Wish You Were Here

Sabbatical

2010-03-12T09:40:00.000-08:00

I know I said last week that I'd be back this week, but then I got sick.

It has not been fun.

I'm feeling better though, which is good, and I've also decided to let my blog rest for a while. I'm not sure how long. At least the next couple of weeks. Maybe longer. We'll see.

I don't feel like my posts for the past few months have been worth your time to read. I don't like that. I think some things are best left undone rather than done poorly. I need to figure out a better rhythm and reason to continue writing in this venue. I appreciate your readership, and it is because I value you that I am unwilling to offer you something I deem of little value.

I'm also reevaluating what I want this blog to be. It isn't an easy thing to put one's deep thoughts and emotions into published prose for the world to read. I need to figure out how and if I want to continue to do that in this way.

Until next time, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you always. He is always good. His love rages for you. He never fails. He is making all things new.

Where IAM

2010-03-03T23:12:00.000-08:00

I am at the International Arts Movement (IAM) Encounter conference in New York City this week. I won't really have time to blog, but if you want to see my thoughts and a lot of pictures, click on over to my Twitter feed.

I'll be back next week.

Wide Open

2010-03-03T06:00:00.000-08:00

His skin felt too tight. It constricted him. It turned in on itself. He felt it drawing into his chest, pulling him closer and closer to collapsing like an old star. The gravity of his heart was destroying him.

When did this start? He couldn't remember. It happened slowly, so slowly in fact that he felt as if he had always felt this way. But that couldn't be. If that were true, he'd of imploded long ago. The pressure was too pressing. The tightness too tightening. It could not have always been this way. He couldn't stay this way much longer.

The happiest times were the worst, not while they were happy but almost immediately after they ended. They always ended. His friends would come along and take his hands and spread wide his arms and stall the strangling. They stretched him. They freed him. They gave him hope to live.

And then they left. It was not theirs to stay. No fault should be placed upon them. This is just the way of things. They good they did was better than he ever dared hope for, better than they needed to do. They left, but before they could leave, they had to come, and for coming they are to be praised.

And when they left, he turned back into himself. He closed back up, or rather, he felt the closing with more profundity.

Oh, how he longed to be free! How he ached to liberated from his own gravity! But he had not the strength within himself. Indeed, it was the strength within himself that was killing him. It drew him up. It pulled him in. He found himself on the floor on his knees, his chest to his thighs, his chin to his chest, his fists to his chin, and his elbows to his side.

He prayed.

Freedom. Grant me freedom. Help me, oh God. Help me. Please.

He opened his eyes. His limbs began to loosen. He crouched. He raised. He stood. He arched his back. His arms fell free at his side. He lifted them. He turned his face toward the sky. He spread wide his arms. He splayed all his fingers. He stretched, and he stretched, and he stretched. And his heart beat strong. And he filled his lungs. And his skin so tight began to tear right down the center of his chest. And his muscles parted. And his flesh slipped from his shoulders like an unbuttoned shirt and fell off his arms and to the ground where it dried up and blew away.

He stood there then, radiant, glimmering, shining, alive fully. He burned yellow and orange and red. White light streamed from his eyes and mouth. He lifted off the ground and spun slowly around and then suddenly flew into the wide open blue of the sky, singeing the wispy clouds as he burned through them.

Finally, he was free.

Urban Retreat

2010-03-01T15:50:00.000-08:00

I don’t want to focus on the rain. That’s too easy. That takes little imagination, little thought. I’m not much for overused symbols and tired clichés. I want more challenge. I want to be able to see more than the falling water, to hear more than the splashes and wind.

I want to see the city. I want to hear the city. Better, I want to see and hear God in the midst of the city. As we walked through the terminal at Union Station, we prayed that our Father would fill our silence with His voice. I pray that prayer still as I sit here in the shelter of my apartment complex and watch the neighbors’ kids play beneath this balcony and reflect on my experience yesterday. Oh, God, give me insight. Help me to understand.

And still the rain pours. Still the wind blows. Even now, in my memory, the rain overwhelms everything just as it did during my retreat. I cannot escape it, and to try to focus elsewhere is false. Where is God present in the urban center? Where is God’s voice? God is in the rain. I saw Him in the storm. I heard Him in the falling water.

God quickened our steps. He would not let us linger. The rain drove us forward in search of shelter, and shelter was easy to find. We found it under trees and overpasses, in convenience stores and cathedrals, and on the steps of municipal buildings and market places.

And where there was shelter from the storm, there were people. God’s rain drove us together. We commiserated in the dry spots. “We” was more than my friend who accompanied me. “We” included the homeless, the single mother with her child, and the businessman on break for lunch. Because of the rain, each individual became a part of “we.” We retreated from the curb as the bus drove by splashing through the puddles lest we be soaked. We laughed about the fury of the weather and what a great day we’d all chosen to take a stroll. We went our separate ways as God’s rain abated and let us each leave the shelter a little less alone than we were when we walked in.

The easy thing to say is that the rain washed the city clean, but this is not true. We made our way to the municipal buildings, and the filth of the city became suddenly apparent. Etched above the doors of city hall were the words of Abraham Lincoln, “Let us have faith that right makes might,” and below that phrase the words of the Bible were inscribed, “The throne is established through righteousness.” Surely, the words were carved in the concrete face as a reproach to those who would dare use their power for evil. Surely. On this day, however, as the tower rose intimidatingly against the grey-clouded sky, I could only read the words as filthy justification for whatever happened within and in the shadow of those walls. No one congregated on the city hall steps. This was no place of refuge in the rain. This was a place of imposition and assault. This was a place where I was drawn to pray for true justice, for the justice not of law but of love.

Later, as we enjoyed Asian cuisine as the only two white people in the Central Market surrounded by people speaking the Spanish language, we discussed what God had spoken to each of us in our silence, we prayed together and thanked God for meeting with us, for allowing us into His heart in the heart of the city, and then we set off back out into the still falling rain.

My Apologies

2010-02-25T00:34:00.000-08:00

I am smack dab in the middle of a very busy week, and I have not had time to blog. I would like to extend my sincere apologies to you, my faithful readers, for disappearing without warning.

I will return.

My Dad and Rob Bell

2010-02-19T08:17:00.000-08:00

I need to tell you about my father.

But first I need to tell you about my seminary.

But even before that I need to tell you about myself.

And after all that, I need to tell you about last night.

Let's begin...

I tend to think a lot of myself. I'm constantly impressed with how open I am to new ideas and how accepting I am even of people whom I don't necessarily agree with.

My great humility is what makes me so hospitable to others and other ideas. I'm remarkable really, and I've become this way all on my own.

Yeah right.

If I am any of these things, it's certainly not my own doing. I do tend to lean to openness, but it's not because I'm so awesome. I've been formed to be that way.

Fuller is a seminary that exists to be in the middle. It strives in just about all things to live in the tension of two opposing ideas. I think that's why it has produced the likes of both Tony Jones and John Piper. Fuller is a place where it's kind of ok to fall on either side of most theological and sociological lines. Fuller walks the line.

But Fuller didn't make me what I am. I came to Fuller because I resonated with its attitude about... life. I've probably learned more about how to walk that line during my time here, but I was already there before I got here.

Which brings me to my father. I am amazed at my dad, and more so with every passing year. I've learned to be open from my father. He is a man who is comfortable with contradictions, not in everything, but in some things.

I'm speaking mainly about theological matters here. My dad can be doggedly stubborn about other things (I am like him in this as well), but when it comes to matters of God, my dad allows for mystery.

A good example - My dad teaches the adult Sunday school class at my church back home. He has for years. I always look forward to going home and seeing what material he is using now because I just never know what it's going to be.

My dad loves Rob Bell and the Nooma videos. In fact, my father introduced me to Rob Bell's teaching originally. He knew of Rob first and convinced me to pay attention. My dad is progressive like that.

However, last time I was home, my dad was using a teaching series from John Piper on the five points of Calvinism in his Sunday school class. I raised my eyebrows when I discovered this on our way to church that morning in December, and my dad explained how he didn't really agree much with Piper, but he appreciated some of what Piper had to say, and he was open to the possibility that some of the way Piper knows God might be valuable to him.

You see, one of the greatest things I've taken from my dad and mom is a deep trust in God. They really believe that God is good and that He is involved in our lives. They really believe that God loves us and is taking care of us. My father and mother live lives of real faith.

My dad knows that God is waaaaaaay bigger than anything he'll ever be able to fully understand. My dad knows that some people understand God differently than he does, and so he seeks to learn to see what they see.

My father is humble - humble enough to learn and, therefore, to teach. He has taught me with his life how to live in the tension, to accept the mystery, and to love others who I may not fully understand.

Last night, I would have given just about anything to have my father with me, because last night, I got to meet Rob Bell.

Riding the coattails of a Fuller professor and being blessed by his hospitality, I was able to go to the historic Wiltern theater in West L.A. to attend the L.A. stop of Rob's "Drops Like Stars" speaking tour.

I also received a backstage pass to meet Rob after the show.

I didn't have time to really talk to Rob. I just shook his hand and got him to quickly pose for a picture.

But had I had the time (and had it not been after midnight in Texas when the show was over), I would have told him about my father and asked him to make a quick phone call on my behalf.

Mission from Silence

2010-02-18T12:33:00.000-08:00

Below is the conclusion of my Spirituality and Mission paper.
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•We live in a world that clamors for our attention making it extraordinarily difficult to remain in God’s presence

•Centering prayer is a historically established means of focusing ourselves on Christ.

•Centering prayer helps us enter into times of silence.

•In silence we truly encounter God.

•This silence looks different than we anticipate because it often feels at first like the absence of God.

•It is in this silence that we become like Christ as we are faithful to God.

Reflection for Mission

All mission comes out of identity, and my true identity is wrapped up in Christ. It is through the silence that I learn who I am. As I sit in God’s presence simply, without any other aim but being with God and resting in God’s presence, God speaks to me and directs me to action. God tells me who I am made to be.

I’ve found over the past few months of walking through this “dark night of the soul” that as I rest, my Father asks me to trust Him, and He asks me to move out of hiding and into whatever He is calling me to. I cannot trust God sitting in my room. Trust requires action. Faith is movement.

Currently, I am attending seminary and trying to discern God’s call on my life. I have hints and suspicions. God is confirming or rejecting those things daily, and God does this as I rest in God’s presence. How else can I know what God would have me do unless I learn to hear God’s voice? In the silence, I hear God speak.

In the future, as I continue in mission in the Western world to middle-class men and women my age, living a life of sought silence will become increasingly important. I hope to model a life of listening to God to all I have the honor of being in ministry with. I will no doubt need constant direction and refilling of God’s strength. I will find those things as I rest in God’s silence. Centering prayer and silence will continue to be integral parts of my spirituality.

My Rule of Life

Everyday, before I leave for work and before I lay down again at night, I will spend time in silence with God.

I will strive to learn to be content not with answers to my questions and doubts but with God’s presence. I will strive to sleep in the storm.

I will use centering prayer throughout my day to bring myself back into focus on Christ.

I will seek in all things in all moments to consider God.

I will rest with Christ.

Silence

2010-02-16T11:18:00.000-08:00

Here is part two of my Spiritual Practices Essay
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In Mark chapter four, the gospel writer retells the story of a stormy night upon the Sea of Galilee. The disciples and Jesus had left the crowd on the shore and were crossing over to the region of the Gerasenes. “A furious squall came up,” Mark records, and the boat begins to be flooded with water. The disciples - many of them experienced fishermen, I would add - fear for their lives. Meanwhile, Jesus is asleep in the stern. Waking him, they ask Jesus if he cares whether or not they drown. Jesus calms the storm before turning to rebuke his disciples for their lack of faith. At this even more so than the waves, they are terrified and begin to question amongst themselves who this Jesus might be.

In the storm, Jesus is still. He is sleeping peacefully while the elements swirl around him. The disciples look to him, but they do not really see him, for they do not see his peace. Had they had the faith to dare to do so, they might have entered into his rest as the tempest raged. “Quiet! Be still,” Jesus commands, and I wonder if he wasn’t speaking as much to his disciples as he was to the waves.

Remaining in God’s presence without ulterior motive is the aim of spiritual practice. We are made to be not to do (Jones 42). It is only when we are satisfied in Christ alone that we are truly satisfied. When we can rest in silence, we can truly rest.

This modern generation yearns for silence (Jensen 217). We ache to disengage (Jones 38). Our lives are a consistent stream of status updates and text messages and email notifications. We are constantly connected, and while that can be a marvelous thing, it can also wear upon us because we never have a moment to contemplate who we are made to be. We are made to be loved by God. In silence, if we can find it, if we can be drawn up into it, we experience God’s love (Jones 41).

The practice of silence is simply that – it is being silent before and with God. It is moving into a place where all questions cease, where all complaints are surrendered, and where all requests are fulfilled by God’s presence. Centering prayer, as previously discussed, is a valuable tool in achieving silence, but the truth is, it will not take us all the way. Only God can truly bring us to a place where we are satisfied alone with God, but rest assured, God wants us there.

I have two main differences of opinion with other writers concerning silence. Most see silence as the entry point into the other disciplines (Tan 42, Jones 40). I see silence as the end goal of other disciplines. I hope to be satisfied wholly in being with Christ, not in being with him so that I can get direction for my life or answers to my questions. Silent communion with God is the goal.

Secondly, while twenty to thirty minutes of silence is a good goal (Jensen 278), setting measurable quotas of silence reveals a misunderstanding of what silence is. Silence is not simply an escape from external stimuli, and it is not a quieting of one’s internal monologue. Silence is coming face to face with all one’s doubts and stresses and looking past them to God. Silence is lying with Christ in the stern of the ship in the middle of the storm. Silence is coming up against “I don’t know,” and allowing God’s shear presence to be enough.

Silence is paramount for the Christian because silence is faithfulness in its purest form. As C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape writes to Wormwood, remaining in silence akin to “when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do [God’s] will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of [God] seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys” (39). Jesus knew this silence as he went into the wilderness and was tempted, emerging into his ministry (Mark 1:12-13). And of course, Christ greatest work was done in the silence of Gethsemane and in his forsakenness upon the cross (Mark 14:32-42, 15:34).

It is this silence we aspire to, not the simple quieting of our world. In this silence we become like Christ, and from this silence, I believe, we, like Christ, will be resurrected.

To be concluded...

Centering Prayer

2010-02-15T09:37:00.000-08:00

Below is the first part of my recently written spiritual practices essay for my Spirituality and Mission class. I'll post the second and third parts tomorrow and Wednesday.

I hope you enjoy taking a look at the sort of things I'm studying.
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Allow me to describe the sounds that surround me as I type this: Someone is vacuuming in one of the apartments near mine. Overhead, in the apartment above, my neighbor is walking to and fro, clomping noisily around their home. Cars and buses and delivery trucks rumble beneath my street-side balcony. The 210 hums in the not-too-distant distance. A siren whines. A child laughs. The pipes squeal as my neighbor bathes. The keyboard clicks beneath my fingertips. I live in a cacophony of sound.

And this is only what is audible. Louder than the vacuums and buses are the questions that rattle about in my mind. “Does she like me?” “Will I have enough for this month’s bills?” “Will I make a decent grade on this paper?” “Should I find a new church?” “What will I eat for dinner?” “Is this relationship salvageable?” “What am I forgetting?” My mind constantly races with questions I cannot answer.

In the middle of this din, we are urged to pray, to sit in silence and spend time with God. This seems impossible. We need a way to push back against the noise. We need a way to retreat without surrendering our lives. We need a way to calm our minds and forget for a moment the hubbub around us.

Indeed, we are implored to do so by the biblical witness. Time and time again, we are entreated us to be still and remain with God. Elijah finds God not in the mighty wind, the fire, or the earthquake, but in the stillness (1 Kings 19:11-13). The psalmists encourage us again and again to rest in God (Psalm 23:2, 62:5, 131:2), and of course, Jesus frequents quiet, distraction-free places (Mark 1:35). “Separate yourself,” God seems to say, “and rest with me.”

Centering prayer is means of doing just that. It is a method of focusing on Christ. It is a way to hear through the clamor and into the peace of God. We are a distracted and preoccupied people who are being pulled in a hundred different directions every moment (Rolheiser 32, Campolo 135). Practicing centering prayer pulls everything back in and points it to Christ.

Centering prayer finds its origin in the disciplines of the desert fathers. As recorded by Cassian, centering prayer was used as a gateway to the contemplative (Jones 70, Campolo 133). As the Enlightenment overwhelmed the minds of later theologians and affective practices were denigrated, contemplative exercises including centering prayer fell out of fashion, but in the later half of the twentieth century, as the West was exposed to the spiritual practices of the East, and as the pace of life quickened, centering prayer was rediscovered by a new generation (Jones 72). Once again, centering prayer is an accepted, and arguably integral, practice of Christian spirituality.

The method is simple. One must latch on to a word or phrase and pray that word or phrase quietly to oneself, focusing on it and letting all other distractions fade away. Words like “love” or “grace” or “Christ” are common. As one is calmed and silenced, the prayer may cease, but the word is always there ready to be prayed again whenever distractions begin to press in again.

In my experience with this practice, I have come to three conclusions that differ with the authors I’ve read. First of all, I do not find it beneficial to pray only a single word, and I do not find the same phrase to always be beneficial. Instead, I find greater value in altering my phrase to match whatever struggle is currently preoccupying me. For instance, lately, I’ve been praying this phrase, “Lord God Almighty, I will rest in you.” My current struggle is with resting in God’s sovereignty over my life. Simply praying “trust,” for example, would not carry with it the reminder that I am resting in God’s sovereign nature. As the worries of life assail my quiet, I return to the phrase and am reminded once again of God’s place in my anxiety.

Second, while I find it beneficial to set aside twenty or so minutes a day for this practice, I also find that centering prayer is valuable in the midst of my day. When I am at work and things get a little stressful, I can briefly practice centering prayer and quickly find myself back at a place of peace. I believe that this ability has been developed in extended periods of prayer, but there’s no reason it must stay in my closet.

Finally, unlike other authors, I do not think that centering prayer is an end unto itself. Instead, I find that it ushers me into a place of silence where I can meet with God. Yes, centering prayer does succeed in pushing back the distractions, but once they are removed, God is all that is left. If we only pray a centering prayer, we’ve stopped half-way on the road to communion with God.

This brings me to the second practice I’d like to examine – silence.

To be continued...

The Church of Apple

2010-02-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

I posted this yesterday on the Brehm Blog. (Perhaps you noticed the link on the right side of the screen.) It's caused a little stir among my friends and their friends.

My friend Chris responded to it on his tumblr page and linked to it on Facebook. I encourage you to check out his comments and others' and to interact.
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Please excuse this post that will possibly wreak of consumerism. I don't write about purchases ever. So much of my identity is wrapped up in the things I own, and I don't think that's right, so I don't encourage that side of me. Still, we do live in a consumerist kingdom, and I think it's important for us to consider how to best live as citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven under the auspices of a tyrant.

That being said...

I love my Mac.

During my final year of college, I was steadily indoctrinated to the wonders of Apple by my friend and roommate Patrick. He effused about Macs daily and even threw a little party when he bought his first Macbook. When I purchased my first computer a half-year later, I never considered any other brand. I've never regretted it.

I am a oft-times too eager disciple of Apple. I have owned two iPods since converting, buying a second one after my first one broke. Now, that's loyalty. I think the company makes dependable products that are aesthetically pleasing. I don't ask for much else.

However, though I daily partake of the goodness of my Macbook and my iPod, I have yet to complete the holy trinity of Apple products - I do not own an iPhone, and I don't think I ever will. Allow me to explain why.

An iPhone is not simply a phone, as all the users will readily attest and as the advertisements affirm. An iPhone is a mobile connection device. An iPhone is an email-sending, Facebook-checking, Twittering, GPSing, video game-playing computer that fits in your pocket. And it makes phone calls.

It's kind of awesome.

iPhones are the future come to the present.

In May, my friends Patrick, Jon, and I were driving through nowhere Wyoming, and Jon and I got into an argument about how to pronounce a word. After a few minutes of going back and forth, we decided to pull up an online dictionary on Jon's iPhone, pipe the audio through his truck speakers, and have the internet settle our argument. While driving 80 mph through the middle of nowhere, we had a computer correctly pronounce a word for us.

If that's not the future, I don't know what is. As my professor Barry Taylor said, with an iPhone, one has the collected knowledge of all humankind in the palm of one's hand.

That's crazy cool, but as awesome as the iPhone is, it's not enough. It's almost enough, but it's not quite there.

Because an iPhone is so much more than a phone, I need it to do a little more than it does. I need my mobile connection device to allow me to write and upload to the internet at any time from practically anywhere (within reason). An iPhone is great for interacting with what has been created, but it's almost useless for creating.

The iPhone is a consumption device. It helps one consume media of all kinds (and it makes phone calls). It does not help one produce anything. Allowing me access to the internet is one thing; allowing me to alter it is another. Putting the collected knowledge of humankind in the palm of my hand changes my world; allowing me to add my knowledge to that of humankind changes the whole world.

When Apple builds that device, they'll likely get my money.

The iPad might be that device. I'm not really sure yet. I need to play with one first. We'll see. I think it's at least a step in the right direction.

In any case, the iPhone and its deficiencies exemplify a key component of our society. We truly live in a culture of consumption. Almost everything is oriented to encourage us to buy. Remember after 9/11 when President Bush gave his speech from Ground Zero? Remember how he suggested Americans should cope with the tragedy and fight back against the terrorists? He told us to go shopping. How does our government combat a recession? It mails us checks and asks us to spend, spend, spend. How do I cope with a particularly stressful week? I go to the Apple Store and look at all the things I could buy if I really wanted to.

Consuming equals peace-making. The iPhone is so popular in part because it is an excellent means of being a good citizen of the kingdom of Consumerism.

But the kingdom is evolving, and my problems with the iPhone are indicative of that evolution. As another of my professors, Ryan Bolger, points out, we are moving into an equal parts consumption-production culture. Photoshop, Garage Band, Final Cut Pro, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Wikipedia, Noisetrade, blogs, etc. - these are tools for production and outlets for what is being produced. The consumers of cultural artifacts are becoming the producers of those artifacts. Our society is morphing into one of both consumption and creation. We are defining ourselves both by what we consume and what we create.

As a student of worship, theology, and art, I must ask what that means for the church. Here are a few brief thoughts:

I think people will be less and less willing to simply sit and take from those in leadership. People are going to want to have input not just in big decisions but in definitions and dogmas as well. People are going to want to help form worship instead of just forming themselves to it. This will be challenging for church leadership because it will take a great deal of discernment to know when to insist on certain tenants and practices and when to bend. We must learn to better listen to God and to each other as more and more voices clamor to be heard.

I actually find this to be a very exciting time. When I read Jesus and the apostles' descriptions of the ideal church in the New Testament letters (by the way, none of the actual New Testament period churches were ideal), I see a nonhierarchical, highly interactive church where everyone is a valued part of the body bringing individual gifts and no one is left out.

Will we get there in our generation? No. Will we get closer? I hope so. I think the history of the Church is one of being conformed more and more to the likeness of Christ. I don't think the Church was closest to right in the first century and that we've just been getting more and more corrupted as time has gone by. I think God has been sanctifying His Son's Bride for two thousand years, and I think that one day we will be made perfect.

And if I have to get an iPhone or iPad to be better prepared to help us get there, so be it.

Many Waters

2010-02-11T08:00:00.000-08:00

Noah was a drunk.

It's one of the strangest stories in Genesis, in my opinion. Noah and his family walk off the ark, God makes a covenant with Noah promising to never destroy the earth via flood again, and then Noah gets wasted like a college freshman away from the watchful eyes of his parents for the first time.

What happens next is even more odd. Noah lies drunk and naked in his tent, and his sons react in different ways to his nakedness, resulting in the middle son being cursed by his father. I'm not even going to go into all that right now. I just want to consider for a moment why Noah's first act after getting off the ark is to plant a vineyard, make wine, and drink himself unconscious.

I honestly don't know why he does this, but I have a guess.

Imagine the world post-flood. The waters rose and destroyed every earth-bound life on the planet that wasn't held inside Noah's ark. For just under a year the waters covered the earth, and then they receded. What do you suppose was left behind?

Do you think the earth was washed clean? Do you think everything sparkled like a bathroom at the end of a Tilex commercial when Noah and crew emerged from the ark?

I don't.

I imagine the land was strewn with dead and decomposing bodies. I imagine fish-nibbled carcasses of every animal you can imagine littered the hills in the vicinity of the ark's resting place. As Noah traveled from that place, I imagine he passed sun-bloated bodies of people he'd known before the flood. I imagine the earth stunk. I imagine the sound of the flies alone could keep Noah up at night.

I think I would have wanted a drink too. I would have wanted to drink to forget the sounds of the screams of terror Noah undoubtedly heard from inside his boat as the waters rose. I would have wanted to wash the stench of a rotting world from my nostrils. God may have promised to never flood the world again, but I think I would have wanted to flood my senses with alcohol to escape the horror of the world around me.

If ever a man deserved a drink, it was Noah then.

But he shouldn't have gotten drunk.

I don't condone drunkenness, and I certainly don't mean to promote drinking to escape one's problems. Alcohol has taken its toll on the lives of too many of my friends and family members. Without maturity and moderation, alcohol is as corrosive an agent on our society as exists.

Drunkenness is wrong.

Noah should not have gotten drunk. The effects of his drunkenness were dire and far reaching. His subsequent, and I imagine, hangover-influenced curse of his middle son was used to unjustifiably legitimize slavery for thousands of years. After this incident, Noah's contribution to the Biblical narrative ends.

I empathize with Noah in the post-flood waste, but he reacted wrongly. Perhaps he forgot God's promise - "Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood." Perhaps Noah failed to look up and see God's sign of love stretched colorfully across the sky. Perhaps Noah let sorrow and grief overwhelm him. Perhaps he succumbed to a flood of depression and sank beneath its waves.

