I met her for the first time in high school, in the hallway outside J1 with bright, spring sunlight in the sky – a girl with long, curly black hair and giant green eyes – raven and emerald. I was dating her best friend who had long, curly blonde hair and cornflower blue for eyes – sand and sky. Before I had even heard the brunette's name I said to myself “That’s the girl I want to marry.” And at that moment I became an adulterer.
I say adulterer, but it was never about skin, never about lust. My affair with the brunette was always a matter of the mind. That semantic distinction, the fact that we didn’t kiss, tricked me into thinking that I wasn’t doing anything wrong. It allowed me an intellectual sleight-of-hand to keep my sense of morality in check. I wasn’t being unfaithful to anyone – we were “just friends” after all. Nor was I lusting for her in my heart, so I could even sidestep Christ’s pointed words. True enough, the brunette was lovely, but that was never what I was driven by. Regardless of the reason though, I gave her a piece of my heart, a part of myself, the part that housed my hope for the future, and as such, I couldn’t give that part to anybody else. For instance, not to the blonde who I was dating, and who introduced us, a woman who remains perhaps the sweetest, kindest, most gentle hearted women I’ve ever known, and it was to her that I was probably the most cruel in all of this. But my cruelty, my folly, by no means stopped with her.
Our affair started with a few clever remarks. A quick turn of phrase lead to a witty riposte which was met with a combined literary reference / double entendre. “Here’s a smart one.” I thought, which was attractive because I was young enough to think myself smart. She’s a ‘good Catholic girl’, but still somehow worldly, seductive. That too was attractive because we smart people can’t be too constrained by religious shackles, and yet solid character is important – so long as it doesn’t get in the way. Don’t ask, “In the way of what?” because we clever people don’t need to ask such boorish questions, we just know. We wink and nudge and pass knowing grins as if we’re in on the joke when in fact we’re constantly hoping that the other smart people will let slip some telling detail that will finally reveal what it is we’re all actually winking and nudging about. That was also the brunette’s most mighty charm, an ability to make you feel as if she were letting you in on a secret, like she was telling you something, or sharing something that she had never shared with anybody else. Without needing to really say anything tangible, she made me feel like I was special to her.
Without question, that sort of coy, inscrutable posturing was absolutely representative of our entire relationship: mile upon mile, page upon page, year upon year of things that were never said, only implied, and all the insecurity and confusion that kind of thing produces. I, for example, couldn’t risk saying anything that might expose my vulnerability, or my intentions, or anything too personal. That too was part of the game, not just her being suggestive, but my ability to keep pace with my own suggestions.. I wasn’t able or allowed to actually say that I wished there was more to our relationship. Oh, it was acceptable to vaguely talk about romantic possibilities between us, but never to come right out and say it. So we built our friendship on this pattern of not communicating, not saying what was deepest or truest in our hearts, at least not about ourselves or each other. In one way, it created a sort of mystery that added excitement to our relationship. Looking forward to seeing her, I would hope for the off chance that her tongue would be unguarded and she might ‘accidentally’ tell me that she loved me too. I groaned and fretted over whether or not I should contrive to ‘accidentally’ say that sort of thing myself. In time, that escalated to involve alcohol. We would drink and I would look for opportunities to do or say something that I couldn’t bring myself to do or say sober., just to reach out to her in some way. At times, that would lead to a ‘meaningful look’ or some slurred confession of possible interest. But in the morning, it couldn’t stick. I was drunk after all, so clearly nothing I said or did was ‘real’ nor did it need to be dealt with, and so the game continued. I think we even called it that for a while – the game. The regular dance of implication and innuendo, it was like a game of chicken really. Who could get closest to saying “Please, please, please stop this.” without actually saying it, without admitting that the game, in fact, hurt. It’s true that in the beginning it just seemed a matter of bad timing. We were never single at the same time, so we remained friends. But in time, that excuse wore thin and yet we still stayed that step apart.
What was really in my heart all those years, what I was totally unwilling to admit to her or my girlfriends (who were not her) and not even to myself was that I was powerfully hung up on that woman. In one way, to say I was in love with her seems the appropriate description, but in another way it seems inaccurate. So much of her had to be read between the lines that it’s difficult to say what I truly knew and what I only projected. Since the game was built on suggestion instead of communication, it’s impossible to really say or guess how much was real and how much was simply misinterpreted or hoped at. There again is that word – hope. I think that’s the crux of it. For better or for worse, I vested my hope in her, in having her, and that hope saw only what it wanted and little of what it should. The Word says that hope deferred makes a heart bitter and that was very true for me. The longer I went, the more frustrated I became. I hoped – for many years – that she would see through my constant hinting and cut through it all, taking the risk to simply say “Me too.” But in fairness, I was so twisted up in the game that I probably would have played her candor off as just another feint. I certainly know that there were times where I said something or other and thought that I couldn’t have been plainer, only to have my gut-wrenching confession treated like I was obviously joking. Who knows how many times she may have bared her own soul, taken that risk, and I missed it, or laughed, or couldn’t believe what I was hearing...so I didn’t.
One bitter outgrowth of all that is that I was an asshole to the various women I dated in those years. I was the classic “physically present, emotionally absent” man. As I said, the brunette had a part of my heart that I was unable to share with anybody else. Now I don’t mean to say that I was deliberately deceitful, nor consciously unfaithful. My mental sleight-of-hand had fooled me as well. At my clearest moments, I might have recognized that there was something broken in me, but I doubt I could have laid my finger upon it. At least one girlfriend was perceptive enough to know exactly what my problem was, and she pointed it out. “It’s that brunette.” she would say. “No, no, no. It can’t be. We’re just good friends.” These women, at least so far as I know, were at least in earnest about their desire to pursue a relationship, even to consider marriage. But I was unable to do the same in return. I wanted to go there – I really did. There was a big part of me that truly wanted to make a relationship work and I had plenty of “What the hell is wrong with me!” rants.
In truth, I owe each of them an apology. If I had been honest with myself I would have known that I wasn’t able to see that kind of relationship though. I was entering into an agreement that I couldn’t keep and I caused a lot of pain and misery with my double-mindedness. And breakups in those years were bloody, ragged, awful things that dragged on for weeks or months, or even years. Half of me knew it couldn’t work because of the brunette and the other half absolutely resented the fact. I was like my own hung jury, totally unable to decide my own fate, so justice and fairness get trampled under.
If, by chance, any of you read this – I’m truly sorry for the grief I know I caused you, particularly you sand-and-sky. It’s taken me these years, and this distance, and God’s gentle hand to help me understand how badly I mistreated you, each of you. I hope you know that it was never my intention to hurt anybody, but I certainly hurt people all the same. This all comes too late of course, but at least one of you gets to say “I told you so.”... and it would be out of character if you didn’t rub my nose in it...as a sister in Christ of course...
What was happening for all those years, was I was waiting for the brunette. I was waiting for her to make a move that it seems I couldn’t. At the time, I wouldn’t have said “couldn’t.” Instead, I would have said that I wouldn’t, and I’d have said that it was out of respect for the brunette. That to pursue her would have been to impose upon her, and that wouldn’t be fair. But in fact I was just chicken shit. The risk of rejection was profound and each passing year only made it more so. You see, I was also bringing my biggest Question to her - “Do I have what it takes?” In this case, “Do I have what it takes to earn your love?” And what I heard her say was “No. Not quite.” It wasn’t enough that sand-and-sky or girl-in-boots were happy to answer my question in the affirmative because I wasn’t asking them. I shouldn’t have been asking any of them that question, but the fact remains that I was, and the brunette’s answer, or the fear of it anyway, locked me into a loop I couldn’t break out of. A simple ‘No’ would have been easier to deal with. At least then I could move on, but instead it was more like an ‘almost’ which only made me want to bridge that last gap. I paid rapt attention to the things she said about her boyfriends (she too was dating, but not marrying). What was good, what was bad, and I tried very much to mold myself to that expectation, hoping that I could turn an ‘almost’ into a ‘yes.’
I realize that up to now it must seem as if my relationship with the brunette was this tortured thing full of miscommunication and unmet expectations, but that isn’t it at all. Despite this recognition of where things went wrong, that friendship was rich beyond measure. We talked about everything, share big ideas and small details, dream, and ponder, and laugh at most everything, including ourselves. There was a self-consciousness about the warped love/friend thing we had wrought, and it was a frequent topic of discussion – we just didn’t know what to do about it. In many, many ways that friendship was, and remains, unique in my experience. The fact that we weren’t physical meant we engaged in other ways that might otherwise have been neglected. We told stories, we completed one another’s sentences, we had more private jokes than public jokes. Plenty of times we were mistaken for a long-married couple by folks who didn’t know us, and we could sit for hours saying nothing at all without a hint of discomfort. And by herself she was a remarkable woman. Bold in a way that was inspiring, extremely bright with a razor wit, loyal to the point of recklessness and her entire family was a tableau of feminine archetypes, not counting Dad of course. She was a woman of tightly help principles and vivid idealism. So it’s not for nothing that my heart was divided. I remember concluding at one point that if things were to only remain as they were, with never a kiss between us, that would be enough. I felt that I could be content to have this good a person, this good a friend and forego a wife.
But in the end, that was untrue. The root of my consternation was the fact that ‘friends’ seemed short of what we could be. If for some reason a deeper relationship simply weren’t possible, if one of us were married say, I would have been OK with ‘friends.’ But there wasn’t anything like that in the way. I think I also could have done without sex if for some reason that were the price to be together, like I said, it really was never about lust. What was too much for me to bear was the uneasy knowledge that eventually one of us would go away to marry somebody else, that I would lose her not by choice, but by the slow, simple wearing of time.
In those ten years between J1 and GFU, life happened. We trudged through the punishments and disappointments the world offered us, including those we made for ourselves, and this special thing we had, our intimate friendship, seemed more and more precious, more and more fragile. And so it was that our friendship sort of fossilized. It became a thing to put high up on a shelf above the reach of grabbing hands and in time we weren’t really willing to even look too closely at it ourselves for fear of breaking it. It’s hard for me to see how those years changed me since I’m too close to it, but I saw how they seemed to change her. I suspect those perceptions were as much my own, my perspective shifting, as her actually evolving. But I remember realizing that we had moved from optimism, through sarcasm, and into cynicism. Her eyes were no longer emerald, but jade. I was growing in bitterness toward our perceived unwillingness to really talk about the elephant in the room. Oddly enough though, even that seemed somehow to draw us closer in some ways. It was as if we were soldiers who kept surviving battles that we shouldn’t have and even the steel that was settling into our gaze was a thing we shared. Increasingly battered by life, continually rejecting perhaps the one relationship we actually believed in, it was like we congratulated one another, and respected one another for still living, but never really admitting or mourning the loss.
Along the way, I remember a girl I met while in the Navy named Melissa and the Dear John letter she wrote while I was at sea. By the time I was stateside again she was getting married and had invited me to come – I asked the brunette to be my date, like I had to a dozen other weddings. Driving to San Diego I had my one and only proper panic attack. I was driving toward one broken heart with the biggest of all my broken hearts in the seat beside me. The irony of it all was so overwhelming that I started balling hysterically...not a good idea at 70mph. So instead I flipped the car around and tore ass to Palm Springs where I drank a lot of sake. Sitting there next to the brunette, freaking out about Melissa – another botched relationship – there came this crystal vision of the life I was in, and it seemed like some kind of Victorian love tragedy.
No doubt, the brunette had her own Questions. If she were asking me “Am I worth fighting for?” my stupid answer was “Um....I don’t really know how to do that.” She went through a nasty car accident with a drunk driver that nearly took her life and scarred her face. If her question was “Am I lovely?”, I wonder how often she looked in the mirror and answered that question for herself – perhaps unable to hear from me or anybody else that her beauty wasn’t diminished in the least. I know that I was not the only boy to give her a piece of my heart. I know that I’m not the only boy who thought I was special to her. But regardless, and even now, even after the part of the story I haven’t told yet, I still believe that what we had was important to her – different. But that said, this isn’t her story, it’s mine. I couldn’t tell her story if I wanted to, nor would I if I knew every twist and turn. I’m just thinking about the ways in which I failed to understand her and the ways in which I mishandled her heart, and her questions. For all that my devotion to this woman cost me, you would think I would have been more deliberate, when in fact it was probably the relationship in which I was the most reckless. I operated on some foolish notion that it would simply ‘work’ if it were supposed to almost regardless of what I did or did not do. I was always thinking about the brunette, but I rarely considered her – how she felt, how something I did might effect her. For crying out loud, now that I’m talking about it, I’m not even sure that I ever really thought about how I might win her. Instead I just wanted it to snap smoothly into place when all the stars were right – so I see that I was an assshole to her as well...figures.
I should point out, in the spirit of full disclosure, that I did in fact kiss her once. There was a brief moment, about 96 hours, where we tried on the boyfriend/girlfriend clothes. One day I said something like “I can’t do this anymore. I need to know we’re going to at least try and make this work or I need to walk away before I go mad.”, after some thought she gave in. You see, I pushed her. I made her choose between the unthinkable and the unbearable and I regretted it almost immediately – I couldn’t stand the fact that I had forced the issue like that in a season of weakness and I took it back as soon as I could, where things went back to almost normal.
It’s funny though, it was also in that moment when I was most honest with her and myself. It really was driving me absolutely crazy – to not be with someone you love sucks, but to be WITH someone you love and can’t have, that’s torture. So in my fit, what escaped was my true desire, and it scared me. Also I wonder if that moment didn’t reveal her hand as well. After all, she did decide to give it a shot. She could have said “No.” but instead she was willing to take a big personal risk rather than loose me entirely. The shitty thing wasn’t for me to force the issue – the shitty thing was to snatch it back and try to act like it never happened. To treat her risk, a risk she took for my sake, as if it were nothing. God I hate myself sometimes.
Really, I don’t know that things ever quite recovered after that. I’d broken it.
Bly talks about the Golden Haired Woman who haunts the dreams of every man. She’s the archetype of beauty and femininity but only so long as she remains in the distance. Once a man is close to her, once she gives him what he asks of her, she becomes only another girl and the hollow man suddenly finds that the Golden Haired Woman is again to be seen on the horizon. Lather, rinse, repeat. Eldredge talks about Eve in a similar manner. That Eve will paradoxically remain unattainable so long as we seek after her. Instead, we must seek after God and in so doing we find Eve – our Ezer Kenegdo.
In the midst of all this, sometime around 1994, I guess I got religion. My faith in Christ was ignited and the slow process of adjusting to a new reality started. In 1997 I left SoCal for George Fox University. I left behind another muddied, wounded girlfriend. At least with her I think I said something along the lines of “Hey, I’m kinda screwed up in the heart department so, ya know, caveat emptor.” I don’t think she really heard it, or chose not to, but I guess I felt like I had covered my bases. Regardless, when I got my acceptance letter from GFU, and started packing, I heard God say, “You’ll meet your wife there. She’s a redhead.”
