Grappling

"Hear me!" she rages, at a turn between turbulence and torpor.
"See me!" she pleads, surging betwixt sullen and sanguine.
Waxing from helpless to hopeful, waning from intention to inaction
She is weary.

Weary like the warrior who wrestles with war
Long years after the shooting was stopped.
Weary like the woman who flinches at the flesh
Of her lover who's touch reminds of the rape.

"It was." claims the mind, the friends, the wishers of well.
"It is." says the wound, the Id, the secret scar.
"And always shall be." Quotes the unquiet ghost.
Pronouncing his permanence, defining her dearth.

Learning to be Carried

When a person goes though some physical trial like an injury or some test like climbing a mountain, we all understand that his or her body needs rest. They need time to recover, to heal. And during that time we don't expect them to be at 100%. We have a smidgen of that idea with our minds where we recognize the need to unplug and veg after some tough mental trial like a BA test or giving a speech.

But I don’t think we have any context for a spiritual analogue to this idea. I reckon we all know of times where our hearts are broken or weary or just under assault but I don’t see that we accept a kind of decreased capacity as a result of those trials. We seem to act as though our spirits have no real need for rest or healing.

It’s been a tough season for me lately and as I was going to bed the other night I felt bad because I’d had so little energy to pray or seek God. Even just soaking was more than I had the oomph for and I was starting to feel guilty. The message sounded something “Prayer is the thing you know you need most right now and look at you – a spiritually lazy scrub who just watches Netflix or plays Portal in your inconsonance.”...but my heart was heavy and the best I could do was shrug.

But I think increasingly that that message came from the enemy. Not from me, and definitely not from God. In fact the only way that idea makes sense is if I buy the line of thinking noted above – that my spirit needs no rest, no succor, no time to heal, regardless of the trauma it faces. I hear the Spirit say something like ‘Give yourself a break man – you’re going through a lot right now. Hang in there, endure, fight the good fight – yes to all of those things. But you can’t do everything at once.’

In this frame of a weary spirit it’s definitely true that my head is down, I’m just trying to get through, and I loose some of my capacity for ‘depth’  in that state. My ability to commune and hear his voice gets attenuated. But I realize that over this last  month I’ve been riding on other people’s faith, cribbing from their insights...and it seems like the next best thing. It’s hard to ‘find God’ when you’re stressed but I can go to books or prayers, or clips like the guys making “Killing Lions” (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkw0sKw3xJTfV6T57cfCZgg) and I can feel like their faith is carrying me along...exactly as much as I allow that. And it’s not like a second-best experience or somehow a flattened vicarious thing, but it feels like a way to let somebody else bear my burden and to allow other parts of The Body compensate for my own season of stress and weakness.

That’s a neat lesson to learn.

It makes he enemy’s accusation of failure seem false. Specifically as I embrace the weakness that he’s pointing at – a weakness that’s real – I can thereby reject the condemnation he’s trying to slip in with it. Suddenly the weakness and weariness, the heart break and the hurt all seem holy, or at least human. And truly His strength can be made perfect.

I Dreamed You Dreamt of Me

I dreamed you dreamt of me last night,
And in that dream you smiled.

Your dream, I dreamt, was warm and pink
And you murmured in your sleep.

I'm my dream, I watched you sleep,
Awake, abreast, and adored.

Drowsy sounds of sweetness
Made me smile at your smile.

In my waking I was reaching
And learned that I was dreaming.

Purify

Purify my heart.
Make me as gold and precious silver.

Baptize my soul.
By water if you will, by fire if you must.

The loaves, when whole, feed a small boy.
The loaves, once broken, satisfy the thousands.

The soil, the seeds, and those frakking birds

In the middle of writing a long post about Sand and Sky and as part of that I've been going back through old journals and blog posts. Tonight I read this one : http://the-m-blog.blogspot.com/2007/03/kids-with-mad-healing-skills.html
(Which has nothing at all to do with S&S BTW)

And I'm reading this just a couple of hours after I was part of a fairly straight forward deliverance prayer.