This world can be a gruesome place. As we walk through life, we are surrounded by the results of the Fall all the time. We have not the strength to bury it. We have not the fire to burn it. We must hold it ever in view. Our memories, blessings though they may be, can be a bane. For every kind word and kiss upon the cheek we recall, there is an insult and a slap following close behind.

Life is not easy to live, but we have hope.

The God of love has covenanted with us to never abandon us. He has written his promise upon the sky. He has proclaimed it raised upon a cross and proved it risen from the grave. His love is the deep truth behind and under everything. "Many waters cannot quench it; neither can floods drown it." (Song of Solomon 8:7 - Thanks, Nicole.)

This world and our lives are not made to be destroyed. They are created to endure. Death does its worst to take out lives and degrade the earth, but God is always at work for our salvation. What is love but a constant attempt to hold on to the things that were never meant to pass away?

And this love has already won.

We've no need to drown our sorrows in alcohol. We've no reason to lay exposed before death's horrors. We've no call for despair.

Love has already won. The Covenant is established. The rainbow is bright up in the sky.

Surprise!

2010-02-10T08:38:00.001-08:00

Homesick

2010-02-08T10:00:00.000-08:00

My friends Tim and Luke are currently living in Prague teaching English.

The Prague that is in Europe.

I'm a little jealous, and they constantly post pictures on their respective blogs. Recently, Luke posted about where he hopes to spend the summer.

Switzerland. Of course. Where else?

He posted a few pictures which prompted me to look up more pictures of Lake Geneva, Switzerland. Here's one:

This pictures and others like it made my heart hurt, not so much because I want to go there so badly (though I wouldn't object if someone was eager to send me), but because it reminded me of someplace else:

Yep. That's my hotel in Many Glacier. I miss it.

Weekly.

A place can get inside you. I was there for four months, and at the time, that seemed like forever. It doesn't seem so long anymore. I've been here in Pasadena for a year and four months and that seems like no time at all. It's scary how time speeds up as you get older.

I want so badly to go back to Glacier. People often ask me which is the best National Park I've visited. I don't like to give straight answers about anything, and I don't want to discourage people from visiting every park, so I always explain that there's something special about every park I've been to, and each is great in its own way. This past weekend when I was in Death Valley I decided I'd stop giving that answer. From now on when anyone asks me which park is best, I'm going to say, "Glacier." There's no place like it. It holds and always will hold a very special place in my heart. Even the much lauded Yosemite Valley is no match to Glacier, no matter what John Muir said.

On the first night of one of my classes this quarter, they asked us where "home" is. I gave three answers: Valley View, TX, because that's where I grew up and where my family lives; Pasadena, CA, because it's the only place I've lived besides Valley View that's ever felt like home; and Glacier National Park, MT, because part of my heart will always rest there.

One day, I'll go back. One day, I'll go home.

A Letter To My Younger Self

2010-02-04T12:20:00.000-08:00

Today, I thought I'd write a letter to my younger self. I started writing the letter, and, were such correspondence possible, below is all I really think I'd want to say.

It's all he needs to know. It's all I want him to know.
_________________________________________

Dear Younger Elijah,

It's all going to be ok.

Sincerely,
Current Elijah

A Good Day

2010-02-02T08:33:00.000-08:00

First of all:

Secondly:

(WOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!)

And thirdly:

(6 of my top 7 favorite movies of the year were nominated for Best Picture. Only Fantastic Mr. Fox didn't make the list.)

And speaking of movies, my review of Up in the Air was published in The Rabbit Room yesterday. I am so very honored to be featured there. Go check it out.

This is a good day.

P.S. This "This I Believe" from NPR is excellent.

The Communion of the Wayward Rocket

2010-02-01T07:55:00.000-08:00

We were all in it together. I was probably the least member of the brotherhood at the time, but I'm trying to make up for it now. This retelling of the incident is my contribution. I will unstick the other three from the flow of time and memorialize them in prose. I will make them immortal.

In a sense, they are immortal already. Their relationships to one another are timeless. As they each drove into the Rose Bowl parking lot that morning, they entered into the realm of myth. They became emblems, types, symbols. Actually, they became the things the symbols point to.

I was wearing rollerblades, listening to my iPod, and careening around the almost empty parking lot.

I had been there for a while when the first vehicle drove up and parked. It was a black Toyota Tacoma that looked like it had seen its share of off-roading. The man or woman inside parked his or her truck along the edge of the asphalt just beside the fence that keeps people out of the drainage channel that bisects the lot. He or she rolled his or her windows down and didn't get out of his or her truck. I'm still not sure why he or she was there. I never actually saw his or her face.

A short time later, after I had made numerous circuits around the stadium, an old, beat up, rusted Ford Metro rolled noisily into the lot and parked near both my car and the Tacoma. A large man got out wearing wind pants, a sweatshirt, and wrap around sunglasses that cast color like an oil slick in the morning sun. He walked around to the passenger side and helped his son get out of the car. The boy was so small I hadn't noticed him riding shotgun. He couldn't have been older than three. He was wearing wind pants and a sweatshirt like his father. I watched them for a moment and then took off to make another lap around the stadium.

I was lost in thought, and my headphones were doing a good job of drowning out almost all ambient noises as I made my way leisurely back toward my car. As I neared, I heard a hissing sound from the back of the Metro. I looked quickly over to see a rocket shoot up into the air. I looked over to see the father and the son with their faces turned upward watching the rocket. I looked back up just in time to see the rocket pop and a parachute emerge from its tail. The spent rocket began to float lazily back to the earth.

The father and son, the man or woman in the Tacoma, and I all watched it together.

It drifted to the West and fell without magnificence behind the fence on the concrete embankment skirting the edge of the drainage channel. The four of us felt a twinge of despair for the injustice, and the three of us old enough to know let out small sighs in recognition of the world working as we have come to learn it works.

And we all four immediately began to think of how to make this right.

I fished my car key out of my pocket in a motion to shirk my rollerblades for my tennis shoes to climb into the ditch to get the rocket. The father put the wire launch pad back in his trunk and walked with his little boy over to the fence to look for a way in. The man or woman in the truck called out to the father to tell him where a gap in the fence could be found a little ways to the North. I closed my car door, content to be an observer, as the father and son began their trek North to the opening in the fence that would enable them to retrieve their wayward toy.

They held hands as they walked.

I followed at a distance, recording their odyssey in my mind for later retelling.

They crossed the footbridge that connected the two halves of the parking lot. They descended into the channel.

I stopped in the middle of the bridge to watch them walk and worried for them because they were on the wrong side of the water. I almost called out to them to warn them of their mistake. Before I could, I saw the father raise his son in his arms and carry him through the rushing stream. (The water only played around the soles of his tennis shoes.)

I skated along the opposite bank as they walked down to their fallen rocket. The father let loose his son's hand, and the small boy began to run as they neared the toy. The lad scooped it up and held it out for his father to take. The father leaned down and began to show the boy how to rewind and repack the parachute into the rocket's body.

I made another lap around the parking lot so as not to intrude upon their moment together.

They hiked back up the arroyo, climbed up the slick, concrete embankment, and made their way back toward their car. As I passed them, I smiled and waved in deference to the father who smiled from behind his sunglasses and waved back.

When I returned to my car to leave, the father and son were setting up to launch their rocket again.

TGIF

2010-01-29T16:32:00.000-08:00

This little kid reminds me of someone...

To Know

2010-01-27T07:30:00.000-08:00

The heaviest things I carry are questions.

Ponderings.

Theories.

Explanations.

My never ending attempt to understand everything weighs upon me like nothing else.

I can't quiet my mind. It races, analyzing every little detail of every aspect of my life. I try to look into every interaction, every occurrence, every life episode. I parse conversations for hidden meanings. I mentally interrogate both the intentions of others and myself. I replay my days again and again and again and again searching for missed details that might unlock anything remotely confusing.

I am consumed with a desire to know.

I used to write two Bible verses on the covers of all my books in high school: Jeremiah 33:3 and John 16:14. Jeremiah 33:3 reads, "Call to me [God], and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know." John 16:14, in reference to the Holy Spirit, says, "He will bring glory to me [Jesus] by taking from what is mine and making it known to you."

I used to pray those verses before every test. If I came to an answer I didn't know, I'd quote those verses both to myself and God before attempting to answer.

Another verse I love is 1 Corinthians 13:12 which, after confessing that knowledge now is incomplete, reads, "[In eternity] I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."

I want to know fully.

But I don't know fully, and I can't know fully, not yet (as Paul confirms in the first part of 1 Cor 13:12), and this aggravates me to no end.

The thing that I desire to understand more than all other things is God. I want to know what He is up to in the world and in my life. Honestly, I'd settle for knowing what He's up to in my life. In fact, that's probably my chief pursuit. That's my big question. "What are you doing with me, God!?! Where is this leading!?! Is there any point!?!"

With regards to specific episodes, I question, "What was the use in that, God? What are you accomplishing in my life through that?" I believe that He works good in all things in my life as I follow Him. I believe that He is working to make me holy. I believe that He is benevolent. (There's a whole lot of theology in those three statements.) I don't believe that He lets life be random; I think He redeems the random. I don't believe that He is ambivalent toward me; I believe He loves me and is in intimate relationship with me. I believe He has purpose and plan.

But most of the time I can't see it. I don't understand it. I don't know what He's doing.

That question is probably a big part of what drove me to seminary, honestly. I came here to know God better, and I came here to better know His plan for my life. Of course, the longer I'm here the more I realize I don't know anything, and since I've been here I think He's been trying to get me to a place where I give up trying to know.

Jesus invites me to lay my burdens down, and my chief burdens are not relationships or injustices or wounds or external stresses of any kind. My chief burden is my desire to know. My constant questioning pushes upon me and comes between Christ and me. I am kept from stealing away in the quiet with Christ like I wrote about on Monday, because I can't shut up.

In the depths of my heart my desire is to rest in Christ. I want absolutely nothing more than to remain still with Him. I want His presence. I want to be satisfied fully in Him.

To do so, I have to rest my questions. I have to let them remain unanswered. I have to let His invitation to trust Him satisfy me.

It's hard. I'm trying.

Pray for me.

The Smart Young Man

2010-01-26T11:21:00.000-08:00

As the Teacher continued on his way, a young man ran up to him, fell at his feet, and exclaimed, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

"Why do you call me good?" the Teacher answered smiling, "Only God is good. Be like God. Honor all the commandments. Act justly. Be merciful. Love righteousness."

"I do. I have. I am," the young man said, "Since I was a little boy I have followed God. I have made it my daily aim to honor and glorify Him in every aspect of my life. I've tried to see and do what He is doing. I have run hard after Him."

The Teacher considered him and loved him.

"One thing you lack," the Teacher said, "Give up all your questions. Quit trying to understand God. Stop trying to know."

At this, the young man's face fell. He walked sadly away, because he was very intelligent.

"How hard it is for the very smart to enter the Kingdom of God," the Teacher mused, "Thankfully, with God all things are possible."

Hard To Get

2010-01-25T07:00:00.000-08:00

My God is always trying to get away. He runs to the secret place, the wilderness, the mountainside. He sneaks into town, and then He sneaks out again. He gets up in the middle of the night and slips out of his friend's houses. He takes midnight strolls upon the lake because perhaps it's the only place he can be alone. God runs. God sneaks. God slips. God hides. My God plays hard to get.

He wants to spend time with His friends. He wants to rest with those closest to Him. He wants to pour into them and explain things to them about the world and teach them how to live well. He wants close intimate time with His followers.

But the crowds keep crowding. The masses amass. They clamor for my God's attention, and He hears them. He sees them. And He loves them. His heart goes out to them, and He cannot leave them. He heals them. He soothes them. He loves them.

And then he tells them, "Shhhhhhh. Let's keep this between you and Me." Is this a request for secrecy, or is it an offer of intimacy? Can't it be both?

My God retreats. "Come with me," He says, "Let us rest."

I find that so hard to do. I want to push onward. I want to accomplish and achieve. I want to obtain things. I want to make things happen. I get excited and expectant. I want it all now.

"My kingdom," my God says, "Is like a farmer who scatters seeds, and then whether he sleeps or wakes, the plants grow. On their own, they sprout and mature and ripen. And then the farmer harvests the fruit."

I don't want to wait. I glimpse the seedling pushing up from the earth, and I want to pluck it immediately. I want to coax it along. I want it to bear fruit now. I try to pour fertilizer and water and light on the plant, and I end up poisoning and drowning and burning it.

"Whether you wake or sleep," my God says, "It grows. Wait until the time is ripe for harvest."

"Rest with Me," He says.

I'm trying to rest. I'm trying to retreat with my Savior. I'm trying to trust Him, to let the ground produce its fruit. I'm trying to believe that harvest time will come.

Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!

And until then, help me rest with You.

My 2009 Year-End Playlist

2010-01-21T07:34:00.000-08:00

Tuesday night, I completed a yearly tradition. I created my 2009 year defining playlist.

I've been doing this since 2007, I (try to) follow three rules in making my playlist: 1) It has to be made up of songs I heard for the first time in the previous year, 2) the songs have to flow thematically with my year, and 3) they have to flow musically (The playlist has to be pleasant to listen to).

Quite often, my favorite songs from the past year don't make the cut. Some do, but many don't. It's more important that the list reflect the emotional journey of my year than it reflect my favorite songs from that year. This isn't really that big of a deal, because I'm not really the type who listens to single songs over and over and over again.

I like albums. I like songs in context. I'll listen to single albums on repeat continually for weeks at a time, but I don't really do that with songs. As a result, songs are most often couched in the context of their surrounding songs on a recorded work. They only kind of exist independently for me. So, pulling a song out of an album for a playlist is kind of like creating a new album entirely. Each song takes on a whole new meaning when surrounded by totally different songs.

Songs from my favorite albums don't always necessarily make the list either. In fact, the more I like an album, the harder it is for me to pull songs off of it to put on the new playlist. The songs on that album seem to belong together. I hate to divorce them from their compatriots. For instance, in 2007, Derek Webb's The Ringing Bell was far and away my favorite album of the year, but no songs off that album made the cut. I just couldn't separate them from their friends.

This year's list is particularly interesting because I didn't really latch on to a lot of music this past year. I really only listened to three albums obsessively, and I didn't listen to a lot else that was new. I didn't buy any new music for the first three months of the year, and then I listened to Jars of Clay's The Long Fall Back To Earth for about three months straight. Then I listened to Derek Webb's Stockholm Syndrome for the next three months. I spent December listening almost solely to Switchfoot's Hello, Hurricane. A few other albums slipped in here and there, but not many.

In any case, I made my playlist, and I'm very pleased with how it turned out. As usual, a few songs I wasn't expecting at all made the list, and a few I thought for sure would make it didn't.

I also cheated a little. I included a song that I first heard in 2008, but I just had to. It is so perfect, and in its defense, none of the songs from its album made the 2008 list even though it was my second favorite album from that year.

Without further ado, here's the list:

1) "Good, Good End" - Waterdeep, Heart Attack Time Machine
2) "When the Summer's Gone" - Sandra McCracken, Live Under Lights and Wires
3) "There Might Be A Light" - Jars of Clay, The Long Fall Back To Earth
4) "I Love/Hate You" (acoustic) - Derek Webb, originally on Stockholm Syndrome (How I have an acoustic version is a mystery.)
5) "Betrayal" - Fiction Family, Fiction Family
6) "Sympathy For Jesus" - The Khrusty Brothers, Jonas Is Back (This is the song I had to cheat to include.)
7) "You Will Always Hurt" - Lori Chaffer, 1beginning
8) "Yet" - Switchfoot, Hello, Hurricane
9) "Mohave Phone Booth" - David Mead, Almost and Always
10) "Changes Come" - Over the Rhine, Ohio
11) "How He Loves" - David Crowder* Band, Church Songs

A few observations: The two biggest surprises to me are the inclusion of "Betrayal" and "Changes Come." I don't really know either of these songs very well, though both of their albums did receive copious listening at various points during the year. Theses two songs are just too perfect though. I was having trouble completing this list before I found them.

If you know any of the finer details of my 2009, you understand the deep irony of my including "When the Summer's Gone." I essentially changed the meaning of the song by putting it on the list.

"Sympathy For Jesus," like I wrote above, is just too perfect for the space it fills on the playlist, but even if it was less perfect, I might have had to include it anyway just to include the line that begins its second verse: "'I appreciate your kind,' he said, and then Jesus poured a drink. Well, my face must have looked kind of funny because he said, 'It's not like you think....'"

It's also kind of eerie how well "There Might Be A Light," "You Will Always Hurt," and "Yet" fit within my year. It's like their respective songwriters were looking over my shoulder and writing based on my life. Music is awesome in that way.

To close, I highly recommend sitting down and processing through your previous year. You probably won't want to make a playlist like me, but I bet there's something you could do to work through and make meaning from what happened in your recent past.

Ye Though I Walk Through the Valley...

2010-01-20T07:03:00.000-08:00

Why were You always running off to lonely places?

I wanted to see who would follow.

Don't You desire all?

I do, but I desire all to come.

And You never say anything plain?

The greatest things can never be explained.

Sometimes You seem so silent.

You are confusing absence and peace.

Did You know You'd have to die?

Everyone dies.

Me too?

Did You give Your life, or was it taken from You?

I give and take away.

Will You take mine?

Would you rather someone else have it?

Why are You tearing me apart?

I want your heart.

Is there no other way?

I am the Way.

When will this be done?

It is finished.

What are You doing?

I'm turning boasts into confessions.

I'm turning certainties into faith.

I'm putting everything to rest.

Rest.

Rest.

Let your doubts fall in my arms, and rest.

You will awake anew.

I am making all things new.

The (Not So) Obligatory Photos

2010-01-19T08:00:00.000-08:00

Patrick calls this the obligatory "Elijah standing in front of breathtaking scenery photo."

And justifiably so. That is me standing in front of breathtaking scenery. I've got a bunch of photos like this one from LOTS of different parks.

That first one is Glacier, and so's this one:

And this one too:

Here's Big Bend:

The Grand Canyon:

Bryce Canyon:

Zion:

Zion again:

Yosemite (although I'm technically sitting in this photo):

The Grand Tetons:

Yellowstone (This picture makes me want to go to Scotland):

King's Canyon:

And Joshua Tree:

Now, I know those are all great pictures. Like I always say, it's easy to take great pictures when you go great places. I am definitely not the most interesting part of each of those photos. I do frame them well and pose appropriately, but I'm now going to show you what you don't see in each of those photos:

Yep. That's me. Falling.

Repeatedly.

I set the timer on the camera, press the button, and run to get in place. That's usually much easier said than done. The ground isn't usually level, the drop-offs are prodigious, and the margin of error is slight. I'm also a bit clumsy which isn't a trait you want when you're hiiiiiiigh up on the edge of a cliff. Somehow though I haven't fallen to my demise. Yet. Eventually I do get a good picture, like this one:

That's from Dante's View in Death Valley, and I am proud of it, not so much because I stood there, but because I didn't fall.

Up in the Air

2010-01-14T16:02:00.001-08:00

"The worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realized by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it." - Oscar Wilde

Where is your source of stability? What do you depend on? In the midst of the turmoil of life, where is peace? What is your hope?

For many, financial security is the bedrock of their lives. We work hard in our chosen fields. We go to school to obtain a higher degree and become more skilled. We save and invest. We do all of this in hopes that these practices will ensure a pleasant, peaceful life.

Then one day we find ourselves sitting across from a man like Ryan Bingham, and he has come to tell us that our foundation is being ripped from beneath us. We are losing our jobs. "Your hope," he says, "is no hope at all. Take this packet, and let us begin helping you rebuild your life."

Ryan Bingham, played by a never-been-better George Clooney, is the central character in Up in the Air, and his job is traveling around the country letting people know they have been let go. He is the god of wealth's angel of death, flitting through the clouds and descending only to bring judgment on the unsuspecting worshipers below. He does this coolly, calmly, and without remorse.

But he is also human, and to become Mammon's harbinger of doom he has had to detach himself from all consequential relationships. He loves and is loved by no one. Women are play things, other men are adversaries, and family is an annoyance. "Relationships are weight," he says, "To carry them is to be slowed down, and to move is to live."

The narrative's central crisis is created when Bingham learns that like the thousands he has spent his life firing, his way of life is in jeopardy. A hot-shot young woman (Anna Kendrick, wonderfully liberated from the Twilight franchise) has arrived on the scene to revolutionize the way Bingham's company fires people, and he isn't going to be able to live disconnected any longer. He's going to have to land in Omaha, a place where he has no reason to be except that the city houses the headquarters of his employer.

Up in the Air is essentially two films in one. On each end of the film and interspersed throughout are montages of people reacting to the news that they are losing their jobs. In these moments the film becomes a lament over the economic storm that we have weathered through the past year. Many of the people pictured in these moments are not actors. They are people who have recently lost their jobs. We see their actual reactions to finding out their hope has failed them. The audience lives vicariously through these people. We commiserate with them in their angst. We ask with them, "When our supposed hope fails us, to what do we hold?"

The second foci of the film concerns the purpose of relationships in our lives. "Make no mistake," Bingham chides Nathalie, "We all die alone." Why then, should we invest in one another?

"Ah ha!" you're thinking, "I know where this movie is headed. The second question answers the first." You'd be right in most films, but Up in the Air doesn't offer such easy answers. Like Ecclesiastes, Up in the Air admits that loving relationships are a balm to life's bruises, but also like Ecclesiastes, the film doesn't picture love as a cure-all.

This film as a whole is more honest that most others. It is a brave work, because it is willing to point out our brokenness and to admit it's inability to provide an answer. It is truly compassionate both to the character of Ryan Bingham and, by way of the people in the film who lose their jobs, to the audience. This is not a trite film in any way.

Like the slave masters who were kind to their slaves, most movies freely give false hope to their audiences. Up in the Air doesn't want you to remain in slavery, and so it doesn't offer easy answers. It doesn't lie to its audience by saying that romance solves all problems. Some will see this film as sad and depressing and unsatisfying. It is these things, but the filmmakers should be applauded for honestly saying, "This is the world as we see it and as we surmise our audience sees it as well. It is a broken place, and we mourn over that, and we have no answers."

This is the place where we, as bearers of the hope of Christ, must step in and give the Answer that has found us. We have true Hope in the face of economic misfortune. We have a reason for relationships. We see past death. "Saints love beyond Time's measure," the hymn sings ("All Flesh Is Grass"). It is our duty to answer Ryan Bingham's cynicism with, "No, Ryan. We don't all die alone, because we know One who has already died for us."

In the Mystery

2010-01-12T13:30:00.000-08:00

I've long had trouble with the book of Job. I just haven't been able to stand the ending. It seems so unfair. Job did nothing wrong, and God explicitly allows calamity to come upon his life. Job loses absolutely everything, and no one comes to his aid. Even his wife and friends prove to be a burden to him in his angst.

Finally, God shows up, but God doesn't comfort Job. God doesn't explain anything to Job. God just says, "Who do you think you are? I'm God. Shut up."

And Job does it! He shuts up. I guess when God comes in a thunderstorm and questions you to your face there's probably not much else you can do, but it just seems so mean to me. I'd have wanted to really lay into God at that point, but perhaps I should try to be more like Job.

This past quarter, I studied Job, and I saw the end of the story in a whole new way. After God shows up and speaks, Job says four things:
1) Nothing that You want to happen can be messed up.
2) I admit that there are some things that I'm just never going to understand.
3) I've heard about You all my life, but now I see You.
4) I repent of all my complaining and questioning.

Sometimes in life God leads us through things that we're just not ever going to understand, and in those seasons, we must be able to say like Job, "I still trust You, God, and I repent of the times I haven't trusted You." We have to be willing to really give everything to God, to give up even our efforts to explain what's happened.

There are things that are just beyond our capacity to understand. We have to trust God in the mystery.

I Will Rest In You

There is much I can't explain,
And I've tried. I've tried in vain.
Now, I repent, and my refrain is,
"I will rest in You."

For all my life I've heard Your name.
They call You "love"; they call You "grace."
Now, in the storm I see Your face,
And I will rest in You.

A Rose Parade By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet

2010-01-07T09:09:00.000-08:00

Well, being in Texas was fun. It had been far too long, and my belly was aching for some Tex-Mex. I had a very good trip.

Still, I was very excited to come back to Pasadena, because I love it here, and I had plans to attend the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade.

I don't know about you, but growing up, my family faithfully watched the parade every year. Is there a more spectacular parade in our nation? Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is pretty great, but there's just something special about the floats fully made of organic material that march down Colorado Boulevard every New Year's day.

There is a side to the Rose Parade they don't show you on TV. The night before the parade, Pasadenians fill the streets in an effort to procure choice seats for the festivities. Observe:

Driving down Colorado Blvd through such a crowd is a risky endeavor. People of all ages stand ready with tortillas smeared in Cool Whip waiting to pelt passing motorists. Similarly, Silly String wielding youth try to leave their mark as well. The cars move quickly, and so do the people. This was the best picture I could manage.

Tired from my day of traveling, I decided not to sleep on the street. Shortly after 2010 arrived, I returned home to my bed. (I videoed the cacophony of New Year moment bliss, but I can't seem to get it to upload.)

The next morning, I made my way back through the crowds to the area my church had staked out the day before. Oasis folks don coffee backpacks and take to the streets to dispense caffeinated goodness to the masses. Here is my pastor suited up:

And here are a few more of my Oasis friends. Here's a poorly taken picture of the Manus family:

Here's Phil and Peter:

And here are some Oasis kids waiting for the parade to start (Look the other way, Judah!):

Finally, the parade began. We saw floats and poop crews and people riding "official scooters."

I took a good number of poop crew and Official Scooter pictures.

I also took lots of pictures of the floats:

This was my favorite float...

...until I figured out that it was just a giant ad for McDonalds:

Speaking of fast food restaurants, Jack, of "in the Box" fame, made an appearance. This one's for you, Ray:

We saw the Ohio State mascot:

And the Ohio State cheerleaders were quite impressive:

Phil tried to give them his number, but they wouldn't take it. Sorry, Phil.