For the first year, I didn’t date anybody. Truth is, I was having a lot of second thoughts about girl-in-boots. I was sick to my stomach about how I couldn’t get this girlfriend thing right and I was approaching the point where I just wanted to get off the frakking roller-coaster already. So that year by myself was really good for me. I had a lot of time to think and pray and I was building a life in Oregon that lacked any of the baggage from SoCal – it was a clean start in a lot of ways that I needed. Of course I was keeping one eye out for any redheads and I still had the other eye on the brunette in SanFran. She was dating somebody and it seemed pretty serious, so I’m sure some part of me was trying to get to a safe distance where a wedding announcement wouldn’t kill me.
Then I went to Kenya for a semester.
Kenya is far, far away from everything familiar, and I mean EVERYTHING. It was under African skies, where Scorpio looms over your night and jackals bark where you were used to coyotes, that God started unpacking my baggage. I only realized it years later, but I started a journal on that trip and page after page after excruciating page was about women. About how I saw them, how I saw my past relationships, how I was so deeply confused about what I wanted and what I wanted to want. In those four months my journal probably heard about every female I had known: my mother, my hot 4th grade teacher, the gravel-voiced, sad-eyed actress all the way up to another brunette I met at Daystar. Let’s call her Blue for the sake of clarity.
Blue and the Brunette had the same first name, though neither of them used it. They had the same middle name, they had the same last initial. They had the same kind of eyes (except Blue’s were... well...blue), almost the same hair, and the same size and build. Not only did we have a lot of things in common, we had the SAME things in common as I had with the brunette. Listen to me – not the same kinds of things, the exact same things. As the two of us talked over milky chai it was really quite surreal. The parallel details went on and on and on, and on both sides. For every detail in which Blue was like the brunette, I was like a lifelong friend Blue had back home. We sang the same obscure folks songs, quoted the same silly movies. At times, the details would shuffle a bit, but they were always there. Blue’s older sister wanted to grow up to be a fire engine. The brunette’s younger sister wanted to be a fire engine – I’m telling you it was absolutely bizarre and we both stared at each other in open-mouthed disbelief. Looking at her was like looking back into the past, to what the brunette was when we met, or what she might still have been if life hadn’t happened. I say that because Blue was about 10 years younger and still innocent in a lot of ways. There were no broken hearts, or drunk drivers, or pregnancy scares in her life.
Meeting Blue – 10,000 miles from home – just about cracked me. It was so very bittersweet. It was almost like a second chance, and yet, there was no chance. Sure, in four months we wouldn’t be 10,000 apart, but we would still be 1,000 miles apart. Plus, she had a boyfriend cum fiancée and she wasn’t damaged goods like I was. I knew that Blue did not honestly represent a potential wife, but she had to represent something. It wasn’t possible that this nearly perfect copy of the woman who haunted my life was here, on the other side of the world, in a tiny University out in the Kenyan bush, by accident. The only thing that quite makes sense to me is that she was an image of something I had just about forgotten – how good and wonderful a person the brunette really was. By that time you see I was disillusioned and part of me was angry with the brunette for not choosing me. Of course it was totally unfair to her, but it was dawning on me how much I had sacrificed on her alter and I had nothing to show for it. The recognition of my own role in that transaction hadn’t yet arrived...
As I journaled page after page, telling my story to myself as God dictated, Blue reminded me of why I had been so smitten by the brunette in the first place. And at the same time, it was made painfully clear how much I needed to let both of them go. Please understand, I couldn’t have formed that last sentence at the time – it’s an idea that’s taken an additional few years to germinate, but I can see now that my time in Kenya was an emotional detox in preparation for meeting Rebekah. That’s where I got all my crying and screaming and mourning out – stuff I’d failed to do before.
Across a dirt road from the University was a sprawl of 10 x 10 plywood rooms called Hostel B. It was a maze of dead-end alleys and random clothes lines where the less affluent students lived while they studied. A few of us Americans, including Blue and I, had made a friend in Hostel B and we often sat in his box making avocado and butter sandwiches. In the last days at Daystar, I was wearing an Indigo Girls concert shirt that the brunette had given to me as a gift a few years before. It seems sort of silly, but that shirt was pretty symbolic to me at the time. You see I was supposed to have been at the concert with her, but I missed her...because of miscommunication...and all I got was this lousy tee-short. You see the joke right? Anyway, Blue and I and Tony and Gump were down in Hostel B killing time when a fire broke out. In the next fifteen minutes, all 60-odd units burn to the ground. I’m kicking down doors looking if anybody is asleep, trying to rescue important belongings from rooms that aren’t totally engulfed in flame and a family history with fire-fighting puts me somehow in a place to help lead the flying squad. 15 minutes and a million things happened, including my Indigo Girls shirt being ruined. Completely saturated in smoke, peppered with pinhole burns from falling embers, and Emily’s face welded into several kaleidoscope blobs...it’s no longer really suitable for the public.
Was that fire auspicious in some way? An omen of what was about to happen? - I don’t know. In fact, the story and its parallels have only just now occurred to me, but it certainly seems prophetic in hindsight.
Two things happened when I returned from Kenya: I moved into an apartment right next to a redhead who I thought was a stoner (that’s my wife, Rebekah, who in fact was not a stoner, but just liked hippie stuff), and my last semester of school started with all the term papers, and thesis writing, and final grades that entails. Of course I also wanted to call my best friend, the Brunette, to regale her with stories of endless wildebeest herds and hoping Massai warriors. If memory serves, that turned out to be easier said than done. It seems that there were multiple failed attempts, probably separated by weeks of busybusybusy but that kind of thing had never been a problem before. Once she moved to the Bay, it was common for us to go for months at a time without speaking and we never lost anything. We just picked up the conversation where it had left off without missing a beat. I can’t say I was planning to tell her about all the things I had been writing about, nor was I planning to mention how I met her younger doppelganger, Blue – even had I wanted to share those things, the Brunette’s deeper connection to all of that had yet to be made clear to me, I was still processing.
When I finally did reach her, I could tell something was wrong. There was a great deal of tension in her voice and she said next to nothing. No “How was your trip?” no “Welcome home” just a few mumbled words through what sounded like clenched teeth. This must be a bad time I thought. Maybe I caught her in the middle of a fight with her boyfriend or something. So I said I’d call again later, and hung up. “I sure hope everything is OK.” was what I said to myself, but didn’t think much more of it. When I called again, I discovered the same tension in her voice as before. But this time I noticed that her “Hello?” seemed normal enough. It was when I said, “Hey, it’s me!” that everything in her voice changed.
That second conversation was only marginally longer than the one before it, but those few words broke my heart.
“I’m so upset with you that I can’t even talk.”
“How dare you?!”
“Don’t call again.”
I was shocked, stunned, wounded, totally confused, and it was probably the heaviest blow to my heart that I’d ever suffered. Filled with joy and excitement and tales to tell from abroad, I found my dearest friend, the person who I cared more for than anybody else on the planet, livid beyond words...and I had absolutely no idea why. That was around six years ago now. I wish I could tell you what her anger was about. I wish I could confess some wicked deed that drove her away from me, but to this day, I still don’t know what upset her. We haven’t spoken to one another since. I tried for a while to reach her through other means, for instance I sent her birthday cards that I I really don’t know if she ever got. I also tried to reach some of the people around her to try and discern what sin I had committed. In all truth I would have confessed and apologized for killing President Kennedy if that would have soothed her ire – but alas, I’m as ignorant today as I was that day. For all I know, she was mad that I hadn’t written more or called sooner.
After some initial scrambling, a vain attempt to fix whatever was broken or atone for any possible insult, I got angry. Angry because I felt that I had been treated unfairly. Angry that she would do such a thing to me after all that we had been through together. Angry that she would throw down one of her best friends without so much as an explanation (which I clearly deserved) or giving me the benefit of the doubt to hear my side of whatever story there might be to tell. In that season of anger, I’m pretty certain I just stewed. I didn’t try to contact her, I didn’t fret over the mystery of what I had done to her. Instead I rehearsed and crafted deeply biting comments and lectures. Preparing a quiver of bolts against the day I saw her again. I practiced my indignation and righteous rage and had long dissertations in my mind on how her anger was always more important to her than her relationships. Oh, I had a lot to say, and I knew her well enough to put those bolt where they would hurt the most. Thank God I never had the opportunity to release that rage or I’d regret it to the end of my days.
But in time, the anger passed too. In time I prayed that she would forgive me for the things I had thought of her, and also for whatever it was that I had done to start thins in the first place, if indeed it was anything deserving so dramatic a response. I also made it a point to give my anger and frustration and accusation over to God – to forgive her for the wrong I perceived, since I couldn’t determine if I deserved her wrath or not. In short, probably a year and a half later, I moved on.
I really never found out what it was that drove her to sever our long and powerful friendship. She’s not an irrational person, so I must assume that she had her reasons. She’s not fickle nor flighty, so I have to assume that they she weighed my error against my friendship and chose one – which is to say I must believe they were good reasons. But all that said, I really only know that she broke fellowship with me without an explanation and as far as I can tell, that was the end of my affair with the Brunette.
With another four years of hindsight I see now that she did me a tremendous favor – she pulled a thorn from my flesh that I was unable or unwilling to pull myself. At the perfect moment – she released me, released me from herself.
I say it was the perfect moment because this was all happening at the same time that I was getting to know and love Rebekah. The first time we were introduced, like I said before, I was certain that she was a pot-head. Her duplex was covered in psychedelic mushrooms and tie-die and smelled of sandalwood and patchouli. Re is very quiet and laid back (read: stoned) and her roommate greeted Jamie and I with a sleepy look and a pan of stereotypical stoner food, “Hey, would you guys like some broooownnnnnies?” she said in her over-calm manner. But as I walked backed to my apartment God said ‘That’s her.” and I knew exactly what He meant. If things had been the same with the Brunette, then things would have been the same with Rebekah – the same as they had been with the other women I dated during my serial monogamy. If things had been the same with the Brunette, I would have been unfaithful to my Redhead. My heart would have remained deeply divided and as one half of me stepped into a relationship with Rebekah, the other half would have dug its heels in and remained behind, trapped in the grasp of a woman half a continent away, waiting for something that was never coming.
The breaking of that bond was incredibly painful, and I resented her the stroke for a while, but I would never have come to where I am today if the Brunette hadn’t cut me off. Instead I would have been single, aging, and bitter, or perhaps married, aging, and bitter. You see, given what I saw as God’s direction I still might have gone and married Rebekah, but I’d be just as double minded as I’d been before only now the stakes would have been higher. By now, the hope I had invested in the Brunette would have been deferred too long and the bitterness that had begun to sprout up those years ago, would be in full bloom, poisoning my marriage. I’ve said before that what I’ve found so striking isn’t that I love Rebekah more and more each day, but that I continually discover new capacity to love that I didn’t know existed. My ‘love tank’ isn’t being filled, it’s growing. I have to credit a large portion of that to the gradual reintegration of the various shards and tailings of my heart. The huge chunk that was missing in all my previous relationships has been recovered and I’m finding rooms and halls in there that have lain unused for long years. I was blind, but now I see. I was lost, but now am found.
While I would honestly thank the Brunette today for saving me, it seems unlikely that saving me was her intention. With all things considered, I think a more likely explanation of everything that happened was the enemy saw an opportunity to destroy me and he took his best shot. With all that I had been going through in Kenya, all the God-driven reflection and revelation, finally meeting my wife and quickly falling toward her - it was a perfect moment to cut me down, perhaps for good. It sounds a little weird to say that the Devil used the Brunette against me, but I do think that’s what happened. If you’re not familiar with all the spiritual warfare I’ve been talking about these last years, don’t read too much into that. I’m not at all suggesting that she was evil or possessed or anything remotely like that, just that the enemy is an opportunist, and a single whispered suggestion can turn a small thing into a world war. If there was one person on this planet who could have slain me with a glance, it was her...and she did.
But what was meant for evil turned out to be for the good. In ways that are almost too much to explain, that death was prerequisite for the life that followed - the life that I have now. A two barreled, full-throated, hair-on-fire life where my whole heart is united and engaged. Not that it looks like something particularly special on the outside, but on the inside, where The Spirit speaks and I weep or laugh or question with boldness and without fear. You know, just now I’m realizing something. I’ve been chewing on this letter for about a year now, piecing it together bit by bit. And I’ve always been thinking of it in terms of how my restored heart made it possible to bond with Rebekah. But I also see how critical it was for me to make my bond with Christ. The overarching theme of the last few years of my life has been this concept of a whole and integrated heart. Raven-and-emerald, it seems I have this also to thank you for. To that end, I can’t discount the very real possibility that this blow wasn’t orchestrated by Satan at all, but by God. Given all that it has accomplished, the timing, and the surrounding circumstances, I can also see it as a kind of surgery, the excision of a tumor. Perhaps in time, the agent responsible will be made clear, but I’m not certain it matters much either way.
You see for all those years I was a kind of ghost – trapped between one world and another. One foot here, the other there, and unwilling or unable to commit to either side. My deep and abiding double-mindedness lead to a profound inability to commit to much of anything, especially a woman. It turns out that Hamlet was right after all – “To be or not to be” really is the question. My indecision, my unmanliness in that regard, not only tortured me, but it caused a lot of misery to the people around me who were counting on me to commit, for my word to mean something, for my “yes” to be a “yes.” I don’t want to take myself too seriously here, or think my actions one way or the other were critical moments in the lives of the women I dated, but at the very least I wronged them to the degree that I said I was them and wasn’t. I failed them insofar as I claimed to be the man in their lives, when in fact I wasn’t. I was, instead, ephemeral, ectoplasmic. Present only in this fragile mortal coil that we all know turns to dust and ashes, just a tissue-paper image of a man. The part of me that is eternal, the part of me that God calls out to offer strength to my mate, was AWOL, trapped inside a kind of stunted, aborted relationship that I couldn’t let go of. So my heart, my soul, spent all those years never living, only waiting, waiting, waiting.
I do need to avoid that peculiar Christian trick of history where we see a thing redeemed, an unexpected blessing coming from dreadful spell, and conclude that it must have all been God’s plan after all. The fact that my marriage to Rebekah is far more than I expected or hoped for, and the fact that the path I just laid out is what lead me to her, cannot absolve me of the fact that I sinned. I can’t look at the chain of women I was intimate with, but never married, and act as if that wasn’t wrong just because I stand here today, restored, forgiven and happy. I can’t hold up my inability to commit to any of them as proof of anything other than my infidelity of the heart. It’s true that you wouldn’t have been able to convince me at the time that my relationship with the Brunette amounted to adultery since we remained platonic, but that’s only because I was lying to myself and doesn’t mitigate the truth of it now. To somehow twist and warp all of this and somehow conclude that I was being saved for Rebekah would be to say that God’s plan included my disobedience, which is utter nonsense. There is an important difference between providence and redemption that we can sometimes skip over when we fear that to recognize our sin would be to cast a shadow on the grace and blessing that we received despite it. To say, “God can make good of all things...” should never be confused with “A Blessing in disguise.” or “God works in mysterious ways.” There are a lot of things in this post that I just as well had not have said, nor shared. There’s a lot here that reflects quite poorly on me and the choices I made. The moral of the story is not that it’s difficult to see through the ordained twists in our paths. The moral is that we regularly make our own paths so crooked that they loop back on themselves, becoming impossibly tangled, and yet God snatches us, as from a fire, for His own glory.