Reading about miraculous healing, fresh off a scrap with some woolybooger, and I'm struck by something. Why is it that I feel the most ambivalent, the most doubtful, almost directly after a kind of victory? Like I've been feeling that a fight was inbound for weeks now (and this may have just been a skirmish - we'll see) and my faith has been building. Tonight at BCNW we jumped into a really cool prayer time and I felt the Spirit show up big time. Then there's this deliverance thing - we hop to and the dark air clears.

You'd think I'd be encouraged, vindicated, or something like that. Instead I'm brushing my teeth and my head is like "Did that even really happen? Was that all play acting and demon-drama? And even if it was real, did I really have any role there or was I just a bystander?"

So that conversation is going on in my head and then another part of me is thinking the "why ambivalent now" thought and God speaks plain as day. "He's trying to keep the seed from taking root." And suddenly a lot makes sense. First, that's not me asking those depressing questions. Second, these are tech birds of the Good Soil parable. Something cool, powerful and faith building has just happened - a spiritual seed has been planted in my heart but for a while it's vulnerable to the frakking birds.

So my immediate prayer goes like this:

Shoo!

The Comeback of Blogging

Several years ago I was regularly entertained, encouraged, challenged and tested by a circle of friends and acquaintances, including myself, who were regular bloggers. We we all just sharing what we were thinking about or going through and the posts rang from one paragraph passing thoughts to long essays on deep and difficult things. But more than the writing was the reading, and the talking. The comments and the follow ups and the strong sense of community that I felt with fried all over the country. And in addition to personal friends there were blogs by strangers or admirees that I kept tabs on. I remember randomly finding the blog of a guy who had left a Pentecostal church and was blogging about his experience of studying ordination for a Greek Orthodox priesthood. Another stranger who was a mom wrestling with CP in her child and all that it entailed in her life. All of that felt rich and right and deep. It was a format that suited both my temperament and my schedule. It s never hard to catch up on blogs when time permitted, whether that was weekly, monthly, or occasionally after long terms of unavailabilty.

Bot somewhere in there, seems like it might have coined with the economic mess of 2008 but I not sure, folks just stopped writing - including me. Well, to be fair, we didn't stop writing all together, we more accurately stopped writing blogs and started tapping like buttons or composing 160 character comments. To be clear, I was the same. My blog was fallow for a long time with only occasional posts.

The thing is, whatever the cause something that I was really enjoying seemed to wither and fold in a very short time and I was subtly mourning that loss for a long time.

But - I think that may be coming back and I'm happy. Sluss-the-Taller has recently started a brand new blog that I'm very excited to see as he makes a pilgrimage from Mexico to Canada, Raven&Emerald has been keeping a fascinating blog about her inner journey, and I just found that KrisB started a new blog that is off to a wonderful start.

I'd be very interested to know, in hindsight, what happened back in 2008-2009. Dd mounting financial stress leave less time for reflection and reading? That seems like a reasonable answer. Did the convenience of Facebook and the illusion of interaction tempt us all for a season? That also seems true enough for myself though the illusion is broken now and I find FB to have a different role than blogging. Or maybe something else entirely. Regardless. I'm encouraged by the nascent reawakening and I sure hope we get back to what we had and I dearly loved.

A Few Thoughts on Healing Prayer

Heads up - I'm way out in the weeds here today, just speculating, but some thoughts I didn't want to forget.

I was thinking about the way I, and lots of folks I know, pray for the sick. Specifically the way that I tend to see one specific problem and pray to that point. You have a pain in your leg? Let's pray for that. You have arthritis? We can pray about that. And I reckon that's largely what I see modeled in the Bible too. It's prayer for a blind man's vision, a lame man's legs, a sick woman's sickness.

But we don't really exist like that. At any given moment there are probably several things going on in my physical body that are off. It's not just that I'm coughing but I also have a sore back and high blood pressure and this and that and whatnot. As we get older, that list of things just gets longer. Similarly, there are things that I'd never consider praying for, even though they are clearly things that are out of warranty on the human body - baldness, obesity, allergies, or the need for reading glasses.