The Ark of the Covenant drove by. I looked at it, and my face didn't melt off. George Lucas is a liar:

Here's a poop crew in action:

There were lots of people in very colorful attire:

And still more poop crews:

The poop crews were there because of this guy:

We saw the Tuskegee Airmen followed closely by a giant ship, because that makes sense:

My entire parade experience can be summed up in one image though, and I've saved that photograph for last:

Wait for it...

Yes! It is as epic an Official Scooter picture as you can imagine, and the perfect way to end an epic day!

Pioneers

2010-01-05T07:15:00.000-08:00

"I feel like a pioneer woman," she said.

She was speaking particularly about her experience of making breakfast with few of the correct ingredients and without being able to find her pots and pans amongst the mass of boxed-up kitchen implements piled in the soon-to-be-a-dining room. I wondered though if she grasped the profundity of her statement. She probably did.

Pioneer woman indeed, she had made the final furniture, clothing, and knick-knack laden trip from Pasadena, CA, to Chula Vista, CA, that afternoon. Now everything she and her husband owned was scattered about their new house, waiting to be put in place, prepared to be settled.

Like the Westward-bound adventurers of old, the Lundsetts had crossed the forbidding desert to stake their claim south of San Diego. The trip had taken them mere hours as opposed to the months that it would have taken their 19th century counterparts, but the courage necessary for such an endeavor was the same. They were leaving everything and everyone they knew behind to settle in a place completely foreign to them. They were trailblazers, immigrants, pioneers.

I say "were." I should say "are." They are trailblazers, immigrants, pioneers, because they are currently, as you are reading this, settling the new land. Their things are still in boxes. They still have (many) neighbors yet to meet. Theirs is a wilderness not yet tamed, a chaos not yet made cosmos, a Kingdom not yet established.

"A Kingdom not yet established" - that's not quite right, and yet it is right. Perhaps I should deviate from the incorrect past and future perfect tenses and delve into the progressive. "Theirs is a Kingdom being established." Yes. That is better.

Theirs is a Kingdom being established. They have journeyed to this strange new land to be part of the inauguration of an order of things taking hold. God is at work in Chula Vista, and the Lundsetts have come here to be a part of what he is doing. They are shouldering the plow to till the ground from which their King's crop will come. Their house is a token of the great Good to come, an outpost on the frontier.

Literally. Their house sits roughly three miles from the international border between the United States and Mexico. In Spanish, this border is called la frontera, "the frontier." The Lundsetts are settling the edge of the world, the end of the earth, to preach the Gospel to all creation.

Their neighbors are immigrants and the children of immigrants. They are people settling in foreign territory in search of a better life. The U.S. is the preeminent kingdom of earth. It is a land promising that better life. From the Lundsett's front walk, one can see the hills of nearby Mexico crowded with the temporary dwellings of those crowding at the promised land's gates hoping to gain entry. As these weary masses force their way in (legally or otherwise), the Lundsetts will be waiting with open arms to embrace them and to point them on to a Kingdom greater still.

The Lundsetts are heavenly pioneers welcoming earthly ones. Their smiles are light in the darkness the desperate slip through. Their words are the truth that counters the lies spoken by the prince of this world. Their house is a glimpse of home for the homeward bound.

"I feel like a pioneer woman," she said. That she should.

That she should.

Avatar, Part 2

2009-12-23T08:44:00.000-08:00

I cried while watching Avatar. I cried honest tears.

I'm not making a joke at the film's expense. I'm not about to be funny and say I cried because the film lacked a soul. I cried because the story I was being told moved me.

It moved me to tears.

SPOILERS follow for two films, Avatar and The Mission.

In Avatar, humans come to overrun a native race of people because the natives are living on land the humans want. The humans try everything in their power to gain control of the natives. They build schools to indoctrinate them with human culture. They assume the native's appearance so as to slip in undetected and subvert the natives' culture from the inside. When all else fails, the humans come against the natives with military force. Humans kill and destroy and take what they want.

As I watched Avatar, I didn't see humans versus Na'vi. I saw the U.S. versus Native Americans. I saw Britain versus Africa. I saw Wal-Mart versus "mom and pop." I saw Big Tobacco. I saw Madison Avenue. I saw the Crusades.

And of course, in Avatar the Na'vi fight back. They resist the imperialist power. With sticks and stones they face off against gun ships and bulldozers, and they ultimately succeed. The human aliens are forced to return home and leave the Na'vi in peace.

They succeed in act three of the film. I cried in act two.

I cried as the natives begin their offensive against the humans, because I knew the natives were going to win. Avatar is that kind of movie. From the moment the main character's narration begins and we learn that his brother is dead and he himself has no legs, you know that this is all going to work out somehow. America isn't going to overrun the Iraqi people and take their oil, um, I mean, the (very American) humans aren't going to overrun the Na'vi for their unobtanium (seriously, it's called "unobtain"ium). We were going to get our happy ending.

I didn't cry out of happiness; I cried out of deep sadness, because here in the world that is truly three dimensional, that's not what happens.

In real life, the United States massacres an entire race and segregates the survivors in reservations. In real life, mankind puts chains around other men's necks and sells them to the highest bidder. "Mom and Pop" don blue vests and greet you as you hurry past them pursuing discounted paper goods and electronics. Another 17 year old buys his first pack of Camels. Ten year-olds bare their midrifts. The cross becomes a symbol of conquest instead of compassion.

In real life, the conquerors conquer.

Two Sundays ago I watched The Mission with my friend Aaron. The Mission is his favorite movie, and it tells the very true story of group of Jesuit priests who tried to stand with a community of South American people against the dehumanizing, slave-taking, imperialistic forces of Portugal and Spain in the 18th century. The Portuguese and Spanish believe the natives are beasts; the Jesuits contend they are men and women.

There's a line in Avatar, I think spoken by Giovanni Ribisi's character, where he says, "When someone has something you want, you make them your enemy and go and take it."

In The Mission (and in real life), the greedy imperialists vilify the Jesuits and Native Americans to rationalize their conquest. The Portuguese slaughter the priests and the tribe. The conquerors win.

As the village is burning and as the soldiers are pelting the resistant natives with bullets and cannon balls, the head Jesuit leads the people in worship. He is carrying the Eucharist when he is shot. He falls to the ground and drops the body and blood of Christ.

A nearby native picks Christ up, raises Him above his head, and continues forward as the fires swirl around and as bullets rain from above. The kings of the earth win, but the Kingdom marches on.

That is hope. That is the kind of hope that inspires my friend to want to be a Jesuit priest. That is the kind of hope that inspires me to stand against the imperialists in my own world. That is the kind of hope that pulls you through when the fires swirl round in your own life and when your friends are falling to gunfire around you.

Now, one might argue that Avatar offers a similar hope. After all, the Na'vi only win when their goddess, Eyra, rallies the planet's animal inhabitants to come to the Na'vi's rescue. Things are pretty bleak until the kingdom of Pandora advances, but Pandora prevails through violence. The Na'vi and the Pandoran menagerie fight back and win.

The message of the cross is one of submission and love. Jesus says (and lived and died to prove His point), "Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Trust God." In the end of our story, when the imperialist powers are finally overthrown, it is Christ who does the overthrowing. He severs the serpent's head with a sword from His own mouth. The citizens of His kingdom don't slaughter anyone.

I'll grant that Avatar offers a glimpse of the truth that ultimately God will prevail, but I think a better, truer ending would have been in Eyra herself had risen up and destroyed the human invaders.

Christ asks us to believe that the world where violence rules is a virtual, false reality. Resurrection is the New Reality. The Kingdom prevails because of God's working. We are simply called to reverently live into the New World, to live as if it is already here.

I cried watching Avatar because I knew it was going to offer a cheaper hope than the true Hope we've been given in Christ. We don't have to fight back and repel the imperialist forces in our world to win.

In Christ, we've already won.

Avatar, Part 1

2009-12-22T14:08:00.000-08:00

Have you seen Avatar yet?

I only ask because I expect that question to be repeated constantly over the next few weeks. It seems to be the big, must-see movie of the moment.

I saw it on Saturday in IMAX 3D. I figured I wanted to be able to say I saw it in all its over-hyped glory. I didn't want anyone to be able to say to me, "Yeah, but you need to see it in..." I scaled the Avatar mountain, and now I return with a message from the other side.

It's not a bad flick. It's not great, but it's not bad either. The visuals are stunning. James Cameron and crew have created a lush alien world full of life and light. Avatar is truly a visually stimulating film.

It's also decently acted and decently directed. I had a full two and a half hours of fun. Avatar wasn't the most fun I've had in a theater in the last two weeks - that award goes to Fantastic Mr. Fox - but it wasn't the least fun either - that award goes to The Road, which I enjoyed but which comes in third in the "most fun in a theater in the last two weeks" competition. Avatar is a decent movie with jaw-dropping visuals.

But that is all. It is nothing more.

The story is standard issue anti-imperialism mixed with a little save-the-planet schtick. It's Dances With Wolves. It's Fern Gully. It's the Hollywood version of the story of Pocahontas. Avatar is nothing new.

Now, I don't mean to say that a story has to be new to be worth seeing. On the contrary, I would argue against the existence of "new" stories. We constantly tell the same stories over and over again in different forms. We convey the same messages in different narratives. The trick is doing so in compelling ways.

The fact that any spoiler is inconsequential is kind of my point, but just so you know, the next paragraph contains SPOILERS.

Avatar tells this story - man comes to destroy natives, man becomes enamored with the native culture, man joins with natives and fight against his own people to protect their way of life. That's it. No extra wrinkles. No nuances. No surprises.

END SPOILERS

Avatar doesn't ask any interesting questions. It isn't relevant to our lives.

My friend Chris mentioned to me that he hoped the film might explore the concept of the "virtual self." He hoped it would wrestle with the use of "avatars." In our current age, many of us have virtual selves, the selves we create on the internet. Elijah Davidson-blogger, Elijah Davidson-Facebook profile, and Elijah Davidson-twitterer are different people than who I really am. These are all "presented" identities. What does engaging via-avatar do to who we are? The me you read online isn't the real me. What does that mean? One could even make the argument that we all present false-selves even in person-to-person communication with one another. Perhaps we all wear masks.

The sad thing (to me) is that I just asked more important questions in that last paragraph based solely on the title of the film than James Cameron did after spending $300 million and working on his film for ten years.

Do we need to be cautioned against taking advantage of those that seem "primitive" to us? Yes. Do we need to be checked in our society's oft' seeming compassionate-less pursuit of that which will sustain our current way of life? Absolutely.

Are these the thoughts that will fill audiences' minds as they leave the theater? Maybe a little, but I hazard that their prevailing thought will not be, "Gee, we probably shouldn't vilify those we don't understand, and we should be better caretakers of our world." Instead, I would guess that people will leave the theater thinking, "Wow! That was pretty!"

I suppose for many people that will be enough. I suppose many people go see a movie for the visual experience. They go see a 3D movie for the ride. For those people, Avatar will prove to be sublime.

I go to the movies to be told stories. I find that stories challenge me and stretch me and quite literally, when they're good, change me. I go to the movie every time hoping to be changed. I don't want a movie to be simply visually stimulating. I want it to have a soul.

I was talking with a friend earlier this week about "beauty." We were discussing what beauty is and what beauty is not. The conversation naturally turned to the human form. We talked about how a person can have a beautiful appearance but be almost totally vapid and ugly on the inside. In such instances, we would say that he or she has a beautiful appearance but isn't a beautiful person, because a person is infinitely more than their appearance.

In much the same way, Avatar is visually beautiful, but it isn't a beautiful movie. Look into its eyes. It has no soul. Ultimately, it is shallow and mundane.

Avatar is a fun movie with fantastic special effects and not a waste of your $10, but it is disappointing in that it could have been so much more.

To close, I think Solomon said it best, "Like a gold ring in a pig's snout is an attractive but unsavory woman." Its special effects are a treasure, but Avatar is a pig.

A (Text) Message From Home

2009-12-18T13:34:00.000-08:00

They have just emerged from the congested, Metroplex traffic and drove past a few of the open spaces for which Texas is famous for the first time. Used to, they would have hit green pastures sooner, but it seems year by year the asphalt creeps slowly north.

Is there a better feeling than emerging from traffic? I'm sure there are many, but pressing one's foot down and picking up speed having shook off the confines of being in close proximity to other motorists is a glorious experience. It's freedom unlike any other.

And the great thing about driving north on I-35 out of the Golden Triangle is that as the roads open up so do the skies. Everything suddenly feels free.

I can see the crisp blue of the sky above the amber and green hills on each side of the interstate. I can hear the steady hum of the car's engine freshly settled in to cruise. The grey of the highway cuts a thin vein disappearing in the distance.

Ah! There in the distance they can see it. They may not recognize it, but they see it. Off on the right side of the road metallic parapets scrape the sky like the high spires of a medieval castle. Did someone place Disneyland here on the Blackland Prairie? No. It is home.

Valley View, Texas, has one landmark - Martindale Feed Mill - rising like the cathedral of Notre Dame marking the place of safe sanctuary for my wandering heart. The feed mill is the castle in the distance. As a boy I imagined Tinkerbell flitting about the top as she does at the beginning of a Disney movie, lighting the topmost point with a magical spark.

They're driving into Valley View now. The high school is on their left. The football field is in the distance. The field house and gym behind the parking lot that was built during my senior year.

They pass Exit 487 at almost the same moment. Had they taken it, a short drive would have taken them to my parent's house off Old Spanish Trail less than a mile from the interstate.

The gas station known as Lucky Lady to the locals flies by on the left. The Dairy Queen, that staple of small Texas towns, and post office come next. The cemetery finalizes things, and Valley View becomes simply a spot in their rear view mirror. Before they could even text message me to tell me they were there, they were gone.

My entire life blurred by at 70 miles per hour.

I will be home soon.

My Name Isn't Asher Lev

2009-12-16T22:47:00.000-08:00

I hate thinking in other people's words.

Do any of you ever do this? Do any of you absorb language and sentence structure and voice? I do. I absorb the words of other people. They fill my head and take over my thoughts, and I lose myself.

My mind forgets whose it is. It sinks into another person's thinking pattern and forgets how to be itself. It gets lost in the neural patterns of another mind.

This happens when I read. My mind's voice fades away as it assumes the accent and cadence of another writer. I lose the ability to think like me; I become someone else. The thoughts are still mine. They are still concerned with the things of my life, but they are in the language of another person. I become in-dwelt, assumed, possessed.

It happened tonight as I tried to sleep after reading the first chapter in a new book I bought to enjoy over the Winter break. I laid in bed and did something that I could not do a month ago because I did not own a bed and I was too busy with school work to dare pick up a work of fiction - I read a novel. And then I turned out my light and went to sleep.

I dreamt immediately, but my dreams were not images and impressions. My dreams were an endless stream of sentences and observations. I dreamt like the book was written. I used Yiddish phrases and talked about writing while really talking about everything but writing. I incarnated Asher Lev.

And then I woke up after an hour of "sleeping" because I was not resting, and I was disturbed by the form of my dreaming. I didn't like being someone else.

I don't really have nightmares. I dream often and vividly, and some of my dreams aren't necessarily fun, but I don't consider any of them nightmaric. Even the un-fun dreams are interesting and enjoyable in their own way.

The hour of narration that I endured this evening was as close to a nightmare as I can imagine. I was taken over by the prose of another person, and I could not stop it. It is a nightmare to lose oneself.

I cannot stop it even now. As I type this, I find my words escaping through my fingertips as if they belong to Chaim Potok, the author of the book I am reading. I thought perhaps if I wrote a bit, I might find my voice again. That has not happened. Every keystroke - that one and that one and that one - is Chaim's.

I'm not sure what to do.

I put a quote on the wall above my desk today. I like it very much. I read it in an article about writing by a writer that I read today. The quote reads:

A writer is someone for whom writing falls harder than it does for other people. - Thomas Mann

This is very true. A writer is not someone for whom writing is easy. A writer is someone who is plagued by writing. A writer bears a weight that others do not bear. Writing is heavy, and it falls heavy upon the writer's person. It is a burden that must be shook off. It lands with a thump upon one's shoulders, and the writing is the shrug that sends the thing to the ground.

Tonight I've all but forgotten how to shrug my shoulders. I find my muscles mimicking someone else's.

I know I said I was giving the blog a rest for the remainder of the year, but I also said I'd post from time to time if the mood struck me. I suppose the mood has struck. I just didn't anticipate it being someone else's mood.

I'm going to try sleeping again.

Good night.

Reflections and Prognostications

2009-12-14T07:16:00.000-08:00

Friday night I had the pleasure of spending the evening with friends at a Christmas party. We kibitzed, ate an amazing dinner (Really, the food was incredible. I could write a whole post about the bread alone.), and then did a white elephant gift exchange. A good time was had, it seemed, by all.

At the dinner table we each took a turn reflecting on the past year and expressing our hopes for the coming year. I wasn't prepared to talk about this, and I like to prepare ahead of time for such reflections and prognostications. I quickly volunteered to go first, because in the absence of time to think, I prefer to go with my gut.

I said, "Well, a year ago I didn't know anyone sitting at this table, not a single one of you, and now I know you all, and that's amazing. As for my hopes for this coming year, I don't know. That's a huge question. I don't know. I guess we'll see."

What I said wasn't bad. It is true that a year ago I knew no one whom I spent Friday evening with, and in the past year, I have spent considerable time with almost all of them. As I looked around the table, I could think of specific moments and events that I expect to remain in my memory forever that involved each of them, good moments too, moments I'm very glad I lived through. Almost everyone at that table has made a definite impact on my life, and I am grateful for each of them. This past year was, in many ways, those people, and a year ago, I didn't see that coming, so how do I dare prognosticate about the coming annum?

But I didn't say all that. I only said the little bit in quotes above. LIke I said, I like to prepare.

Everyone followed suit and expressed their thanks for the past year and their hopes for the coming one, but they were all much more detailed and revealing than I was, and as I listened I wished I had said more, so I'm going to say what I wish I would have said there, here, now.

I would define this past year as a year of losing everything, or rather, it was a year of finding out that I didn't have what I thought I had anyway. It has been a year of stripping away much of the layers of ego I had wrapped around myself and getting to the core of who I'm made to be. It has been a year of learning who I am not and who I am supposed to be, who I've always been really if I had just had the courage to lay aside idols and ideals in favor of the true good of God.

This year has not been easy. In fact, it's been one of the most challenging of my life, but that makes sense, seeing as how it has been a year of God breaking and healing and ultimately sanctifying me. He has been answering an old prayer that I might become a humble man devoted solely to Him. We're not there yet, but we're a hell of a lot closer, because we've left a lot of the hell that had been attached to my life behind.

So I am overwhelmingly grateful for the past year. I am grateful for everyone sitting at that table, because so many of them have played an integral role in the work of God in my life this past year. I'm sorry for any distress they have endured on account of me, but that's the risk they run in being likewise surrendered to God, because I guarantee they have each been used by Him in this past year. I thank them all from the depths of my heart.

In this coming year, I hope to rest. I hope for peace. I hope that God will continue refining me, but I hope this year will prove to be a bit more gentle. I have walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and I will fear no evil, but I could use some green pastures and still waters.

I hope in this coming year that God will continue to reduce and refine His vision for my life. As I said before, this year has been one of letting go the things I have taken upon myself; I pray God continues to fill my hands with the work He wants me to do.

2009 has been a very good year, and I would not trade a single moment of it for anything. Not one moment. And I'm looking forward to the good God surely has in store for me in 2010.

And with that, I would like to announce that I've decided to rest my blog for the remainder of the year. I may post here and there if I get particularly inspired, but I don't intend to. I would like to take a few weeks' break to rest.

I'm very, very much looking forward to seeing those of you who read this from a little bit closer to heaven in Texas, and for those of you who live here in Pasadena, feel free to stop by my apartment.

Have a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, everyone. I'll see you on the other side.

The Church Plant Paper

2009-12-10T09:09:00.000-08:00

At 1:12 AM this morning, I finished my final paper of the quarter. I'm not quite finished working yet - I have a book to read and a review to write - but the big tasks are complete.

Above is a Wordle of the text of my Church Plant paper. I think it's really beautiful. I love that the big terms from my paper are "Christ," "story," "people," "world," "one," "meaning," and "love." (Thanks, Dianne, for the idea.)

As I've written before, I took this class to write this paper. I wanted to intentionally think about the kind of church I'd want to be part of starting. In the end, the church-form I've written about is both very like and very unlike what I expected to write about.

The proposed church idea has gotten simpler, which isn't what you might think would happen. You'd think that after ten intense weeks of reading and studying and talking about church, one's vision would get more complicated as one drew from many sources about what church can be.

But that's the beauty of the way Dr. Bolger teaches church planting. He took us through a very counter-intuitive process. He encouraged us to begin by working through our personal church histories and laying out all our baggage and attachments, both positive and negative. Then we worked through all our dreams for what a church could be. We talked about the values that define us and the good that we want to be a part of.

Then, and here's the kicker, we laid all of that down.

We surrendered it. We gave it all up. We went through a process of dying to ourselves and our ideas of what church should be, and then we humbly asked God to resurrect us. We let die our arrogance and vainglory and individualism and waited for God to build us back up as a cohesive whole. We let die our selves and asked Him to make us into a church. The final step is listening and responding to what God directs.

At least that's the process we went through. Admittedly, this is a process meant to be worked through with the people who are part of a church planting team. I don't have a team. I'm just me, but the process was still enlightening.

And the outcome was simple, because I had laid aside all the extra stuff I'd accumulated. I boiled everything down to me and God and then finally to just God, and I then let Him define what I should be.

Tomorrow, if I have time to write between now and then, I'll try to post about the other class I took this quarter and how it has affected me. Have a great Thursday.

And the Winner Is...

2009-12-08T08:15:00.000-08:00

...Dianne!

Of course, congratulating her for guessing correctly is like congratulating someone for hitting a target with a shotgun, but nonetheless she did figure out the answer.

Before I reveal which of her guesses was correct, let's go through a few of the wrong answers.

(I cross posted this on Facebook, so some of these guesses come from there.)

While it may be true that my numbers happen to coincide with the number of TCU wins in each successive football season, I was not thinking about that. I have no idea how many wins TCU has each year. I bleed maroon. (Though to be perfectly honest, I don't know how many wins A&M has had over the past three years either, but I do know they didn't win 13 games this year.)

I tried closer to 20 new kinds of pie in 2007, I doubt I tried 11 new kinds in 2008, and I'm almost sure I didn't try 13 new kinds of pie in 2009, though the thought of doing so is rapturous. I absolutely ate that many and more pieces of pie each of those years though.

Swear words spoken - Now I wonder if Matt is referring to particular swear words or to the number of times any swear words crossed my lips. In the first case, I don't think there are that many swear words. Cursing is a terribly limited way of expressing oneself. In the second, I can think of two instances, one in 2008 and one in 2009, where I more than used up my proposed yearly quota in about a half hour's time, so sorry to disappoint you, Matt, but my mouth is a bit fouler than that, though only when I'm under extreme duress and in my car, alone.

"Concerts attended" was a twice repeated guess, and while I wish I had attended that many concerts in each of those years, I did not.

"Movie seen in the theater" also isn't a bad guess. The average American sees five movies a year in the theater. I'm a bit more exceptional in my film viewing habits. At this point in 2009, I've seen 25 movies in the theater this year.

Patrick guessed the number had something to do with the number of songs I've written and/or recorded each year. This is incorrect, but not a bad guess, though I imagine I've written more songs and recorded fewer of them each year than those numbers would indicate.

Courtney ventured that the numbers referred to the colors of nail polish I've used each year. This is disturbing on many levels. First of all, while I have NO BASIS FOR JUDGMENT, I would imagine that to be a particularly large palate of polishes. Secondly, and most disturbingly, were this true, AND IT IS NOT, the numbers would indicate an increase in nail polish use each year.

So, we've covered music, movies, pie, profanity, and nail polish, and none of these categories have contained the correct answer. That leaves us with National Parks.

Unfortunately, I have not been blessed to visit that many National Parks each year, but the hint was referencing the number of particular parks I've enjoyed per annum, so I guess that makes a few of you half right.

"Number of Days Spent Backpacking?" - No, if only, and we're getting closer.

"Number of Nights Spent Camping?" - YES! More or less. Well done, Dianne.

Though I must qualify your answer. The numbers refer to the number of nights I've spent in National Parks each year with a caveat. The 2007 number is (parenthesized) because I actually spent four months' worth of nights in Glacier, but instead of counting every night June through September, I just counted the nights I spent actually camping. It just seemed more fair.

The important thing is, the number is increasing each year. Now, I'm sure that trend won't continue forever, but I'm glad for it now. This coming year already has a few National Park nights planned including moving with the family into cave dwellings, (not) pretending to throw my brother in a big ditch, scaling a broken dome, reliving a line from Psalm 23, and maybe even chatting with Ents and/or journeying to one of our nation's least visited National Parks which is only a few miles from one of our most populous cities.

Thank you all for your guesses. You are an imaginative and creative group, and I'm afraid you know me too well.

A Guessing Game

2009-12-07T10:58:00.000-08:00

2007=(8) 2008=11 2009=13 2010=??

Who knows what this series stands for?

(Click here for a hint.)

I Love to Win

2009-12-03T07:54:00.000-08:00

Well the week is bustling right along. Books are being read, reports on said books are being written, meetings are being held, third-party profanities and vulgarities are being overheard, nicknames are being given out, and prizes are being won.

What? Prizes are being won?

Yes.

The Pasadena Public Information Officer, Ann Erdman, has a great blog in which she shares information about what's happening in Pasadena and explores Pasadena's past. Once a week, she hold a "History Mystery" contest in which she shows a photo and asks her readers to guess what the picture is of. Here is this week's mystery, and here is the follow-up post declaring my victorious guess. Apparently, I have won a "fabulous prize" of some sort.

