Merry Christmas! An unfortunate opening knowing that my last post pre-dates Thanksgiving this year (and that by quite a lot). Good grief life is busy. And good, mind you. But nonetheless busy.
In the time since I last wrote I've been to Disney World and made not one, but two trips to VA Beach (Thanksgiving one week, the next back for our company Christmas Party). I've hosted family for Christmas and been hosted by family and by friends. And the days have, yes, flown by. Yet it isn't the lack of time nor of focus that keeps me from this page...far more it is the backlog of ideas and choices on a growing list of "to-do's" that somehow pile upon one another forming what looks very much like an insurmountable wall.
Rather than sit staring at the wall, let me share a story that has been on my mind since sometime this summer. If nothing else, it will serve to break the log jam!
Through a growing friendship with several men in our region, I was invited to attend a small "luncheon" at a ministry in Roanoke. The ministry serves the homeless, the addicted, the lost. The men who invited me have a heart to play a role in this ministry's mission of recovery & rescue. Sitting at a large table inside of the facility, I found myself more in the role of observer than participant - watching "both sides" of the discussion while enjoying a lunch representative of the daily fair the ministry provides to those in need.
The men I was with came to the table in hopes they might bridge the gap between being "in the mission" and "re-entering the world." One of these men had mentored just such a man "caught in the gap," offering leadership and advice as well as practical items such as a pre-paid cell phone or periodic rides to job interviews and the like. He'd experienced the powerful impact one man can have on another man's life and had a hope to marshal others (like myself) into playing a similar role.
Most of the conversation revolved around this idea of "bridging the gap" and people on both sides weighed in with thoughts and ideas, both for what "the gap" looked like and how it might be bridged. In the midst of this discussion a very interesting question was posed to the man who runs the recovery ministry (interesting to me, at least):
"What does success look like?"
Now you must know that I had expectations of the answer to this question. I expected something that might as well have been printed in a brochure or on a website. I expected a pat answer, not necessarily rehearsed, but comfortable and safe. But the question seemed to stop this man in his tracks almost as if he had never before considered it, much less articulated an answer.
"When I was younger, first working with my Dad at the mission," he began, "I would have given you an easy answer that sounded something like, 'a wife and two kids with a white picket fence,' or something that looks normal and right to most any of us." He paused, leaning back in his chair. "I think that idea is part of why I left for a while. I was constantly frustrated to see that virtually no one who came here ended up that way. They all lapsed or failed...or even if they didn't completely fail, it never looked like they ended up in the life that I expected for them."
"But when my father was in the hospital," he continued, "I got calls from men he'd helped wanting to come see him...to thank him. I said yes to most of them, only asking that they not drink or show up high at his bedside. Many of them managed my request, though not all." He looked around the room, folding his arms as he spoke.
"Every one of those men, even the ones who couldn't manage to walk into the room without a drink or something to help them through it, every one of them was there to tell my Dad what a difference he had made in their lives. To thank him. Many of them broke down and cried."
At this point I was putting together in my head both the scene he was describing and the idea around it. Here was a man who had, at some point, worked for and/or with his Dad in this ministry, then left that work, only to return to it...and, clearly, to inherit it. Like a strange prodigal son.
"After watching those men and seeing how it lifted my Dad's spirit, I don't think I can tell you what success really looks like in this program. I don't think I know anymore. Maybe it just looks like a guy who lived in a bottle for years and now only falls into it for a week or so before returning to get some help. Maybe it looks like a guy who's life is still in some form of shambles, but its a life he's working on and the mess of it isn't littered with quite all the same crap as before. Maybe its a guy who can pull himself together enough to see his kids for a weekend...and not much more than that...but that weekend is more than he's managed in years and years."
"Maybe success is just doing better today than you were yesterday or last week or last year. Stumbling next month again but having some kind of depth and desire to pull yourself back together for one more try. And another after that."`
The room was silent as his answer trailed off more than it ended. Somehow everyone knew we'd stepped inadvertently onto holy ground through his conjuring up of this response. The men in the room all stared at him or at the table or at their hands. It was clear to me then that there was no gap in this man's ministry.
Finally someone broke the silence with a simple observation that lingers with me even today.
"That sounds just like us."