There's an assumption that lays behind most of my prayers for healing and it could be summed up in Jesus' prayer "on earth as it is in heaven" I often start from a mental space that asks what I think it'd be like in heaven and pray for that truth to override the local earthly truth. Ergo, if there's no cancer in heaven, which seems like a reasonable assumption, then it's legal to pray that cancer gets lost here.

Starting from there though I see a few things that I need to chew on.
1. I don't pray for folks "holistically" I pray for them symptomatically. It's not that I pray for their health, I pray for a particular symptom or ailment to end. There's a lot to be said for praying with specificity and I admit that a general prayer for "health" seems vague but I suspect that it's more about my mental model than anything else. I want to try to get a firm thought about divine health that is comprehensive and specific.

2. I suppose I don't generally think to pray for things that my mind might place blame for - which sounds terribly judgmental but I think this is what happens. Obesity, as an example, is something that my mind attributes to bad choices. I think of it less as a condition or ailment and more of a consequence. And somehow in a way that I'm not fully conscious of, that changes things. But then look at, say, lung cancer. I wouldn't stop to ask a lung cancer patient if they were a smoker and pray differently based on their answer. So something is off in my head here.

3. And this one has me really wondering...can we legally pray for youth? I mentioned things like baldness or myopia as things I wouldn't think to pray for but it's deeper than that. My prayers for a young person tend to be more...not sure how to say it...incensed than praying for older people. Fair or not, a baby with cancer seems more unfair than a 90 year old with cancer. I sense injustice more and pray from that awareness that a thing isn't "right" But somehow my brain crosses a line where cancer seems less unjust and more...what? Unfortunate? I see that in me is a whole scale that works on age. I expect older people to be sicker and it feels normal so prayers have less energy on my part.

But what if age itself is properly understood as an ailment, and all that other stuff is a list of symptoms?

Hear me out - on earth as it is in heaven right? Don't we expect that heaven is full of young men and women? People in the prime of life? We don't expect spry folks with gray hair and reading glasses we expect 20-30somethings or maybe even teens. If there's anything too that would it be fair that "age" at least in the sense of a steadily declining body, doesn't exist in heaven?

I was thinking about this on Friday when the guy leading morning prayer bust out Psalm 103. We know v 3 pretty well because "he heals all your diseases" but v5 also says "your youth is restored like the eagle's" - well now...perhaps there is some scriptural meat to this idea too.

Is anybody of aware of any literature on this idea? Praying for youth to be restored? I'd be curious to hear what other folks have thought on this topic.

Sugarplums V2

Sugarplums V2

We made Alton Brown's recipe last year, this time I made my own adjustments and they came out awesome. This is a spicy treat, not overly sweet and definitely leans toward the adult palette, especially folks who skew toward granola stuff.

• 3 oz pistachio nuts, toasted and chopped
• 3 oz walnuts, toasted and chopped
• 4 oz dried cherries
• 4 oz candied dates
• 4 oz dried plums
• 4 oz dried figs
• 1/4 c powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp anise seed, toasted
• 1/4 tsp caraway seed, toasted
• 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
• pinch ground cloves
• pinch salt
• 1/4 c honey
• raw, coarse sugar to coat

Toast the seeds and nuts and set aside.

Place nuts and fruit in a food processor and pulse a few times so ingredients are finely chopped and mixed but don't overdo it and get mush.

Mix up the seeds, salt and sugar in a large bowl, add the fruit and honey and then mix thoroughly with your hands. A glove would be a good idea here...but whatever. If the mixture isn't quite holding together, add honey by the tablespoon until you have a mix that is stable without being gooey.

Pinch off balls no larger than a melon-ball and roll in coarse sugar.

Gives between 50-75 sugarplums depending on the size of the ball.

Sweet Chili con Carne

Sweet Chili con Carne

Image scraped from doerlefoods.com

I made this for a potluck. I started here and made my own adjustments.