Yay, me!

That is all for now. It's time to put my nose back to the grindstone, which if you think about it, isn't anything anyone would ever want to do.

A Year Is A Remarkable Span of Time

2009-11-30T07:23:00.000-08:00

Last year, on Thanksgiving, I was robbed, and I didn't have anyone to tell about it.

This year, neither of those things were true, and I enjoyed Thanksgiving very much.

It's remarkable how things can change in a year (and the journey one takes to those changes). This year, of the ten people I spent Thanksgiving with, I only knew three of them last year at this time and then, they were only acquaintances. Now they are good friends, and if God hadn't told me otherwise, I might possibly be moving with them to Chula Vista to plant a church.

A year does funny things. There were two people present who a year ago weren't both interested in each other romantically but who are now married, two people who mean as much to me as any two people anywhere, two people whom I would do just about anything for. Never underestimate the effects of a year.

I've also decided that I rather like Thanksgiving. I think it's the perfect holiday for this time in my life. The break is a bit too short and too close to Christmas to rationalize serious travel. In other words, it doesn't make much sense to go home. As a result, one finds him or herself spending the day with a different kind of family giving thanks for God's faithfulness with the people who have experienced that faithfulness alongside you throughout the past year, people whose presence is cause for thankfulness.

I would also like to thank Abraham Lincoln for setting Thanksgiving on a Thursday, thereby all but guaranteeing that I'd also get Friday off from work. That extra Friday is a wonderful bonus day. It always feels like found time.

Anyway, I had a great holiday, but enough with the prose and on to the pictures.

Yes, there was a turkey.

No. I don't mean Drew. Or Blair. Or David (at least not this time). Lower left. Yes. There's the bird. At first, we weren't sure we cooked it long enough, but then we ate it, and no one got sick.

Success.

We borrowed JD and Margie's house for our festivities. (I say "we." Understand that I did very little to make this gathering happen. Basically, I just showed up and ate food. Blair and her mom and Courtney and Andre and the Carrs did all the real work. I was but a guest joyously relishing their hospitality.)

JD is a paleontologist, and there are actual fossils all around their house including the one on the left-hand wall. Cool, huh? "We" borrowed their house because they were gone to visit one of their children, I think.

Thanks, JD and Margie. Without you, our holiday would have been much, um, cozier.

After dinner, there was pie in three varieties. Courtney is posing here with the pecan. We also enjoyed sweet potato pie and pumpkin pie. All three were delicious.

Mmmmm, pie!

After pie, I learned a new favorite Thanksgiving game - "Guess the English Speaking Scandinavian Accent, Expletive". Here is Andre beguiling us with his linguistic skills.

I laughed. A lot.

Later, after a few hours of discussing the weightier matters of life and digesting the weightier matters of pie, those of us who were still around posed for a group photo. In this first one, Matt didn't realize we were taking a normal picture.

He thought we were supposed to be goofy, but we straightened him out and posed for shot #2, each of us well prepared for serious smiling.

Or maybe not. Oh well. Maybe next year we'll manage a more respectable photo.

If we're all together again next year.

If you detect a note of sadness in that line, you should, but realize that it is a sadness born by the sincere pleasure of having such fine friends. It is a sadness rooted in the exciting season of life we find ourselves in, a season marked by possibility and new beginnings.

Would I wish that my friends might stay, as they are, here with me? Perhaps, but not at the expense of all the God-blessed adventure ahead of them and not at the expense of all the God-blessed adventure ahead of me.

I look forward to a time of greater situational stability in my life. I look forward to a time when at least some people's presence remains constant. Even then though, I suspect that good friends will enter and leave my presence. The years will still roll by bringing what change they will.

And so I will enjoy every forkfull of pecan pie. I will let laughs bubble up from the very depths of my heart. I will digest fine fare slowly, make goofy faces for the camera, and smile broadly. I will make it my goal to enjoy every good moment with sincere thankfulness.

And I will always look forward to whatever good the next year may bring.
____________________________

As I read over this before publishing it, I realize that my "the turkey didn't make us sick" comment, while humorous, does a great injustice to the meal I was presented with.

Every part of the feast was fantastic. The absence of pictures is proof that the food wasn't on my plate long enough for the shutter on my camera to snap. There were multiple kinds of vegetables, two kinds of stuffing, cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes that I actually liked (for the first time in my life), corn casserole, heart-attack inducing macaroni and cheese, gravy, rolls, and of course, the turkey roasted to perfection and mouth-wateringly moist. I loved it all so much.

Thank you, to all of you who so lovingly prepared it.
____________________________

One final postscript - my blogging over the next two weeks will be sporadic at best.

We're entering week ten of the ten-week quarter, and finals are upon us. I'll be needing to knuckle down and do serious work for the next two weeks. I might check in from time to time, especially if I need a distraction from my studies.

This has been a great quarter, and the work I have left to do is the reason I wanted to take these classes. I can't wait to (continue) getting after it.

See you on the other side if not before.

I Survived the Rougenacht

2009-11-25T08:11:00.000-08:00

I just want to let everyone know that I am ok.

Be not afraid for my safety. I have survived the attacks. The Rougenacht is over. I remain unscathed.

Friday, apparently, was Kick the Ginger Day in California, a day when middle school-age Facebook users were encouraged to physically assault those of us blessed with red hair. Thankfully, I do not frequent places where such juvenile delinquents congregate. I'm glad I decided to forgo my jaunt into Old Town Friday night, a place teenagers are often spotted in gang-like force on the streets.

I'm honestly shocked at this state-wide observance. I thought that perhaps in California, a state known for tolerating just about anyone, I could escape the social stigma that has haunted be from birth when I emerged from my mother's womb with a head full of lovely red hair, and the doctor, in his racism, refused to bring me the rest of the way out. I mean, even Carrot Top has friends in California. I thought I was safe here. (Though perhaps this "holiday" is why Carrot Top recently decided to bulk up.)

In any case, I now know to be on my guard. You won't catch me unaware, you pimple-faced blond and brunette supremacists.

And I won't be hiding my true colors either. Though I'm sometimes seen donning a fine fedora or becoming baseball cap, I will only assume such accoutrements out of my surpassing sense of style, not ever out of fear.

And I won't be dying my crimson locks either. I will bear my God-given pigmentation proudly. And one day, though they fade to gray, the gray will come with wisdom, not with worry, for I am unafraid.

I dream of a day when such discrimination becomes a thing of memory and legend, like tales we tell of darker times when giants roamed the earth. But until then, remember, all you would be juvenile assailants, Goliath was felled by a red-head, and should you mess with me, I will fell you too.

A Taste of Things To Come

2009-11-24T07:47:00.000-08:00

In Texas, there are three food groups - Tex-Mex, barbecue, and chicken fried steak.

Mmmmm! Chicken fried steak, how I love thee! Battered and tenderized, deep-fried and smothered in (cream) gravy, clogging my arteries and warming my heart. Is there any food finer? I think not.

You know that common question - "What would you want for your last meal?" My answer is simple: chicken fried steak (blanketed in gravy), mashed potatoes (one part potato, one part gravy, one part butter), green beans (drowning in butter), warm rolls (soaked in butter), an endless glass of lemonade, and a piece of the finest, warm pecan pie in creation. Why wait to die to go to heaven? Heaven is a well prepared meal away.

(And incidentally, consuming said feast might put one a step closer to heaven anyway.)

I love chicken fried steak, and I don't eat it often. There are two reasons for this. First of all, I don't want to weigh 300 pounds. Second, many Californians don't even know what chicken fried steak is. Isn't that sad? When I speak of the dish, I'm often rewarded with blank stares and puzzled questions. "What are you talking about, and why is it 'chicken fried?'" Poor West coasters. The tofu wool has been pulled over your eyes.

(And if the juxtaposition of the words "tofu" and "wool" doesn't turn your stomach, nothing will.)

Maybe it's because of the upcoming holiday of thanks which sees me still separated from Texas and, more importantly, from the friends and family who reside there, or maybe it's because my blood was flowing a little too freely, but last night I just had to make chicken fried steak.

So I did.

And I shared it with a fellow Texan (Drew) and three friends who had never had it before - a native Angeleno (Chris), a Frenchman (Simon), and a Chinese Canadian (John) - and one Montanan (Dustin) who had only had it once at a restaurant and wasn't impressed with the restaurant's fare.

Of course, because I don't get out of class on Mondays until 9:30 PM, we didn't get to eat until around 11 PM. While I cooked though, Drew injected a little more Texanity into the evening. He taught everyone how to play 42.

For those of you not from the motherland, 42 is a domino game and the national game of Texas.

That's right, I said "national."

You see, this is all part of my plan to spread Texas goodness to the ends of the earth, and slowly but surely, convert everyone to the better way. My method is simple: invite people in, feed them, and begin teaching them how to live as citizens of God's country. Before you know it, the world will be Texas.

It's already happening. Last night, as the dominoes clicked on the table and the aroma of chicken fried steak filled my apartment, we had a foretaste of things to come. Last night, though clearly not yet everywhere, Texas was already here.

And it was good.

Little glimpses of the kingdom like I had last night give me hope. I might just be able to make it until it's time to go home.

Birthdays and Not-Yet-Lived Histories

2009-11-23T08:52:00.000-08:00

Last night we celebrated my friend Janice's birthday. Janice is dating my friend Matthew, and so I am blessed to count Janice among my friends as well.

I've known Matthew since the beginning of this year, I suppose. I don't remember exactly when we first met. I do remember the first time I spent any substantial time with him though. I was invited to a small worship gathering by Courtney at Andre's apartment, and Matthew led us. He is an accomplished guitarist and a skilled worship leader.

But more than that, Matthew is a wonderful man. He is as joyous a person as I know. He exudes enthusiasm and optimism with such intensity, I suspect dourness is repelled from his presence. His is a light which fills whatever room he is in, a light before which darkness cannot stand. His is the light of Christ within him.

And Janice is a fitting match. She is as joyous as Matthew, and she matches his intensity with warmth. Where Matthew is bubbly and effusive, Janice is steady and deeply compassionate. Together they shine like the sun - bright, warm, and life-giving.

Does anyone else ever have moments where you feel like you can see someone well into the future, like when you look at them, you see them years from now? It's not like seeing their future; it's like seeing the history they haven't lived yet. The future is a series of events. History is the impact of those events. Sometimes I feel like I see not-yet-lived histories. I see who people are becoming given who they are now, and seeing them then, I see them better now.

Last night, as Matthew led us in worship to celebrate Janice's birthday (Could anything be more appropriate, by the way?), and as I looked from where I was sitting and saw the two of them, I saw them down the line. I saw the two of them, streaks of grey in their hair, full of wisdom gleaned from years of faithful Kingdom service, the joy that is so attractive in each of them aged into a peace this world finds odd, with young Christians gathered around them learning how to trust and love Jesus with as much passion as they have.

In that moment, I felt humbled to be in the presence of such faithful disciples. They shined like the Son of God - bright, warm, and life-giving in every way.

I am honored to be called their friend.

A Constant Sunrise, Part 6, "No Angels"

2009-11-20T10:55:00.000-08:00

Is nothing really impossible
I don't see Gabriel here
No heavenly intervention
No angelic "Do not fear"

I see no sure salvation
From this winepress floor
Only falling chaff
No angel of the Lord

I could use an angel today
Someone to come and say,

"You'll make it through
Eventually.
Listen to me.
God is with you."

Yeah, God is with you.

Was that the warmth of Eden
Or the fury of a flame?
Still somehow I can't enter
Though no angel guards the way

So still I stand here staring
Where I last saw You appear
Waiting for some comfort
But there are no angels here

I could use an angel today
Someone to come and say,

"You'll make it through
Eventually.
Listen to me.
God is with you."

Yeah, God is with you.

I've been waiting by these waters
I've been waiting for a change
But there isn't any movement
There are no angels here today
Lord, can You hear my voice
When I call out to You?
I don't see and angel
I need an angel to see the through

I could use an angel today
Someone to come and say

"You'll make it though
Eventually.
Listen to me.
God is with you."

You'll make it through
Eventually.
Listen to me.
God is with you.

Yeah, God is with you.

Yeah, God is with you.

Esther, Inglourious Basterds, and the Absence of God

2009-11-19T23:28:00.000-08:00

Three things:

First, my Fuller blog is now linked over on the sidebar. As with the Brehm Blog, there's no way of differentiating the bloggers, so the post might be from me, and it might not. In any case, following the link will take you to a place where I do blog occasionally. (If your RSS, a feed is available.)

Second, my post today (below) is an edited version of the paper I wrote for my midterm for my Writings class. Have I mentioned how much I'm loving my classes this quarter? Because I am. A lot. Maybe too much.

Third, have a fantasmic weekend! I will go to REI and help some friends move and who knows what else? (I do. I know what else, but I daren't spill the beans on my blog.)
_____________________________________

One might argue that conflict and suffering is the thing that most binds us all together. Heartache is our great shared experience. Tragedy is our common tale. We all sing, “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,” and the irony is, we all sing it. In distress, we cry out in anguish, and we hear the cries of everyone else and indeed all of creation crying in mournful harmony with us.

Turmoil draws us out of our own selfish worlds and awakens us to what is beyond us. We cry out to God. We beg aid, because faced with worlds outside our own, we need someone outside our world to order things. We need someone bigger than and beyond the brokenness to set things right. Affronted with a bent world, we appeal to one unbent outside the broken to enter in and straighten all things.

Why is it then in those moments of deep desperation that God so often appears absent? Why, when we most want answers, is God silent?

Faced with God’s apparent absence, our other problems dissipate. The question, “Why is this happening to me?” pales before, “Where are you, God?” If God is absent or ambivalent or non-existent, what hope do we have? If all that exists is this mess, that fact is much more troubling than the mess.

Faced with the absence of God, how is one to react?

The psalmists wait. “Wait for YHWH,” Psalm 27:14 reads. “Be still before YHWH, and wait patiently for him; do not fret over those who prosper in their way, over those who carry out evil devices,” writes the psalmist in 37:7. Psalm 131 reads, “O YHWH, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me. Oh, Israel, hope in YHWH from this time forth and forevermore.”

But there is another option for how to respond to evil besides waiting on God. One can fight back.

If God will not act and wipe away the injustice in the world, perhaps we should. If God will not raise a hand against evil, we can. In the absence of God’s justice, we can enact our own, or at least this is one possible answer, and it’s an answer contemplated by our world and arguably by the book of Esther.

In Esther, God is silent. The Jewish people have been displaced. Their homeland has been overrun. They are aliens and outcasts in a hostile land. Hadassah is forced to hide her identity to survive. She calls herself Esther, gains the grace of the most powerful man in the land, and is made a queen. Soon however, her secret people are in grave danger, but using her wiles, she saves them. Faced with genocide, Hadassah turns the tables on her people’s enemies, and the Jews slaughter seventy-five thousand people in a single day, a day that was supposed to be a day of triumph for their enemies, and bring an end to their oppression. Through all of this, God is silent. YHWH’s name is never even mentioned.

Similarly, with his characteristic cinematic flourish, Quentin Tarantino gave audiences a modern version of the same tale in his 2009 film Inglourious Basterds. The film is a reimagining of the end of World War II. It is two and half hours of Jews brutally killing Nazis. Even Hitler himself isn’t immune to Tarantino’s fictitious circumcised vengeance. In the film’s main plotline, a young Jewish woman hides her identity, ingratiates herself with the Nazi glitterati, and uses her power to annihilate her people’s enemies during what is supposed to be a celebration of Nazi prominence, bringing an end to World War II. Inglourious Basterds is more than WWII remixed; it is Esther retold as only Tarantino can tell it.

Inglourious Basterds isn’t about World War II. It’s about the problem of evil in a world seemingly devoid of God. (This next bit is speculation, but from what other context can I write?) The Holocaust was an atrocity unlike any other, and God let it happen. Where was YHWH in the midst of that? Was God absent? For many Jews, I would imagine the answer is yes, God was absent. And if God was absent, if God refused to save them, perhaps they should save themselves. Perhaps they should enact their own justice and destroy their enemies. They weren’t able to do that then during the Holocaust, but Quentin Tarantino has given them their justice now much like the book of Esther gives narrative victory to the displaced and trod upon Jewish people in a land and time when God seems silent.

However, Quentin Tarantino isn’t as brave as the writer of Esther. Inglourious Basterds does indeed revel in the violence of killing Nazis, but the film is ultimately ambiguous as to the worth of that violence. Yes, the great Nazi evil is eradicated, but justice comes through strange channels and means. The film does not celebrate the eradication of evil via violence. It simply presents it to the audience to judge for themselves whether good was done.

Esther makes a claim. Esther calls the violence and victory “good.” The book closes with a celebration of the Jewish victory over their oppressors and commends the greatness of the Jews. Inglourious Basterds does not provide that release. The film refuses to make that claim. The book of Esther hates evil enough to call its eradication “good” even when it comes by shockingly violent means. The book of Esther hates evil more.

Because God hates evil. God hates injustice. And God loves people. Unflinchingly. Unfailingly. Even when God seems absent, God’s love never fails.

Here is where Inglourious Basterds falls short of Esther. Tarantino’s film cannot rejoice in the demise of evil, because it cannot call the evil wholly bad, because it will not call God good.

The writings of the Old Testament are built on the foundation of YHWH’s unfailing love. The psalmists wait on the Lord because they know the Lord will come. The Jews in Esther can institute a festival commemorating their victory because they know God also rejoices to see justice done.

And they are all proved true. Time and time again, God answers the psalmists’ cries and delivers them. The transplanted Jews thrive under the auspices of Queen Esther and her benevolent cousin Mordecai, God’s proxies in a foreign land.

Yes, sometimes God is silent. Sometimes, God seems absent. Everything we know can be falling apart, and we can look to the One who is supposed to be holding it all together, but our Help is nowhere to be seen, and I don’t know why that is.

But I know that God is good, and God’s love never fails. So while it may be true that tragedy is the tale common to all humankind, that is only a temporary truth. One day a greater truth will take its place: God is making everything new. And the absence of God will become the ever shrinking space between us.

And the silence will become peace.

Sunset and Hot Tea

2009-11-18T22:52:00.000-08:00

The house has a wrap-around porch, the wooden kind that sits three steps up from the hard packed dirt that dominates the landing and fades gradually into a barely maintained downward slope of grass. The lawn changes abruptly into high grass where the mower's circle ceases, and the high grass runs all the way down alongside the driveway to the ditch by the dirt road that leads back out to the main road and into town, the nearby cities, the rest of the world. There is a simple wooden table and a pair of comfortable chairs on the porch on each side of the house where one can sit and watch the sunlight greet and bid farewell to the rest of the world each day. The porch echos hollow beneath one's feet, and the chains of the porch swing down on one end creak when the wind blows.

Roger sits at his desk which faces out into the living room and lets the falling light of the afternoon illuminate the page in his typewriter. He likes the way the orange light hues his words giving them character they'll never possess once published. He listens to his wife singing softly to herself in the kitchen. The click-clack of his typing mixes with the clinking of cups being set on saucers, spoons stirring tea, a kettle being placed on a tray. "Ahhh! Sunset," he thinks, "Sunset and hot tea." He types a few more words, stops in mid sentence, and waits for his wife to emerge from the kitchen, vitals in hand. He hurries over to help her as she does as if the thought just occurred to him to do so. They push through the screen door and out onto the porch.

"Look at those clouds," Cora says, "It's gonna be a good one."

"Hmm. I bet you're right," he replies.

They watch the sun slip slowly down, sipping their tea. They used to keep a camera close when they first moved out here, but they soon learned that sunsets don't need to be captured. They come back every day, ever the same, ever new. Now they simply watched. Together.

"Jamie called this morning," she says, "While you were out."

"Oh," he says.

"Her and Frank are doing fine. Kids are too. She said Frank and Simon would be out on Saturday to look through a few boxes they've got out in the shop. Something about some project Simon's doing for school."

"Well, that'll be alright," he says.

"She sure is good one," she says, "We're blessed Frank found her. Where he'd be without her I'll never know."

He smiles, thinks for a moment, and reaches over and puts his hand on top of hers. The sun touches the horizon.

The sun settles into its slot. The shadows of the trees on the lower part of their property creep up the hill toward the house. The sky fades blue and orange and purple and red. The clouds are gold then grey.

Roger gently rubs the thin skin on the back of his wife's hand with his thumb. He takes a final sip of tea and sets his cup back on its saucer as the sun disappears in the distance, and the light and color begin to drain from the sky following behind their source.

They stand up. She places the dishes back on the tray. He picks up the tray, and she holds open the screen door for him as he carries the tray back into the house. He stops at the door to look at her for a moment as she looks to the West.

"It was a good one," she says.

"Yes it was," he says, and he bends down to kiss her cheek.

Switching Teams, Or Maybe "Switch-Hitting" Is More Appropriate

2009-11-17T20:25:00.000-08:00

I love church. So much. I love God's people gathered to love God and to love each other together.

I love to hear them sing. I love to hear them pray. I love to hear the "Amen" arise spontaneously in the midst of a good sermon. I love the communal laugh (or groan) when the preacher tells a good (or bad) joke.

I love Sunday school and youth group and lock-ins. I love Christmas dinner and Easter breakfast and pot-luck lunch. I love Saturday spruce-ups and 24 hour prayer vigils. I love Simon Says and Target Practice and rooms decorated with fish and hearts and heaven. I love libraries and conga drums and pie fights and bowl-a-thons.

And call me crazy, but I even love sound systems.

I love it all so much. I love that my life growing up revolved in many ways around church. And not just any church, but a church. Cross Timbers Church. I love my church. So much.

I want everyone to have what I had growing up, and it breaks my heart to think that people my age aren't looking for the good I was given in Cross Timbers in similar churches.

My loyalties are divided. My heart isn't wholly devoted. While I love church as I have known it - the form, the rhythms - I love my generation more. I love people my age, and I want all of them to know the Jesus that I was introduced to by the people of Cross Timbers Church. I can't imagine spending my life for anything else.

And so I came to seminary, and not just any seminary. I came to Fuller Theological Seminary because Fuller, unlike all other schools I looked at, has a culturally focused arts program.

You see, I think that our culture, and my generation especially, looks to the arts to make meaning of their lives. I think we largely find in movies and music and books what I was given in church. I think we wrestle in the cineplex with the questions I was asked in Sunday school. I think we shop en masse the Friday after Thanksgiving to prove to ourselves that everything is ok the way I knew everything was ok because we shouted "All glory to Jesus!" at the close of every service every week as a congregation.

I want to engage in the conversation happening all around us in our culture by creating alongside everyone else. I don't want to be part of a sub-culture that speaks its own language. I want to be in the world offering the answer I have to the questions everyone is asking just like the world is doing. And I want to question the world's answers.

And so I came to Fuller to begin learning how to have that conversation. I wanted to take the greater culture with one hand and the church with the other and introduce them to each other. And so I came here to pursue a master of arts degree in Worship, Theology, and the Arts.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday, I gave up my pursuit of that degree.

And I switched to a new one.

Yesterday, I became a student in the School of Intercultural Studies. I am now well on my way to obtaining a master of arts degree in Intercultural Studies with an emphasis in Worship, Theology, and the Arts. Before, I was an SOT (School of Theology) student. Now, I am SIS.

Why?

Well, for all the same reasons I came here in the first place. I just have a better focus now on how I want to introduce the church to my generation (and vice versa). I think I'm beginning to understand what kind of party to throw that might get them talking to one another, and I think this degree with this emphasis will better prepare me to be that sort of host.

What kind of shindig am I talking about? What will that look like?

Well, I could tell you here and now, but then we wouldn't have anything to talk about, would we? One thing I've learned over this past year is that while my blog is very good at initiating some kinds of conversations, it's also very good at squelching others.

I don't want to tell you what I want to do. I want to talk about it. It's too easy to be a consumer. Of things. Of information. Of other people. I want to participate together in the work of the New Reality of Christ.

I want to be part of the church. That's all I've every really wanted.

For Those Who Have Ears to Hear...

2009-11-16T07:06:00.000-08:00

Last night was Oasis' monthly Worship Community meeting. On these nights, we bring in an experienced worship leader to talk to and with us about what it means to lead worship. The worship leader typically tells us a bit of their story and then expounds on some aspect of worship leading that they feel is important, and they lead us in a time of worship and prayer.

Last night, we were visited by David Ruis, my very favorite worship song writer of all. He wrote "We Will Dance," "Whom Have I But You," and "You Are Worthy of My Praise" among others. As he led us in worship, I couldn't hardly believe that God had brought me here and put me in that room. David Ruis' songs are the backbone of my worship songwriting. They are the standard I judge my own songs against, the heights I aim toward, and there he was, in a small room with about 20 of us, sharing what he sees as the heart and power of worship.

Incredible.

Below is a story he told us. I hope he doesn't mind me retelling it here.

This story is true.
________________________________________

It was day three of the conference, and it was David's turn to lead again. He was heading hurriedly toward the stage when he felt someone tugging on the back of his shirt. Perturbed, he turned around to see who was accosting him. Two young men were standing there. One, David soon learned, was deaf and the other was his interpreter. The deaf man was crying.

"I have to tell you something," the young man signed and his friend vocalized.

"Ok," David responded.

"I've been so moved by the worship this weekend. It's incredible, and I had to let you know. What I see and feel when you lead is so powerful," he said.

David was flabbergasted, because, once again, this young man was completely deaf.

"Well, thank you," David said, "I'm glad you are enjoying it."

The two young men turned and rejoined the crowd, and David turned to continue on his way to the stage. Before he could get there though, he was caught again by a young woman.

"David!" she called.

He turned to answer her, "Yes?"

"You have to know, the young man you just met isn't a Christian," she said, "We just invited him along at the last minute."

David stared at her aghast.

"Yeah, but he's been so touched by the worship this weekend, he told us last night, 'Don't be surprised if I go home from this conference a Christian because of what I've experienced here,'" she said.

"Wow," David said, "Thank you."