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Where to Start?
I'm struggling to develop a presentation this week - a story to deliver at a conference next Tuesday that continues to elude me. I'm going through all the familiar steps. Gathering information, making notes, drawing connections...basically working toward some kind of "critical mass" that, hopefully sooner than later, culminates in an Ah-Ha moment...and then I can finally start.
With a firm deadline looming, its a bit scary. Though I'm confident (hopeful?) that it will shift into "exciting" at some point...today. The trick, for me, is always tied up with this idea of where to begin. I have a general sense of where I want to end up; of where I hope the audience is when I reach the end, but where does this story begin?
In any good story, the beginning comes as late as possible. That may not sound like your experience with stories, but you'll just have to trust me that its true (and feel free to test the theory with your personal favorites). An author may (should) have a healthy understanding of everything that has come before the start of the story, and often weaves into the tale revelations, flashbacks, and insights into the character's history and experience...but the actual start of the story adheres to a general literary rule that we shouldn't ever begin the beginning earlier than we must in order to effectively tell, well, a good story.
Its the same for my presentation. I have (and am accumulating) a large body of knowledge about my subject, and I have a great idea of what I hope to reveal to those who attend my talk, but I need to determine where and how to start -- to capture attention, to meet people "where they are" and, from there, take them where I hope to go.
In a bit of an intellectual leap, an old adage came to mind (inspiration or stall tactic, I can't know): "Today is the first day of the rest of your life." Don't you hate that one? Maybe its only the triteness of it that bothers me. But I think its a bit deeper than that - it feels dismissive as well. Like something I would hear at the end of a 12 Step Meeting...something that inherently dismisses everything that has come before today and implies that I can and/or should start fresh.
I guess I don't hate it quite so much the way Paul phrases it in Philippians 3: "But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining toward what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal..."
In fact, reading that, I'm forced to reconsider a bit.
Does Paul really want us to forget the past? Is he encouraging us to forget our previous failures so we won't feel disqualified from our current efforts? To forget our victories so we don't spend today's time in self congratulatory praise?
Or, is his encouragement more simply this: begin today's story today?
In the stories I've heard and in the time I've spent trying to understand my own story - the forensic study of a life in search of the fingerprints of God - I've found I can rely on one common arc: development. Development of gifts...development of character by suffering...development of faith. When I look back over the days that form my life, my story, I can see similar challenges surface and resurface...and I can see an ever-increasingness both to the hurdles in my life and to my ability to overcome them. I could not do in high school what I one day overcame in college. I could not achieve in college what I one day achieved later.
I could not do today what I am called to accomplish if it weren't for the struggles and development I experienced yesterday. And, I believe, there is One who understands the entire body of knowledge regarding my life, who knows exactly where the story will end.
In that context, it isn't entirely that I should wipe the slate clean or forget entirely what lies behind. Rather, perhaps, I can fully embrace, today, what has been developed in me through all my yesterdays -- crafted in and for me -- and simply...
begin the story.
With a firm deadline looming, its a bit scary. Though I'm confident (hopeful?) that it will shift into "exciting" at some point...today. The trick, for me, is always tied up with this idea of where to begin. I have a general sense of where I want to end up; of where I hope the audience is when I reach the end, but where does this story begin?
In any good story, the beginning comes as late as possible. That may not sound like your experience with stories, but you'll just have to trust me that its true (and feel free to test the theory with your personal favorites). An author may (should) have a healthy understanding of everything that has come before the start of the story, and often weaves into the tale revelations, flashbacks, and insights into the character's history and experience...but the actual start of the story adheres to a general literary rule that we shouldn't ever begin the beginning earlier than we must in order to effectively tell, well, a good story.
Its the same for my presentation. I have (and am accumulating) a large body of knowledge about my subject, and I have a great idea of what I hope to reveal to those who attend my talk, but I need to determine where and how to start -- to capture attention, to meet people "where they are" and, from there, take them where I hope to go.
In a bit of an intellectual leap, an old adage came to mind (inspiration or stall tactic, I can't know): "Today is the first day of the rest of your life." Don't you hate that one? Maybe its only the triteness of it that bothers me. But I think its a bit deeper than that - it feels dismissive as well. Like something I would hear at the end of a 12 Step Meeting...something that inherently dismisses everything that has come before today and implies that I can and/or should start fresh.