• 1 1/2 lbs ground beef
• 1 cup pre-soaked pinto beans
• 1 cup pre-soaked navy beans
• 1 green bell pepper chopped
• 1 can tomato sauce
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 Tbsp oregano
• 6 slices bacon, cooked crisp and crumbled
• 1 Tbsp dill
• 3/4 c molasses
• 2 Tbsp chili powder
• 1 Tbsp black pepper
• 1 tsp salt

Brown and drain the ground beef, cook and crumble the bacon. Throw everything in a big ol kettle and simmer for about 3 hours.

You could do this in a slow cooker too and set it on low for about 6 hours.

Topher Toffee

I've been making toffee for years, tinkering with various recipes, and I'm feeling like it's time I contribute a few of my own to the web. No intention of this becoming my cooking blog but you can see whatever I'm thinking about here: http://www.pinterest.com/cryptopur/food/

Butterscotch Topping

Topher Toffee

1. 2 cups (4 sticks) of butter cut into cubes
2. 2 cups of sugar
3. 1/4 tsp salt
4. 1/2 tsp cardamom
5. 2 cups chocolate or butterscotch chips - butterscotch used here. (mini chips melt easier but not a big deal)
6. 1/4 tsp baking soda
7. 1/4 tsp caraway seed or anise seed
8. 1/4 c slivered or sliced almonds

Melt butter, sugar and spices together in a heavy bottom kettle. Stir continuously in one direction to prevent the butter from separating.
Once everything is melted clip a candy thermometer to the side and heat to 285 degrees. Stir occasionally and be ready to wait 20-30 minutes...it takes a while. 285 is, in my more experienced opinion, just a tad high so I will often remove the heat just south of that.

While it’s cooking, line a 13X9 pan with parchment paper or aluminum foil. 

Toast the almonds and caraway seeds together in a dry skillet over med-high heat and set aside.

Once removed from the burner add the baking soda and still in quickly. Pour the toffee into the pan when it reaches temperature and allow it to flatten out on a level surface.


After 5 minutes, sprinkle chips over hot toffee and allow about 5 minutes to melt. Then spread the melted chips over the toffee to create an even layer.


Now sprinkle the almond/seed mixture over the soft chocolate and press down gently to set them and let it all cool to room temperature – about an hour.


Lift the toffee out of the pan by the paper/foil and break the hardened toffee into bite sized chucks.


All done!

The Message Of The Keys

I’ve heard it said that circumstance is the language of the Holy Spirit. Basically, that there are times when the specific events and conditions in the world around us are a kind of subtle message from heaven. Over the centuries folks call this kind of thing “signs” or “omens”...that kind of thing. The trick of course is a sensitivity of spirit that can discern a genuine ‘sign’ from everyday details or coincidence and I think there is simply no substitute for that beside the gut feeling you can get when an event or detail somehow ‘rings.’

About two months ago, over the course of about a week, I’ve had this strange thing happen and it’s having that kind of ring to it. Three different keys have gone lost or, in one case, was broken. My office key, my house key and the key to my car. I’ve never lost a key before or since and my key holding gadget is in perfect working order...so it’s just strange. In each case the keys were easily replaced so the events were only trivial inconveniences...but to have three in such a short period got my attention.

So it’s now about two months later and I’ve been thinking about this on and off, I’ve been praying for any additional info, but really I’ve got nothing. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that somehow there was a meaning or purpose in there and I just cant see it. So for today, all I wanted to do is write it down so I can remember it later.

Full stop.

Chili Omlete thing

I’m only posting this here so I can Pin it, and then never loose the stupid recipe again...

Chili Omelet

• 10 eggs
• 1/2c flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 pint cottage cheese
• 1 lb shredded cheese – probably Jack or pepper jack
• 1/2 c butter
• 1 4oz can of diced chilies (don’t drain)
  

Toss it all together, then into a greased 9X13
Bake at 375 for 25min

Awesome to prepare night before and easy breakfast for company

When he turned away, twenty years today

When he turned away, twenty years today
He was coming down from a fence
That they'd built together through the story weather
Just to get above the rain.

And when it came today that he turned away
From the eyes and the cries and the cheers
That a woman in back, dressed in green and black
Seemed to bring back all the years.