"Sure," she said and turned to return to her seat, and David continued up to the stage, thoroughly humbled and his ideas about what worship is shattered.

Mission-Shaped Church

2009-11-13T07:33:00.000-08:00

This week, the School of Intercultural Studies hosted Bishop Graham Clay of the Church of England for their annual missiology lectures. Bishop Cray is at the forefront of the Anglican church's efforts to revitalize their denomination. They call this the Fresh Expressions movement.

In England, only 3% of people aged 20-30 are involved in church. 3%. The only people who even feel an inclination to go to church, or feel guilt for not going to church, are over 75 years old. The church in England is irrelevant to the people. It is dying.

But our God is a god of resurrection.

Faced with such a challenge, the Church of England has radically reevaluated how their church operates. They've opened their minds and opened the flood gates to new possibilities of church. They call these new ideas of church Fresh Expressions.

Fresh Expressions are simply influxes of the reign of Christ in the lives of people and the organizations that grow out of that. Fresh Expressions are church forms divorced from the strict structure and hierarchy of the Church of England. The church leadership is encouraging and freeing people to listen to the Holy Spirit and do what the Spirit leads, to join in with what the Spirit is already doing. The church is prescribing for its members what it is doing itself - laying aside individual assumptions about what it means to do church (dying to oneself) and going through the patient process of letting God show one how to live.

At its core, it's a discernment process. It is:
1)Listening to and following God's call,
2)Asking God how you can serve where the Spirit leads you,
3)Letting community form in the midst of serving,
4)Daily making disciples (helping each other learn to live like Jesus),
And only after all the other has happened, 5)Letting worship take shape.

Their process is the opposite of the common church planting model of "go start a worship service like what you want church to look like, and try to get people to come."

This process assumes a few things. First of all, it assumes that Christ is already at work in the world revealing Himself to people, that the Spirit is witnessing already, and we get to be witnesses too. It also assumes that mission must be incarnational - we must become like the ones we are sent to. Christians must be willing to lay themselves down to be part of God's mission. We must die to live. This process also assumes that God wants us to be part of His mission. I think these are all pretty safe assumptions because they are rooted in Christ and demand humility.

I found Bishop Cray's talks on "dying to live" and "discernment as the church planting process" to be especially encouraging and challenging. As I've written before, I sometimes wonder if I am able to engage with non-Christians because my whole world for much of my life has been in a predominantly Christian culture. This process suggests that God does indeed want me to be part of introducing people to Him who don't know Him, and that as I am willing to lay myself down to follow what He's already doing, He will find a place for me. It likely won't be easy, but it will be good.

I also suspect that God has made me as I'm made, with the passions and talents I've been given, for a reason. I don't think He'll ask me to be someone other than who He created me to be. I think that if I want to really live beholden only to Christ, I need to let Christ show me how to live.

This week of class has been great. In many ways it's been a culmination of what I've been studying and praying about and thinking about all quarter.

I don't want to just study it though. I want to put it into practice now. I want to begin to listen for and discern God's will for this period of my life and perhaps beyond. I want to humble myself and die to myself and trust Christ to raise me back up into the world He wants me to live in.

Encore! | Tim Haydock is a Ninja | Raccoons

2009-11-11T08:01:00.000-08:00

First of all, thank you to any of you who said a prayer for me last week. We made it through, and everything went wonderfully. Our events at work went off pretty much without a hitch, I finished all my school work, and then on Friday, there was a concert.

The show was wonderful. I had a great crew of volunteers who made the evening go very smoothly. Derek showed up, sound checked, and then stood around and talked to us for a while before heading back stage. We asked about upcoming projects (Sandra is working on a new hymns record, they filmed the Stockholm Syndrome show in Dallas for a dvd release, voting for Democracy, Vol. 1 [an album of covers] should commence in December, Caedmon's Call is working on a new album to be released this next year and only original band members are writing songs for the album including Cliff, Danielle, and Todd, and they'll be bringing the Stockholm Syndrome tour to the West Coast in early 2010), and my friend Courtney volunteered to do form some sort of Caedmon's Call interpretive dance troop for the next tour. He didn't really say no either, so we'll see what happens with that.

Then, Derek went backstage to relax before the show, and I started worrying over whether people would show up. I can't tell you how good it felt to see Travis Auditorium begin to fill. In the end, we sold 191 tickets and covered Derek's guarantee. Whew!

Derek played for about an hour and a half and then put his guitar down and left the stage. Now usually when bands do that they are planning to come back out for an encore. The house lights stay down, and people keep clapping until the artist comes back out for another song or two.

Derek doesn't do encores.

He usually has this whole spiel he goes through about how encores are essentially egotistical and a big lie because bands plan them into their set list. He didn't go through that talk on Friday night (I think because he was tired and hadn't done much talking during his shows in a while), but when he left the stage I knew he was done. However, it was my call when to bring the house lights up and signal the end of the show, and I wasn't prepared to do that just then, so people kept clapping, and I had a moment of terror about what was going to happen next, because, like I said, Derek doesn't do encores. For a moment there, I foresaw a bummer of an ending to an otherwise fun evening.

But then he came back out and played one more song. I saw a Derek Webb encore! That's like seeing Sasquatch.

Then the show ended, people eventually left, I closed the place up, accidentally locked my computer in the sound room, and then went to a friend's house to eat cupcakes and watch The Princess Bride.

I know that's a random way to end the story, but that's what happened.

Hosting the concert was a lot of fun, but it was also a lot of work, and that was a relatively easy show. I don't know how my predecessor, Tim Haydock, managed to host two shows in the Fall including Over the Rhine which was WAAAAAAAY more complicated than Derek. This was easy as cake compared to what he had to do, I'm sure. (Notice, I used, "easy as cake," and not the usual "easy as pie," because there's nothing simple about good pie.) Mad props, Tim. You are a gentleman and a scholar.

And a ninja.

And I was tired, so on Saturday I did very little and enjoyed it very much. On Sunday I went with a few friends to experience a different church, and on Sunday afternoon and evening I went with a different group of friends to an art exhibit/concert in Newport Beach. And then I came home and met a raccoon.

The weekend was great, and it's already Wednesday, so I better get back to work. Later!

Where The Wild Things Are

2009-11-09T10:27:00.000-08:00

The following is my first post on the Fuller Blogger website, the other place I will be blogging in the coming months. To see it in its native environment, click here.
______________________________

Valley View, Texas, my hometown, is small. My family is large. I am the oldest of six kids, so, including my mom and dad, there are eight of us. We like to joke that when we moved out of the country and into town, Valley View had to put up a new city limit sign to reflect the change in population, and while a new sign did go up shortly after we relocated, it probably had more to do with the new census numbers being released than my family's move. "Valley View, Texas, pop. 740" the sign now reads. Even with my family's presence, it's still a small place.

Pasadena is not small. There are more people within a quarter mile of my apartment than in my whole hometown. People move in and out daily, and the community at large doesn't really notice. No new signs are errected noting the population change. My family would still be considered large here, but its presence certainly wouldn't be newsworthy.

Pasadena is the city, and the city is different than the country. From my front porch in Valley View, I can see cattle grazing on the hillside. People sometimes lose pets to coyotes. The nights are quiet, and stars fill the heavens. In Pasadena, I'm lulled to sleep by the engines of buses beneath my bedroom window. Pets are kept indoors. Losing the battle with streetlights, stars become the stuff of myths.

Valley View, while a well settled town, is still very much on the edge of the country. It is in a liminal state, navigating the transition between wild and domesticated, between free and tamed.

Pasadena is tamed. There is not a tree left unpruned, not a lawn left unmanicured. There are still a few dirt roads within Valley View proper; in Pasadena, everything is asphalt. Pasadena is civilized.

Or so I thought.

Last night, after galavanting across L.A. with a group of Fuller students to take part in a conversation about Jewish artist Mark Chagall's use of the crucifix in his paintings and enjoying a fine meal at Pei-Wei, I walked back into my apartment complex only to be greeted by this little guy:

He hung his head lazily over the top of the parking garage and alternated his gaze between me and the full garbage bin below.

He didn't seem to concerned with my presence, and he didn't seem to mind having his picture taken. I guess in L.A. everyone wants to be a star.

I watched the little bandit for a while. I saw that Pasadena and Valley View really aren't that different. We try to tame our world, but the wild things won't be tamed. They simply adapt.

I too have adapted. I sleep soundly at night, unbothered by the passing buses. I miss the stars, but I have learned to see the beauty inherent in blue and gold streetlights.

But deep inside I'm still the same person I was when I left home a year ago to move to the city. I just have a few more skills, and I see the world a little better.

Derek Webb

2009-11-06T07:31:00.000-08:00

I have a confession to make.

I wasn't only thinking about my fellow seminarians when I began trying to book Derek Webb to come play here today. I was thinking a lot about myself.

You see, I am a huge fan. It's silly really how big of a fan I am.

I was thinking this morning, and I've seen Derek in concert twelve times in the past five years. I've seen him in College Station once, in Houston seven times, once in Waco, twice in Dallas, and once in Knoxville, TN. I drove four hours out of my way in the middle of an 18 hour road trip for that last one. I once took off work and crisscrossed Texas to see him three times over the course of a weekend in Dallas, Houston, and Waco. Call it obsessive if you like. I just call it fun.

I don't really know why I like his music so much. I'm not sure I want to know. I think getting to the bottom of my aesthetic pleasure in his music would reveal more about me than I want to know. His music affects me deeply.

Right now, I'm shuffling all his studio albums while I work. "The Proverbial Gun" is playing at this moment off his latest album, Stockholm Syndrome. The first time I really heard that song I was driving into the parking garage below my apartment complex. I parked my car and left it running so I could listen to the song. It overwhelmed me. As Derek cried, "FREEEEE! FREEEEE! FREEEEE! FREEEEE!" at the end of the song, I was in involuntarily in tears. I still don't know where they came from. I don't know why Derek Webb's music more than any other affects me like that.

Why does art affect us anyway? What is it about a movie or a book or a song or a painting or a performance that can elicit such deep emotion? Why are we moved by such superfluous things? Art serves no industrial purpose. It is not efficient. It does not fulfill any physical need. You can't eat a painting or wear a song.

Art expresses the inexpressible. It gives form to things we can't quite grasp. Art gives meaning to life. Certainly, art does not feed or clothe us, but it makes the food worth eating and the clothes worth wearing.

Derek Webb's music has sustained me time and time again. I have been encouraged simply by the act of his performance, not even the music itself, just by the fact that he is playing it and interacting with his fans. It's comforting to know that we are trying to give voice to the things I can't seem to say. That still doesn't explain why his music affect me like it does though.

And tonight Derek Webb will be here at Fuller Seminary. I will not get to simply sit and listen. I will be busy organizing things, but I will see, and I will hear, and I will be edified.

The Forgotten Ways

2009-11-04T07:46:00.000-08:00

For the last few days, I've been reading The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch for my New Church Movements class. I've also been blogging reflections on each chapter on my blog for that class, Acts 4:32.

The Forgotten Ways describes what a missional church would look like. A missional church is a church whose primary motivation is acting out the ways of Jesus in the world. Ministry focused churches are focused primarily on building up church members. Both are needed, but Hirsch's contention is that being missional should be our primary focus. He says that ministry will inevitably follow, but mission should be our drive.

I encourage you to click over and peruse my chapter reflections. I know that most of you will have no desire to actually read the book (which is what I would encourage you to do), but my reflections are short, and they may make you think differently about what it means to be part of a church.

A Step Further

2009-11-03T07:43:00.000-08:00

First, admit you are powerless to save yourself. Then, turn your will over to God, confess your sins, repent, accept forgiveness, love others, and take the hope you have found to others who need it too. This is the core of the Twelve Steps, the famed recovery program of groups like Alcoholics, Narcotics, and Gamblers Anonymous, but it just sounds like being a Christian to me.

A week ago, I knew very little about recovery ministry or twelve-step programs. I had a cousin who was involved in a twelve-step program years ago, but I was young, and I didn’t really know how to relate to him. I wish I had. I wish I had possessed the wherewithal then to learn from him or from someone else what I’ve learned this week. Perhaps I could have loved my cousin better if I had.

This week, I had the honor of talking with two friends of mine, Ryan and Steve, about recovery ministry and twelve-step programs. These two men recently started a recovery group at my church, Oasis Pasadena, and I knew they could enlighten me on what recovery ministry is all about. You see, Ryan and Steve have each had extensive experience with recovery ministries, because they are in recovery themselves, and the group they have started is their way of sharing the hope they have to others.

“In meetings they refer to it as ‘Twelfth-stepping,’” Steve says, “’Twelfth-stepping’ is just any sort of service to others in the recovery community.”

Twelfth-stepping can include driving others to meetings, telling others about meetings, or being someone’s sponsor. Sponsors are people in recovery who have worked through all twelve steps, who have been sober for at least a year, and who are willing to personally help another person go through the steps.

Ryan and Steve are taking their twelfth step a step further.

“What we’re doing is reinserting Christ into the Twelve Step process,” Ryan says, “Twelve-step programs include a vague reference to a ‘higher power.’ We’re saying that power is Christ, because that’s where the real hope of recovery lies.”

Twelve-step meetings take all forms, from small group support meetings to three hundred person celebrations of sobriety. The group Ryan and Steve have started is a step study group.

“Each week we just look a step and talk about what’s involved with the step,” Steve says, “Then you have to work them on your own.”

Some steps, like taking an inventory of past wrongs, can take weeks to complete, while others, like turning ones will over to a higher power, are a daily discipline, and all the steps are best practiced in community.

“The stats are bleak,” Ryan says, “A low percentage of addicts get clean and stay clean. This is an area where the Church must be involved.”

And Ryan and Steve, as recovering addicts, are proof that recovery is possible, and the group that they have started is the evidence of their faith that with Christ, recovery is possible for others as well.

If I could, I would have you sit down with Ryan and Steve and hear their stories directly from them. Then you could hear the conviction in their voices. You could see the hope in their eyes. Recovery wouldn’t be a term on a page, a topic to study, or a program to implement. In Ryan and Steve, recovery takes on flesh and blood. In shaking their hands, you shake recovery’s hand and feel recovery’s strength, and it all starts with admitting you are powerless.

If you are also in recovery from any addiction, Ryan and Steve would be glad for you to join their group. It meets every Sunday evening from 5 to 6 PM in the Oasis Pasadena office in front of the Ice House comedy club at 26 N Mentor Ave,
Pasadena, CA 91106. The group is Christ-centered, closed to those without addictions, confidential, and anonymous.

Elijah Davidson (2nd yr MA WTA) feels compelled to credit that line in the first paragraph about the Twelve Steps sounding like being a Christian to his friend David Carr.

Intermission

2009-11-02T07:39:00.000-08:00

Happy November, everyone! I am excited this wonderful month is upon us. I hope you are too.

You know, they say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Well, this first week of November is certainly looking to be very lion-like. I have a book to read, two papers and a book report to write, and two sections of homework on Proverbs all due this week. At work, we're hosting a big event this week (125+ attendees) that is sure to keep me running all over campus during the work day. The Brehm Center's inaugural lecture series and concert is this week which I should attend. And, oh yeah, Derek Webb will be here on Friday to play some songs for me and 250 of my friends, and I'm in charge of making sure that all happens.

That's a long way of saying, pray for me. I need near supernatural energy to make it through this week. Everything should be a lot of fun (even the homework), but I'm going to need help to get everything done.

Also, you'll understand if this blog is updated a little less frequently this week than you're used to. There are only so many hours in the day, and I need to use some of them for sleeping.

I hope you are all enjoying the "A Constant Sunrise" series. I'm sure having fun writing it. There are at least three more entries to come, but I want to do them well, so I don't want to try to cram them in in the midst of all this week's craziness.

Tomorrow, I think I'll post an article I recently wrote for the Semi. The last two weeks of Semi articles have been on recovery ministry, or ministry to people who are addicted to something or who have been affected by someone else's addiction. I interviewed two of my friends at Oasis who have recently begun a recovery ministry there.

It's so neat! The article was in the Semi last week, and tonight after the recovery group met, my friend who runs the group text messaged me to tell me that a few people came to the group tonight who had read about it in the Semi! I couldn't be happier. I think it's the first time I've written something that actually made a difference in the world. How cool! I'll post the article tomorrow. I hope you like it.

Anyway, I hope you all have a great week, and I hope your weeks are less busy, but just as fun, as mine.

A Constant Sunrise, Part 5, "Through"

2009-10-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

(Today's post is so blissfully appropriate, you'd think I planned it this way. I did not. This is just a sublime coincidence.)

Today is my 21st re-birthday. 21 years ago today I made Jesus Christ Lord of my life. Of course, it was 13 years later before I really understood exactly what that meant, but Jesus knew what it meant 21 years ago, and that's all that matters.

21 years ago today, I stopped dying and began to come alive. I stopped getting older and began to be made new. I headed Christ's call to follow Him, and oh what an adventure it has been.

I began to be re-created. "I no longer live, but Christ lives in me," the apostle writes. "Christ lives in me" - what a statement. Christ defeated death and rose from the dead, and that Life is now in me.

And that Life is working in me to make me into Christ's image. The Spirit is working in me to make me righteous. I'm not there yet, but the Spirit is a "deposit guaranteeing what is to come." I have the "firstfruits," Paul writes in Romans 8, but I eagerly anticipate my full adoption, the full redemption of not just my soul, but my body as well. Christ is redeeming my whole person, and it is this hope, Paul writes, that pulls me through.

The Spirit helps me in my weakness, in my sin. The Spirit intercedes for me. So when I am faced with me sin, broken before my depravity, I have hope. The brokenness is my hope, because the brokenness is proof that a new Life is at work in my person.

Where is the hope in sin? It's in the ache. It's in the shame. It's in falling mendicant before a loving Savior, your face to the earth, and hearing a voice from heaven whisper in your ear, "Do not be dismayed. I am making you new."

For me, that started 21 years ago today.

I am not there yet. I am not wholly new, but Redemption is ever at work in me re-creating me in Christ's image, both in body (in action and vigor) and soul. Christ reigns even in my sin. His light shines through my darkness, cleaving it in two and severing its condemning hold on my life. On the cross, He said it is finished, and a few days later he proved it. We live in that hope.
__________________________

A few years ago, after having yet another run-in with my old self and subsequently finding myself on my face before my Savior in repentance, I heard those precious words whispered in my ear - "I am making you new." - and I wrote the following song to memorialize His goodness.

Through (A Hymnish Song of Sanctification)

I need Your grace to cover me
Because I waste Your clemency
How great is my dependency
Cover me
Cover me

And I am being made new
'Til my time here is through
So I rest my doubts in You
You said it was through

Yes I wander; yes I roam
Those aberrations I won't own
The tyrant sin has been dethroned
Bring me home
Bring me home

And I am being made new
'Til my time here is through
So I rest my doubts in You
You said it was through

I'll not view darkness with dismay
For when the night o'ertakes the day
I see beyond the earth's domain
There You reign
There You reign

And I am being made new
'Til my time here is through
So I rest my doubts in You
You said it was through

To be continued...

P.S. Have a great weekend.

A Constant Sunrise, Part 4, "My Strength"

2009-10-29T06:56:00.000-07:00

My Strength

I don't want to be like every other man
I don't want to look even though I can
From this rooftop I can see all across the land
And I don't want to be like every other man

Close my eyes
Most days I don't have the strength
Lord, I try
But some nights I just can't sleep

I don't want to see the end of the world
I heard that it was once brought down by the beauty of a girl
It's looking like a flood I need Your rainbow to unfurl
I don't want to see the end of the world

Clear my skies
Shipbuilding's never been my strength
Leave me dry
I would rather thirst than sink

I don't want to have to push these walls down to be free
But God, I want revenge on these dirty Philistines
Delilah may be fair, but she was so unfair to me
I don't want to have to push these walls down to be free

Take my eyes
But please return to me my strength
Let me die
Don't let them get the best of me

Restore me
Be my strength
Rescue me
Be my strength
Remember me
Be my strength

Lord, be my strength
_____________________________________

Sin is the offense and the accusation, the crime and the evidence, the inner confession of guilt that no lawyer can explain away.

Sin is the downpour that soaks the Pomeranian, wetting down the dog's coat and revealing the rat-like frame beneath.

Sin is the instant replay on the jumbotron showing your game-losing fumble again and again and again.

Sin will confront you with your depravity, highlight your dis-love of God and other people. Sin will knock you off your feet, lay you face down on the floor, and whisper in your air, "You did it again. You're never going to change. There is no hope for you. You're nothing. You're broken. You're lost."

And deep, deep down, you know the accuser if right.

So, if you're like me, in that moment you ask, "What hope do I have? Confronted so clearly with my sin, to what do I hold? The Liar cannot win. What will pull me through?"

Where is the hope in sin?

To be continued...

A Constant Sunrise, Part 3, "Shaken"

2009-10-28T07:30:00.000-07:00

I had been in Glacier for a week...

I know I talk about Glacier a lot, but I find that those four months were hugely formational for me. It was the first time I was ever really "away," the first time I was ever really on my own. Sure, I had been away at college, but I was only a three and a half hour drive from home, and for someone like me, who likes looooooong drives, three and a half hours is nothing. In Glacier, I had to make my own way for the first time. I had to figure things out and make things work, and I couldn't lean on anyone else for support. In a lot of ways, it was just me up there. So, I'm sorry if the stories I tell of Glacier get old, but there's no other way to tell the stories of all that's come after.

I had been in Glacier for a week, and it had been a hard week. I had gone through training, discovered my living situation to be much less than ideal, and opened a hotel. I was cut off from home, alone, and bewildered. But I did have email access, though it was aggravating and the service was spotty at best, and I had received an email from my mom detailing some of the happenings back home since I'd left.

She told me a woman in our church had taken a turn for the worst in the fight against cancer. This really didn't seem fair. A couple of years prior, cancer had taken another woman in my church. Both of these women were among the most godly I've ever known. Why would God let this happen?

I went for a hike. I climbed up to a waterfall near the hotel. The hike was short but steep, and it gave me a chance to process the stresses of the week and the news I'd received from home. I questioned God as I climbed. I asked Him where He was in this. I asked Him how he could let this happen again. I challenged his goodness. I wanted to know how He felt about what was happening. I wanted to know what He was doing about this. I wanted an answer to the questions I talked about in my post yesterday, the questions I'd been asking for two years - "Where is the hope in death? What is God up to here?"

And I arrived at the waterfall. I stood before it and felt small and helpless. It was so strong, so unchallengable. It created its own wind which pelted my face with a fine mist and slowly drenched my clothes. It was imposing.

And it was tearing the mountain in two. I looked up and could see how the torrent was steadily cutting like a knife through the limestone. The water crashed to the ground and churned big rocks into little rocks and took ahold of the little rocks and carried them further down the mountain. Given enough time, the water would turn the mountain into a plain.

And I thought about damming the river above the falls and stopping it from killing the mountain. I thought about how the way the waterfall was ripping apart the mountain was in some way a part of the great ripping of all creation that will only be finished when God shakes this world and recreates and restores everything that broke when we disobeyed in the garden at the beginning of the end. In a way, it's because of sin that the water falls. It was a terrible thing.

But it was also lovely. Yes, it was destroying the mountain, but God had given the destruction grace. He had imbued the falls with beauty. I realized then that there is more life in God's shaking of things than in all of our struggling to survive. God long ago took ahold of the necessary destruction of creation and began to work it all for good. No longer are things simply breaking. Now, God is making them fully alive.

I thought about the women in my church, the one taken and the one being took. I thought about the peace and joy that they had. I thought about the hope that they possessed. They were dying, as we all are, and they were beautiful. In their bought with cancer, they each exemplified a faith in Christ rooted in the sure hope of His resurrection. They so clearly knew that though they would die (from cancer or otherwise), yet they would live. Because of Christ, death was no longer the end. It was just another step toward the life abundant.

Make no mistake, cancer is not God's will. Car accidents are not God's will. Death was never part of the plan. Those things break God's heart as much as they break ours. More even. But He is God, and He is able to work good in everything. One day, everything will be made right.

It took me four months to get my head around that and put it into lyrics. The song went through multiple iterations, I tinkered with it constantly, I sang the chorus incessantly, and then one night in mid-September a week or so before I returned to Texas, it all fell into place. I popped out of bed one night as I was falling asleep, sat down at my desk, and wrote out the entire lyric. It was only upon penning the final stanza that I realized that my prayer was also Jesus' prayer, and He'd been praying it for much longer than I.

The song is "Shaken." The lyrics are below. Though I wrote it two years ago, it reached its full meaning this year when the woman who largely inspired it was finally shaken free of this waterfall filled world and gathered into the arms of our Savior. Shame for us, but good for her.

____________________________________________

Shaken

I see all things shaken
So quickly they fall
I weep as they're taken
The great and the small

And all I want is all things right

I see all things shaken
The earth and the sky
The breadth of creation
Must shudder and die

And all I want is all things right

I see all things shaken
No nothing is spared
Nothing forsaken
And all things repaired

And all I want is all things right
And all I want is all things right

I see all things shaken
Captives set free
Sleepers awaken
The broken believe

And all I want is all things right
And all I want is all things right

There's more life in the shaking
Than in all of this struggling to survive
For that which God is breaking
He is making fully alive

And all I want is all things right
And all I want is all things right

I see all things shaken
I see all things new
I see celebration
I am coming soon
____________________________________________

To be continued...

A Constant Sunrise, Part 2, "Getting Home"

2009-10-27T07:30:00.000-07:00

It's a three and a half hour drive from Valley View, TX, to College Station, TX. Usually, after a weekend home, I'd make the drive Sunday evening, getting back into Aggieland around 9 or 10 PM. Occasionally though, I'd go ahead a spend one more night in the comfort of my parents' house, get up extra early Monday morning, and make the drive back then.

This was one of those days. I had a class at 9:10 AM, so I had gotten up at 5 to drive back. My plan was to park at my house and ride my bike to campus. There should have been just enough time to do that if everything went perfectly.

Everything did not go perfectly.