Having come through that now, and having some distance to see the broader strokes, I’m mortified by the fact that I was so unable to see my own story, my own ingrown path. I also rue the thought that at some point in these last years the Brunette might have thought to herself - “Oh no, what have I done?” but never reached out for fear, or pride or apathy. Romantic aspirations aside, she and I were mighty friends, and I miss that relationship...I wonder if she does as well. Even more, I hope she isn’t still nursing her anger, whatever it’s original cause. I know how powerful a poison bitterness and resentment can be, and how healing forgiveness is. I hope that she too found some unlooked for blessing through all of this, even if that’s simply to be rid of me. And really, I don’t mean that that in some self-deprecating, woe-is-me sort of way. I may have been a close friend, but I also know that toward the end I put a great deal of undeserved pressure on her. I held her accountable for my frustration and at times for the collapse of relationships that she had nothing to do with. To that end I’ve asked for, and sought her forgiveness in many ways and many times and I have to console myself that that’s about all I can do in that regard, which in all honesty feels pretty damn unsatisfying.
But perhaps no small part of this letter is my chance to return the favor, to release her. To say publicly that, for my part anyway, there are no hard feelings, no held grudges. I can offer up my own forgiveness for what it’s worth, perhaps unsought and undesired.
Dear, dear friend - I’m very sorry for all the ways I was unfair to you, expecting things from you that I shouldn’t. For my failing to be either a proper friend or lover. For missing your heart for the trees of your intellect. Though I was angry for a time, I recognize that you no doubt did only what you felt right at the time and I can’t hold that against you, nor would I had I the strength. My forgiveness and my good will are here and freely given. Take them or reject them - as you wish.
30 May 2006
20 May 2006
My monster story
Here is (to date) my one and only monster story. It’s odd, but this truly is the way I remember it. I’d be quite interested to know how Kathie remembers it since she was there..
It must have been 1985 or ‘86 and it was Homecoming at Rim – that means it was late October. The skies were clear but there was a mighty wind tearing through the trees. Not a gentle whooshing but a roaring, shake-the-house, the-gods-are-warring-in-heaven sort of wind. That by itself gave he night a particular feel. There was no peace, no sweet October breeze. Instead everything was clamorous and tense. Later that night, as Kathie and I were driving across the Rim, we watched from a mile above the surreal effects of the wind storm as entire city blocks would suddenly go dark – victim to some tree falling into a power junction...or worse.
But I’m ahead of myself. We drove across the Rim because 330 was closed. For some reason Kathie picked me up in Running Springs. I don’t remember why, but perhaps it was because she had her CRX and I only had access to my father’s 1972 1/2 ton Dodge pickup – not really a ‘date’ vehicle. Regardless of the reason, we left my house and headed down Live Oak with plans to have dinner at Edward’s Mansion in Redlands – a house that looks almost exactly like the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland (just another vaguely spooky detail).
There was nobody else on the road, which was odd. It was Homecoming for more people than just Kathie and I and it was a Friday night to boot. You would think there would be people everywhere, but instead everything was buttoned up tight. Maybe the rest of the mountain somehow sensed that something otherworldly was afoot and decided to wait it all out behind closed doors. But Kathie and I were excited to be out and about. I was probably wearing a new sweater that Kathie bought with my mom’s money – a little plan the two of them had foisted upon me. I was willing to wear clothing that my girlfriend bought for me, but not anything that my mother bought for me. So the two of them conspired to upgrade my wardrobe bit by polyester and velour bit. Kathie was no doubt wearing a new dress with hair up and makeup – the whole nine yards. We were committed to go get our picture taken at the dance and no silly wind storm was going to stop us.
As we pulled to a stop at he bottom of Live Oak, where it joins Highway 330 on a wide, mile-long, five-lane slope, there was a Caldrons truck parked across the two downhill lanes. The truck’s back, and the driver’s, was to us and the pale orange glow from the sodium street light cast everything in sharp angled shadows. Keep in mind that the wind is absolutely howling. It’s bitter cold and even Kathie’s little sports car was being blown about in the gale.
It’s at this point where something went screwy in my head. Several very weird things are about to happen and yet they didn’t seem weird at all at the time. It was as if were hypnotized or something. I was the storm trooper letting Luke and Obi Wan go by as the Jedi waves his hand. “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for...” It was only quite a bit later as I started to think back on these next few minutes that I became convinced that I was witnessing something unnatural.
I’m at a stop sign with my windows closed against the wind. Roughly twenty-five feet away is this pickup-truck with it’s tail toward me. This major highway, on what should have been a very busy evening, was absolutely empty. I can see the back of the driver’s head through the rear window but I can also see his face, reflected in his port side mirror – the big 12 x 8 truck mirrors – and his face is not human. I wouldn’t say it was demonic, but it was monstrous – think Sloth from Goonies (“Hey you guys!”). All skin, and no hair – misshapen eyes that weren’t symmetrical, a mouth with protruding teeth and swollen lips. His window must have been down because I remember his arm resting on the sill like he was just killing time at a gas station. He never turned around to face us but I know that we had a brief conversation that could not have happened. With the wind, and the distance between us, and my closed window, it was impossible that I could have heard him, nor could he have heard me. But as we pulled to a stop I heard him say very clearly, as if he sat next to me in the car, “The highway is closed.”
“Oh.” I said, “What happened?”
“A semi truck jack-knifed. You’ll have to turn around.”
Despite the fact that everything in this moment was wrong in some way, none of it seemed odd in the slightest right then. Of course I can hear the monster man from way over there. Of course we have to turn around – I’m sure he’s only looking out for our safety. Of course he’d sit there with the wind screaming through his open window – it’s a lovely night after all. So I said “OK” and turned the car around.
I don’t particularly remember the next 20 minutes or so. I couldn’t tell you if Kathie and I spoke to one another or if we were silent. The next thing I do remember was mentioned already, driving across the Rim, trying to meet our reservation despite an additional hour of driving we had to do, and watching San Bernardino lights flicker and die in the invisible storm. I also know that Kathie and I were pretty certain that we dined with a vampire at Edward’s Mansion, but with so much Garlic on the snails, I guess we were pretty safe all the same.
It was an odd night all around, but the monster working for Caldrons was definitely the weirdest...although it does explain a lot about Southern California roads.
It must have been 1985 or ‘86 and it was Homecoming at Rim – that means it was late October. The skies were clear but there was a mighty wind tearing through the trees. Not a gentle whooshing but a roaring, shake-the-house, the-gods-are-warring-in-heaven sort of wind. That by itself gave he night a particular feel. There was no peace, no sweet October breeze. Instead everything was clamorous and tense. Later that night, as Kathie and I were driving across the Rim, we watched from a mile above the surreal effects of the wind storm as entire city blocks would suddenly go dark – victim to some tree falling into a power junction...or worse.
But I’m ahead of myself. We drove across the Rim because 330 was closed. For some reason Kathie picked me up in Running Springs. I don’t remember why, but perhaps it was because she had her CRX and I only had access to my father’s 1972 1/2 ton Dodge pickup – not really a ‘date’ vehicle. Regardless of the reason, we left my house and headed down Live Oak with plans to have dinner at Edward’s Mansion in Redlands – a house that looks almost exactly like the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland (just another vaguely spooky detail).
There was nobody else on the road, which was odd. It was Homecoming for more people than just Kathie and I and it was a Friday night to boot. You would think there would be people everywhere, but instead everything was buttoned up tight. Maybe the rest of the mountain somehow sensed that something otherworldly was afoot and decided to wait it all out behind closed doors. But Kathie and I were excited to be out and about. I was probably wearing a new sweater that Kathie bought with my mom’s money – a little plan the two of them had foisted upon me. I was willing to wear clothing that my girlfriend bought for me, but not anything that my mother bought for me. So the two of them conspired to upgrade my wardrobe bit by polyester and velour bit. Kathie was no doubt wearing a new dress with hair up and makeup – the whole nine yards. We were committed to go get our picture taken at the dance and no silly wind storm was going to stop us.
As we pulled to a stop at he bottom of Live Oak, where it joins Highway 330 on a wide, mile-long, five-lane slope, there was a Caldrons truck parked across the two downhill lanes. The truck’s back, and the driver’s, was to us and the pale orange glow from the sodium street light cast everything in sharp angled shadows. Keep in mind that the wind is absolutely howling. It’s bitter cold and even Kathie’s little sports car was being blown about in the gale.
It’s at this point where something went screwy in my head. Several very weird things are about to happen and yet they didn’t seem weird at all at the time. It was as if were hypnotized or something. I was the storm trooper letting Luke and Obi Wan go by as the Jedi waves his hand. “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for...” It was only quite a bit later as I started to think back on these next few minutes that I became convinced that I was witnessing something unnatural.
I’m at a stop sign with my windows closed against the wind. Roughly twenty-five feet away is this pickup-truck with it’s tail toward me. This major highway, on what should have been a very busy evening, was absolutely empty. I can see the back of the driver’s head through the rear window but I can also see his face, reflected in his port side mirror – the big 12 x 8 truck mirrors – and his face is not human. I wouldn’t say it was demonic, but it was monstrous – think Sloth from Goonies (“Hey you guys!”). All skin, and no hair – misshapen eyes that weren’t symmetrical, a mouth with protruding teeth and swollen lips. His window must have been down because I remember his arm resting on the sill like he was just killing time at a gas station. He never turned around to face us but I know that we had a brief conversation that could not have happened. With the wind, and the distance between us, and my closed window, it was impossible that I could have heard him, nor could he have heard me. But as we pulled to a stop I heard him say very clearly, as if he sat next to me in the car, “The highway is closed.”
“Oh.” I said, “What happened?”
“A semi truck jack-knifed. You’ll have to turn around.”
Despite the fact that everything in this moment was wrong in some way, none of it seemed odd in the slightest right then. Of course I can hear the monster man from way over there. Of course we have to turn around – I’m sure he’s only looking out for our safety. Of course he’d sit there with the wind screaming through his open window – it’s a lovely night after all. So I said “OK” and turned the car around.
I don’t particularly remember the next 20 minutes or so. I couldn’t tell you if Kathie and I spoke to one another or if we were silent. The next thing I do remember was mentioned already, driving across the Rim, trying to meet our reservation despite an additional hour of driving we had to do, and watching San Bernardino lights flicker and die in the invisible storm. I also know that Kathie and I were pretty certain that we dined with a vampire at Edward’s Mansion, but with so much Garlic on the snails, I guess we were pretty safe all the same.
It was an odd night all around, but the monster working for Caldrons was definitely the weirdest...although it does explain a lot about Southern California roads.
12 May 2006
Slaying spirits
“Awake, O sleeper, rise from the dead!” - Eph 5:14
For a while now I’ve had lots of time to examine (and practice) this thing we call spiritual warfare – and I confess that it often seems rather silly. Or if not silly, perhaps incomplete, or false in some way. The problem is this word ‘war.’ In the wars that I see on TV, the final answer to who wins or looses comes down to who’s dead and who is still alive. Patton says that no war is won by a man dying for his country. “We win by getting the other bastard to die for his country.” There is a finality there – an unambiguous point where combat stops, one way or the other, it stops. But in spiritual warfare we’re talking about the combat between eternal things – spirits, angels, souls – there is no dying, no end. So praying against demons can at times feel like the drudgery of shooing flies away from a picnic. We wave our hands and the things disperse but they always return, over and over and over. Jesus describes an exorcism with some depressing details. The unclean spirit runs off to a dry place...whatever that means...but in time he simply comes back, and brings along his friends. What’s the point then?
There is no indication in Scripture, that I’m aware of, that suggests this war between heaven and hell is ever exactly won – at least, the enemy is never destroyed. Instead, the best situation we see is one where the enemy is chained up. It may be as simple as this – eternal means eternal. A spirit, by its nature, will never be destroyed, will never end, never, ever. Not the devil, not his angels, and not us. We are permanent fixtures of this universe for better or for worse. In which case, the more closely we associate ourselves with this earthly paradigm, where live is started and life stops, the less sense spiritual warfare will make.
In my Ninjutsu class we talk about something called Zhjon Shin – the indominatable spirit. The notion is that half of every fight is won and lost when your spirit interacts with your opponents spirit. It’s not just a matter of mental toughness or tenacity. It’s a matter of setting your heart to iron and projecting that spirit in your attitude, your state of mind, and your body language. When you see a kung fu movie and the hero, who has been loosing the fight till this point, takes a deep breath and sets himself again with a look of peace on his face, when Neo beckons to Agent Smith with a slight grin saying “Come get some.” - that’s Zhjon Shin. The kung fu master has won the fight already because his heart has overcome his enemy’s.
When this spiritual warfare journey started for me, the primary fight was simply one of self preservation. The enemy can’t kill our spirits anymore than we kill his, but he assaults us all the same - how? And to what end? For this we must recognize that when we talk about a dead spirit and a sleeping spirit, we are describing the same thing. While our spirits cannot be destroyed, they can be crushed, traumatized, or anesthetized – we can sleep. In truth our spirits can sleep long years while our bodies remain alive. “Awake, O sleeper” and “rise from the dead” are synonymous.
This is big leap for many of us. As young children our spirits are alive and zealous and longing for life. But as the years and wounds pile upon us it drives that spirit from the field. By the time most of us enter our early teens, we’ve already seen quite enough of this world and we want the ride to end, we want to get off. Our parents divorce. A beloved grandmother dies. Our camp counselors touch us where they shouldn’t. We want the pain the stop – the disappointment, the guilt, the anxiety – but it doesn’t. The sun rises and sets and races around to rise again – truly everything is vanity, chasing after the wind.
And it’s here that we learn to sleep.
We stop engaging, we stop hoping, we stop longing – because it seems to bring more misery than anything else. Our first crush is so aptly named. The immense joy of love screams into our tender, naive hearts like a bullet and we’re almost overwhelmed by the beauty of it all. But for most of us, it ends in a million pieces and we can’t fathom where all of this torturous pain has come from. I remember my first heart break, the begging, the foot stomping, the profound ache in my chest and how it all seemed so unfair.
Tragedy lives in these places of our lives. Where the experience is deemed quite unbearable and we vow not that we won’t feel that way again, but that we wont feel that deeply again. Our eyes dim and the heart thunders away like a frightened stag into deeper and deeper woods. The message that came to me in the midst of that first heart break was this, “You look like a fool. Look at you crying and whining and begging – and it only makes you look more ridiculous than you already do to the woman you love and to her parents listening upstairs. You’re pathetic!”
Listen to me – pay attention. That was spiritual warfare. Warfare waged against me.
I got thwacked by the pointed end of a well aimed shaft and I didn’t even know I was on a battlefield.
Of course that wasn’t the only arrow that came my way, but it was a potent one. Over and over, as my relationship with Rebekah has grown, I’m not so surprised that I love her more, but that there is still more of me that is capable of loving her. It’s the rediscovered capacity to love that has been so striking to me. It’s like this ice burg slowly rising out of the sea – revealing more and more and more of itself – unguessed at space and strength and structure that had always been there – but was pestered into dormancy by the war waged against me.