I guess I don't hate it quite so much the way Paul phrases it in Philippians 3: "But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining toward what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal..."
In fact, reading that, I'm forced to reconsider a bit.
Does Paul really want us to forget the past? Is he encouraging us to forget our previous failures so we won't feel disqualified from our current efforts? To forget our victories so we don't spend today's time in self congratulatory praise?
Or, is his encouragement more simply this: begin today's story today?
In the stories I've heard and in the time I've spent trying to understand my own story - the forensic study of a life in search of the fingerprints of God - I've found I can rely on one common arc: development. Development of gifts...development of character by suffering...development of faith. When I look back over the days that form my life, my story, I can see similar challenges surface and resurface...and I can see an ever-increasingness both to the hurdles in my life and to my ability to overcome them. I could not do in high school what I one day overcame in college. I could not achieve in college what I one day achieved later.
I could not do today what I am called to accomplish if it weren't for the struggles and development I experienced yesterday. And, I believe, there is One who understands the entire body of knowledge regarding my life, who knows exactly where the story will end.
In that context, it isn't entirely that I should wipe the slate clean or forget entirely what lies behind. Rather, perhaps, I can fully embrace, today, what has been developed in me through all my yesterdays -- crafted in and for me -- and simply...
begin the story.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Loving Enemies
There are a few "lessons" I remember from childhood that seem, whether faithfully followed or not, to make consistent sense. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," for instance. Whether learned in Sunday School or on the playground (whether as a strategy for life or a realization that "what goes around" really does "come around"), that one never gave much cause for doubt or concern. "Children obey your parents" made sense too - didn't often follow it, but not because I had any doubt in the practice, fundamentally I mean. Right?
There are also some ideas that somehow stick in my mind, but always seemed pretty tough. Tough from the outset...from a "how does that really work?" perspective, and then even tougher the more exposed I became to the world. The deeper I searched, the less sense they made. The more I interacted with and became challenged by and grew to be frustrated or angry or disappointed with others. Even the more I came to realize the truth of real evil: Hitler or Sudan or the evening news or insert-your-unbelievably-horrible-story here. Some ideas just didn't fit.
"Love your enemies." Jesus said.
What?
The turn the other cheek thing? That at least has some resonance in a Ghandi-like, civil disobedience, "you may win but I will still win through my meekness," kind of way. But "love" my enemies? As a strategy for life? I haven't, to my knowledge, built a long list of enemies for myself in this world. I think there are far more times in my life that "feel" as though I'm battling an enemy...when I'm really not. But lets assume, at times, that I've felt like my boss is my enemy...or a competitor...or a neighbor...or a pastor...or a friend.
Love my enemies? Really?
Is that really a serviceable technique for impacting the world? And if it impacts the world...it surely doesn't carry the likely "impact" of helping me "win," does it? Not even on the holier-than-thou, I win in the end front. And, with love being a pretty powerful word...and the phrasing of this command being a pretty specific assignment...I mean, am I just supposed to "try" to love them? To "look like" I love them? To "act" as if I love them? Because, lets face it, I don't...love...them. Right?
Or is it just "in general?" Is it simply the fact that I can't sit back and "hate" a "people group" because of Pearl Harbor or 9/11 or because hacking off someone's arms with a machete or raping women is detestable and clearly worthy of "hatred?" That instead I "should" be willing to "go" and "love" them...in hopes of seeing them change...in hopes that my love affects that change? So that my love of them is really, I don't know, a love "for" or even "toward" them that is contingent on the possibility that it will influence and impact and change them? Is that it?
But that seems odd because the command is really pretty simple: Love them, he says. My enemies. Not "show them love" or "go do love to them" but...love them. The actions -- the hope for impact, the desire for change -- are all good and even perhaps a necessary outflow or result of love. But it all starts just with, well, love. How can that be?
Over the course of the past few years I have had the chance to hear the life stories of several men. I don't mean to say I've "spent time" with some guys and "picked up" on the story of their lives. No. I mean I've heard men begin their story with the date and place they were born...and tell it up until today. Well, yesterday maybe. Sometimes these stories stretch across weeks. Sometimes hours. The story of a man's life; how he came to be who he is today - both broken and whole.