As I drove down Harvey to turn on Munson to to turn on Gilchrist to get to the house I was renting with three other BYX guys, my cell phone rang. I looked down and saw that it was my mom calling, so I answered it.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"I'm almost home," I said, "I just pulled into College Station."

"Can you pull over to the side of the road for a minute? I need to tell you something."

Uh oh, I thought.

I pulled over into a parking lot, and my mom told me that as she arrived at school that morning, she learned that a high school classmate of mine had been involved in a hit and run over the weekend. My classmate had been walking home after a fight with her boyfriend in Houston where she had moved since high school, and a car had hit her as she walked. She was dead before the ambulance got there. This was the second classmate of mine to have been killed in a car-related accident in the three short years since we had graduated.

"Wow," I said.

"Yeah. Well, I knew that you'd want to know," my mom said, "I'll let you know about the funeral arrangements as soon as I hear anything."

"Thanks," I said.

"You ok?" she asked.

"Yeah. I'll, uh, I'll be fine."

"Call me when you get home, ok?" she said.

"Sure," I said, "Love ya'."

"I love you too," she said, and we hung up. I called her back a couple of minutes later after I had parked at our house.

A little later, I was hurriedly riding my bike across campus trying to get to my 9:10 class on time, but my mind was racing with prayers and questions about what had happened.

It seemed so unfair. I didn't really know how to react. The day seemed much like any other. The same people were milling around campus. The sky was as blue. The air was as muggy. But everything was suddenly different. The brokenness of our world was much more apparent.

And why had God allowed this to happen, and not just happen this time, but happen again? Why had another of my classmates been killed in a car accident? Couldn't God have stopped it? Why didn't He?

And to top it all off, as a Christian, I also wondered about my friends' eternal state. Where were they now? Did they know Christ? Were they saved? I think so, but how can we ever really know?

Anyway, before I had made it to class, my thoughts had congealed into a song, melody and all. The lyrics follow:

Getting Home

What can I say?
In many ways it's just another day
Another loss, another chance to pray
For this fallen world
Fallen so far
I'm shocked we haven't hit the bottom yet

Accident?
What ever happened to You providence?
Wasn't this something you could circumvent?
Stop a speeding car
Is that so hard?
I'm shocked You haven't solved this problem yet

Another call on the phone
"Pull over to the side of the road."
"I knew that you'd want to know."
"Call me when you get home."
Get home
This is all about getting home

Young and free
In many ways you were just like me
But in the end were you free indeed?
You were hurting so
As we all are
God only knows where you are now

Another call on the phone
"Pull over to the side of the road."
"I knew that you'd want to know."
"Call me when you get home."
Get home
This is all about getting home

This was my lament, my mourning. After this incident I began to ask God the hard question, "Where are You in death? Where is the hope in this?" My friend's death seemed so random and wrong. This was not judgement. This was not restitution. This was just bad, and so I began to look for the hope in this and in similar situations.

It was two years before I found an answer.

To be continued...

A Constant Sunrise, Part 1

2009-10-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

"Life is a constant sunrise, which death cannot interrupt any more than the night can swallow up the sun." - George MacDonald, Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood

I've written here about George MacDonald before, the Scottish preacher and writer from the last half of the 19th century whose books have so edified me over the years. I discovered MacDonald in college. He was recommended to me by another of my favorite authors, C.S. Lewis, who called MacDonald his "master." I've never read a book by MacDonald that didn't change my view of the world.

Now, sometimes his books are long and somewhat confusing. The language is different than what I'm used to, and there are occasional long stretches of mundanity in a few of his works. I've almost always made my way through though, and I've always been rewarded for doing so, but once I did not push through. Once, I set the book down and did not pick it back up.

That book was Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood, the story of a minister who moves into a new parish and gets to know his neighbors. I made it as far as the above quote about twelve pages in, and then I stopped, not because the book was tedious, but because that line so rocked my world, I didn't need to read any more of anything for a while.

You see, at the time (and still now), I was studying "hope." I wanted to know what it is, what it looks like, and why it is so important. I've said before that I feel like we use a lot of words related to our faith that don't really carry a lot of meaning for us. Words like faith, hope, love, and grace are so common they lose their power, they lose their actuality. I want to recover the depth of meaning that those words seem to have in the scriptures, and I started with "hope" because hope seems to be at the root of everything else.

As I studied, it seemed that hope exists for those situations when it makes no sense to hope. There's a profound irony that statement - hope is for hopeless times. When there is no longer any reason to hold on, that's when you need to hold on the most. Hope is that which you hold on to. Hope is what pulls you through.

Hope is a noun, a thing. We often use the word like a verb - "I hope to have pie soon." - but that's just another way of saying, "I want to have pie soon." The word hope doesn't really carry much weight in that sentence. To use the word like a noun - "My hope is to have pie soon." - is much stronger. In that sentence having pie is hope. "Having pie" is doing something for me. Pie has strength.

And "My hope is to have pie soon" begs the question, "Why?" Why am I holding on to the chance of pie? What is motivating that desire? Hunger? A long day at work? Sublime adoration of the pinnacle of pastries and its felt absence? In any case, something is amiss, and the promise of pie is pulling me through.

So I began asking the question, "What is the hope in the bleakest situations of our lives? Where is the hope in death? In sin? In broken relationships? When everything seems lost and beyond repair, what do we hold onto?"

The answer, of course, is Christ. Throughout the Bible, Christ is hope. In the Old Testament, hope was the promise of what Christ eventually did on the cross and by rising from the grave. After that cataclysmic event, hope is what Christ accomplished by dying on the cross and rising from the dead and in His promise to continue making all things right, the redemption of all things.

Let me reiterate: Hope is what Christ did on the cross and by rising from the dead, because that was the beginning of all things being made right.

In all those hopeless times when we need hope, Christ is our hope. His resurrection is the proof that even the worst things can be turned to good. His resurrection is proof that He is about the business of turning those bad things to good.

I don't think we should ignore the brokenness in our world. We shouldn't look past it. We should stare it in the face. We shouldn't live disconnected from reality with our heads in the clouds denying our world. Christ left heaven and came to earth and then sent us out into the world to give the hope we have to creation. God focused Himself here. Why should we focus anywhere else? Our hope is not "I'll Fly Away;" it's "This Is My Father's World."

And so my question wasn't, "What do we look to beyond those things?" It was was, "Where is the hope in those things? How have those things been redeemed?"

We believe that Christ is about the work of redeeming all things, of working good in every situation. We believe that nothing is beyond His reach, that He is God enough to use even the vilest plans of the enemy to accomplish His purposes. Isn't that the majesty of the cross? Isn't that the great victory of Easter? On Calvary, Sin killed God. Death won. But on Sunday morning, Christ rose, and Life started shooting through everything, like a concussive wave rippling through all of time, past and future. Christ used Sin and Death to bring Holiness and Life to all creation.

The sentence from Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood that I quoted above so rocked my world because it poetically crystalized my conviction that there must be hope in every situation. "Life is a constant sunrise" even when the night runs long and death seems inescapable. Life is breaking through in every moment.

Because of what Christ did, is doing, and promises to do, there must be hope in every situation, because He is in every situation working to make all things new and good. I made it my prayer to learn to see that hope, and God began to show me, and I began to write songs about what He showed me.

To Be Continued...

A Conversation Concerning Laments

2009-10-23T13:23:00.000-07:00

Below is the text of an email conversation my mom and I had this week about what I've learned about laments this week in my Writings class.

Here's how it works: My original email is in black. Her initial response is in red. My reply is in green. And her final reply is in blue.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend.
________________________

On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 7:08 AM, Carrie Davidson wrote:

What did you "surmise" about laments? I OFTEN know there are many facets of worship that we do not "employ."

----- Original Message -----
Between: Elijah Davidson
And: Carrie Davidson
Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 11:08 AM
Subject: Re: An Observation

The neatest things about laments that I learned include:

Laments only make sense in the context of a covenant relationship. (I understand this.) One wouldn't dare voice anger in a lesser relationship. Lamenting to God is covenant-enforcing speech. The Israelites understood that they were in a mutual relationship with God, so when He didn't seem to be keeping up His side of things, they didn't hesitate to call Him on it. (They did understand that it was really them that didn't keep up their side of things, right?) Yes. They understood that, but in the laments, they are questioning God. Laments accuse God of not keeping His part of the deal. Of course God is keeping His side of things, but sometimes, I have to admit, it doesn't seem that way. And in any case, God doesn't go silent because we sin, like some sort of karma thing. His love is unfailing, and laments constantly reaffirm this and remind God of it. Ok, I see this.

Laments affirm, rather than deny, the authority of God, because laments say, "If you don't help me, I am lost. No one else has the power to save me, and I'm not looking to anyone else for salvation. You're it." (That is a really great sentence and explanation. I understand this.)

Laments, practiced regularly by a congregation, have the potential to legitimate a different kind of conversation about another side of life. People are encouraged to come back to church because there they find room to express things that normal life doesn't afford them the opportunity to express. In laments, people can tell the truth about the full human experience. (Again, really great.)

Laments, and prayer in general, in the Bible are always about trying to get God to change. (I don't really understand this "change"? When I pray I am not thinking that God is going to change. I don't think God changes, does he? Don't we want him to act on our behalf?) Laments want God to move. They want Him to change in the respect that right now He doesn't seem to be involving Himself. Laments cry, "GET INVOLVED, GOD!" Prayer in the Bible, Dr. Goldingay says, is always about trying to get God to act. It's never about changing us. Prayer isn't about changing us. (Sometime I think God wants me to change when I am praying. And, I change how I am praying or sometime I accept His answer during the prayer. Or like you said below the prayer helps me get my head on straight. Is that right?) That's not wrong. I think prayer does change us, but Dr. Goldingay's point was that often we make prayer ALL about changing us, because we don't dare believe that God will answer our prayers, or perhaps He's said no so many times we doubt He'll ever say yes, so we change our hope in prayer. Prayer changes us, but that's not what it's ALL about. People in the Bible pray to get God to move. Ok, wow, that is reeeeally good. Throughout the Bible, when people pray, they expect God to act. He doesn't always act though, but the pray-er always expects Him to and trusts Him regardless.(Yes, I understand this.)

In that respect, laments are like rhetorical terrorism - they are the speech of a weaker party trying to force a stronger party to change. They are not simply emotional release or ways to "get ones head on straight."

In class last night, I wished so bad that everyone I know could have been there with me. The way Dr. Goldingay talked about prayer and lamenting was so challenging and refreshing. He tore down all the rationalizations and excuses we make for prayer and why God doesn't seem to answer prayer sometime. (I would love to hear more, more, more.) It was neat. By the end of class, I just wanted to pray more. (I need to want to pray more.)

Dr. Goldingay's wife had multiple sclerosis, and she slowly declined over the past forty years. He stood by her and cared for her with remarkable faithfulness. She died this summer. I'm sure he's prayed a number of laments on behalf of his late wife. I'm sure he asked for healing many times. As he talked about prayer in the Bible always being about asking God to change regardless of whether or not God changes, I thought, if John Goldingay can believe that, I can too.

Elijah

elijahdavidson.blogspot.com

Tales of the City

2009-10-22T13:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I wrote about my fondness for stories. Today, I want to point you to a collection of stories.

A couple of weeks ago, I discovered an amazing webpage created and maintained by the New York Times: One in 8 Million. One in 8 Million is a collection of people's stories, in their own words, told over a slide show of beautiful black and white photographs of these people's lives. I've been working through the stories slowly, savoring each one like the exquisite sip of humanity that it is.

Go. Make small talk with Joe Keegan, a real life Hitch. Pull up a chair to Liberian home chef Eliza Smith's table. Dig up old outhouses with Jack Fortmeyer, retired NYC fireman and treasure hunter. Listen and see. Prepare to lose time delving into the tales they tell of their lives. There are more stories here than I have yet had time to enjoy.

And they're still adding more.

(Re)telling Tales

2009-10-21T07:20:00.000-07:00

Tell me a story. Tell it to me again. And again. And again.

I'm a bit like a little kid, I guess, like the child who says, "Read it again, daddy," as soon as his father finishes her bedtime story. I really enjoy hearing stories multiple times.

When my sister Abigail was little, she watched The Sound of Music obsessively. For what seemed like a period of years, though it was probably much shorter, there was hardly a time when our house wasn't alive with the sound of Julie Andrews singing. I never really minded.

My brother and I shared a bedroom for most of our lives. Amos liked to watch movies as he was going to sleep. I didn't, because if there was a movie on I wouldn't go to sleep. He'd doze off a few minutes after pushing play; I'd just stay up until the movie was over. He had his favorites - The Pistol, Angels in the Outfield, Cool Runnings, Space Jam - and while he slept, I watched them all over and over and over again. For a while there, I could quote every line of Angels in the Outfield from beginning to end.

My father has this same habit, so maybe that's where we get it from. I can't tell you how many times I've walked into the living room to find my dad sliding a James Bond film that he's seen a hundred times into the VCR or watching a movie on TCM that they show at least once a month. He doesn't re-watch things with the same intensity as my siblings did when they were younger, but I think that has more to do with available time than it does with considered preference. I also think he re-watches things because while doing so he can devote his attention to another task, like drawing up football plays or planning workout routines.

I guess I'm thinking about this because last week I went with my friend Andre into Hollywood to see the new Coen brothers film, A Serious Man. We went to the same theater I went to see The Godfather at last September. I was telling Andre about that experience, and I mentioned that I've probably seen The Godfather twenty times at least, but seeing it on the big screen was like seeing it for the first time. He commented on my tendency to watch movies multiple times. I hadn't thought about it much before.

Then last night, I watched The Searchers with my friend Stacey, and after the movie was over, she thanked me for explaining the parts of the movie she found confusing to her as we watched. I explained that I have probably seen The Searchers seven or eight times, so keeping track of the story is no problem at this point. She, like Andre a week before, was aghast that I had watched a movie so many times. If they only knew how many times I've seen Apollo 13 or Rudy...

But why, I wonder, do I like to watch movies so many times? Unlike my father who works on other things while the movie plays in the background, and unlike my brother who promptly fell asleep as soon as the movie started, and unlike Abigail who was three years old, I really watch movies every time I watch them. I pay attention. I engage in the story. Why do I do that?

I do learn more about the characters and the story each time I watch. I understand the story better. For instance, last night I noticed that Ethan gives his brother "Yankee dollars without a mark on 'em." This implies that Ethan stole them. Also, it was more clear to me than ever that Ethan and his sister-in-law likely had an affair in the past, and the attention that he gives the oldest daughter, Lucy, might perhaps imply that she is actually his daughter. And the tombstone that Debbie hides behind is that of Ethan's late wife who had been killed by Comanches years before which explains in part his racism.

But that's only part of the reason why I like watching movies multiple times. I also watch movies that are less deep and that I don't learn new things about every time I watch them.

I think I just really like stories. And I like them in all forms too. My favorite stories are those told by people about their own lives. I could sit and listen to another person talk all day about where they're from, what they've done, what they're doing, where they hope to go, and what they hope to do. When a person tells me his or her story, I feel like he or she is telling me about him or herself. They're explaining who they are, how they got that way, and who they think they are becoming or who they want to become. To borrow a metaphor I used in my class reflection yesterday on Acts 4:32, a person's story is the surfboard, the wave, and the shoreline. Stories are everything. I understand people as they tell me their stories, and I understand myself and our world better too. I might even go as far as to say I understand God a little better as well.

So, tell me a story, and then tell it to me again and again and again. Let's figure things out together.

Deconstructing Webb

2009-10-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

The following is my review of Derek Webb's latest album, Stockholm Syndrome. The review appears in this week's Semi, Fuller's weekly student paper. If you are part of the Fuller community, I discourage you from reading my review here; pick up a Semi instead and enjoy some of the other articles contained therein. If you're not part of the Fuller community, and if you're not my sister Hannah, enjoy.

Deconstruction, the process of systematically tearing something down in order to expose its own internal assumptions and subvert its proposed unity, is at the heart of Derek Webb’s latest album, Stockholm Syndrome (2009), a hip-hop influenced look at the things we love instead of Christ, the very things that hold us captive and abuse us.

Webb has a history of deconstructing the modern Western church. On 2003’s She Must and Shall Go Free, Webb held his decidedly Reformed lens up to the ecclesiological world around him to expose the American church’s infatuation with things other than Christ. This is a Webb that many were comfortable with. Listeners rallied to his side to rail against the American church, never mind that his lament is a personal one, and listeners were meant to sing it for themselves. Admittedly, many did. She Must and Shall Go Free also sits comfortably musically in the realm of Folk and Country, not unlike Webb’s work with his former band Caedmon’s Call. This was a Derek Webb many could, and still do, cheer.

Webb’s later efforts have proved harder for listeners to applaud. His sophomore effort, I See Things Upside Down (2004), was a more Wilco-esque album which began Webb’s process of personal musical deconstruction. The tunes still have an acoustic heart, but that heart is hidden beneath layers of electricity and eccentricity.

The next two entries into Webb’s catalogue, the sparse and mellow Mockingbird (2005) and the Revolver-era Beatles inspired The Ringing Bell (2007), differ stylistically from Webb’s previous offerings and continue the process Webb started with She Must and Shall Go Free of deconstructing what the church believes as evidenced by what the church does. These albums are the logical out-working of a faith rooted in the love of Christ. “If we love Christ,” Webb seems to ask, “What will that look like practically in the world?” Mockingbird, following the faith-focused election season of 2004, focuses on politics and the church’s readiness to align itself with a political system instead of the coming kingdom of Christ. The Ringing Bell is about the American church’s propensity to violence of all kinds, ideological and otherwise, underscored by a call for peacemaking.

Interspersed throughout both albums are a collection of love songs serious and sweet serving as a gentle balance to the indictments of Webb’s other tunes. They are the hope that shines like a star through the night of our depravity, songs pointing to the good coming as sure as the dawn.

Enter Stockholm Syndrome, Webb’s most recent addition to his repertoire. Musically, Webb has, with this album, completed the demolition begun with I See Things Upside Down, and finally freed himself from the supposed confines of the acoustic singer-songwriter world. As Webb’s co-producer Josh Moore says in Paradise Is A Parking Lot, a documentary chronicling the making of Stockholm Syndrome that was released with the album, “[Stockholm Syndrome] sounds like it has an organic origin but has been severely destroyed in the process of getting to the final thing.” Consider Webb’s sound thoroughly deconstructed, though he did not do this for solely aesthetic reasons. As Webb has stated in multiple interviews, he sees himself as a folk-singer, and in his view, folk music points to something beyond the singer. To Webb, today’s Woody Guthries and Joan Baezes are hip-hop artists, and so he incarnated Stockholm Syndrome into a more urban musical world, and like Woody Guthrie, Stockholm Syndrome is all but unrelenting in its protests.

Unlike previous offerings, Derek Webb peppers his latest album with no counter-balancing love songs. Like the persistent snare that provides the skeleton of track 13, “What You Give Up To Get It,” the listener is hit again and again with the idea that we all too frequently sell ourselves to the ones who abuse us ideologically. Webb highlights causes, sexuality, worship style, placing hope in the state, materialism, and the End as things that steal focus away from what really matters. The album’s lynchpin, and the song that has aroused the most controversy because of the language Webb uses in the song, is “What Matters More,” a three minute and two second cry for Christians to consider if people or platitudes deserve the largest portion of our attention.

And protest music has never been so fun. Stockholm Syndrome is packed with head-bobbing beats and rollicking bass lines. Just try and sit still while listening to “Cobra Con,” “I Love/Hate You,” or “Jena & Jimmy.” This is club music at heart. It’s music with both a message and a groove meant to make you move.

But don’t take my word for it. Find out for yourself. The Brehm Center, ASC, and Arts Concerns are pleased to offer you the opportunity to see and hear Derek Webb in person on November 6 right here on campus for $10.00 per ticket. The show will be preceded that day by a Q&A time with Webb. This is a private show for the Fuller community, and you can purchase tickets in the Brehm Center, the Catalyst, and the Office of Alumni/ae and Church Relations. I hope to see you at the show. It should prove to be a night of thought-provoking and dance-inducing music.

Elijah Davidson (2nd yr WTA) plans to show no mercy to the dance floor should Derek play “Jena & Jimmy” during the show.

If...

2009-10-19T06:30:00.000-07:00

If my blog makes you smile or brightens your day or, better yet, actually makes you laugh...

Then that's good. I'm glad. That's probably enough, but if that's all it does, then I have failed.

If my blog inspires you to love the great outdoors...

To dare to spend a night under the stars...

To experience the majesty of Creation and worship the Creator...

Then that's good. I'm glad. I can only hope to instill such spirit of adventure, but if that's all it does, I have failed.

If my blog helps you to see the world around you a little differently...

To notice the small ways God is breaking in all around...

To daily be intrigued by the mystery all around us, all the things we can't explain...

To see the miracles...

Wonderful. I'm so very happy if that's the case, but if that's all, once again I've failed.

If my blog makes you want to have a piece of pie, fantastic! We're getting closer.

If you want to share that slice with me or someone else, we're closer still.

If my blog makes you start looking for excuses to pour a glass of coffee or tea and sink a fork in a slice of fresh strawberry or banana cream pie...

And all the while to be engaged wholeheartedly in conversation with another person, sharing hopes and dreams and thoughts about life and God...

Then we're very close to what we're aiming for, but we're not quite there. I'm still failing.

If that is all, then all my words have been in vain.

But if my blog instills in you hope...

If you smile or even laugh because you've found reason to be glad in the face of uncertainty and doubt and injustice...

If you want to go outside and take to the mountains because there God's great goodness working in all things is so evident, because there you find space and time aplenty to rest with Him, and because returning you see easier the beauty of the world around you and all He is doing everywhere...

If in noticing the influx of His kingdom and celebrating the mystery around us, you are motivated to be part of what He is doing in the world every moment of every day in every context...

If with every piece of pie and every conversation you are celebrating the good work Christ did on the cross that reconciled us to God and us to each other, if you are proclaiming that unity with every mouthful...

If you find yourself believing in a kingdom not just coming one day on the clouds but already all around us and able to be established further with every act of love...

If you discover you are excited to live as if heaven is already here, and the sin-free customs of that place are the customs of this life too...

Then I have succeeded.

Not a single keystroke has been wasted.

An Observation

2009-10-16T17:32:00.000-07:00

There is a Norwegian going through boxes in my living room while I read an article online about laments and their function in the worship of a believer and the Church.

That's a ridiculous statement.

Two years ago this time, I was thoroughly confused about what to do next in life.

God is very awesome.

Have a great weekend.

Morning Fog

2009-10-15T07:45:00.000-07:00

We are draped in fog. Between the time when I walked to work this morning - early because of a meeting and a class I have to take off for during the middle of the day - and now, the world has turned white, and I wonder, is the world shrouded, or is it veiled?

Isn't it odd that we associate the same color with death and marriage? You may think I'm wrong. You may think that death is shaded black and that marriage and white are one.

True, we do tend to wear black to funerals, but we, and by "we" I mean humanity across the ages, have typically wrapped our deceased in white. Think about the mummies of ancient Egypt clothed in white linen or the white robes worn by worshipers as they are dipped into the pool and baptized into Christ's death. Think about the white sheets pulled dramatically over the faces of the dead in hospitals hiding the departed from the land of the living.

And clearly marriage and the color white go hand in hand, a symbol of the purity and holiness of two people performing that great prophetic act of choosing love in a world plagued by hate.

But is my world, consumed this morning in a sea of white, shrouded or veiled? I think perhaps both.

For the world is passing on. It is dying, being shaken, drifting away. Sin has spread its poison through the veins of every leaf on every tree in creation, and their colors are changing, their complexions are growing pale, and one by one they fall dead to the earth. For as the Maker of the earth in Whose grip everything is held together died, so all that He made must follow suit. Everything must die. The sheet must be pulled over the eyes of all creation. The end must come.

But just as the Maker sat up on the stone and handed his shroud to the attending angel to dutifully fold, so His creation is being called forth from the grave. "Remove the grave clothes. Dress my love in white. The wedding feast to come is now near at hand."

Creation is every day drawing closer to the great consummation of all things. With every leaf that falls a bit less of sin's poison remains in the tree. Death is gasping. Condemnation is taking its dying breath. Resurrection is being aroused. A new day dawns. And soon the Son will break through, the veil will be lifted, heaven will come to earth, and they will be one.

In fact, I see a bit of blue even now.
_________________________________

Edit: This is the current view from my office window.

Great Men Carry Bags

2009-10-14T12:25:00.000-07:00

Tonight, my friend Patrick is going to see U2 in Houston. Patrick is very excited about this. For the last couple of days, he has been inundating his Gmail status box and Twitter feed with clever U2 related phrases like "U2morrow" and "It's a beaU2iful day!"

Hilarious.

Besides providing me with moments of mirth, these communications of his charge for the coming concert are inspiring nothing less than envy in our mutual friend Jon. Jon has replied numerous times that he would like Patrick to sneak him into the concert in some sort of bag or luggage.

Because it makes sense that Patrick would be carrying a steamer trunk in with him to the show.

Admittedly, many things make sense in Jon's world that don't exactly make sense in the world the rest of us live in - things like giant cranes in national parks, not being able to live without things one doesn't own, and excitement over accomplishing great athletic feats like rubbing ones stomach and patting ones head at the same time.

I do admire his ingenuity though.

Somewhere in the midst of Patrick making fun of Jon for his suggestion, I got caught in the crossfire, and suddenly, I was being made fun of for carrying a briefcase.

That's too far, Patrick.

I adore my briefcase. I wrote a whole post back in January about how the two of us met. It has been my faithful companion now for ten months, and I refuse to let someone cast aspersions on it.

A man needs a bag. Now, there's no need for it to be frilly or flowery like a purse. It should be functional and simple and sophisticated. It's part of being prepared. My father carries a bag, I carry a bag, and I will one day teach my sons to do the same.

