Giraffe

It's a giraffe. 


So we're playing Pictionary at Senior High night and a kid is drawing Noah's Ark and everyone is yelling out answers until someone gets it right. 

The draw-er was ready to move on, but we all howled, "What is that?" 

His offended answer was, "sheep" and we laughed even harder.

"No, behind the sheep." 

"Oh, it's a giraffe."

And then he looked at his incomplete giraffe and we all died laughing. Luckily I was sitting down or I might have peed. 

Here's what I love about life and find humbling on a regular basis - I can see things clearly in my head and I think I've drawn an easy to understand picture for those around me, but in reality we are not seeing the same thing.

I'm slowly learning to ask more questions, leave room for more interpretations, and admit that I can be wrong or at least have an incomplete picture.

When I find myself being reactive to someone's perspective, I think of that sweet phallic giraffe. First of all, it makes me laugh and laughter does tend to diffuse some of the reactivity. Secondly, it reminds me that what I see clearly or think I'm communicating clearly can come across in ways I don't intend. 

My second favorite part of youth group, because I don't want you to think I'm a crappy pastor, was the "God's love is like . . . game." The teens wrote down random objects around the room on a card without knowing why and then passed it to someone else who had to finish the sentence, 
God's love is like . . . a boot. It helps you wade through the muck of life. 
God's love is like . . . ping pong. It takes some back and forth.
And my favorite:
God's love is like . . . a coffee pot. I can't remember what the person said but I think it's a perfect image.

Teenagers make me so much wiser if I remember to stop talking, play more, and listen. 

VelociPastor

I am so predictable. Amazon knew that I would be interested in watching - VELOCIPASTOR!

Seriously, it's my love of pastoring, chickens (they are just a few steps away from velociraptors) and ninjas all wrapped into one movie. If there was juggling, I would have to shell out the $4 to watch it, but the trailer has been enough.

I confess I have watched the trailer multiple times and shown it to those I love because this kind of horror has to be shared. I still scream every time he eats the guy in the confessional - the trailer is truly enough.

The plot is age old. 

Here is the summary from Rotten Tomatoes: After a devastating family tragedy, a priest travels to China to find deeper spirituality, but instead is endowed with an ancient ability that allows him to turn into a dinosaur. At first, he is horrified by his newfound superpower, but a local prostitute convinces him to use his newfound gift to fight evil -- and ninjas.

Okay. Maybe that twist with the ninjas is not age old, but the rest is as old as humanity. VelociPastor is a new twist on the old story that we can kill our way out of evil. If only the good guys could kill all the bad guys, then we all could be happy.

This story never turns out well even when there aren't dinosaurs and ninjas involved. I love the idea, don't get me wrong, people do horrible things to each other and there is something rewarding in the drug dealing murderer getting eaten in the confessional. 

But, then I look at Jesus hanging on the cross and I have to recognize I follow someone who refuses to repay evil with evil, but clings to mercy even in the midst of horror. I have to recognize I follow a God who tells us time and again not to judge and we are not in charge of vengeance. 

Mercy. Love. Forgiveness. Grace. These are the words that shape our life of faith and ministry. 

There is one point in the trailer where his prostitute friend says, "you talk all the time about helping people and this might be the first time in your life that you can." This is what starts him on his killing spree. 

Jesus never actually calls us to "help" people because I think he had a good sense of humanity's distorted ability to destroy people and call it helpful. We are called to love, gather, feed, and serve all God's beloved children. I'm pretty sure eating them isn't acceptable.

Inconvenient

I didn't know who Kobe Bryant was. 

I'm sorry. 

I haven't really paid attention to sports or celebrities since the 80s, but multiple people I love were pained greatly by his death so I'm learning.

I found myself choked up reading about all those lost in the helicopter crash and seeing pictures of Bryant with his arm around his daughter. My heart broke for all those who lost loved ones and all those who lost a hero.

And then my mind wandered to Stevie Ray Vaughan's death in a helicopter. It was years ago, but I had just seen him in concert and he was so alive and amazing and pulling his life together that it seemed unfair for him to be snatched in the prime of his life. That's when I remembered some wise words an imam once told me:

Death is inconvenient.