-------------------
Found this stuffed in an old journal. As far as I can make out I wrote it back in hi school..and I kinda like it...though I really have no idea what I was writing about. Anyway, saved for posterity.

The Actor's Dilemma

When I used to be a drama geek, especially in high school but still in college, there was this common cry of distress from the thespians. It was a sense that we saw ourselves as artists of a sort but we were doomed to only execute the art of another person, the playwrite. We loved our art, we studied it, we nestled there and we truly worked in a way that was creative - but still was the awareness that what we did was derivative and that was somehow distressing.

For my own part, it wasn't so much a big deal, as I had other artistic outlets, specifically writing but a dabble here and there in just about anything called 'art' at one time or another. Nevertheless, I very much understand and feel the dilemma.

For much of the last six months I've been working hard on an effort to secure the licenses to a piece of intellectual property. For the sake of avoiding Google's prying eyes, we'll say it's the story of a wall that's Red. As of last week. It appears that effort has been successful - w00t! Now this last week I spent some time at GDC and in the course of several conversations I came to realize that what I may have latched onto was something far bigger than I realized just in terms of size. I knew, thou never really thought about, the fact that this was a series of over 20 books and conceivably we could spend the next 20 years, Lord willing, exploring, visualizing and working with this property (I'm just theorizing here - no plans to that effect). Along with that was an even broader realization that if I play my cards right I might, juuuuuust maybe, be in a position to work with several different IPs and make a career out of that. Other books, other series, other stories come to mind that I'd have a lot of fun as I...made derivative works from somebody else's art.

I should point out that it probably isn't a genuine either/or question in any legal sense. But realistically, these projects are likely to be a year or more in the making...each. So each time I might pick one up it represents a significant commitment. Saying "yes" to a project about the wall is realistically saying "no" to everything else...maybe.*

But that's perhaps beside the point. At least at some point it's a question of pride. Would I be willing to submit my best effort to supporting somebody else's work at the expense of realizing my own? If so, under what circumstances? If not, then why not? I'm pretty darn comfortable saying that Brian's books are better than my writing so at the very least I have an opportunity to learn in to craft of Epic storytelling.

Anyway, I don't have any real answer to the question, it's just something I'm thinking about and wanted to write down.

-------------------------

* There may be a way to do these things in parallel. For example, the creative part of a project could be mostly managed. Play more of a "producer" role and find the right folks to be creative. So long as they're the right people and I manage it all with attention, it need not be all consuming...perhaps leaving enough bandwidth to pursue my own stories. But that's iffy and not something I'd take lightly especially when we're working on something with any degree of delicacy.

Rest in peace my beloved father

As the bagpipe builds
And the drone begins
The fireman's son remembers.

The language of life saving.
The schoolyard pride in parentage.
The sorrow, half sensed, for the life lost nonetheless...

The family, extended,
To Christmas and camping.
Co-workers connected, their kids more like cousins.

The sage smells like heaven as
The sun
Goes down
On Joshua Tree.

Simon The Leper

“Now when Jesus was in Bethany, at the home of Simon the leper...”
Mat 26:6*

If you were in need of something really, really bad, maybe money, maybe wisdom, maybe healing, and you invited somebody over for dinner who was completely aware of and capable of meeting your need, how would you treat them if the night came and went and that person left without so much as an encouraging mention of your situation?

I was reading this passage here when I noticed this phrase “Simon the leper” and the story goes on as if that’s a non-issue. This is the story of the gal who anoints Jesus with expensive oil for your reference, but it takes place right in front of a guy who has a pretty obvious need and as far as we can tell, Jesus doesn't even notice.

“Hey guys, never mind me. I’m just the guy buying you dinner...the guy with, you know, this horrible disease that Jesus heals in other people all the time...”

There are lots of things going through my mind on this passage and from several angles. Like the way we can all cozy up to people insincerely if they have something we need.

But what first came to me was actually something in the other direction, a kind of heart where we see Jesus’ simple presence as more important and more important than any of the things He could do for us, or any of the things we thing we can do for him. Just to hang with him because we want to. No agenda, no manipulation, no clever arrangement of my prayers to achieve maximum scripture density.