That’s the enemy’s battle plan, at least at first, and particularly when we’re too young or too misinformed to guess the true hand that is set against us. He wants to make us sleep – through pain or indulgence or distraction he coaxes our spirits to lay down the struggle and instead to close our spiritual eyes. It’s like our parents soothing us as we start on the long drive to Grandma’s house. “Why don’t you just grab a pillow and go to sleep. It will all be over soon enough.” What’s really happening is that they know you’ll be a pain in their neck so long as you’re awake – so long as your eyes are open you’ll squirm and fuss and kick. So long as your spirit’s awake – you’ll engage in this life and the struggle that proceeds around you. You’re more likely to sing, to vote, to write. So long as your spirit is alive and awake you’ll cause no end of trouble for the enemy who’s trying to hold on to this rock he calls his kingdom.
Does that make sense? The weapons of spiritual warfare are not meant, nor able, to kill. They are meant to suppress. That’s how prayer becomes a weapon, and song, and the simple name of Christ. Those physical actions come with a spiritual component – the exertion of your own spirit against another. In that way, it’s similar to the way many fantasy worlds explain magic – it’s a way of effecting the world through the exercise off our will. Keep in mind that we humans are hybrid creatures – body and spirit, and the motion of one effects the other. When I kneel, my spirit can’t help but be moved toward a submissive posture. When my soul is agitated, it tends to make me scowl. Which is why the physical acts of spiritual warfare can facilitate or embolden that corresponding action of my spirit.
This is also what I mean when I talk about fighting for men’s hearts. So many of us are asleep at our posts. Our lives have taught us not to engage, not to love too deeply, not to hope too much. We’ve been driven to seek spiritual sleep as the only defense to our continually broken hearts. That unbearable misery I felt over that broken heart – that wasn’t physical pain, it was spiritual pain. Physical pain would have been easier to bear, because it can only get to a certain point before it simply kills my body and it’s over. Spiritual pain can last forever and I suspect it can grow without measure. This assault on our spirits starts the day we are born and we soon discover that it just keeps coming and coming.
My experience with The Spirit these last years has been a process of waking up. Of drawing myself back up to my proper height without drooping shoulders and without a bowed head. When I do so, I make myself a bigger target, I get the enemy’s attention and I make myself deliberately more vulnerable to attack. The offer of The Spirit is not a safe life – but rather a vivid life. A life with both joy and sorrow – and lots of them both. I pray that will never go back. I pray that I won’t find myself like Cipher from the Matrix – knowing truth from lies...but preferring the lie because it’s easier.
For a while now I’ve had lots of time to examine (and practice) this thing we call spiritual warfare – and I confess that it often seems rather silly. Or if not silly, perhaps incomplete, or false in some way. The problem is this word ‘war.’ In the wars that I see on TV, the final answer to who wins or looses comes down to who’s dead and who is still alive. Patton says that no war is won by a man dying for his country. “We win by getting the other bastard to die for his country.” There is a finality there – an unambiguous point where combat stops, one way or the other, it stops. But in spiritual warfare we’re talking about the combat between eternal things – spirits, angels, souls – there is no dying, no end. So praying against demons can at times feel like the drudgery of shooing flies away from a picnic. We wave our hands and the things disperse but they always return, over and over and over. Jesus describes an exorcism with some depressing details. The unclean spirit runs off to a dry place...whatever that means...but in time he simply comes back, and brings along his friends. What’s the point then?
There is no indication in Scripture, that I’m aware of, that suggests this war between heaven and hell is ever exactly won – at least, the enemy is never destroyed. Instead, the best situation we see is one where the enemy is chained up. It may be as simple as this – eternal means eternal. A spirit, by its nature, will never be destroyed, will never end, never, ever. Not the devil, not his angels, and not us. We are permanent fixtures of this universe for better or for worse. In which case, the more closely we associate ourselves with this earthly paradigm, where live is started and life stops, the less sense spiritual warfare will make.
In my Ninjutsu class we talk about something called Zhjon Shin – the indominatable spirit. The notion is that half of every fight is won and lost when your spirit interacts with your opponents spirit. It’s not just a matter of mental toughness or tenacity. It’s a matter of setting your heart to iron and projecting that spirit in your attitude, your state of mind, and your body language. When you see a kung fu movie and the hero, who has been loosing the fight till this point, takes a deep breath and sets himself again with a look of peace on his face, when Neo beckons to Agent Smith with a slight grin saying “Come get some.” - that’s Zhjon Shin. The kung fu master has won the fight already because his heart has overcome his enemy’s.
When this spiritual warfare journey started for me, the primary fight was simply one of self preservation. The enemy can’t kill our spirits anymore than we kill his, but he assaults us all the same - how? And to what end? For this we must recognize that when we talk about a dead spirit and a sleeping spirit, we are describing the same thing. While our spirits cannot be destroyed, they can be crushed, traumatized, or anesthetized – we can sleep. In truth our spirits can sleep long years while our bodies remain alive. “Awake, O sleeper” and “rise from the dead” are synonymous.
This is big leap for many of us. As young children our spirits are alive and zealous and longing for life. But as the years and wounds pile upon us it drives that spirit from the field. By the time most of us enter our early teens, we’ve already seen quite enough of this world and we want the ride to end, we want to get off. Our parents divorce. A beloved grandmother dies. Our camp counselors touch us where they shouldn’t. We want the pain the stop – the disappointment, the guilt, the anxiety – but it doesn’t. The sun rises and sets and races around to rise again – truly everything is vanity, chasing after the wind.
And it’s here that we learn to sleep.
We stop engaging, we stop hoping, we stop longing – because it seems to bring more misery than anything else. Our first crush is so aptly named. The immense joy of love screams into our tender, naive hearts like a bullet and we’re almost overwhelmed by the beauty of it all. But for most of us, it ends in a million pieces and we can’t fathom where all of this torturous pain has come from. I remember my first heart break, the begging, the foot stomping, the profound ache in my chest and how it all seemed so unfair.
Tragedy lives in these places of our lives. Where the experience is deemed quite unbearable and we vow not that we won’t feel that way again, but that we wont feel that deeply again. Our eyes dim and the heart thunders away like a frightened stag into deeper and deeper woods. The message that came to me in the midst of that first heart break was this, “You look like a fool. Look at you crying and whining and begging – and it only makes you look more ridiculous than you already do to the woman you love and to her parents listening upstairs. You’re pathetic!”
Listen to me – pay attention. That was spiritual warfare. Warfare waged against me.
I got thwacked by the pointed end of a well aimed shaft and I didn’t even know I was on a battlefield.
Of course that wasn’t the only arrow that came my way, but it was a potent one. Over and over, as my relationship with Rebekah has grown, I’m not so surprised that I love her more, but that there is still more of me that is capable of loving her. It’s the rediscovered capacity to love that has been so striking to me. It’s like this ice burg slowly rising out of the sea – revealing more and more and more of itself – unguessed at space and strength and structure that had always been there – but was pestered into dormancy by the war waged against me.
That’s the enemy’s battle plan, at least at first, and particularly when we’re too young or too misinformed to guess the true hand that is set against us. He wants to make us sleep – through pain or indulgence or distraction he coaxes our spirits to lay down the struggle and instead to close our spiritual eyes. It’s like our parents soothing us as we start on the long drive to Grandma’s house. “Why don’t you just grab a pillow and go to sleep. It will all be over soon enough.” What’s really happening is that they know you’ll be a pain in their neck so long as you’re awake – so long as your eyes are open you’ll squirm and fuss and kick. So long as your spirit’s awake – you’ll engage in this life and the struggle that proceeds around you. You’re more likely to sing, to vote, to write. So long as your spirit is alive and awake you’ll cause no end of trouble for the enemy who’s trying to hold on to this rock he calls his kingdom.
Does that make sense? The weapons of spiritual warfare are not meant, nor able, to kill. They are meant to suppress. That’s how prayer becomes a weapon, and song, and the simple name of Christ. Those physical actions come with a spiritual component – the exertion of your own spirit against another. In that way, it’s similar to the way many fantasy worlds explain magic – it’s a way of effecting the world through the exercise off our will. Keep in mind that we humans are hybrid creatures – body and spirit, and the motion of one effects the other. When I kneel, my spirit can’t help but be moved toward a submissive posture. When my soul is agitated, it tends to make me scowl. Which is why the physical acts of spiritual warfare can facilitate or embolden that corresponding action of my spirit.
This is also what I mean when I talk about fighting for men’s hearts. So many of us are asleep at our posts. Our lives have taught us not to engage, not to love too deeply, not to hope too much. We’ve been driven to seek spiritual sleep as the only defense to our continually broken hearts. That unbearable misery I felt over that broken heart – that wasn’t physical pain, it was spiritual pain. Physical pain would have been easier to bear, because it can only get to a certain point before it simply kills my body and it’s over. Spiritual pain can last forever and I suspect it can grow without measure. This assault on our spirits starts the day we are born and we soon discover that it just keeps coming and coming.
My experience with The Spirit these last years has been a process of waking up. Of drawing myself back up to my proper height without drooping shoulders and without a bowed head. When I do so, I make myself a bigger target, I get the enemy’s attention and I make myself deliberately more vulnerable to attack. The offer of The Spirit is not a safe life – but rather a vivid life. A life with both joy and sorrow – and lots of them both. I pray that will never go back. I pray that I won’t find myself like Cipher from the Matrix – knowing truth from lies...but preferring the lie because it’s easier.
03 May 2006
Bootcamp NW
I just got back from a four day men’s retreat based on the Wild at Heart material called Bootcamp NW.
...breathe...
It’s not like I’m the kind of person who shies away from hyperbole, but the ongoing experience of my interaction with these concepts and these people can hardly be overstated. In many, many ways it’s changed my life. And let me be clear about something because I think it’s critical to understand. I am no John Eldridge groupie, I’m not a shill for some Wild at Heart cult. W@H is just one book among several that have been published in the last ten years or so that deal with similar concepts. Specifically: how should a Christian man look and act in modern America and why are so many of us asleep? So it’s rather gender-specific, in my mind it’s particular to today and I suspect it’s particular to America, or perhaps the west. W@H is only the book that caught my eye – it’s the Colorado colored version of something that I see the Holy Spirit talking to a LOT of people about in a LOT of churches. And the message seems to have real staying power. This message has outlasted at least two other pop-church messages that had more energetic followings, Prayer of Jabez and Purpose Driven Life.
That said, I also recognize that I’ve been guzzling the cool-aid for a while now. Regardless of anything else I know how much this train of thought, this set of tools and terms, has impacted my life and I’m really not very interested in debating the minutiae anymore. To that end, I’ve also become something of a cheerleader. I’ve taught at two miniature versions of this camp myself, I’ve lead small groups (Bands of Brothers is the proper jargon), and continued to explore these themes on this blog. Verily, if it weren’t for what W@H hath wrought (that was fun) I never would have had the nerve or the passion to do half of what I did this last year. I still waffle between thinking that this message would be valuable to every man I know and where it’s only useful to some – so far I can’t quite determine if the guys who don’t get it are resistant in some way or their just the wrong audience. Perhaps that’s not the point anyway. The point is to find that thing – anything – that will light your fire, and I’ve found mine.
So here’s a central theme that really turns my crank. When Christ says that He came to give us life, and life to the full (or life abundantly) when does that abundant life start? If I think that it starts when I’m saved, as opposed to when I die / resurrect, then why are most men in the church asleep, bored, distracted, living the same lives of quiet desperation that the men of the world do? If nothing else, the idea that this war we see described in scripture is 100% REAL and NOW and in my face – and that I might have a functional role to play in that war...now that’s an idea that catches my imagination. But I don’t want to recap the book here – read the book.
Michael – come to Bootcamp in November. I’ll buy your admission if you buy the plane ticket.
Compared to last year, this Bootcamp was less dramatic and more refreshing. God spoke on the same topics we hit last year and it really helped clear my head after a difficult season. In fact, by the time I went this year I was quite tired, quite bummed out, and wondering what the hell went wrong – dark days. Perhaps the best part of this weekend was the chance to gain some perspective. I mean – wow – what a year! It’s so easy to get myopic and only see what our most recent and immediate life has been, but the simple chance to go back over my journal and this blog, all since the last Bootcamp...He surely is my Ebenezer, where else would I go?
The last 12 months have been, without question, the most spiritually active in my life. But they’ve also been some of the most...what to call it...zoeally active? My life, my circumstances, my job – physical world things that can show up on a photograph or a bank statement. Those things too have seen all kinds of activity. Some joyful, some mournful, but all of it ALIVE! And that’s the great thing. I don’t see W@H or the broader movement calling men to ‘better’ lives in the sense of easier, richer, less stressful lives. Quite the opposite. The Spirit is asking men to get up off their asses swing the damn sword. There will victory AND defeat. The invitation is not to safety, but to risk. It’s not increased territory, but to contesting territory. Not to Christian purpose but to true Christian liberty.
I’m told that the Celtic Christians called the Holy Spirit The Wild Goose – utterly unpredictable. I hope to spend these next 12 months waking up every day with no idea what will happen because the Wild Goose goes where it will and my job is simple – chase it!
...breathe...
It’s not like I’m the kind of person who shies away from hyperbole, but the ongoing experience of my interaction with these concepts and these people can hardly be overstated. In many, many ways it’s changed my life. And let me be clear about something because I think it’s critical to understand. I am no John Eldridge groupie, I’m not a shill for some Wild at Heart cult. W@H is just one book among several that have been published in the last ten years or so that deal with similar concepts. Specifically: how should a Christian man look and act in modern America and why are so many of us asleep? So it’s rather gender-specific, in my mind it’s particular to today and I suspect it’s particular to America, or perhaps the west. W@H is only the book that caught my eye – it’s the Colorado colored version of something that I see the Holy Spirit talking to a LOT of people about in a LOT of churches. And the message seems to have real staying power. This message has outlasted at least two other pop-church messages that had more energetic followings, Prayer of Jabez and Purpose Driven Life.
That said, I also recognize that I’ve been guzzling the cool-aid for a while now. Regardless of anything else I know how much this train of thought, this set of tools and terms, has impacted my life and I’m really not very interested in debating the minutiae anymore. To that end, I’ve also become something of a cheerleader. I’ve taught at two miniature versions of this camp myself, I’ve lead small groups (Bands of Brothers is the proper jargon), and continued to explore these themes on this blog. Verily, if it weren’t for what W@H hath wrought (that was fun) I never would have had the nerve or the passion to do half of what I did this last year. I still waffle between thinking that this message would be valuable to every man I know and where it’s only useful to some – so far I can’t quite determine if the guys who don’t get it are resistant in some way or their just the wrong audience. Perhaps that’s not the point anyway. The point is to find that thing – anything – that will light your fire, and I’ve found mine.