We were on a tour of the mosque in Dearborn, in the embalming room next to the nursery, and the imam was describing how a body needed to be buried within 24 hours. I asked about family that couldn't get there in time and he said, "Death is inconvenient." 

Amen. 

So I've been practicing being inconvenienced and uncomfortable hoping I'll be a bit more prepared. I'm not sure there is any way to be prepared for death pulling the rug out of the life you imagined, but it never hurts to practice.

I hike on Mondays as part of my day off and today it was definitely inconvenient and uncomfortable. It took a long time for me to get motivated to leave my cup of coffee and head out into the sideways precipitation and slush. The great gift of ritual is that I always hike on Monday whether I feel like it or not and the dog knows it. 

We headed out expecting to be miserable, but then surprise! The sun popped out, the temperature dropped a little so the slush was ice, and an eagle posed so we could get a good look at how beautiful she was. 
It's good practice to do the hard and inconvenient thing with some dread trusting that life and joy surprise us. 

I've had enough experiences like that to help me keep going when I'd rather curl up.

Then we turned a corner and the sleet and wind scoured my face. It was tempting to turn around, but we kept pushing because I knew around the next corner there could be a totally different experience. (It was different - we went from wind to post-holing in deep snow). I'm not going to say it was particularly fun, but it was a good reminder that sometimes you have to put your head down and keep pushing until you round the next bend.

I know none of that is helpful when people are in the throes of grief, but doing uncomfortable and inconvenient things might be good practice if you aren't. 

Fixing

I passed a snowman with serious issues today on my hike. Cassie barked at him and I considered fixing him. 

And then I asked the obvious question, "Why?" 
Why do I feel like I know the way things should be? 

Then I started laughing and Cassie barked more because I'm weird, but the snowman reminded me of the Jesus fresco in Spain that a parishioner tried to "fix" and Jesus ended up resembling a messed up monkey.

Here is my resolution on Martin Luther King Jr. Day:
I will not approach people as projects in need of fixing.

I think one of the first steps in violence and in racism is the dehumanization of the other and then the decision to either destroy or fix them. 

I will engage in relationships outside of my culture, age, gender, and all the other little boxes so my blind spots are revealed and my world becomes bigger. I miss our little interfaith group because this was one of the gifts we offered each other; we opened new perspectives and removed blinders. 

We didn't have to agree about beliefs or perspectives, but we could honor that folks were seeking to figure out salvation faithfully. I might find some things inaccurate or wrong, but I can only speak about what gives my life hope and meaning. 

I'm not in charge of fixing and we can look back at church history and see the many times the church tried to fix things and Jesus ended up defaced.

Real

I like writing on Mondays. It keeps me from thinking about my lists or getting one line from an addictive song stuck in my head.
Shot through the heart and you're to blame . . . 
On a train bound to nowhere . . . 
If you like pina coladas . . . 

I've come to realize that writing on Mondays gives me something to think about that doesn't cause me stress on my day off. I've also come to realize that the work of trying to publish something might be a bit too ambitious for me.

Today, I bundled up in the 3 degree weather and went for an amazing hike. It was so stunningly beautiful it didn't seem real. There are days when Alaska is crazy beautiful and I feel like I'm living in a post card, or with  a painted backdrop, or in a Cecil B. DeMille  drama. But then I realize I have snotcicles and it is all so very real.

I'm not sure if any other parents of teenagers struggle with the time spent on Fortnite, but I'm slowly figuring out how to compromise. Our basic guideline is that you have to experience as much real reality as you do virtual reality. You need as much time experiencing the aches of climbing, a frozen face, and the reward of a beautiful view as you do gathering axes, blowing things up and the other weird things that compromise the game I'm trying not to judge too harshly.

I enter virtual reality through books and my dear son enters it through games. We both need reality checks. Instead of delving too deeply into what is real, I tend to think that something is real if it involves a certain amount of discomfort or suffering. 

That's not masochism, but a recognition that reality takes an investment and risk; it means an openness to the elements and facing them on their terms. Reality is encountering the world as it is instead of a world designed and manipulated to keep us comfortable and spending money. 