There are times, this week has been one of them, where I go to God more out of exhaustion than anything else. Where life has simply been hard and I retreat to that secret place for badly needed rest. Those can be the prayers of desperation too, the “all we can do now is pray” moments. I don't see anything wrong with that, but in those moments I am going to the throne because I need something, even if its only to be somewhere other than in my own head.

But I think about Simon here. There’s reason to believe that Jesus stayed with this guy more than once. Did he keep having Jesus over hoping that sooner or later he’d have his leprosy healed? Or was he perfectly content and mightily honored to have God under his roof and well able to look past his own need to the bigger picture? What did Simon get out of it if not health? Did he expect anything? Or was presence enough?

I know that I want his presence to be enough for me. I know that there are times when it really is. But I also know that it’s hard to stay there and I think that part of that is the orphan heart that expects that Jesus is just visiting and He’ll be gone soon, so if I need something I better get it now. It’s a fear that what might be good today wont be good tomorrow. That fear that somehow God is temporary but my need is forever reminds me of an old saying: Ignorance can be educated...but stupid is forever.

I hope that this ability to stay with Christ in his circumstance, his reality, can grow in me and that need to always ask him to come down into my circumstance can ebb.

---------
* I’m aware of the discussion out there on whether or not Simon was still a leper at this story or even if ‘leper’ is an accurate translation of the original text. For the purpose of the post though – it seems irrelevant.

A Thanksgiving Poem

When the freezer is full, when we fly for fun
He is my vine, my cup, my wine.

When copper is all that’s left in the pocket change jar
He is my vine, my cup, my wine.

When pizza seems a splurge, when a diamond seems disposable
He is my vine, my cup, my wine.

A toast, a hale, a lifted stein
To the Door, the Star, the Risen Lamb,
My need, my fill, be not germane
To thanks well due my King, I Am.

Acorns and Oaks

A couple of weeks back I attended a retreat in Colorado with Morgan Snyder he called “The Intensive.”

(Morgan – I love you man, and the event was awesome, but the name...it’s gotta change.)

Anyway, it was a powerful experience and I expect to be chewing on it for a long time but rather than play that out here on my personal blog I started a new one where I can stay on one particular topic and also collaborate with a few other folks on the same topic.

So take a look at http://acornsandoaks.blogspot.com/ if you’re so inclined.

I’m not abandoning this blog by any means so I’ll keep posting here on my own stuff, but “Intensive” stuff will be over there.

Heaven and Infinite Dimensions

I had a thought as I was drifting off to sleep last night that I want to capture someplace – and this is it. Pure speculation but I thought it was worth writing down.

• Any object we can see exists in at least four dimensions at once. (Length, Height, Depth and Time)
• Superstring theorists tell me the universe is probably made of at least ten dimensions, perhaps more.
• It seems reasonable to think that the same 4D object mentioned above does, or at least could, exist in those other dimensions at the same too.
  

All of that is only to say something pretty straightforward – that the things I typically know and interact with are multi-dimensional be their nature. I point this out because I have been trained by Sci-Fi movies to think of ‘alternate dimensions’ as wholly distinct worlds. Like some other 4D universe that is parallel to ours as opposed the more mathematical description of each dimension representing an additional ‘direction’ of freedom or motion. To that we can imagine the Flatland people who for some reason are limited to their 2D world (3D if you count time) where they are unable to move off their plane of existence even though we could look at and observe them without fear of being noticed. Likewise, if we are bound to this limited subset of dimensions, someone with even one additional degree of freedom could easily hide from us simply by moving in that direction.

This is connected to one possible understanding of little-h heaven. By ‘little-h’ I just mean something like ‘the spirit world’ or whatever you might call the place/ dimension / existence in which angles and demons do their thing as opposed to ‘big-H’ Heaven which is the whole God’s throne room paradise thing. Going back to superstrings, heaven could be nothing more or less than those six+ extra dimensions we suspect are there. For some reason, perhaps because of the fall, they are mostly inaccessible and imperceptible to us – but by no means are they illusory.