So here’s a central theme that really turns my crank. When Christ says that He came to give us life, and life to the full (or life abundantly) when does that abundant life start? If I think that it starts when I’m saved, as opposed to when I die / resurrect, then why are most men in the church asleep, bored, distracted, living the same lives of quiet desperation that the men of the world do? If nothing else, the idea that this war we see described in scripture is 100% REAL and NOW and in my face – and that I might have a functional role to play in that war...now that’s an idea that catches my imagination. But I don’t want to recap the book here – read the book.
Michael – come to Bootcamp in November. I’ll buy your admission if you buy the plane ticket.
Compared to last year, this Bootcamp was less dramatic and more refreshing. God spoke on the same topics we hit last year and it really helped clear my head after a difficult season. In fact, by the time I went this year I was quite tired, quite bummed out, and wondering what the hell went wrong – dark days. Perhaps the best part of this weekend was the chance to gain some perspective. I mean – wow – what a year! It’s so easy to get myopic and only see what our most recent and immediate life has been, but the simple chance to go back over my journal and this blog, all since the last Bootcamp...He surely is my Ebenezer, where else would I go?
The last 12 months have been, without question, the most spiritually active in my life. But they’ve also been some of the most...what to call it...zoeally active? My life, my circumstances, my job – physical world things that can show up on a photograph or a bank statement. Those things too have seen all kinds of activity. Some joyful, some mournful, but all of it ALIVE! And that’s the great thing. I don’t see W@H or the broader movement calling men to ‘better’ lives in the sense of easier, richer, less stressful lives. Quite the opposite. The Spirit is asking men to get up off their asses swing the damn sword. There will victory AND defeat. The invitation is not to safety, but to risk. It’s not increased territory, but to contesting territory. Not to Christian purpose but to true Christian liberty.
I’m told that the Celtic Christians called the Holy Spirit The Wild Goose – utterly unpredictable. I hope to spend these next 12 months waking up every day with no idea what will happen because the Wild Goose goes where it will and my job is simple – chase it!
12 April 2006
Letter to a friend...
Dear anonymous friend, ;)
Thanks for sending these reflections on [your trip to the Gulf Coast to help hurricane survivors] – it’s always cool to hear how folks are encountering Christ and how it effects them.
I remember coming back from Kenya and all the stories I told and I all the experiences I had and how I KNEW that I would never, COULD NEVER, be the same. The poverty, the indifference to life, the endemic corruption – it was shocking and terrifying and so very sad. And yet, less than six months later I looked at myself and felt that in fact nothing had changed at all. I was in my same old grooves, my same old habits and I had stopped talking about Kenya because so many folks seemed like they simply weren’t interested in anything but my photos of elephants. I was sad for that. Like I had missed an opportunity to learn an important lesson (to say nothing for the people who yawned at another Kenya story).
But later still, on further reflection, I saw that Kenya had changed me but it wasn’t so obvious. There was a new plank added to my personality and when it was brand new it seemed dramatic and fresh and stood out like a sore thumb. But inevitably, life continued and that plank was slowly integrated into a structure with all the others. In time it no longer stood out, but rather it supported. It was a starting place – not an ending place.
So in the end I’ve come to see that despite all the things I’ve seen around the world, all the good experiences and all the traumatic ones, I’m called to bloom where I’m planted. That experience, like many others in Hong Kong, Panama, Mississippi, Nagasaki – they change me, but they don’t define me.
As this powerful memory dims in your mind like a setting sun, I hope you won’t begrudge the normal work of time. Instead, relish the fact that God has laid a new slab in the deep foundations of your life – and look expectantly toward what he will build atop it.
Grace and Peace – Chris
Thanks for sending these reflections on [your trip to the Gulf Coast to help hurricane survivors] – it’s always cool to hear how folks are encountering Christ and how it effects them.
I remember coming back from Kenya and all the stories I told and I all the experiences I had and how I KNEW that I would never, COULD NEVER, be the same. The poverty, the indifference to life, the endemic corruption – it was shocking and terrifying and so very sad. And yet, less than six months later I looked at myself and felt that in fact nothing had changed at all. I was in my same old grooves, my same old habits and I had stopped talking about Kenya because so many folks seemed like they simply weren’t interested in anything but my photos of elephants. I was sad for that. Like I had missed an opportunity to learn an important lesson (to say nothing for the people who yawned at another Kenya story).
But later still, on further reflection, I saw that Kenya had changed me but it wasn’t so obvious. There was a new plank added to my personality and when it was brand new it seemed dramatic and fresh and stood out like a sore thumb. But inevitably, life continued and that plank was slowly integrated into a structure with all the others. In time it no longer stood out, but rather it supported. It was a starting place – not an ending place.
So in the end I’ve come to see that despite all the things I’ve seen around the world, all the good experiences and all the traumatic ones, I’m called to bloom where I’m planted. That experience, like many others in Hong Kong, Panama, Mississippi, Nagasaki – they change me, but they don’t define me.
As this powerful memory dims in your mind like a setting sun, I hope you won’t begrudge the normal work of time. Instead, relish the fact that God has laid a new slab in the deep foundations of your life – and look expectantly toward what he will build atop it.
Grace and Peace – Chris
05 April 2006
Cool post...
Read this today and it hit me pretty hard.
Good post Marilyn!
Is Your Encounter With God Weak
Good post Marilyn!
Is Your Encounter With God Weak
03 April 2006
On Ownership
Ownership is a powerful thing. To look at a thing and say “That’s mine.” even better to say “I made that.”
For a man, owning things can often be a proxy for where we’ve gone in life, what we’ve achieved. Our first car is like a right of passage, a symbol of adolescence becoming adulthood. Of course, that car also teaches us some of our first real-world lessons about responsibility – it’s no longer an exercise in mom and dad’s laboratory. Often we get our first job just to pay for gas for our first car. Even more so a house - I had my house about 2 months when Darrin Miranda told me “From now on, every time you walk out the front door it will cost you $50 at Home Depot.” - he wasn’t far off.
I’m not really talking about ‘stuff’ here, I’m not talking about materialism. I’m talking about this powerful drive to have something that’s my own, whether it’s a physical thing like a car, or a house, or a baseball card collection, or something intangible like a degree or a business.
So there’s this guy I know, we’ll call him Fred. For the last two years or so, I’ve had the pleasure of watching Fred and his wife’s business grow from a neat idea with one customer who practically had to beg them to sell him something, to a growing-too-fast-dear-Jesus-help-us-keep-the-wheels-on success story. It’s been exciting and fascinating to watch God work in this thing almost despite anything they do to help or hinder the thing. But that clearly cool business story aside, what’s really intrigued me is how it’s changing the two of them, particularly Fred. I’m not certain this is 100% true, but I think this business is the first thing either of them have ever owned that was worth more than about $5,000. (not counting what their wonderful kids might fetch on the black market) And the effect on Fred has been deeply transforming. I’m sure it’s not only this, but there’s this new thing in his life, he now has the ability to look around that room with all the pots and pans and pepper and say “This is mine. I made this.” and no man can gainsay him. That is seriously powerful. It gives him a sense of pride, an anchor for his self-esteem. From there he can look around at the world and have faith for even better things – even more, that HE might be a functional part of those better things, hat God might actually use HIM.
In ‘Wild at Heart’ they say that a man’s deepest question is “Do I have what it takes?”
It’s the question that really asks – am I a man at all, or just a boy? And I’m watching Fred approach this question with a different look on his face than was there four years ago. Because there is this thriving, growing thing in his face every day – a business that he owns – he’s accomplished something that most men never do and you can see the thoughts racing in his mind – doing battle with the older, darker thoughts born of failure and fear. “Maybe they were wrong about me? Maybe I was wrong about myself? Maybe I really do have have what it takes...”
Today, more than anything I think, Fred finds himself at a moment where he needs to be on his own for the simple sake of proving to himself and others that he can be. It’s an unexpected crossroad, and that giant step forward yawns before him like the Grand Canyon. It’s a delicate moment here – this opportunity to assert our independence, because we can easily come to think the moment is about success or failure. But it isn’t – it’s about the courage to try. For my part, I’m trying to cheer him on in the way you encourage the kid frozen at the top of cliff dive. Is there real, actual danger? – yes, the water to the left is too shallow. But will this moment by pivotal – very much yes. If he turns away it will be a set back, a delay to this next phase in his life and the problem with these delays is that we never know which will be our last opportunity. But for now, it’s just that gut-wrenching, inch-by-inch approach to the precipice as you peer over the edge and fight the vertigo...you can do it Fred. You can do it.
But ownership cuts both ways. In another corner I have another friend, we’ll call him Bob. Bob has always been a superstar. Popular, self-confident, excelling in everything he puts his mind to. If Bob ever asked “Do I have what it takes?” he was able to confidently answer with a “Well duh!” And yet, like Fred, Bob doesn’t really own much at all. It’s certainly not for lack of trying, the guy’s been energetic and entrepreneurial for as long as I’ve known him, but nothing seems to stick. Another central theme in Wild at Heart is the notion that our strength is not for ourselves – it is given to us by God to serve others. Bob knows his strength, perhaps too well, but it’s hard for him to serve, hard for him to submit. The simple truth is that he’s usually smarter, better, faster, and more talented than the people he works for – it’s no wonder he finds it hard to get in line. Also like Fred, Bob finds himself at a crossroads these days – with decisions before him and he too, like Fred, has gone through some major growing these last 18 mos.
Now in fairness, I don’t know Bob as well as I know Fred, so I could be way off, but my sense is that ownership has become twisted in Bob’s heart to become more of a lure than a reward. He wants to own something so badly that it colors the way he sees other things, it changes the way he acts. Like a starving kid who finds a salad bar and eats himself sick...so sick he misses the main course. Maybe more accurate would be a kid whose BEEN hungry – who’s learned to take what he can today because you never know if there will be bread tomorrow. For Bob, it doesn’t even seem to be about owning any particular thing, just owning SOMETHING. He wants so very bad to say “That’s mine!” that he has a history of sabotaging the very things that would satisfy that need in his heart. It’s the lure of easy money and a quick fix and looking so long for the pot of gold.
It’s the juxtaposition between these two men that has got me thinking about ownership.
The one wondering if he can actually own anything, the other wondering why he doesn’t own more already and what he can own right now.
One who probably ought to leave the safety of the nest for the open sky, the other who probably needs, more than anything, to stop being a one-man-band and commit himself to sharing and collaborating.
I suppose, like most things, the relationship between ownership and sin is a gray area. The impulse to own can strengthen us or consume us. We can get unhealthy with a drive to have something that we become unwilling or unable to recognize that it’s really God’s in the long run – we’ve just been allowed to hold it for a while. We can likely grow to feel that we oughtn’t own anything because we’re too dumb, or too irresponsible, or too dirty – so we reject the gifts God offers us, or fail to recognize the opportunities he presents.
Perhaps the most compelling part of these men’s stories is the fact that from where I stand, both men have practically been buried by God’s advice in these matters – and both of them see just what I do...but they resist it. Whether it’s for fear, or pride, or just because it’s not what they expected, they hedge, they hesitate, they want more confirmation. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not criticizing here. I’ve certainly been in the same place, where you can’t see the forest for the trees and the electric bill. It’s just fascinating to be watching these stories unfold from the bleachers. That’s where I hope to take the time to reflect on my own vision of ownership. I’ve certainly been afraid to reach for something – been there. I’ve certainly lunged for a grape only to discover I missed the watermelon – done that.
And so often, the true motivator in me was fear. Fear of taking on responsibility, or fear of being left-behind by the Jones’. I think of the evening that Saul winds up camping in the same cave where David is hiding. Who would have blamed David for thinking “Here is Saul! God has delivered my enemy into my hands!” With this kook chasing him through the countryside trying to kill him, how much would fear have played on David’s heart – Make the strike! End your trouble now! This may be your only chance! But David didn’t give into fear – instead he’s able to step back and see the bigger picture and declares (in essence) “Just ‘cause I can don’t mean I should.” I even wonder if God HADN’T delivered David his enemy. Is it possible, that taking Saul’s life would NOT have been sinful, but it simply would have been less – less righteous, less inspiring, less wise – but not exactly wrong? What do we think of the incredible coincidence of the story’s set-up? We’re told God doesn’t temp us so we shouldn’t consider it some kind of test for David. Would the Devil lead Saul to that cave? That seems out of character for him to sacrifice his king, but more importantly there’s no indication of that in the story. Perhaps we can learn something from David’s son Solomon. When God offers him just about anything he might ask for we have every reason to believe the offer is'nt in earnest. Riches? Land? Dominion? They are all on the plate and given that situation I don’t think asking for those things would have been sinful for Solomon. But he asks for wisdom – given an invitation to be almost anything, he puts all his ambition and all his anxiety aside and chooses instead to submit. “God, teach me about you. And that will be enough.”
As a result he gets both.
For a man, owning things can often be a proxy for where we’ve gone in life, what we’ve achieved. Our first car is like a right of passage, a symbol of adolescence becoming adulthood. Of course, that car also teaches us some of our first real-world lessons about responsibility – it’s no longer an exercise in mom and dad’s laboratory. Often we get our first job just to pay for gas for our first car. Even more so a house - I had my house about 2 months when Darrin Miranda told me “From now on, every time you walk out the front door it will cost you $50 at Home Depot.” - he wasn’t far off.
I’m not really talking about ‘stuff’ here, I’m not talking about materialism. I’m talking about this powerful drive to have something that’s my own, whether it’s a physical thing like a car, or a house, or a baseball card collection, or something intangible like a degree or a business.
So there’s this guy I know, we’ll call him Fred. For the last two years or so, I’ve had the pleasure of watching Fred and his wife’s business grow from a neat idea with one customer who practically had to beg them to sell him something, to a growing-too-fast-dear-Jesus-help-us-keep-the-wheels-on success story. It’s been exciting and fascinating to watch God work in this thing almost despite anything they do to help or hinder the thing. But that clearly cool business story aside, what’s really intrigued me is how it’s changing the two of them, particularly Fred. I’m not certain this is 100% true, but I think this business is the first thing either of them have ever owned that was worth more than about $5,000. (not counting what their wonderful kids might fetch on the black market) And the effect on Fred has been deeply transforming. I’m sure it’s not only this, but there’s this new thing in his life, he now has the ability to look around that room with all the pots and pans and pepper and say “This is mine. I made this.” and no man can gainsay him. That is seriously powerful. It gives him a sense of pride, an anchor for his self-esteem. From there he can look around at the world and have faith for even better things – even more, that HE might be a functional part of those better things, hat God might actually use HIM.
In ‘Wild at Heart’ they say that a man’s deepest question is “Do I have what it takes?”
It’s the question that really asks – am I a man at all, or just a boy? And I’m watching Fred approach this question with a different look on his face than was there four years ago. Because there is this thriving, growing thing in his face every day – a business that he owns – he’s accomplished something that most men never do and you can see the thoughts racing in his mind – doing battle with the older, darker thoughts born of failure and fear. “Maybe they were wrong about me? Maybe I was wrong about myself? Maybe I really do have have what it takes...”