You see, I need, at a moment's notice, to be able to whip out a pen in case I come across another man (undoubtedly not carrying a bag) who needs to endorse his paycheck so he can cash it and his family can eat. I need to have my iPod close so I can let some sad young woman on the train who's just been turned down at another job interview listen to Tom Petty's "Won't Back Down" and give her the umph to try again. I need my Bible handy in case I stumble upon a beleaguered college professor in the midst of an existential crisis. My bag is to me what Batman's utility belt is to him. Don't dare make it an object of ridicule. One day it just might save you.

So, next time you see a man walking down the street with a satchel slung over his shoulder or a briefcase in his hand or dragging a steamer trunk behind him, stop and thank him.

And if you work for Reliant Stadium, you might want to check to see if someone's hiding inside that distinguished urban accessory. If it's Jon, let him be. He just doesn't know any better.
__________________________________________

In an unrelated story, the fun reactions to Elijah's goatee continue.

Today while walking home for lunch, I passed my friend Brittany. I haven't seen Brittany for months, because she was gone all summer. As I passed, I said hello, and I don't think she recognized me at first, because after we'd passed each other, I heard her exclaim behind me, "Oh! Elijah with a beard!" Then we stopped for a moment and caught up.

An Eruption of Euphoria

2009-10-13T06:15:00.000-07:00

Today, I feel euphoric, and there are a whole host of reasons why. I must tell you about them.

First of all, I woke up yesterday morning strangely excited about the coming week. I don't know why, but I just had a feeling this week would be fun. So far, it has not disappointed.

Yesterday morning I confirmed something I'd been working on for the past few months. Derek Webb is coming to Fuller. The Brehm Center, the All Seminary Council, and the Arts Concerns group is excited to host my favorite living musician on November 6. It's going to be a private show for the Fuller community. Now that we've cemented the deal with Derek's management, the real work starts, but I couldn't be more excited.

Then, yesterday at lunch, I learned via text message that one of my best friends got engaged on Sunday evening. I walked around the rest of the day with a big, goofy grin on my face. I knew he was proposing, but I hadn't heard until then how it went. Though admittedly, if the outcome is at all uncertain, few guys would dare propose. Still, there is nothing but joy in the outcome. Also he used my tripod throughout the day to take pictures of himself and his bride to be, which means my tripod, which has scaled lofty peaks and braved the driest deserts, is now about a billion times more awesome than it was Sunday morning.

Next, yesterday's skies were overcast. That may not seem like news to you, but in Pasadena the skies haven't been overcast since June, and even then they were just grey. There weren't any perceivable clouds. Yesterday included full-fledged (correct me if I'm wrong, Dianne) cumulonimbus mountainous piles of floating vapor. When the fires were raging across the San Gabriels a month or so ago, I imagined the smoke as clouds, and then I felt guilty for enjoying its presence. They say today it might rain. If it does, I may go outside and dance in it.

I've also been having a tremendous amount of fun with my banjo recently. I've been writing a lot of music without lyrics. This is odd for me. As you may have surmised from the verbosity of my blogging, I'm a word guy, and I almost always write lyrics before music. Lately, I've been discovering new facets of my banjo and tinkering with melodies and harmonies without giving hardly a thought to lyrics at all. It's tons of fun, and it's a new way to go about writing a song for me - start with melody and music and see what develops.

My weekend, by the way, was wonderful. I hope yours was as good as mine. Friday evening I attended Art Night Pasadena, during which art galleries all over Pasadena open their doors por gratis to the public. I tried on traditional Asian garb at the Pacific Asia Museum.

We went to the Art Center of Design, and I felt like I was looking at the future.

We also stopped by the symphony hall and listened for a bit to a string quartet playing Beatles music and a man playing the organ like he had eight arms. It was all great. I was even interviewed by the City at one point about what I like about Pasadena. While wearing my fedora.

On Saturday morning I experienced an immediate, miraculous answer to prayer, drove a friend to the airport (one of my favorite things to do), saw Toy Story 1 & 2 back to back in 3D, took a nice, long nap, went to a friend's housewarming party, and then I came home and went to sleep. It was a fantastic day.

On Sunday I got to play my banjo in church. And church was awesome, by the way, regardless of the presence of my banjo, because Jon preached on confession and we had a time of group confession of sin. It was awesome. I love what's going on in our church. I'm proud to be a part of it and excited about what's in store. I feel so very blessed that God has allowed me to be a part of this body. Sunday afternoon consisted of lunch with a friend about a recovery ministry he's part of which I am writing an article about for the Semi, writing another upcoming Semi article reviewing Derek Webb's latest album and plugging the concert, and then another church-related meeting that evening. The whole weekend was very good.

And like I said at the beginning of this post, I have great expectations for the coming week. I can't wait to see what more good it brings. It has a lot to live up to so far.

The Blessing of the Silence of God

2009-10-12T07:25:00.000-07:00

The silence of God can be a very puzzling thing. We think, or at least I think, God knows everything. He knows what I'm going through. He knows how hard it is, and He could fix it or He could comfort me or He could tell me how this is all going to be ok in the end. Why doesn't He? Where is He? Why is He silent?

I want to be transparent here today. I am not now plagued by the silence of God. There is no great turmoil in my life right now. In fact, I have as much peace and am as much amazed at the goodness of my life as I have ever been. I would not change anything about my life right now. I am not desperate for answers right now. I'm good.

But I haven't always been in this place. There have been times - some distant, some recent - when I've cried out to God begging Him to explain my world to me, to give meaning to my pain, to fix it if He would. In those times, He was silent, and I was bewildered.

Those times passed. I recovered. God spoke again. My world reformed. Everything was good.

I've pondered since then though God's confusing silence. Why does He seem to be so talkative when things are going well or when He's confronting me about some sin in my life but then turn mum when I most need answers? Where is He then? What is He doing?

When I find myself at a loss and able only to sit silently in grief, when I'm out of words to pray and the strength to pray them, when my heart is broken and weary of believing, when injustice seems to win, I think God is there sitting silently beside me, His heart as broken as mine, His eyes as wet with tears.

I think injustice bothers God more than it bothers us. I think the effect of sin on the world, on us, and on our relationships breaks His heart more than it breaks ours. I think bad things happen, things that are against the will of God, and I think He is distressed by it.

"In all [our] distress, He too was distressed, and the angel of His presence saved [us]. In His love and mercy, He redeems [us]. He lifts [us] up and carries us all our days."

That's Isaiah 63:9, more or less. It says that what bothers us bothers God, and He redeems. The bad things are bad, but God is good and makes good of even the bad things.

I think God is sometimes silent because there is nothing to say. The situation is just broken. It's not what He wants. It's bad. For Him to speak and claim the brokenness as His design would be wrong. Though He tries us, He does not terrify. He does not explain the bad away either. He does not cheapen the injustice. In His silence, by grieving alongside us, He bestows great worth to our pain. He acknowledges it and affirms the wrongness of it all. "Yes. You should hurt," His silence says, "Because this is wrong." In our distress, He too is distressed.

But He does not stop there. He does what only He can do. He takes what is shattered and redeems it. He does the miracle of making good from bad, wine from water, life from death. In love and mercy, He redeems.

The silence of God isn't plague; it is presence. He's with us fully no matter what we're going through. He never leaves us nor forsakes us. And the presence and affirmation of God in our distress should give us great hope, because He cannot let injustice reign. He redeems and makes good of even our most distressing situations.

Amen.

Amen.

Seminary Is A Daily Ecclesiological Conundrum

2009-10-09T06:02:00.000-07:00

To give you a taste of the kind of reflection I post on my other personal blog, Acts 4:32, I'm cross-posting my reflection following class yesterday. These are the kinds of things I'm forced to think about daily in seminary. I love it, and I hate it all at the same time.

I'm going to leave you with this for the weekend, because this is what I'm left to ponder for the weekend (and beyond) as well.

If anyone has any thoughts on my questions, I'd love to hear them.
_______________________________________

Class Reflection - 10/8/09

"The studies show that after two years of coming into church, new believers do not lead others to Christ because by that time they have severed all ties with the non-Christian world."

"[The leaders of alternative worship communities] didn't want Christians who were having their 'fun night out of naughtiness' in the pubs. They wanted Christians who were already there, whose lives already revolved around pubs."

"The reason other Christians go [to the pubs] is to support those who are already there."

Welcome to my internal struggle...

McGavran, in The Bridges of God, discusses what he sees as the proper end of the mission station. He says they should be shut down and their resources extended to support People Movements. He says the missionaries should build their own homes, get jobs in the country, and humbly help the indigenous movements flourish.

He says they should do this because the mission station and the missionaries who work there are ineffective in spreading the gospel.

Modern church movements like to espouse the benefits of "being the church" where people are. They don't seek to pull people out of their societies; they seek instead to be Christians among their community, the same community they were a part of before they became Christians. For instance, if a person comes to Christ whose life pre-Christ revolved around hanging out on a street corner with a drug dealer, the other Christians encourage the new convert to keep hanging out on the street corner with the drug dealer, much like McGavran celebrated evangelization by family members to family members.

What then am I do to?

I have been raised in the church. My friends, past and present, are mostly all Christians. I attend seminary; it's the reason I moved to California. I work at the seminary; it's how I afford to stay in California. I am also involved in ministry in my church. My life revolves around church and Church related people and things.

And I love my friends.
And I love my coworkers.
And I love where I am in life.

But I am not in community with non-Christians. By virtue of the family I was born into, the orbits of my family's life, and the orbit of my life now, I live in a "Christian" world. Separate. Sequestered. Set apart.

Have I become a mission station?

Is the only hope for me to be "shut down," my resources funneled-off to support "indigenous" movements? Am I precluded from leading Peoples to Christ because I was raised Christian? Can I only function in an ancillary role? Am I the greatest which must become the least, and if so, how do I do that?

Do I need to settle down, build a house, get a job, and learn to be part of the non-Christian society around me? Do I need to strip away all that has formed me, all that has made me who I am? What of my seminary training? What of my (oftentimes fought against) urge to minister, to pastor, to lead people in worship? Does that pursuit, and the aquarium I've entered into to be trained for that end, disqualify me from ministering, from pastoring, from leading people in worship?

I hope not, but what am I to do?

Photography, Facebook Conversations, and Craft

2009-10-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

Well, this will be different.

Today, for a real change, I'm going to post a message and reply from a Facebook conversation. I don't know much about photography, but I'm always eager to learn more. People often comment about the pictures I take. My reply is always that it's easy to take good pictures when you go to beautiful places. However, there is a thought process behind each picture, and this touches on a facet of creating common to all art.

Artists must hold in tension unbridled creativity and craft. The artists works and sweats and bleeds in order to get better at his or her art form. The singer does vocal exercises, the painter studies photographs, the guitarist practices picking patterns, the writer reads and studies grammar and tries out different forms. And then, buttressed by hours of patient practice, the artist creates. The spontaneity and magic of an inspiring work is fed by the earthiness of intention and dedication, and this is true in life as well as in art.

P.S. If you have any photography tips for me, please share!
________________________________________

Jason Allen Medina 08 October at 06:52

Hey Elijah!

I've really enjoyed looking at your pictures. When we went hiking, you were talking about shutter speed, ISO, etc. I'm just curious, for the pix for the sunrise in Joshua Tree, what were your settings? I realize picture taking is at much art as it is craft, but I'm still trying to develop both for myself as I learn all the settings. Do you remember what they were? And more importantly, why they were? I understand the shutter speed/aperture value, but I'm still grapsing ISO.

Thanks, man!

Jason
________________________________________

Elijah Davidson 08 October at 09:03

Honestly, Jason, for the sunrise pictures in the cactus garden, I left my camera on automatic mode and didn't mess with the settings. But, I do know my camera pretty well, and I have ways of tinkering with the ISO and shutter speed in automatic mode. Let me explain.

ISO refers to how sensitive your "film" is to light. Before digital cameras, different films had different ISO speed, so you would need a different role of film for a different lighting situation. With digital cameras, this effect is simulated. You probably knew this.

I like to think of ISO as how much light my camera is going to let in. This works in cooperation with shutter speed, because leaving my shutter open longer also lets in more light. Higher ISO typically yields a grainier image, so I tend to try to keep my ISO set as low as possible and leave my shutter open for longer periods of time. This works fine for the kind of pictures I most ofter take - nature shots. Nature tends to sit pretty still, so the longer shutter time isn't a problem. Should I try to capture something in motion in a low light situation, I would need to shorten the shutter speed and raise the ISO.

Like I said before, for the pictures in Joshua Tree of the Cholla Cactus Garden, I left my camera on automatic mode. I didn't adjust the ISO and shutter speed manually. However, I did work with my camera to help it choose the correct settings for itself. Here's how:

On my little point and shoot, I can push the button down half-way to focus in on what I want to take a picture of. Doing so also forces the camera to select an ISO setting and shutter speed on its own. As long as I keep the button pressed half-way down those settings are locked in. To take the pictures where the cacti are silhouetted in the colors of the sunrise, I would focus first on the sunrise. The camera detects the abundance of light and lowers its ISO setting and shutter speed. Then, with the button half pressed, I would reframe my picture around the cacti. Had I started by focusing on the cacti, the cacti would have been better illuminated and the sky would have appeared almost white because the camera would have chosen a higher ISO and shutter speed.

I also have learned how to tinker with the Macro/Micro setting while in automatic mode, knowing when to zoom in and when to just move my camera closer. I'm just now learning how and when to adjust that in manual mode, though as I look at my Joshua Tree pictures, I wish I knew better now, so I could have been more intentional about what was and wasn't in focus in each picture.

That's probably more info than you wanted or needed, but I hope it makes sense. I don't know much about photography, but I feel like I'm getting to know my camera pretty well.

Elijah
________________________________________

You can view my Joshua Tree photos, including the ones Jason was asking about here:

The Blog Blog

2009-10-07T08:06:00.000-07:00

As I'm sure you are aware, by day I am a mild mannered administrative assistant for the Office of Alumni/ae and Church Relations here at Fuller. By night, I don my disguise, dash into the darkness, and descend with daring upon the ne'er-do-wells endangering the denizens of downtown Pasadena.

Well, maybe not, but I do change into casual clothes, pack up my laptop, and retreat to some remote corner of campus to study. I'm your run-of-the-mill AA by day and a superhero student by night, and somewhere in the midst of that, I find time to write.

Typically, I've written my daily blog post in the morning of the day it posts, but with my new job, busy as it is, I am unable to do that, so I've had to adjust my writing schedule.

Perhaps you noticed.

On Monday, I didn't post, because I've figured out that I have to move to writing in the evening for the coming day. I made that switch on Monday, and now we are good to go again.

This schedule adjustment is just part of the greater Fall Quarter related reordering of my life. Working full time in addition to some of the other responsibilities I've garnered on top of class has forced me to restructure things a bit.

Some of those new responsibilities include more writing (Yay!). Over on the right side of the screen, as I mentioned last week, you'll find a new set of links, "Other Places I Blog." These are other places I'll be writing during the coming quarter and year.

First on the list is "Acts 4:32," my other personal blog. For my New Church Movements class, I am required to post reflections on each class session as well as chapter by chapter notes on the books I read for class. These posts will all be short, though there will be many of them. Also while I haven't done so as of yet, I will write them as if I'm writing to you and not just for myself so that you might find them edifying as well.

New Church Movements is essentially a 10-week church planting seminar, so Acts 4:32 will be my thoughts on church and how one might do church. If you follow my posts, it will kind of be like you are going through my class with me this quarter, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on church things, so comment away.

Second on the list, is "The Brehm Blog." The Brehm Center for Worship, Theology, and the Arts houses my degree program here at Fuller, and last Spring, they asked me to join their new blogging team. Honestly, I've been pretty bad about posting on the Brehm Blog all summer, but I intend to do better in the future. My plan is to post once a week over there throughout the coming year.

I'm not the only one who writes for the Brehm Blog however, so other people's post will appear on my sidebar as well. Each post (whether written by me or not) should be interesting though. They will all deal with worship and the arts and how we engage theologically with them. My most recent post over there was about a street artist in New York city. Check it out.

A third blog is soon to be added to this list as well. I have been chosen as a Fuller Blogger as well. I and 16 others have agreed to blog at least once a week on whatever we want as a window into the world of Fuller for potential students. I'll be writing there about seminary related things. I'm thinking my posts will mostly be short narratives about seminary life. We'll see. I don't have the link up yet because the blog itself isn't up yet, but as soon as it is, I'll let you know.

And, my final point of business today concerns all of these other blogs as a whole.

In the past, as I've posted in other places, like on the Brehm Blog for example, I have cross-posted here as well, meaning, the same post appeared on Wish You Were Here and on the Brehm Blog. I will not be doing that anymore. Each blog will be its own separate entity. As a writer, I feel that this is the most ethical and brave way to post. It would be easy to simply continue writing this blog only and also post things from here on the Brehm and Fuller blogs, but the Brehm Center and Fuller are giving me publicity and a platform, and I feel obligated to give them ~~peculiar~~ particular content. Also, this will push me to be a better writer because I'll have to be more disciplined and focused. It's a matter of integrity and intent.

Now, you might be asking, "But Elijah, does this mean you'll be posting here less?" Maybe, but not much less. I used to fear that the more I wrote, the less I'd have to write, but that is just not how it works. Because I process my world through text, the more I write, the better I understand things, and the more I have to write about. If I post here less frequently, it will be because of my busier schedule, not because I am writing in other places. Writing restores me, and so I am excited to be doing more of it.

Between Days 43 and 44

2009-10-05T17:40:00.000-07:00

Day 43, 14 days out of Tucson, October 5 by my best estimate

After two weeks of riding through an expanse as barren as the heart of Satan himself, I finally find myself in a terrain intriguing to the imagination and satisfying to the spirit.

The land I've traveled through was bleak. Day melted into day beneath the unrelenting sun. Time lost meaning. Indeed, I fancied the Almighty had spilt his hourglass in that place, and I had unwittingly wandered into a land that time failed to order. But trudge on, I did, thankful for the extra ration of water I had laden poor Charlie with. He is a good horse however, and we accomplished the crossing, our faith much more supple than either our tongues or skin. I must confess though, I thought for a while that we were to never escape the desert, and truly we are not out of it yet, but at least this new country seems intriguing, what little of it I can make out in the failing light.

I rest this evening under a boulder larger than the house of my childhood, warming before a fire whose light dances on the boulder's surface like the movements of a nickelodeon.

Day 44, 15 days out of Tucson, October 6 by my best estimate

What wonders I have beheld in the span of a night!

Last evening, after I had bedded down for the night, I heard a rustling in the darkness beyond the ring of light cast by my fire. I perked up for a moment thinking I was about to be visited by a coyote or hare, but no creature came, and the sound quieted, and I soon fell back to sleep.

A short time later, I was awakened again by the same sound only this time magnified a hundred fold. I sprang from my bedroll, sure that I was to be overrun by a menagerie of size unseen since Noah welcomed the created order into his Ark. As I looked into the night, I detected the movement of great beasts all around me. I hurriedly fashioned a torch from a bunch of kindling I had amassed, for the night was especially dark as there was a New Moon, and stepped out into the dark to see what these creatures could be.

At first, I assumed that the tumult that had awakened me was caused by the beasts moving through the strange trees that populated the desert. As I ventured into the darkness however, and illuminated the trees with my torch, I saw no such beasts. I only saw the trees, though the sound around me never abated. I turned this way and that hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the animals, but wherever I turned, I only saw more trees, their branches akimbo and their leafy heads pointing every which way. Turning rapidly again, I chanced to stumble, and I dropped my torch. Upon finding the sand, it extinguished, and after reaching to gather it up, I looked up to discover the source of the noise.

The trees themselves were in motion. Illuminated only by the stars, the great trees swayed and danced together, apparently in time to some music my ears were unable to detect. Some of them ran and leaped. Others locked arms and waltzed gently together, but all seemed engaged in the same dance, the starlight ballet of the great Yuccas.

I watched them for hours, mesmerized, sitting upon their desert dance floor, and as the sun began to color the Eastern sky, they each reassumed their daytime positions, and I, worn from my night-time vigil, fell asleep as well.

When I awoke in the heat of the day, they were all still, as if nothing had happened the night before. I stayed awake this night to see the dance again, but the trees do not stir. I notice the presence of the moon this evening in the distant sky like a shaving on the floor of a carpenter's shop, and I think its light may be what keeps the trees from their dance.

I must explore this country further.

Rested and Raring to Go

2009-10-02T06:48:00.000-07:00

The Fall Quarter started this week which means I once again have class.

And yes, I meant that sentence to be humorous.

If you remember, I decided to take the summer off from taking classes. Towards the end of the Spring Quarter, I found myself in a place of great excitement about what I was learning. I was being exposed to all these new old ideas, and these ideas were undergirding my convictions with a theological framework and inspiring me to an intrepid practice and discipline. I was being challenged and encouraged and... awakened. It was great.

But it was all happening too fast.

The quarter system squeezes into ten weeks what the semester system lays out in sixteen. I was reading and studying and writing, and I didn't have time to process and consider and dream. At that time, I asked my friends who have been here a few years longer than me how they cope. They said, "Well, what you do is you take a book and say, 'This is really great stuff. I will read it better later,' and you put it on your shelf and move on to the next assignment." I don't want to do that.

The main reason I'm only going to school part time is that I don't want to rush through seminary like I rushed through getting my undergraduate degree. I am taking my time this time and enjoying this season of my life. I want to savor this experience. If seminary is a drink, it is a fine wine, and I want to breathe in the bouquet. If it is a steak, it is a filet, and I'm trying to let every last bit of flavor play on my tongue.

So, I took the summer off to make a feast of the meal that was the previous three quarters. I'm very glad I did.

And I'm very glad to be back in class again. I'm hungry for more.

I'm taking two classes this quarter: Writings with John Goldingay and New Church Movements and Growth of the Church with Ryan Bolger.

Writings covers the last third of the Hebrew Bible - Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiates, Song of Songs, Lamentations, Ruth, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Daniel. Why that grouping? Why are there wisdom books and history books and prophetic books all mixed in there together? I'm eager to find out the answers to those questions and more myself.

New Church Movements and Growth of the Church is a School of Intercultural Studies class I had to petition to get to take. It focuses on church movements around the world, like the global Pentecostal movement and the Emerging church movement, and critiques church growth theories. In simple terms, it's a church planting class. Over the course of the quarter, I have the opportunity to study church plants and think through what a church or community I'd want to be part of forming would look like. I cannot wait. I've never been so excited about a set of books to read or a series of assignments to do for a class in my life.

Also, I'll be blogging about my experience in the Church Movement class. It's a requirement for the class. Instead of blogging about it here though on Wish You Were Here, I've set up a second blog, Acts 4:32. I've linked to that blog over on the sidebar. Check it out if you want. The blog (for now) will consist of my thoughts on each class session and my chapter by chapter reflections on what I read.

That's something else I should fill you in on. I've been asked to blog in a few different arenas besides Wish You Were Here, but more on that later. For now, I'll just point you to my sidebar and say there are yet more changes to come. Rest assured though, I will not be backing off from this blog in any way.

In fact, as I think about it, there are probably a few more exciting things I ought to fill you in on as well, but that will all come in time. Everything does.

Well, that's enough filling-in and teasering for today. In summary, I feel restored, and I am excited about what lies ahead.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

On Writing

2009-10-01T01:27:00.000-07:00

"Writers don’t write from experience, though many are resistant to admit that they don’t. I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy."

- NIKKI GIOVANNI

This is true.

"I Love You, Lord"

2009-09-30T09:12:00.000-07:00

I Twitter, and on Monday afternoon while at work I had this thought, so I tweeted it and set it as my Facebook status.

At the time, I was reading an article for my Writings class, and the author mentioned that in the Bible, people practically never tell God they love Him. I thought about that for a bit and wondered why. I also thought about how we seem so ready to tell God we love Him in our songs and prayers. I thought perhaps that the writers of the Bible had a deeper reverence for God's love than we do.

Constantly throughout the Psalms, for example, God's enduring love of us is extolled. God's love is called upon by the prophets as they entreat God to spare their people from destruction. God even reminds people time and time again how much He loves them in encouraging them to turn back to Him from their sin.

But that's all about God's love of us. It's not about our love of Him. In fact, one might argue that the Bible is a story of God's love for us in the face of our rejection of Him.

I tweeted and Facebooked what I tweeted and Facebooked because I thought maybe that our ancestors wouldn't dare proclaim that they loved God because of how deeply they understood that He loved them. Perhaps they knew that their love for Him did not compare in any way.

It's just a thought, and I've enjoyed hearing people's reactions to the tweet and status update.

Last night, I went on a night hike in Azusa with some friends from Oasis. (The picture above is from the hike. It's only tenuously related to this post, but I think the picture is neat, and I wanted to share it with you.)

While hiking, one of my compadres asked me about my Facebook status from the day before. He had a few thoughts on the subject and wanted to know what was behind my quote, so I explained to him what I just explained to you. He had similar ideas, and our discussion evolved into a good conversation on worship.

As we talked though, I told him how that afternoon and evening after my tweet, I found my actions not matching up to my tweeted thought.

On Monday evening, I went to class for the first time since June. My aforementioned Writings class meets on Monday evenings, and I enjoyed it so much. I felt so grateful to be here at seminary getting to study the Bible and learn from wise women and men about the Bible and church and the Kingdom of God. I sat by two good friends in class and made a few new friends. As I walked back to my apartment, the air was cool, my heart was full, and there was only one thing I wanted to pray - "God, I love You. Thank you for bringing me here, for making a way for me. I love You so much!"

As I told my friend this story as we hiked, I was struck with a different thought. I tweeted and Facebooked that thought this morning when I woke up.

Perhaps that's closer to the truth or at least just as true as the other. Maybe in those moments where God's love for us is so gloriously evident, our natural reaction is to give to Him the best thing we know in thanks, and the best thing we know is love, because we know His love for us.

Free Will, Part 2

2009-09-29T06:40:00.000-07:00

Dear One,

Well, here we are. I suppose we knew this day would come. I did. I saw it coming long ago. You did too. I see that now.