Up to this point, I’m just summarizing what other people have written as a starting point. What I was thinking about last night was building on these ideas.

• Quantum mechanics tells us that in some profoundly weird ways reality is shaped by our perception. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger's_cat).
• Now add that to some interesting imagery and concepts in the Robin Williams movie “What Dreams May Come”
  

What if every soul that gets created, or perhaps every soul/spirit that remains ‘alive’ in Christ, somehow creates an additional dimension in the whole big manifold of creation. This dimension could be understood as going ‘into’ that person perhaps in the way Christ and the Holy Spirit dwell ‘within’ us. Within my dimension I have the ability, conscious or unconscious, to shape what it is like there. It is as responsive to my will as my attitude – and for that matter it may be as resistant to my will in the same way. There could be skill, training, and experimentation involved as we get used to this kind of ‘self-control.’

Also, if these are dimensions that stack into reality as opposed to self-contained and parallel worlds, then an object like a tree could exist in many. If not all, of those dimensions simultaneously. Then, just like walking around a car to see it from all sides, I could move from layer to layer to layer to see how that tree appeared in a multitude of ‘selves.’ How you saw the tree could be different than how I saw it and that perception would be realized within ourselves. Some ‘lesser’ objects, like a tree, may be limited to a subset of the existent dimensions/people – maybe I have to ‘opt in’ for it to appear in my space. Other ‘greater’ objects like the New Jerusalem appear in all dimensions as part of the ‘default kit.’

With every soul, a new world is born and yet all worlds remain part of God’s interwoven creation. We move between worlds or perceive many at once as we explore our degrees of freedom.

That could be pretty fun.

Hero Friendship

Because I decided to walk the half mile between the hotel and the restaurant, and because both traffic and parking turned out to be more difficult than expected, I actually arrived first by about 20 minutes. The three of us were in Colorado for a retreat and since Colorado Springs seems to be verily awash with Christian authors, speakers, and celebrities we took the opportunity to ask for a meeting with a man who I deeply respected from his writing and speaking – and he had said yes.

I can’t say that I‘ve ever been the star-struck kind of person. It’s probably born more out of my own pride and stubbornness than anything else but I don’t generally look at anybody as a ‘special’ and instead presume fundamental equality. But here I was chit-chatting with a guy who had made a real impact on my life and I was more than a little spun up. Once Dwennon and Rande arrived I was able to find my center fairly quickly but for a bit there I was a little giddy and I have to assume it showed. But more interesting (to me anyway) is that a year later I know this man on a first-name basis. We trade email and text-messages and I count him as a friend. It’d be a stretch to say we’re buddies but we’re more than acquaintances and contrary to that old saying that familiarity breeds contempt, I respect him more now than I did then, and that has got me thinking.

Staring up at the ceiling in bed last night, thinking about this post, I asked Rebekah, “Do you think we can know our heroes personally or does the nature of a ‘hero’ require some distance?” Something that was slippery to me seemed crystal clear to her. “No. Of course not. Parents are their kids’ heroes all the time.” And of course she’s right and of course parents are only one example of that kind of relationship – so I kept thinking about this new friend from Colorado.

Somewhere around 2003-4 I read Wild at Heart and I got totally rocked. I’m not really very good at keeping authors and their books together in my mind but folks had been talking about W@H and so I knew John Eldredge’s name. I didn’t have any sense of celebrity there but if I’d bumped into him in the airport I’m sure I would have smiled and said something positive...though unlikely I’d ask for an autograph. In 2005 I attended my first Boot Camp Northwest event and there I got really rocked. It’s odd to look back on it now but by the end of that camp I thought of the speakers as ‘special’ and approaching them was an act of courage. Of course now I look at all of those guys...as just guys. That’s not to say I think less of them, I only mean that I know them to be human, with flaws and fears and quirky senses of humor – and I haven’t lost any of my deep respect for who they are or how they impacted my life.