I have heard stories that I did not want to hear. I have heard of terrible things done to the storyteller...and terrible things done by him. And some have heard the same from me. Across all of these stories I have learned one thing that is inevitably true of every man's story. One commonality that happens again and again and again.
I love each of them.
I cannot, it seems, hear your life story without loving you. Even against my own expectations...even against my own "better" judgement.
I know you may not believe this...you might have things in your story that you have promised never to tell another human being. Terrible things that make you unlovable. Or surely would if they were known.
But that's not true.
What I've found is that "knowing someone" and "loving someone" are ultimately synonymous. It is unavoidable. And through knowing them I discover that I am rooting for them. I can see the path that they are on today as it grows out of the path of yesterday...and I am rooting for their tomorrow. To see them win... To see them overcome... To see them fulfilled...
To see them rescued. Or to see them live into the rescue that is already taking place.
So, this odd perspective on Loving Enemies has dawned on me. It isn't that I should act in love or try to love or work toward loving...it isn't that I should do anything. I can simply trust that, if I knew the real story, I would love them. I would love them in the midst of their circumstance, perhaps hating some things that they've done or are doing or might do, but loving them all the same. Rooting for them all the same.
And trusting that I "would" love isn't all that far from simply "loving" after all.
What I do next, then, about my love? That is the only question.
There are also some ideas that somehow stick in my mind, but always seemed pretty tough. Tough from the outset...from a "how does that really work?" perspective, and then even tougher the more exposed I became to the world. The deeper I searched, the less sense they made. The more I interacted with and became challenged by and grew to be frustrated or angry or disappointed with others. Even the more I came to realize the truth of real evil: Hitler or Sudan or the evening news or insert-your-unbelievably-horrible-story here. Some ideas just didn't fit.
"Love your enemies." Jesus said.
What?
The turn the other cheek thing? That at least has some resonance in a Ghandi-like, civil disobedience, "you may win but I will still win through my meekness," kind of way. But "love" my enemies? As a strategy for life? I haven't, to my knowledge, built a long list of enemies for myself in this world. I think there are far more times in my life that "feel" as though I'm battling an enemy...when I'm really not. But lets assume, at times, that I've felt like my boss is my enemy...or a competitor...or a neighbor...or a pastor...or a friend.
Love my enemies? Really?
Is that really a serviceable technique for impacting the world? And if it impacts the world...it surely doesn't carry the likely "impact" of helping me "win," does it? Not even on the holier-than-thou, I win in the end front. And, with love being a pretty powerful word...and the phrasing of this command being a pretty specific assignment...I mean, am I just supposed to "try" to love them? To "look like" I love them? To "act" as if I love them? Because, lets face it, I don't...love...them. Right?
Or is it just "in general?" Is it simply the fact that I can't sit back and "hate" a "people group" because of Pearl Harbor or 9/11 or because hacking off someone's arms with a machete or raping women is detestable and clearly worthy of "hatred?" That instead I "should" be willing to "go" and "love" them...in hopes of seeing them change...in hopes that my love affects that change? So that my love of them is really, I don't know, a love "for" or even "toward" them that is contingent on the possibility that it will influence and impact and change them? Is that it?
But that seems odd because the command is really pretty simple: Love them, he says. My enemies. Not "show them love" or "go do love to them" but...love them. The actions -- the hope for impact, the desire for change -- are all good and even perhaps a necessary outflow or result of love. But it all starts just with, well, love. How can that be?
Over the course of the past few years I have had the chance to hear the life stories of several men. I don't mean to say I've "spent time" with some guys and "picked up" on the story of their lives. No. I mean I've heard men begin their story with the date and place they were born...and tell it up until today. Well, yesterday maybe. Sometimes these stories stretch across weeks. Sometimes hours. The story of a man's life; how he came to be who he is today - both broken and whole.
I have heard stories that I did not want to hear. I have heard of terrible things done to the storyteller...and terrible things done by him. And some have heard the same from me. Across all of these stories I have learned one thing that is inevitably true of every man's story. One commonality that happens again and again and again.