I saw it in your eyes that morning on the hillside as we watched the sunrise, or was it night and we were watching it set? I'm pretty sure it was morning. I've always been fond of the morning. I remember I looked over at you, and you turned to look back at me, and your eyes weren't as bright as they should've been, as they'd been other mornings. There was a sadness playing there that I hadn't seen before. You knew then. You could see it coming. We were watching the sunrise, but you... you were seeing it set. That was the first I knew, I think. That morning.

It was all downhill from there. Remember at Pete's house that night he threw that swell party? Man. Everybody was there that night. What a shindig! We got there a little late, just like everyone else, and things were already swinging. The beer was good. The food was good. The music was better. I was having a great night, and then, all of a sudden like, you wanted to leave. It was like the party just drained right out of you and mixed with the spilt alcohol on the floor. You were quiet all the way home too. You didn't say a word. I felt bad for Pete. He'd planned that party for weeks. It was a shame to break it up like that, but what else could I do. You said, "Let's go," so we left.

And that's the deal, love - what you want, you get. If there's one thing that I will not allow to be denied me, it's my boast that I love you completely, without reservation, without fail. And if there's one thing I know, it's that love is selflessness, and who better to lose my self to than you?

But before we take this next step, I want to be sure we know what we're getting into, because I'm gonna see it through, and it's not gonna be easy, so let's lay this out real clear.

First off, I'm never going to stop loving you. Ever. I'm going to be true even if you're not. Leave me. Forsake me. I will never abandon you. I will love you 'til the day I die and beyond.

Second, you're going to let me love you. You're not going to make me stop. You could. You could have mercy and tell me to turn my affections elsewhere. Like I said before, I'm yours. Not mine. If you were to tell me to stop loving you, I would. What choice would I have? I gave myself to you completely. And if I go through all this and at some point you let me loose, well, that just won't work. What will all this have been about? So you're going to let me love you. To the end.

And third, there is no other way. Right? We've been through it all. Tried every option. Tested every hypothesis. Nothing else works, right? Nothing. Because if there is any other way for me to prove my love, let's do that. Please let's do that. The last thing in the world I want is to be apart from you, and that's what we're talking about. Separation. Complete and utter separation. Me. You. Apart. That's gonna be hell. I want to be clear that's there's no other way for this to work. This is it.

This is it, isn't it? I'm gonna love you, you're gonna let me love you, and we're gonna be as separated as two can be. Damn. But you know what? I don't have a choice. Let this be the final proof. If there was thought that there might be a little selfishness in me, if anyone had anything against me suggesting that any part of me was divided, let them be silent now. Let all creation be silent before this act of love: Not my will, but yours. Free will is the sinful claim of selfishness. Freely I give it up.

Not my will, but yours be done.

Yours...

Free Will, Part 1

2009-09-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

God, I love free will.

It's my alibi, my excuse, my out, my... justification. Free will is my own personal Jesus Christ.

I can't wait 'til the end. Generation upon generation lining up to wait their turn before the throne to be judged. I'll be there sitting smug behind that shiny mahogany table my hair slicked back decked out in my finest white-as-light suit. Each one'll take the stand, and I'll pull his or her file from my briefcase and read off the offenses. I'll read 'em slowly too, savoring each syllable like it's a sip of fine wine.

Oh, and won't they squirm, because they'll know that every word I'm saying is true. Don't misunderstand, I love a good lie, but the truth is much more fun and destructive. Even I'll admit that. Lies can twist things up pretty good, cause some problems, muddy the waters, but the truth can sever flesh from bone, show things as they really are, provide perspective. I'll be telling the truth that day. Every last bit of it.

The truth of their malfeasances will wash over them like a flood, and they'll flounder. All their high-brow posturing of how they're each "really not all that bad" will melt into the sickened countenance of guilt and despair. They will begin to drown in their sin, and I'll get to watch every moment of it.

And then it'll happen. They'll take their dying gasp. Each man or woman will suddenly sit bolt upright in their chair. Some of 'em will even stand up and lean forward on the railing, and every one of 'em will point at me. They'll yell, "BUT HE MADE ME DO IT!!!" I'll just smile. I love those words. Then they'll turn to the Judge and say, "You should've seen him with all his tricks and games, setting things up just right and maneuvering me around. He'd wait 'til I was at my weakest and slip a little temptation in, or worse yet, he'd wait 'til I was enjoying victory and then all subtle-like get me to do such-and-such when I wasn't paying attention. He made me do it! Really! I swear!" Then they'll turn back and look at me, eyes full of desperation and pride, and I'll jot another entry to the bottom of the list.

"Free will," I'll say softly as I write, too softly for them to hear.

"What?" they each say.

"Free will," I'll say a little louder as I punctuate my sentence.

"What?" they'll each say again with a bit more incredulity in their voice.

"Free will," I'll say matter-of-factly looking up to meet their eyes which are quickly filling with tears. "Free will," I'll say one more time looking up at the Judge, and then I'll kind of smile as I pretend to jot something else down on the yellow legal pad in front of me.

And what will He say? Nothing. Nothing at all. What can he say? I'm right. They have a choice every time without fail. Sure I set up the scenarios. I ask the questions, but they answer of their own accord. I don't, and can't, force anyone to anything.

Free will is the pillow I rest my head on at night. It's the needle point above my kitchen sink. Free will is my favorite song, and I have Him to thank for it.

Free will is His finest creation. It pre-dates Creation actually. It even pre-dates me. Free will is at the heart of this whole shebang. One might even argue it's what makes Him Him.

And He decided to imbue His creations with that little bit of Himself. He didn't have to. I wouldn't have. I'd have kept that greatest gift, free will, to myself, but I always have been a little more pragmatic than Him. There's a lot of things He did that I'd have done different. To begin with, I'd have never made me.

Free will. God, I love it. It's His greatest creation and His greatest mistake.

To be continued...

Running Randomness

2009-09-25T08:16:00.000-07:00

Today, I will be posting random thoughts and observations throughout the day, which means what you read on this post now will be added to as the day goes by. You have two options: you can check back multiple times throughout the day to see what I've added, or you can just read it all at once at the end of the day. It's up to you.
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Nicole Stockton is my most faithful blog reader and commenter. I am overwhelmingly grateful for her dedication. Seriously, you are hard pressed to find a post Nicole hasn't commented on.

Nicole, your comments are always thoughtful, and your encouragement keeps me writing. Thank you so very much.

Nicole's husband, Jared, is one of my oldest friends. We were all involved in a weekly Bible study that met at their apartment before I moved out here to California. I miss them greatly, and I think about them every time I open my Bible, both because of the bookmark they gave me as a going away present and because I learned to love reading the Bible in community under their graces.
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Tonight I'm going to see Donald Miller speak in at Azusa Pacific University. A talk by Don at Rob Bell's Mars Hill Bible Church was essential in motivating me to come to Fuller. I love to tell that story. Ask me about it sometime. Tonight should be a lot of fun.
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I have a goatee. After returning from the mountains last weekend, I thought it would be nice for a change. The best part is seeing people's reactions to seeing me with facial hair because no one here has ever really experienced that before.

On my way into work this morning, I passed my former boss, Krystin, and her husband, Jeremy. I said, "Good morning!" smiling big. She exclaimed, "OH! MY! GOSH!" It was awesome. I'm still laughing about it.
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A gallon of water weighs 8 lbs.

I know how much a gallon of water weighs because of pig shows. We'd have to be real careful washing the pigs just before time to go into the ring at shows where they weighed the pigs on their way in. Sometime our pigs would be very close to the upper end of their weight class, and should the pig get a hold of the hose in the wash pen, it might gain 5 lbs before you could stop it.
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Speaking of Rob Bell, this is a great interview with the pastor from 2008 over at Patrol Magazine. You should also listen to this sermon, entitled "The Importance of Beginning in the Beginning," which touches on some of the same things.

I particularly love how in this sermon, he linguistically redeems all work and especially the work of businesspeople. I agree with him that so often we relegate businessmen and women to a funding-other-ministries role. Their work is much holier and redemptive than that. Rob does a good job of explaining why.
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This Sunday is our church's one year anniversary. We're planning quite the shindig. Last night I went with my friend Phil to buy 35 lbs of chicken. I will also be playing my banjo during worship. Teriyaki basted chicken + banjo laden worship = shindig.
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My youngest brother started playing football this year. He is a seventh grade offensive lineman and defensive end. During and after his game a few weeks ago, my mom sent me pictures of him in action. It was all I could do to not get on an airplane immediately and fly home to go to a game. I miss Micah and football something fierce.

Because my dad is a coach, my family's life orbits around the football season. My year begins at the beginning of August (and actually it begins gearing up to begin in July), hovers around the football field for about four months, and then settles into power-saving mode December through June. Without thinking about it, I physically notice football-related things more this time of year; I get excited at the smell of fresh cut grass; I perk up when I see stadium lights.
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I just miss Texas something fierce. It's been three months since I was home, and it will be another three before I get to go back again at Christmas.

I miss my home state in weird ways too. I rearranged my living room and while admiring my work thought to myself, "That new table would be a great place to play 42." 42 is a domino game common in the Lone Star State.

I also missed my state as I looked at these amazing photos of the devastation of Galveston and the surrounding area by Hurricane Ike a year ago and the recovery of that same area a year later. I remember looking out toward the Gulf from the top of the A&M parking garage watching the sunrise and admiring the land that stretched to the sea. There is something comfortable in that terrain.
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Related to those pictures, I think it's really neat how those photos are presented, allowing one to click and see the new image come over the old. The internet is a neat thing, and it's fun to see people utilizing it's strengths.
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My dad has a favorite saying: "When it's good say 'we;' when it's bad say 'I.'" There is a tremendous amount of wisdom in this. Pronouns carry a lot of weight, and the use of a pronoun can completely change a situation.
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That is all. Have a great weekend!

My Collaterally Damaged Backpacking Companion

2009-09-24T06:54:00.000-07:00

All week I've been writing about how I went on my backpacking trip last weekend alone. That's only partially true. You see, I had a very faithful friend with me the entire time. In fact, this friend is probably my most ready and steady hiking companion. We've been together in at least six different National Parks, and we've always backpacked together.

A brief aside - "hiking" and "backpacking" are different things. When I use the word "backpacking," I am referring to an outdoor activity in which one loads a backpack with all one might need to spend at least one night in the mostly undeveloped wilderness. "Hiking" is a more general term referring to the activity of walking along a trail. "Day hiking" never includes spending the night out in the wilderness while "backpacking" always includes "hiking." I just wanted to make sure we were all on the same semantic page.

Ok. So my hiking companion and I have always backpacked together. Here is a picture of us atop Avalanche Falls in Glacier NP:

And here we are enjoying the view in Big Bend:

Honestly, I don't like to hike without my friend. We've been acquainted since I was 13 years old. We've even traveled around the world together on mission trips, though I don't have any pictures to show you of us in foreign locals. I do have a few more pictures of us in National Parks though. Here we are in Bryce Canyon:

And here we are in Joshua Tree, though you have to look close to see my companion in this shot:

Our grandest adventure to date though has to be our journey down into and out of the depths of America's "Big Ditch":

On this trip, my friend suffered a minor injury, but it was nothing a little tender loving care couldn't repair.

We travel well together, and so when I began to assemble the necessities for my two-night trip last weekend, I knew I had to include my compadre.

Here we are atop Kearsarge Pass:

And here we are relaxing and uncomfortably demonstrating how to use a bear canister as a pillow:

Another brief aside - as mentioned, I am resting my head in the above picture on a bear canister. Bear canisters are required equipment for anyone backpacking in the King's Canyon backcountry. Black bears roam those hills, and the Park Service has catalogued numerous campsite raids by the hungry omnivores. Bear canisters protect one's food from the marauders, and are to be stashed at least 50 feet away from one's campsite. I kept mine over 100 feet away for safety.

This trip, while rejuvenating for me, proved to be traumatic for my friend.

On Saturday evening, rather than share my snug, two-person backpacking tent, my friend spent the evening laying out with nothing but the Milky Way above and a cold slab of granite below. I feel kind of responsible for what happened next, because I'm pretty sure my friend's self-enforced segregation was propitiated by my affirmation that two days of sweaty hiking had done little to enhance my friend's aroma.

I slept fine Saturday evening. Sure, I tossed and turned a bit - that's to be expected after a day of hiking - but in all honesty, I was completely unaware of what was happening a mere 50 feet from my tent where my companion was reclining near my pack.

I woke up Saturday morning, sat up in my sleeping bag, rubbed the night from my eyes, and turned to peer through the mesh of my tent body to check on my friend. He wasn't where I remembered him being as I went to bed. I thought perhaps the wind had picked up in the night, and my friend had readjusted himself to better fit the breeze's whims. In any case, clearly something had transpired while I peacefully dreamed. I expatriated myself from my tent and went to inspect. What I found shocked me.

During the night, my camp had been ransacked by at least one bear if not more. The pan I use to prepare my food had been disturbed from its perch atop my bear canister, and the mesh bag that holds it had been ripped by the claws of a hungry Ursus americanus. My backpack had been atacked as well. Its straps had been chewed and clawed, one of them was all but severed, and the pack itself had been roughed up a bit.

But my faithful friend endured the brunt of the attack. His back suffered several lacerations, and his side had been pierced like the side of our Lord was pierced two thousand years ago by the Roman spear, spilling out the blood and water that covers our sins and protects us from the wrath of the Almighty. As I gazed upon his skin stripped and torn, I couldn't help but think that he had taken my place and drank the cup of the black bear's wrath that was rightfully mine for transgressing in the bear's territory. I took this picture of my friend's wounds after we returned to Pasadena. Observe the destructive power of an American Black Bear:

Seeing his trauma, I cradled my friend in my arms, and like Thomas of old, put my fingers in his wounds, disbelieving what had happened. Then, accepting my friend's fate, I carefully placed him in my backpack and prepared to carry him back home where, hope of hopes, he could find resurrection so that one day we could take to the trails together once again.

Driven

2009-09-23T07:12:00.000-07:00

Ok, Elijah, you're thinking, So you went up into the mountains for the weekend to get away, to get to a place without distraction where it was just you and God. I understand that, but why? Why did you want to get away? The solitude is what you went for; why did you want it?

I disappeared this past weekend for a number of reasons. First, I wanted to rest and recuperate before the new quarter starts on the 28th. I've never looked more forward to a school term as I am looking forward to this one, and I wanted to recharge before it kicks off. I'm an introvert, you see, and introverts recharge by withdrawing. This weekend I withdrew to rejuvenate.

Secondly, I needed a little time to "put things in place," to consider all that has happened in the last year, what this coming year might hold, and what might lay beyond this coming year, and then to process what things I needed to be concerned with and what I needed to leave behind. I went into a place marked by the space between granite peaks so that I'd have room to lay everything out and reorganize my life.

Thirdly, and most importantly, I went backpacking this weekend because I realized something recently: I am not very good at answering a question that has come up a few times over the past few months in somewhat of a new context - "So, Elijah," they say, "What do you want to do?"

I've been asked that question for a long time, at least since I was in high school, and I've gotten very good at answering it in a way that is specific enough to satisfy my conscience and vague enough to satisfy my penchant for mystery. "Oh, I don't know," I answer, "I'm just trying to live by faith and do the things God directs me to do. He's never really given me a long-term, step by step plan for my life. Some people have that 'I want to be this' or 'I want to be that.' God's never really given me that. He just seems to show me where to go next, and so I go there. Sure, there are some big, broad things that drive me, but I don't really have that definitive plan, and I've come to be comfortable with that."

This is true to an extent, but you see, I am very good with words. I craft my responses to questions I know I will be asked. This mind of mine that daily writes these blog posts that you enjoy reading is constantly creating not just blog posts and songs but also conversations with the people around me. I pre-think through most conversations I have with people. I consider how the conversation will begin, how it will progress, possible permutations, and how I'll react to each variance. I don't mean to make it sound like my interactions with you all are scripted; they're just pre-considered. They hardly ever go as I have planned, but my answers and responses are pre-considered nonetheless.

So, there is a lot packed into my standard response to the question "So, Elijah, what do you want to do?" because I have planned it out, and so much so that I am able to recreate it here in this blog post. My answer is nuanced and subtle. Honestly, it's a good way to not answer the question that was asked of me, and that's fine... as long as my answer to that question only affects me, but as soon as how I answer potentially affects someone else, the clarity and honesty of my response becomes much more important.

And so I went up into the mountains to reconsider how I answer that question. I needed some uninterrupted time to think through not only the coming year but also the years to come. I needed to put language to the clear direction God has given me. I needed a little time to think through how to tell the clearer truth when it is appropriate to do so.

You see, for all my talk about tumbleweeds and being driven by the Wind wherever He may lead, the fact of the matter is, the Wind has been whispering in this tumbleweed's ear for a long time, and I have been listening. I know where I'm headed. I'm not just drifting (as a friend likes to remind me). There is passion and purpose and a plan to everything I do; I'm just not very good at expressing it. I've come to see that it can be very important how I express it especially when my intentions potentially affect others.

That's the crux of what I've learned recently - I am not my own. My intentions for my life affect others, and so I should be very intentional how I explain those intentions. I do a disservice both to myself, to my family, to my friends, and to God when I irresponsibly refuse to take the time to be honest about what I am about. I went up into the mountains to fix that.

My normal answer to the question "So, Elijah, what do you want to do?" isn't a lie. It's just not very clear. It's immature. I'm still all about living a life of faith, being driven by the Wind. And that's the deal - the Wind is driving me, not casting me about. To follow Christ is never to be aimless; it is to be precisely aimed by the master Marksman.

And perhaps part of growing up isn't to suddenly know exactly how the next sixty years of one's life will play out. Rather, maybe part of maturing in faith is being able to recognize and verbalize how God is leading you. I hope so. I hope that is true, and I hope I am daily maturing, daily becoming more like Christ (Who set his face like a flint toward Jerusalem), and daily drawing closer to Him.

One of the Best Things About Backpacking

2009-09-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

Why does one go up into the mountains for a weekend? Why does one only tell about three people that he is going away? Why does one refuse to camp in an established camping spot near water and instead bushwhack a half mile off trail to find a secluded place on a precipice far away from the sound of people even though doing so increases the work required to camp and the likelihood of being ransacked by bears?

Simple.

To get away. To be alone. To spend time with no one but oneself and God.

Isn't it odd then that one of my favorite parts both of this past weekend and of hiking in general is the people you meet while on trail? I guess that isn't too odd though. I most often find people are my favorite part of anything I do.

I really like people. As fascinating and mesmerizing as God's created world is, even the most endless view pales in comparison to the eternity contained in a human being. I could spend years in the Kearsarge Valley and eventually know it through and through; I could spend a lifetime with any random person on this planet and never explore all of him or her. That's neat.

And humbling.

And exciting.

I always meet such interesting people hiking. Maybe it's being surrounded by such beauty, but I find that people who hike are almost always exceptionally nice, and this is especially true of people who put forth the effort to hike through the backcountry.
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I saw their group leave as I pulled into the parking lot at the trail head. There had to be twenty of them if there were two. Great, I thought, I bet they're headed to the same camping area as I am. So much for solitude. I also figured I'd end up playing leap-frog with their group on the trail all day.

I was right. Sorta. We didn't really end up playing leap-frog because their group seemed to split into two parts - the fast group and the slow group. I passed the slow group abut half way up Kearsarge Pass. About ten of them were all sprawled out all over the trail rifling through their packs for snacks as I rounded a bend. I prepared myself to slip quickly through the confusion. As I weaved my way through, I heard one of their leaders talking on his radio.

"You are where?" he asked. I couldn't make out what the other end said. "Well, do you want to just meet us at the top?" The radio squawked another reply. "Pretty much everyone is here, everyone but Crysti, John, Andrew, Sara, Tom, Chun Lee, Michael," he took a breath, "Katie, Ramon, Phil, Mary, and Steve." The group burst out laughing. I had to laugh too as I slinked my way through their group and on up the trail.

As I mentioned yesterday, the climb to Kearsarge Pass was killer. On the way, I stopped multiple times to sit and recuperate for a few minutes before continuing my climb. Eventually, I made it, and another part of the large group was already enjoying the view from the top. They cheered for me as I crested the pass, and one of the young men offered to take my picture by the Kearsarge Pass sign.

After a moment of catching my breath, I struck up a conversation with the older gentleman who seemed to be leading the group. It turns out they were a group of students from Cal Tech, a prestigious engineering school here in Pasadena. What are the odds? The man told me he was their teacher, their chemistry professor, and he'd been bringing groups of Cal Tech students on this same hike every summer for thirty years. I told him I was attending Fuller, and he told me that he used to live right by campus - in the Seventies. He was an exceptionally nice man, and his students were very well behaved. I ran into a few of them the next day as I descended from Glen Pass after visiting Rae Lakes, and I had the opportunity to encourage them on just like they encouraged me to crest Kearsarge Pass the day before.

Speaking of Glen Pass, I awoke early on Saturday to make my way over to Rae Lakes. Glen Pass is a beast, and as I stood atop it after a couple of hours of climbing, I let loose a mighty WHOOP! to mark my achievement. I was answered from the trail below by a hearty ATTABOY! from an approaching hiker. I continued taking pictures and waited to make his acquaintance. He completed his climb a few minutes later and set down his very large pack to rest a moment, and we talked.

"Where are you coming from?" I asked.

"Oh, Rae Lakes," he said.

"And where are you headed?"

"Whitney."

"Ah! You're doing the Muir Trail," I exclaimed, "How long have you been out?"

"16 days," he said, "I'm trying to break a record... for the slowest hike." I laughed.

We talked for a few minutes more. He was from Chicago, and this was his second time to do the Muir. The first time was 18 years ago when he was 34. In fact, his birthday was the day before, so I had the pleasure of wishing him a happy birthday atop Glen Pass. I asked him how much his pack weighed - about 60 pounds! I had trouble crossing Kearsarge with 30 pounds on my back, and I'm 25 years old; I can't imagine lugging twice as much weight over higher passes at more than twice my age. For the rest of the trip when I began to feel tired, I just thought about that man and stopped my internal whining.

We also discussed other places we'd been. It turned out we had been in Glacier at the same time as me two summers ago. He remembered the September 8th snowfall that greatly motivated me to get back to Texas. Go figure. After a few more minutes of enjoying the view together, he re-donned his pack and set off down the trail. I marveled at his tenacity as I watched him go.

I continued down the trail, greeting each hiker I passed with a hearty "Good morning!" Shortly, I met two young men about my age, and I could tell right off that there was something special about these two. Perhaps it was their almost overly cheery demeanor or their obviously high level of intelligence, maybe it was their apparent oneness with God, nature, and their fellow man, or maybe, just maybe it was their t-shirts which read, "Texas A&M University," but I could tell that these two were solid guys. We didn't talk long, but we talked long enough to find out that we were the same class year at A&M, and they were from Dallas, out here for a short vacation. I can't tell you how many times I've met Aggies in the backcountry, but it has been often. We are a capital group.

And in the midst of all my trail-side kibitzing, I found the solitude I was looking for too. That's the grand thing about people who backpack - they appreciate a good conversation and a reason to rest their legs, but they also know when to leave each other alone.

Where I Disappeared To Last Weekend

2009-09-21T08:52:00.000-07:00

Where did you have dinner Friday night?

I had dinner here:

I took off work Friday, got up at 4 AM, drove four hours north to Independence, CA, got lost, stopped and asked for directions, followed the directions the kind, Middle Eastern gas station attendant gave me, drove up into the Eastern Sierras, parked my car, took my backpack out of the trunk, and hit the trail by 10 AM - this trail, actually:

This trail climbed 2500 feet from 9200 feet above sea level to 11,760 feet atop Kearsarge Pass. I about died on the way up. The air was thin, and my lungs weren't quite ready for the task I assigned to them. It took me four hours to reach the pass, but I made it:

And it was worth every step:

Then I hiked down, because that is what you do, although on the way up I considered finding a place to camp near the top and cutting my intended itinerary short. I was that worn from the climb. I'm glad I changed my mind:

On the way down, I passed a small stream from which I refilled my hydration pack utilizing the miracle that is the water filter pump I borrowed from my friend Matt, who, at that moment, as if he already wasn't, officially became one of my favorite people. This happened here:

I know that picture isn't the most awe-inspiring, but the cool drink of water I took there deserved memorializing.

I hiked on through lovely trees and to views ever increasing in wonder:

I left the trail to seek out a camping spot far away from other hikers and preferably with a great view. I think I succeeded:

I watched a sunset that evening that rivals some of the best I've ever seen, and then I went to bed:

The next morning I rose early and took the trail again. I climbed another pass, this time with 30 less pounds on my back to overlook the Rae Lakes region of King's Canyon National Park:

And then I hiked down to the lakes, because, well, they just seemed so inviting:

And then I scaled Glen Pass again.

I believe in miracles. Do you? I climbed 2500 feet from the shores of Upper Rae Lake to the 12000 foot high Glen Pass in one hour and fifteen minutes. When I was a boy I had to sit out at recess because of asthma. Praise the Lord.

Then I hiked back down and after a relaxing, reflection-filled afternoon and watched the sunset from my oh-so-perfect campsite again:

I awoke the next morning, repacked my things and began the re-hike back over Kearsarge Pass and down to my car, enjoying the view along the way:

Whereas on Friday it took me six hours to make the trek, Sunday morning I made essentially the same ascent and descent in four hours. I then got back in my car and drove home to Pasadena, rejuvenated and ready to start a new year of school and life.

Wow. You know, it seems so fast when I run through it like that. The predominant feeling I had all weekend was one of time, lots and lots of time to reflect and pray and consider and plan. I had as much time as there is space between those peaks that encircle the Kearsarge Valley.

I had a full, fantastic weekend. I hope yours was as refreshing.

Happy Friday!

2009-09-18T06:00:00.000-07:00

I will not be blogging today.

Y'all all have a great weekend. I'll be back on Monday.