It’s that feeling, that experience, that I’m trying to roll out in this post but I’m looking for the right words. It’s been a singular experience to come to know a man first through his work, to respect and admire him on that basis, then to meet him and build a friendship and still hold him in high esteem. As part of BCNW I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some really great men and women who are talented, powerful, anointed – and also silly, hurting, uncertain. The reflexive egalitarian in me asserts that we’re all just people, those folks are really no different than me but isn’t it true that we typically experience that reality when our heroes fall? When we find out that someone we once respected is flawed in a way that disappoints us? In those moments we don’t want them to be human really. Perhaps we want them to be different from ourselves because we’re far too familiar with our own weakness and we desperately need to know that at least somebody is NOT like us.

Over these last several years I’ve had the pleasure of meeting folks like John Eldredge, Gary Barkalow, Craig McConnell, Bart (Does Bart have a last name?), Morgan Snyder and other fellow sowers in this ‘men’s ministry’ thing, but also a broader circle like Kris Vallatton, Michael Hyatt, Bill Johnson, Aimee Semple McPherson, Rick Joyner, etc. etc. Some have been little more than a handshake, others have become genuine friends, most somewhere in the middle. My goal isn’t to drop names here though, what I’m pointing to is a set of experiences much different than the one where a hero disappoints us upon closer inspection – and instead remarking on a place where I can meet these people, learn that they are just as human and imperfect as myself, and come away not disappointed but holding their person and character in even higher regard than before – and I’m trying to understand how that’s happened.

I think the heart of it comes from something Dwennon says all the time, that ‘One man’s glory should not diminish another man’s glory.’ There is a way in which I see these people talk about one another that conveys a kind of honor and respect that isn’t competitive and I see them act in a way that seems to genuinely seek and speak about the things God has done in that person’s life and far less about the things God has yet to do in their lives. The result is a kind of atmosphere of mutual support even if only from a great distance. Don’t get me wrong, I’m under no illusion that some perfect unity of the spirit is going on but to even TRY to act that way is a fair bit more noble than most of the world. Going back to my star-struck dinner (and a stunningly good bison rib eye...with garlic butter and peppered squash...and crème brule...)

Right!

What I was saying was that I look back at my evolving relationship with this man from stuttering and trying to be clever to where I’m yucking it up on the phone with the guy this afternoon in front of a bunch of other guys I know of as mighty warriors for the kingdom...and it feels perfectly natural.

That speaks to another part of this process that I’m just beginning to be aware of – part of this process has been in my willingness to let down my own guard and expectations. I have to allow these people to be human, releasing my own sense of their heroic identity, and in so doing I’m able to take a step closer to them as friends. They take the risk of making themselves available and vulnerable and I have to take the step to allow them to be flawed. You might say that when I accept their step ‘down’ I wind up taking a step ‘up’ - only to discover that the elevation difference was in my head all along.

I suppose I also ought to learn an important lesson here. Speaking at BCNW I’ve come to see how easy it is for people to conclude that somehow you must be a ‘spiritual elite’ in some way. After all, the microphone is our modern equivalent to the scepter, it denotes authority. But just like the scepter, the folks holding that thing know its nothing more than a stick. I’ve seen people approach me after a speech with a kind of star in their eye and I’ve always been weirded out by that but I think I see something that I’ve missed in the past. My impulse in those moments is to say, “Dude, don’t look at me like that. I’m just like you.” and I seek to equalize the situation by removing any sense of the ‘special.’ I want to ‘come down’ so to speak...but perhaps I’d do better to instead invite them ‘up.’ Not to say, “I’m just like you.” but rather “You’re just like me.” To validate whatever it was I may have said that inspired them.

Bill Johnson has this great line. Ever seen somebody sing a song really well and you go to congratulate them. They say, “Oh it wasn’t me, it was the Lord.” to which he’d reply, “Well it wasn’t THAT good...” Joking aside I understand the desire to give credit where it’s ultimately due but to close my loop here. What I‘ve experienced as I’ve walked with these men and women is where they are aware of how Christ has worked in their lives but instead of feigning humility they might say “Thanks. I’m glad God spoke to you through that. That was Christ in me...and He’s in you too.”

BTW – Aimee Semple McPherson is long dead, or ‘on to glory’ as she might have said. I just wanted to see if you were paying attention. ;)