Today, more than anything I think, Fred finds himself at a moment where he needs to be on his own for the simple sake of proving to himself and others that he can be. It’s an unexpected crossroad, and that giant step forward yawns before him like the Grand Canyon. It’s a delicate moment here – this opportunity to assert our independence, because we can easily come to think the moment is about success or failure. But it isn’t – it’s about the courage to try. For my part, I’m trying to cheer him on in the way you encourage the kid frozen at the top of cliff dive. Is there real, actual danger? – yes, the water to the left is too shallow. But will this moment by pivotal – very much yes. If he turns away it will be a set back, a delay to this next phase in his life and the problem with these delays is that we never know which will be our last opportunity. But for now, it’s just that gut-wrenching, inch-by-inch approach to the precipice as you peer over the edge and fight the vertigo...you can do it Fred. You can do it.
But ownership cuts both ways. In another corner I have another friend, we’ll call him Bob. Bob has always been a superstar. Popular, self-confident, excelling in everything he puts his mind to. If Bob ever asked “Do I have what it takes?” he was able to confidently answer with a “Well duh!” And yet, like Fred, Bob doesn’t really own much at all. It’s certainly not for lack of trying, the guy’s been energetic and entrepreneurial for as long as I’ve known him, but nothing seems to stick. Another central theme in Wild at Heart is the notion that our strength is not for ourselves – it is given to us by God to serve others. Bob knows his strength, perhaps too well, but it’s hard for him to serve, hard for him to submit. The simple truth is that he’s usually smarter, better, faster, and more talented than the people he works for – it’s no wonder he finds it hard to get in line. Also like Fred, Bob finds himself at a crossroads these days – with decisions before him and he too, like Fred, has gone through some major growing these last 18 mos.
Now in fairness, I don’t know Bob as well as I know Fred, so I could be way off, but my sense is that ownership has become twisted in Bob’s heart to become more of a lure than a reward. He wants to own something so badly that it colors the way he sees other things, it changes the way he acts. Like a starving kid who finds a salad bar and eats himself sick...so sick he misses the main course. Maybe more accurate would be a kid whose BEEN hungry – who’s learned to take what he can today because you never know if there will be bread tomorrow. For Bob, it doesn’t even seem to be about owning any particular thing, just owning SOMETHING. He wants so very bad to say “That’s mine!” that he has a history of sabotaging the very things that would satisfy that need in his heart. It’s the lure of easy money and a quick fix and looking so long for the pot of gold.
It’s the juxtaposition between these two men that has got me thinking about ownership.
The one wondering if he can actually own anything, the other wondering why he doesn’t own more already and what he can own right now.
One who probably ought to leave the safety of the nest for the open sky, the other who probably needs, more than anything, to stop being a one-man-band and commit himself to sharing and collaborating.
I suppose, like most things, the relationship between ownership and sin is a gray area. The impulse to own can strengthen us or consume us. We can get unhealthy with a drive to have something that we become unwilling or unable to recognize that it’s really God’s in the long run – we’ve just been allowed to hold it for a while. We can likely grow to feel that we oughtn’t own anything because we’re too dumb, or too irresponsible, or too dirty – so we reject the gifts God offers us, or fail to recognize the opportunities he presents.
Perhaps the most compelling part of these men’s stories is the fact that from where I stand, both men have practically been buried by God’s advice in these matters – and both of them see just what I do...but they resist it. Whether it’s for fear, or pride, or just because it’s not what they expected, they hedge, they hesitate, they want more confirmation. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not criticizing here. I’ve certainly been in the same place, where you can’t see the forest for the trees and the electric bill. It’s just fascinating to be watching these stories unfold from the bleachers. That’s where I hope to take the time to reflect on my own vision of ownership. I’ve certainly been afraid to reach for something – been there. I’ve certainly lunged for a grape only to discover I missed the watermelon – done that.
And so often, the true motivator in me was fear. Fear of taking on responsibility, or fear of being left-behind by the Jones’. I think of the evening that Saul winds up camping in the same cave where David is hiding. Who would have blamed David for thinking “Here is Saul! God has delivered my enemy into my hands!” With this kook chasing him through the countryside trying to kill him, how much would fear have played on David’s heart – Make the strike! End your trouble now! This may be your only chance! But David didn’t give into fear – instead he’s able to step back and see the bigger picture and declares (in essence) “Just ‘cause I can don’t mean I should.” I even wonder if God HADN’T delivered David his enemy. Is it possible, that taking Saul’s life would NOT have been sinful, but it simply would have been less – less righteous, less inspiring, less wise – but not exactly wrong? What do we think of the incredible coincidence of the story’s set-up? We’re told God doesn’t temp us so we shouldn’t consider it some kind of test for David. Would the Devil lead Saul to that cave? That seems out of character for him to sacrifice his king, but more importantly there’s no indication of that in the story. Perhaps we can learn something from David’s son Solomon. When God offers him just about anything he might ask for we have every reason to believe the offer is'nt in earnest. Riches? Land? Dominion? They are all on the plate and given that situation I don’t think asking for those things would have been sinful for Solomon. But he asks for wisdom – given an invitation to be almost anything, he puts all his ambition and all his anxiety aside and chooses instead to submit. “God, teach me about you. And that will be enough.”
As a result he gets both.
17 March 2006
The Junie Story
Matt’s in bed and he hears, “Congratulations. You finally made it. Now get ready to move on to the next thing, hugs and kisses, God"
Back in 1998 I was new to Newberg. I was a full time student at GFU and living on my Navy education money, about $800/mo for rent, food, and all that plus school expenses – things were...um...tight. I was also new to my church, I’d been attending for about 4 months.
At the time, I had a strong feeling that I should give $500 to the church. You should know that the idea that God would give me some kind of a specific direction like that was a very new idea for me. I’d never really had anything like that happen before. And it wasn’t just a sense that I should give some money to the church, or a lot of money, but a specific amount - $500. That decision vexed me for over a month while I talked with my pastor, talked to my teachers, wrung my hands and flipped out. I had all kinds of good reasons not to do it – it was bad stewardship! It was way more than 10% of my income! It would certainly cause me to skip on other financial commitments that I had! Quite frankly the whole idea was just foolish. But from the moment He spoke, I knew that He had spoke, and what was really happening was that I was trying to find a way out from under it and my brain was leading that charge while my heart never really bought all the arguments. Also, all the counsel I got from people I trusted came down to something like this – despite the way the circumstances look, we’re called to obey. SO do that.
Eventually I screwed up my courage, took a deep breath and wrote a check. I drove that check over to my church and with downcast eyes gave the check over to John Teeters. “I’m supposed to give this to the church.” I said – moping.
“Really?,” he said. “Any reason in particular?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Well I think I know – thanks.”he said smiling...and that was that. No explanation, no big fanfare that was nearly up to the stress I had endured over the decision. Just a casual ‘Thanks” like I’d given him a lollipop. Still, it was behind me and the peace of finally having made a decision was reward enough. Right or wrong it was now officially in the past. On my back to the car, as clear as day, God says “Good job. Now prepare to give $5,000.”
I was like “You gotta be kidding me!” but I hid that thought in my heart for a couple years while I graduated from college, started working, and got married. In all that time I never knew what that whole episode was about except that it was a powerful lesson in obedience. I did miss several bill payments – God didn’t promise me that following his lead wouldn’t cost me anything. In fact, if anything, He promises that following Him WILL cost us – sometimes our very lives. But He also promises that it’s worth it. That one struggle with hearing his voice and trusting it no mater how things looked lead me into further adventures that turned into huge blessings. Going to Africa and marrying Rebekah are only two of them and for me I looked back on that as a turning point, and that was enough.
Bt then sometime in 2001, so about three years after that $500 check was done, there’s a guest speaker at church. It’s a young lady named Junie who has recently returned from a long term mission and she wants to tell her story to TFC since the church helped with her support. I’ve never seen or met Junie, but she’s so full of the Spirit and joy and seems so totally sold out for Jesus it’s neat to watch her. After hearing about tribes and weird food and jungle rot she wants to talk about Providence. Before she left she was raising support from TFC and one or two other local churches. With literally 3 days to go before her deadline she had raised $1,500 of the $2,000 her organization required her to raise – and she was getting desperate. She knew that the call to this mission was real but God hadn’t provided the money – what was she to think? And then, she says, a mysterious check for $500 suddenly came through TFC – it made her requirement almost perfectly and without that she might never have gone. She never knew where that money came from...but I did. I almost lost there that day – it was a good thing I was in the back – because God seemed to turn to me with this knowing little wink and whisper - “You didn’t think I would just fritter away your sacrifice did you?”
For the record, Junie went on to become the children’s pastor at my church – because of what we had done for her - where she did a fantastic job of raising God fearing little children. She was a fantastic source of joy and love and eventually found her husband there. But the story continues...
Not long after that I made the decision to quit my day job and start my own business. As part of that I took a loan against my house as start-up money and as that loan finalized and I’m looking at my bank account wondering about the best way to manage this cash God says “Remember the $5,000?” OK – I’ve just quit my job. I have a new wife which is a responsibility that I’ve never had before. We have a new house, that I just took a loan against. Are you serious? The struggle over $5,000 wasn’t nearly as vexing as the $500 because I had several years of experience behind me this time – I had learned to trust God in both thick and thin – so I did cough up the money. To date, there hasn’t been anything where God showed me a direct result of that donation, but then again, I’m at a place in my faith where I don’t really need that anymore. I know He’s good for it. I know it was something. Most importantly, I know that’s what He asked for – and I don’t need to know why. I do know that God’s hand has been on this business ever since then. Helping us through both good and hard times and making this a incredibly rich season in my life. If nothing else, just submitting Code-Monkeys to His will in that very tangible way has been a fertile field of spiritual growth.
After that $5k went out, as clear as day, God said - “Thanks. Get ready for $50,000.”
Back in 1998 I was new to Newberg. I was a full time student at GFU and living on my Navy education money, about $800/mo for rent, food, and all that plus school expenses – things were...um...tight. I was also new to my church, I’d been attending for about 4 months.
At the time, I had a strong feeling that I should give $500 to the church. You should know that the idea that God would give me some kind of a specific direction like that was a very new idea for me. I’d never really had anything like that happen before. And it wasn’t just a sense that I should give some money to the church, or a lot of money, but a specific amount - $500. That decision vexed me for over a month while I talked with my pastor, talked to my teachers, wrung my hands and flipped out. I had all kinds of good reasons not to do it – it was bad stewardship! It was way more than 10% of my income! It would certainly cause me to skip on other financial commitments that I had! Quite frankly the whole idea was just foolish. But from the moment He spoke, I knew that He had spoke, and what was really happening was that I was trying to find a way out from under it and my brain was leading that charge while my heart never really bought all the arguments. Also, all the counsel I got from people I trusted came down to something like this – despite the way the circumstances look, we’re called to obey. SO do that.
Eventually I screwed up my courage, took a deep breath and wrote a check. I drove that check over to my church and with downcast eyes gave the check over to John Teeters. “I’m supposed to give this to the church.” I said – moping.
“Really?,” he said. “Any reason in particular?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Well I think I know – thanks.”he said smiling...and that was that. No explanation, no big fanfare that was nearly up to the stress I had endured over the decision. Just a casual ‘Thanks” like I’d given him a lollipop. Still, it was behind me and the peace of finally having made a decision was reward enough. Right or wrong it was now officially in the past. On my back to the car, as clear as day, God says “Good job. Now prepare to give $5,000.”
I was like “You gotta be kidding me!” but I hid that thought in my heart for a couple years while I graduated from college, started working, and got married. In all that time I never knew what that whole episode was about except that it was a powerful lesson in obedience. I did miss several bill payments – God didn’t promise me that following his lead wouldn’t cost me anything. In fact, if anything, He promises that following Him WILL cost us – sometimes our very lives. But He also promises that it’s worth it. That one struggle with hearing his voice and trusting it no mater how things looked lead me into further adventures that turned into huge blessings. Going to Africa and marrying Rebekah are only two of them and for me I looked back on that as a turning point, and that was enough.
Bt then sometime in 2001, so about three years after that $500 check was done, there’s a guest speaker at church. It’s a young lady named Junie who has recently returned from a long term mission and she wants to tell her story to TFC since the church helped with her support. I’ve never seen or met Junie, but she’s so full of the Spirit and joy and seems so totally sold out for Jesus it’s neat to watch her. After hearing about tribes and weird food and jungle rot she wants to talk about Providence. Before she left she was raising support from TFC and one or two other local churches. With literally 3 days to go before her deadline she had raised $1,500 of the $2,000 her organization required her to raise – and she was getting desperate. She knew that the call to this mission was real but God hadn’t provided the money – what was she to think? And then, she says, a mysterious check for $500 suddenly came through TFC – it made her requirement almost perfectly and without that she might never have gone. She never knew where that money came from...but I did. I almost lost there that day – it was a good thing I was in the back – because God seemed to turn to me with this knowing little wink and whisper - “You didn’t think I would just fritter away your sacrifice did you?”
For the record, Junie went on to become the children’s pastor at my church – because of what we had done for her - where she did a fantastic job of raising God fearing little children. She was a fantastic source of joy and love and eventually found her husband there. But the story continues...
Not long after that I made the decision to quit my day job and start my own business. As part of that I took a loan against my house as start-up money and as that loan finalized and I’m looking at my bank account wondering about the best way to manage this cash God says “Remember the $5,000?” OK – I’ve just quit my job. I have a new wife which is a responsibility that I’ve never had before. We have a new house, that I just took a loan against. Are you serious? The struggle over $5,000 wasn’t nearly as vexing as the $500 because I had several years of experience behind me this time – I had learned to trust God in both thick and thin – so I did cough up the money. To date, there hasn’t been anything where God showed me a direct result of that donation, but then again, I’m at a place in my faith where I don’t really need that anymore. I know He’s good for it. I know it was something. Most importantly, I know that’s what He asked for – and I don’t need to know why. I do know that God’s hand has been on this business ever since then. Helping us through both good and hard times and making this a incredibly rich season in my life. If nothing else, just submitting Code-Monkeys to His will in that very tangible way has been a fertile field of spiritual growth.
After that $5k went out, as clear as day, God said - “Thanks. Get ready for $50,000.”
15 March 2006
More on that man thing...
I understand why the blogs put the newest post at the top, but this post is properly a continuation of the previous post – it should go beneath it...I wonder I can fudge the date or something to force it down? Anyway...
While I see this idea shaping up in my mind, I also think that it won’t properly crystallize without the counsel of the other guys. This thing, its structure and purpose and SOP should be shaped and fleshed out organically. “Wisdom is found in the moths of many counselors” says the Word. But that said, here are a few ideas:
I’ve been brought to the awareness that Jesus carries more than that lost sheep on his shoulders – he carries a double-edged sword with his robe dipped in blood.
That fires me up!
That’s the Jesus I want to follow into war.
And it seems to me that the trumpet is sounding.
