Couldn't help but get very moved by what was going on there, where people were constantly giving of themselves. He described such an amazing community in the midst of so much pain and death.