The first thing I tell people when they are thinking of visiting us in Alaska is that it's not Disney. This isn't a catered experience sure to leave you mildly amused without leaving your comfort zone; this is real - sweat, snot, and some tired legs kind of real. 

Maybe Swearing Will Help

I'm going to take a break from blogging for a while and work on editing. 

I've decided to work on a daily devotion based on blogs, newsletters, and sermons and I would like to title it Maybe Swearing Will Help. I think that will go over as well as A Waste of Time.

There is a random mix of quotes and poems on my desk, but I keep a little sign that says "Maybe swearing will help." It is not meant to be offensive, but sometimes swearing does help me.

Swearing and singing come from a different part of the brain than regular speech. Singing has never been my gift, but I learned to swear well when I was young. I'm going to blame it on my speech impediment. When I was unable to enunciate s, z, r or l, I could say shit and damn until the cows came home. When so much of language was work for me, I loved swearing for the break it gave my tongue and brain.

Swearing also often helps people feel comfortable. I'm a pastor and my very presence at a gathering brings guilt. People walk up to me and start to tell me why they aren't in church. I write it all down and pass it on to Jesus for them. Not really. It's just slightly awkward, but if I swear then people end the lame excuses and say something like, "it's good to know you are human." I hope they thought I was a cyborg before I started swearing.

Humanity and profanity so often go together.

Sometimes we look at our humanity as lacking sacredness, but I would like to focus a daily devotion on God's work transforming the profane into the sacred. Jesus continually takes the ordinary stuff of life and encourages us to see God at work redeeming and loving.

If humanity is living with our impiety and limits, then I would say divinity is imagining the creative power of eternal love.  I see this stab as a devotion as an attempt to make connections between humanity and divinity. How do we pay attention to our profane moments and see how God is making them sacred?

Termination Dust

Termination dust makes me happy. 

The fresh snow on the mountains marks the end of one season and the beginning of another (I'd say we only have two seasons - light and dark). And now it's time to terminate things. I get to chop down all the plants I haven't already killed, put my garden to sleep, and clean out the coop before the poop freezes. I'm not sure why these things make me happy, but I love the process of cutting everything back so we all can rest and renew over the winter. 

I'm kind of feeling the same way with my faith tradition. I've been thinking about getting rid of the labels "God" and "Christian." I feel like these labels need chopped down to the roots and allowed to rest because they have lost meaning, or more appropriately they are overflowing with too many contradictory meanings.

I think the word "god" is dull and worthless. The word simply means "supreme being" and what the heck does that mean? It's hard to hear the word "god" and not think of a big white guy in the sky. I don't believe in a big white guy sitting in a cloud somewhere far away ruling over us. 

So I've been trying to come up with a more appropriate word to describe the God we worship. Christian orthodoxy describes God as a trinity so I would argue that the best name is "Eternal Communion of Love." That's a grand theological solution in case you were wondering, but the logistics get messy. Eternal Communion of Love is a lot of words to write every time we talk about God and the acronym is way too much like E. coli and that does not evoke worship and praise. 

How about E.C.? Eternal Communion and it makes me think of E.T. who is more appealing than the big white guy in the sky or diarrhea. Come on. There's something holy about E.T. - he's a terrifying and fascinating mystery that draws people in.

Anyway, I'm going to try and let the word "god" rest because it's been invoked for way too many horrible things and talk about E.C. for a bit. At least for the rest of today.

I'd love to stop calling myself a Christian too. I feel like that label has been hijacked across the spectrum to equate to certain social agendas. I do think our trust in the Eternal Communion of Love may drive us to speak out on issues, but I also think it is probably best not to say our agenda comes from God.  If your social agenda leaves you hating brothers and sisters, then it probably isn't grounded in the love we see in Jesus.

How about "Lovers"? We get rid of the name Christian and replace it with Lovers. It's a way more dynamic name than Christian. And think about all fun new signs and songs. "The First Lover's Church", "Onward Lovers", "Good Lover Friends, Rejoice" . . . 

I know it's goofy, but there are times that it's helpful to cut back our assumptions, give our overused words a break, and try to look anew at our faith and world around us.