While I see this idea shaping up in my mind, I also think that it won’t properly crystallize without the counsel of the other guys. This thing, its structure and purpose and SOP should be shaped and fleshed out organically. “Wisdom is found in the moths of many counselors” says the Word. But that said, here are a few ideas:
- We should understand money
Like it or not, money is a powerful force and there is a great deal of Biblical advice regarding money. We can’t be fully armed warriors if we can’t effectively weird this particular weapon. And it’s not enough to read a Larry Burkett book, we need to understand and experience both success and failure with investments and business. It goes without saying that enriching our own lives isn’t really the point, but nor is it verboten. The Word says a good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children – so let’s work toward that goal. While money can no doubt be as much a blessing as a curse, we can’t eschew this tool just because of it’s potential danger.
- We should know how to fight
A man with a sword is an anachronism today – I’m not disputing that. But there is something singularly powerful about knowing that lethal force is within your reach. Being a knight, being a leader – being a man – includes the idea of the judicious application of force. In today’s world, that would only rarely mean physical force, but even there, a so-called knight turned to jelly by a 14 year-old with a knife, is clearly missing something. Learning to fight teaches us about our own strengths and just as well our weaknesses. It teaches us poise in the face of danger. It’s self-confidence, self-control, and the proper place of authority all in one. We learn to respect ourselves as we learn to respect our enemies – including The Enemy.
- We should value fraternity
Our American culture is too mobile, too segmented, too disconnected to build the kinds of deep, thick-or-thin relationships that make us strong. As these last few years have passed, nothing has changed so sharply in my understanding of God’s call on my life than my appreciation of community. This idea rests squarely on a commitment of these men to one another for a long time – years at the very least. Also, I’m not talking about soccer games, at least not ONLY soccer games. I’m talking about a deliberate effort to know one another (our wives and kids as well as the guys) and come to that place where trust one another deeply. Where we’re vulnerable enough to say, “Guys – I need help with this!” and where a guy who falls, a guy who chokes, or a guy who sins isn’t berated or preached to, but rather is gathered round and protected – given the space to catch his breath and heal. I’m sick and tired of that Christian culture where we shoot our wounded.
- We should be deliberate
This group should seek and embrace a purpose with zeal. It’s not enough to just agree that we’ll all hang out and try tom be Godly men. We need to approach this band, as well as the rest of our lives with direction. Not wandering, not simply reacting to what happens to us, but pressing on toward a goal. I confess that at this moment I don’t know what that ‘bigger’ goal would be. But I trust that when everything is in place, it will made clear to us. And don’t take this lightly. I know that it’s fashionable in these men groups to say that leading our families is the biggest adventure of all, but quite frankly – bullshit. No doubt raising teenagers (or twins!) presents certain significant challenges, but I’m really thinking that this is about more than keeping promises, more than loving our wives – The Round Table became legend because those men committed themselves to an ideal larger than life, larger than themselves. Let us seek and expect that God’s call will be mighty.All of this vision casting, all of this purple language, is really just this: Christ has awakened my heart to something huge – life abundant. He’s calling me to see the bigger picture and to be an active part of it. I want to move past the phase in my life where I go go God cautiously, with one eye always on the door, one foot always in the world – and instead to charge the throne boldly. And there still – to really find that place where my spiritual life, as rich as it might be, to mesh fully with my physical life. I’m wanting to move past timidity and safety and frakking boredom – bored at work, bored at church, bored all week until I get to watch Battlestar Gallactica where somebody else is living life to the fullest. Why do Treasure Island, and Lord of The Rings, and Lion King get me excited? Because they are full of adventure and the promise that great things happen when normal people stay a course. And my heart was MADE for adventure.
I’ve been brought to the awareness that Jesus carries more than that lost sheep on his shoulders – he carries a double-edged sword with his robe dipped in blood.
That fires me up!
That’s the Jesus I want to follow into war.
And it seems to me that the trumpet is sounding.
12 March 2006
Imperfect vision
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
There’s something gathering at the edge of my vision – a dim outline of something that still lacks details or texture or color, but it seems to be increasingly vivid in the last few weeks. It’s a vision, I think, of where God will be moving me in the near to mid future, an assignment of sorts. As I’ve started to sense this approaching thing, sniffing for it on the wind, I find myself compelled to make room for it, to prepare for its arrival. For example, after five continuous years of hosting Skaggs Spaghetti Night – we’re calling that to a halt. After too many years of long hours at work, working overtime to get my fledgling business on its feet, I find myself with a fresh commitment to working my day and coming home on time – damn the deadline (which, by the way, has been an unlooked for exercise in simplicity and providence. It’s fascinating how many things actually DON’T need my attention). I’ve been cutting things back, cutting things loose, and deliberately saying no to things that at any other time in my life would have seemed like opportunities.
So as not to seem coy, and retaining my right to say “oops – I was way off” - here’s the shape of what I’m seeing.
It’s a little over the top – I know. But this is what is taking shape in my mind. A group of guys who really take this stuff seriously. Who value brotherhood and community above a promotion that would break this circle. Call it a modern round table. If one can put 1000 to flight, and two can put 10,000 to flight – what can ten men of integrity and honor and courage do?
There’s been a stirring in the church over this very subject, but this isn’t really about ‘the church’ - at least it isn’t about that building you meet in on Sunday. It’s very much about The Body and being very conscious and deliberate about picking up this sword and learning to use it. To become warriors and men of renown – knights.
And not by force of will, but by answering the summons.
This will hurt and be the process of years. This will cost you a great deal – it represents a significant sacrifice - but your life will be saved in the process. More importantly, the lives of your families, your sons in particular, will be rescued form this grey, flat, lifeless thing we’ve come to call modern American life. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be truly challenged once in a while? To actually have something actually on the line? To live a life of fullness where neighbors say ‘I want what that guy has. He is so ALIVE!”
And while the core of this thing is about Jesus, it’s not just about prayer. It’s not “Let’s stop to the throne room of heaven brother!” - it’s real live dirt and mud and blood. Learn to fight – for real. Swing a real sword so you know what’s like. We’re talking about life and death here – both spiritual AND physical. We love God with our whole spirit, but also our whole mind and our whole body.
Listen to me :: There will be men who read this post, even men who have never read my blog before, who will understand this call is for them. This idea won’t be new to them – it will be only an articulation of something that has been smoldering in their chests for months, maybe even years. The mind will yell “Yes! That’s it!”
I don’t know where this will go – I’m only trying to be obedient to the call on my heart as I understand it – invite.
And let me also offer this caution. Many are called, but few are chosen. The immediate invitation is this – come. Yes – I mean move your family, your job, your life. Come if you’re certain of God’s call and I know some of you are. But for many, many others the invitation is different – start something. Ask God about your own group of men that surround you. Surely this invitation is only one of many – there is no shortage of need for men who will step up and swing the bat. This will not bee the only such group to be formed. I have to trust God that He will hand pick the men for this group that he has in mind, but for others, others for whom the idea feels like a tug on their guts, raise a flag and see who salutes.
For me, I’ll wait and see who answers.
There’s something gathering at the edge of my vision – a dim outline of something that still lacks details or texture or color, but it seems to be increasingly vivid in the last few weeks. It’s a vision, I think, of where God will be moving me in the near to mid future, an assignment of sorts. As I’ve started to sense this approaching thing, sniffing for it on the wind, I find myself compelled to make room for it, to prepare for its arrival. For example, after five continuous years of hosting Skaggs Spaghetti Night – we’re calling that to a halt. After too many years of long hours at work, working overtime to get my fledgling business on its feet, I find myself with a fresh commitment to working my day and coming home on time – damn the deadline (which, by the way, has been an unlooked for exercise in simplicity and providence. It’s fascinating how many things actually DON’T need my attention). I’ve been cutting things back, cutting things loose, and deliberately saying no to things that at any other time in my life would have seemed like opportunities.
So as not to seem coy, and retaining my right to say “oops – I was way off” - here’s the shape of what I’m seeing.
- I’m seeing a group of men - a small group, probably no more than ten.
- All of them peers, so men of roughly the same age and stage of life.
- All of them ‘Servants of the Secret Fire’ as Gandalf says – Christians of deep and sincere commitment to our Father and His Son.
- Men who excel at their profession, who have achieved a degree of success by virtue of the fact that their hearts are truly engaged in their work and the work is truly submitted to God. Whether that be ministry or middle management, potter or policeman – what matters is passion. And I’m not talking about success as the world measures it but rather that spiritual contentment that he is where God placed him and his labor is an offering.
- These men recognize and accept the burden of leadership that they are called to. They have heard God’s call to their hearts to be bigger – to be more – whether that be leading their own families to God’s throne or leading a nation to the same place, these men know deep in their core that God has called them to more than punching a clock.
- And this is critical – these men understand that they will study war that their sons might study wisdom. They take up this mantle, this covenant with one another, for the express purpose of making their sons mighty men of God.
It’s a little over the top – I know. But this is what is taking shape in my mind. A group of guys who really take this stuff seriously. Who value brotherhood and community above a promotion that would break this circle. Call it a modern round table. If one can put 1000 to flight, and two can put 10,000 to flight – what can ten men of integrity and honor and courage do?
There’s been a stirring in the church over this very subject, but this isn’t really about ‘the church’ - at least it isn’t about that building you meet in on Sunday. It’s very much about The Body and being very conscious and deliberate about picking up this sword and learning to use it. To become warriors and men of renown – knights.
And not by force of will, but by answering the summons.
This will hurt and be the process of years. This will cost you a great deal – it represents a significant sacrifice - but your life will be saved in the process. More importantly, the lives of your families, your sons in particular, will be rescued form this grey, flat, lifeless thing we’ve come to call modern American life. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be truly challenged once in a while? To actually have something actually on the line? To live a life of fullness where neighbors say ‘I want what that guy has. He is so ALIVE!”
And while the core of this thing is about Jesus, it’s not just about prayer. It’s not “Let’s stop to the throne room of heaven brother!” - it’s real live dirt and mud and blood. Learn to fight – for real. Swing a real sword so you know what’s like. We’re talking about life and death here – both spiritual AND physical. We love God with our whole spirit, but also our whole mind and our whole body.
Listen to me :: There will be men who read this post, even men who have never read my blog before, who will understand this call is for them. This idea won’t be new to them – it will be only an articulation of something that has been smoldering in their chests for months, maybe even years. The mind will yell “Yes! That’s it!”
I don’t know where this will go – I’m only trying to be obedient to the call on my heart as I understand it – invite.
And let me also offer this caution. Many are called, but few are chosen. The immediate invitation is this – come. Yes – I mean move your family, your job, your life. Come if you’re certain of God’s call and I know some of you are. But for many, many others the invitation is different – start something. Ask God about your own group of men that surround you. Surely this invitation is only one of many – there is no shortage of need for men who will step up and swing the bat. This will not bee the only such group to be formed. I have to trust God that He will hand pick the men for this group that he has in mind, but for others, others for whom the idea feels like a tug on their guts, raise a flag and see who salutes.
For me, I’ll wait and see who answers.
09 March 2006
Conversations With Lewis
See: http://mysterycycles.blogspot.com/2006/01/i-admit-it-i-hate-islam.html
Whenever I tell my story, or ‘testimony’ in High Christianeese, I give a lot of credit to C.S. Lewis and 1994 (the year, not the book) for bringing me into the kingdom. I consider myself a rational, intelligent person and my intellect presented any number of barriers to my faith. I had innumerable questions about dates and ages and genealogies and on and on and on. Miracles, and resurrections and such were just so much superstition cloaked as something more important as far as I was concerned.
What’s interesting is that I would have called myself a Christian at that time if you had asked. But you see, I was a ‘thinking Christian’ not one of those min-numb robots who takes everything with blind faith. I was interested in the compelling similarities between Jesus’ teachings and those of Buddha, I had an enlightened, modern relationship with an intelligent girl that I lived with. I knew that responsible use of mind altering substances was actually a holy rite in several ancient religions and that laws prohibiting such things were either Republican attacks on my freedom by blue haired old ladies in New England, or an unfortunate necessity to address the problems of the irresponsible users. I knew that God was everywhere so there was no need to go to church, besides I’d almost certainly wind up running into some intolerant Bible-thumper. In hindsight, I was willing to call myself a Christian because that sounded kinda cool and I guess I did believe, at least, that God and Jesus were real – but it was like recognizing the Prime Minister of England on TV. My impression was based more on disjointed, occasional headlines than anything else. And since he really doesn’t have any kind of authority over me then what he thought or said was only interesting insofar as I agreed with Him, and could use his quote to win an argument and look clever.
For all those years, and many before then, Lewis’ Mere Christianity had sat on my bookshelf. I had read it years ago, found it interesting, but then moved on to some foul tome by Allister Crowley (Yeah, I had an occult phase) but eventually settled into a pretty steady diet of Discover, the History Channel, and Nova. I loved science literature and I considered myself a man of science. Toward the end of 1994 my squadron, VAW-114, moved over to CV-63 and I spent the next six months at sea. Despite what you might think about the Navy, you know the phrase ‘It’s not just a job. It’s an adventure!” - well most of the time it’s just a job, and even being at sea is little different in many ways. We work 12 hour shifts 7 days a week and there is simply NOT that much to do to fill those hours. Since I was on the night shift for much of that time, there were many, many nights in that six months where I was all caught up and I went wandering around the Kitty Hawk. On that ship, there are many rooms! Off the flight deck there were huge nets suspended 90 feet off the water – I often crawled out onto one of those nets and watched miles and miles of dark ocean slip beneath me. But other times, I’d roll on my back and stare up at up a sky so crowded with stars that I would audibly gasp. It was in those moments in particular that I had the time and the space to ask sincerely, “God? Are you really there? Is this Jesus thing for real?”...and He answered.
In that time, I devoured every book in the ship’s library on Christianity, particularly those by Lewis, and particularly Mere Christianity. That one book speaks directly to so many of the intellectual challenges I had to the faith. It was candid, but unapologetic. It was lucid and intelligent without becoming sophistry.
It was exactly what I needed to hear.
And it quite literally changed my life.
But as I mentioned, it wasn’t the first time I had read that book. Come to think of it, it probably wasn’t the second time either. Mere Christianity is one of those books that well meaning concerned Christians give to friends they’re worried about – so I’m sure somebody had offered the book to me as a gift in more than one occasion.
Had the book changed? Had the current edition been somehow improved from my older paperbacks? Not at all. Lewis’ rationale was exactly the same it had been for the previous 50 years. His logic was no sharper, his arguments no more weighty, his prose no more eloquent. It was the same book – it was event the same freaking paperback with the powder blue cover and sailors before me had dog-eared about every other page for their own mysterious reasons.
What had changed was me.
What had passed was time.
What had grown was détente.
In the simplest terms, I had come to a place and time where I was willing to listen. For crying out loud, I really didn’t have anything better to do, so I asked questions and God answered.
Prior to that trip, listening wasn’t what I was up to – I would have argued with you if you had suggested otherwise, and effectively, but in truth I was really only interested in raising a defense of my own ego, my own way of doing things, and my own draws to sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Not that I was some mad party freak, I was a relatively normal guy, but the point was that I knew what I wanted and it was important to me to defend that state against anyone or anything that challenged it. My worldview HAD to be right because so much of my existence hung on it. I wouldn’t have been able to put it to words at the time, but my guts knew that Christ’s call was truly to put all of that to death and that part of me was not going down without a fight.
Twelve years later, I’m still subscribed to Discover, and Wired and I love anything technology related. I’m such a nerd. But more and more I consider myself a man of faith – and I hope to grow in that space still more. I see faith as more powerful than knowledge now, more instructive, and ultimately more real. Some of those changes came through academic study – admittedly, a study of faith might seem like a contradiction, but history is littered with men and women like Lewis – wildly intelligent, sharp as tacks, and sold out totally for our Risen Lord – their stories and writings are fascinating. But it was Lewis who was there when I needed him, and I plan to get in the long line of folks who want to shake his hand in heaven.
But what has all this got to do with Devin?
Almost two months ago a pretty lengthy debate erupted on Devin’s site and I’ve been thinking a lot about it. The very long thread was characterized by one fellow who generally argued from the rationalist/materialist viewpoint and a number of Christians who tried to argue from a more Bible-based/Creationist viewpoint. But despite very well reasoned and very well documented posts on both sides – nobody was moving. It wasn’t quite like a stalemate because at least both players in a stalemate recognize the situation. It was more like the battle between the Merimac and the Monitor. Cannonball after cannonball fired with skill and accuracy, only to bounce off the ship’s iron hide. The thread eventually ended from exhaustion, not because anybody was able to make their point. And this battle royale got me thinking.
The word says “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception according to the traditions of men, according to the elementary principles of the world.” Col 2:8
As I watched Devin and Michael in particular raise a valiant defense, and as Kham countered them in his own way, I saw that the best intentions of both were playing against them.
Let me just say for the record - I‘m certain that Kham is nobody’s fool. He’s clearly well read and intelligent – but I do think that he’s dead wrong. What’s more, I think that his error may someday cost him his eternal soul – and that’s a huge thing. A gigantic motivator to convince him of the profound truth I’ve been made aware of.
Likewise, I fully understand the motivations of both Michael and Devin. They want to see Kham rescued from a prison he doesn’t even know he’s in. It’s like Morpheus meeting Neo for the first time. Will you take the blue pill or the red pill – without question, Morpheus could have just yanked Neo from his little pod without all that drama, but it would have killed him. Neo had to be willing – he had to be ready.
I’ll answer any question that anybody asks about anything – once. I love all the science, all the philosophy, all the intellectual gymnastics and Christianity has a wonderful body of deep, deep thinking to draw from. But I’m not interested in arguing with somebody whop just wants to argue. Because at that point it’s not about the logic, or the facts – it’s about the heart. It’s not for lack of reason that a person resists God , it’s anger, or fear, or pride, or whatever happens to drive that person, and in those case my argumentation is bad for both of us.
When I get in a conversation where I can’t even share fundamental notions about truth with my opponent, we literally have no common ground. Since he thinks I’m a kook already, everything I say – EVERYTHING, just sounds like foolishness. He rejects the very foundations of my thinking as ignorant, or parochial so every time I open my mouth it only reinforces his preconception. In other words – all my high reason only acts to drive us apart or worse yet, drives this man away from Christ. Even more insidious is the unfortunate fact that I’m likely to behave the same way. The fact of the matter is that Kham’s argumentation was beginning to tick me off. From where I stood, Mike and Devin were writing excellent responses to his questions but he would sweep them away with a comment that amounted to “Since you’re a Christian, everything you say, every source you cite, every thought you have is polluted with ignorance. So I won’t bother to address anything that you just said.” With a little distance, I see that what I’m really bothered by is the fact that he got under my skin.
All of this is because a man doesn’t come to God through reason, he comes because he’s called...and he responds in his heart.
A few more relevant quotes:
But aside from my contention that such conversation actually do harm for both parties, I think there is a bigger issue – these zero-sum engagements sap our strength, divert our attention, and devour resources. In short – the enemy is able to tie up a gigantic amount of time and energy that dissipates into nothing at best, anger, pride, and broken fellowship at worst.
How many thousands of words were spent on that thread? Slater the Younger said something along the lines of ‘As long as we’re talking about Jesus then it’s all worth it.’ But, with respect Chris, I think that’s naïve. It’s the kind of statement that seems unassailable on its face, so obviously true and wise that nobody would question it – but it doesn’t really mean anything at all - it’s not truth. Here’s another line like it: ‘Go in peace! Be well fed!”...and yet we do nothing to actually help the circumstances of those we bless.
If that thread continued today – with still more dueling facts that rise in ever blooming arcs of eloquence and subtlety...but nobody budges – is that truly worth it? What if continued for another three months – would it still be worth it? For that matter is it worth anything at all, to either side? I’ll tell you one thing, it would be worth it to the enemy. He would have successfully benched two major players (Devin and Michael) for all those hours with what amounts to sand in their eyes. How many real ministry opportunities would those two miss in that time? How many cycles in those brains would have been spent fighting a battle that was unwinable?
Do we leave the 99 to rescue the 1? Of course we do!
But we are called not only to be gentle as lambs, but as shrewd as serpents. We have to have the presence of mind to see a red herring for what it is so we can get back to the field quickly. If this truly is a war people – and I think it is – we can’t lose to something as boring as attrition.
I’m not ever going to talk somebody into the kingdom – ever.
But I can, and have, waste a lot of precious time – mine and theirs - trying.
Whenever I tell my story, or ‘testimony’ in High Christianeese, I give a lot of credit to C.S. Lewis and 1994 (the year, not the book) for bringing me into the kingdom. I consider myself a rational, intelligent person and my intellect presented any number of barriers to my faith. I had innumerable questions about dates and ages and genealogies and on and on and on. Miracles, and resurrections and such were just so much superstition cloaked as something more important as far as I was concerned.
What’s interesting is that I would have called myself a Christian at that time if you had asked. But you see, I was a ‘thinking Christian’ not one of those min-numb robots who takes everything with blind faith. I was interested in the compelling similarities between Jesus’ teachings and those of Buddha, I had an enlightened, modern relationship with an intelligent girl that I lived with. I knew that responsible use of mind altering substances was actually a holy rite in several ancient religions and that laws prohibiting such things were either Republican attacks on my freedom by blue haired old ladies in New England, or an unfortunate necessity to address the problems of the irresponsible users. I knew that God was everywhere so there was no need to go to church, besides I’d almost certainly wind up running into some intolerant Bible-thumper. In hindsight, I was willing to call myself a Christian because that sounded kinda cool and I guess I did believe, at least, that God and Jesus were real – but it was like recognizing the Prime Minister of England on TV. My impression was based more on disjointed, occasional headlines than anything else. And since he really doesn’t have any kind of authority over me then what he thought or said was only interesting insofar as I agreed with Him, and could use his quote to win an argument and look clever.
For all those years, and many before then, Lewis’ Mere Christianity had sat on my bookshelf. I had read it years ago, found it interesting, but then moved on to some foul tome by Allister Crowley (Yeah, I had an occult phase) but eventually settled into a pretty steady diet of Discover, the History Channel, and Nova. I loved science literature and I considered myself a man of science. Toward the end of 1994 my squadron, VAW-114, moved over to CV-63 and I spent the next six months at sea. Despite what you might think about the Navy, you know the phrase ‘It’s not just a job. It’s an adventure!” - well most of the time it’s just a job, and even being at sea is little different in many ways. We work 12 hour shifts 7 days a week and there is simply NOT that much to do to fill those hours. Since I was on the night shift for much of that time, there were many, many nights in that six months where I was all caught up and I went wandering around the Kitty Hawk. On that ship, there are many rooms! Off the flight deck there were huge nets suspended 90 feet off the water – I often crawled out onto one of those nets and watched miles and miles of dark ocean slip beneath me. But other times, I’d roll on my back and stare up at up a sky so crowded with stars that I would audibly gasp. It was in those moments in particular that I had the time and the space to ask sincerely, “God? Are you really there? Is this Jesus thing for real?”...and He answered.
In that time, I devoured every book in the ship’s library on Christianity, particularly those by Lewis, and particularly Mere Christianity. That one book speaks directly to so many of the intellectual challenges I had to the faith. It was candid, but unapologetic. It was lucid and intelligent without becoming sophistry.
It was exactly what I needed to hear.
And it quite literally changed my life.
But as I mentioned, it wasn’t the first time I had read that book. Come to think of it, it probably wasn’t the second time either. Mere Christianity is one of those books that well meaning concerned Christians give to friends they’re worried about – so I’m sure somebody had offered the book to me as a gift in more than one occasion.
Had the book changed? Had the current edition been somehow improved from my older paperbacks? Not at all. Lewis’ rationale was exactly the same it had been for the previous 50 years. His logic was no sharper, his arguments no more weighty, his prose no more eloquent. It was the same book – it was event the same freaking paperback with the powder blue cover and sailors before me had dog-eared about every other page for their own mysterious reasons.
What had changed was me.
What had passed was time.
What had grown was détente.
In the simplest terms, I had come to a place and time where I was willing to listen. For crying out loud, I really didn’t have anything better to do, so I asked questions and God answered.
Prior to that trip, listening wasn’t what I was up to – I would have argued with you if you had suggested otherwise, and effectively, but in truth I was really only interested in raising a defense of my own ego, my own way of doing things, and my own draws to sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Not that I was some mad party freak, I was a relatively normal guy, but the point was that I knew what I wanted and it was important to me to defend that state against anyone or anything that challenged it. My worldview HAD to be right because so much of my existence hung on it. I wouldn’t have been able to put it to words at the time, but my guts knew that Christ’s call was truly to put all of that to death and that part of me was not going down without a fight.
Twelve years later, I’m still subscribed to Discover, and Wired and I love anything technology related. I’m such a nerd. But more and more I consider myself a man of faith – and I hope to grow in that space still more. I see faith as more powerful than knowledge now, more instructive, and ultimately more real. Some of those changes came through academic study – admittedly, a study of faith might seem like a contradiction, but history is littered with men and women like Lewis – wildly intelligent, sharp as tacks, and sold out totally for our Risen Lord – their stories and writings are fascinating. But it was Lewis who was there when I needed him, and I plan to get in the long line of folks who want to shake his hand in heaven.
But what has all this got to do with Devin?
Almost two months ago a pretty lengthy debate erupted on Devin’s site and I’ve been thinking a lot about it. The very long thread was characterized by one fellow who generally argued from the rationalist/materialist viewpoint and a number of Christians who tried to argue from a more Bible-based/Creationist viewpoint. But despite very well reasoned and very well documented posts on both sides – nobody was moving. It wasn’t quite like a stalemate because at least both players in a stalemate recognize the situation. It was more like the battle between the Merimac and the Monitor. Cannonball after cannonball fired with skill and accuracy, only to bounce off the ship’s iron hide. The thread eventually ended from exhaustion, not because anybody was able to make their point. And this battle royale got me thinking.
The word says “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception according to the traditions of men, according to the elementary principles of the world.” Col 2:8
As I watched Devin and Michael in particular raise a valiant defense, and as Kham countered them in his own way, I saw that the best intentions of both were playing against them.
Let me just say for the record - I‘m certain that Kham is nobody’s fool. He’s clearly well read and intelligent – but I do think that he’s dead wrong. What’s more, I think that his error may someday cost him his eternal soul – and that’s a huge thing. A gigantic motivator to convince him of the profound truth I’ve been made aware of.
Likewise, I fully understand the motivations of both Michael and Devin. They want to see Kham rescued from a prison he doesn’t even know he’s in. It’s like Morpheus meeting Neo for the first time. Will you take the blue pill or the red pill – without question, Morpheus could have just yanked Neo from his little pod without all that drama, but it would have killed him. Neo had to be willing – he had to be ready.
I’ll answer any question that anybody asks about anything – once. I love all the science, all the philosophy, all the intellectual gymnastics and Christianity has a wonderful body of deep, deep thinking to draw from. But I’m not interested in arguing with somebody whop just wants to argue. Because at that point it’s not about the logic, or the facts – it’s about the heart. It’s not for lack of reason that a person resists God , it’s anger, or fear, or pride, or whatever happens to drive that person, and in those case my argumentation is bad for both of us.
When I get in a conversation where I can’t even share fundamental notions about truth with my opponent, we literally have no common ground. Since he thinks I’m a kook already, everything I say – EVERYTHING, just sounds like foolishness. He rejects the very foundations of my thinking as ignorant, or parochial so every time I open my mouth it only reinforces his preconception. In other words – all my high reason only acts to drive us apart or worse yet, drives this man away from Christ. Even more insidious is the unfortunate fact that I’m likely to behave the same way. The fact of the matter is that Kham’s argumentation was beginning to tick me off. From where I stood, Mike and Devin were writing excellent responses to his questions but he would sweep them away with a comment that amounted to “Since you’re a Christian, everything you say, every source you cite, every thought you have is polluted with ignorance. So I won’t bother to address anything that you just said.” With a little distance, I see that what I’m really bothered by is the fact that he got under my skin.
All of this is because a man doesn’t come to God through reason, he comes because he’s called...and he responds in his heart.
A few more relevant quotes:
- “...I say [that Christ is preeminent] in order that no one may delude you with persuasive argument.” Col 2:4
- “Remind them of these things [that we died with Christ], and solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words, which is useless, and leads to the ruin of the hearers. Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth. But avoid empty and worldly chatter, for it will lead to further ungodliness and their talk will spread like a gangrene.” 2 Tim 2:14-17
- “Do not throw your pearls before [folks who aren’t interested in pearls anyway] lest they trample them underfoot, then turn and tear you to pieces.” Matt 7:6
- “He who corrects a scoffer gets dishonor for himself” - Prov 9:7
But aside from my contention that such conversation actually do harm for both parties, I think there is a bigger issue – these zero-sum engagements sap our strength, divert our attention, and devour resources. In short – the enemy is able to tie up a gigantic amount of time and energy that dissipates into nothing at best, anger, pride, and broken fellowship at worst.
How many thousands of words were spent on that thread? Slater the Younger said something along the lines of ‘As long as we’re talking about Jesus then it’s all worth it.’ But, with respect Chris, I think that’s naïve. It’s the kind of statement that seems unassailable on its face, so obviously true and wise that nobody would question it – but it doesn’t really mean anything at all - it’s not truth. Here’s another line like it: ‘Go in peace! Be well fed!”...and yet we do nothing to actually help the circumstances of those we bless.
If that thread continued today – with still more dueling facts that rise in ever blooming arcs of eloquence and subtlety...but nobody budges – is that truly worth it? What if continued for another three months – would it still be worth it? For that matter is it worth anything at all, to either side? I’ll tell you one thing, it would be worth it to the enemy. He would have successfully benched two major players (Devin and Michael) for all those hours with what amounts to sand in their eyes. How many real ministry opportunities would those two miss in that time? How many cycles in those brains would have been spent fighting a battle that was unwinable?
Do we leave the 99 to rescue the 1? Of course we do!
But we are called not only to be gentle as lambs, but as shrewd as serpents. We have to have the presence of mind to see a red herring for what it is so we can get back to the field quickly. If this truly is a war people – and I think it is – we can’t lose to something as boring as attrition.
I’m not ever going to talk somebody into the kingdom – ever.
But I can, and have, waste a lot of precious time – mine and theirs - trying.
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