I love each of them.
I cannot, it seems, hear your life story without loving you. Even against my own expectations...even against my own "better" judgement.
I know you may not believe this...you might have things in your story that you have promised never to tell another human being. Terrible things that make you unlovable. Or surely would if they were known.
But that's not true.
What I've found is that "knowing someone" and "loving someone" are ultimately synonymous. It is unavoidable. And through knowing them I discover that I am rooting for them. I can see the path that they are on today as it grows out of the path of yesterday...and I am rooting for their tomorrow. To see them win... To see them overcome... To see them fulfilled...
To see them rescued. Or to see them live into the rescue that is already taking place.
So, this odd perspective on Loving Enemies has dawned on me. It isn't that I should act in love or try to love or work toward loving...it isn't that I should do anything. I can simply trust that, if I knew the real story, I would love them. I would love them in the midst of their circumstance, perhaps hating some things that they've done or are doing or might do, but loving them all the same. Rooting for them all the same.
And trusting that I "would" love isn't all that far from simply "loving" after all.
What I do next, then, about my love? That is the only question.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
About Time
Coffee filters. Hate ‘em. Well, not the filters themselves, of course – very useful things… necessary, even. No, it’s the running out that I hate. And not, perhaps, the running out so much as the sneaking up of the running out…of the coffee filters.
I don’t know (without going to look) how many coffee filters come in a pack. I am going to guess that we buy these things in lots of a hundred or so.
And I use one per day.
Easy math, right? The “last” filter means three months gone since the last, “last” filter. More than three months. What is that, 15 weeks? Give or take?
And what have I done with 100 days? Hmm?
I heard a sermon a year or so ago that must have caught me at or near coffee filter day. Our pastor was talking about time. He told a story about a man he knew who got so concerned about the manner with which he wasted time that he projected out how many years he likely had left, multiplied that number (40, let’s say) by 52, then filled a jar with a marble for every Saturday from today until, well, his… end.
That’s 2,080 marbles.
Each Saturday morning would start once the man removed a marble from the jar – his chance to measure the time he had left and ensure it was put to good use.
The man’s wife thought the whole thing was pretty morbid.
I’ve thought about that man quite a bit since then, on and off. The pastor was illustrating an idea from the Psalms where the speaker is asking that God “teach us to measure our days.” Why? So that “we may gain a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90)
Gain a heart. A heart of wisdom. A wise, experienced, knowledgeable, deep, full heart. A heart.
I actually think this man was gaining. I can envision that he was a person who had spent his days too freely -- or not at all. A man who might go to buy coffee filters and suddenly realize he couldn’t really remember anything important about any of the Saturdays from the past three months. A man who determined to be more determined about what each Saturday could be…and who maybe still chose to sit in a recliner now and again, but not for lack of consideration, first.
But I also thought of a different story about a man who stored up everything he owned and piled it in a secure place so that he could keep it safe and live off it forever. And to that man God said, “Fool…today your life will be taken from you. What good is all your stuff now?” (Luke 12) I wonder: how far apart is a jar of marbles from that big pile of stuff? A good ways, I guess. So long as the jar really is full of Saturdays.
I have an inkling that sometimes the jar is full of morbid fascination. And sometimes it is full of self-congratulation over, well, the very idea of the jar. Pride, we might call it. Sometimes it might be full of a few extra marbles that carried over from the last few marbles inadvertently missed and forgotten.
But…
If the jar really is what I hope it is -- what the man must hope it is -- I think it must be brimming with desire. Not desire to see days spent well or poorly. Not desire to “do Saturday’s right.” Not desire that gets caught up in the should-have’s of missed marbles or lost days.
No. Not that. Not the heavy, heavy burden of expectation (none so heavy as that placed on ourselves) that gets twisted and squeezed into a poorly defined term we falsely name “desire.”
Wise desire.
Desire that knows time is precious. Desire that has things to do because doing them is fearfully hard and wondrously rewarding. Desire that loves and helps and sacrifices. Desire that isn’t contained by the jar or the marbles, that isn’t so simple as a bucket list or a honey–do list or any, any, any list.
Wise desire. That wakens and does. That hungers when it is quiet. That must. Must! Even forgetting the marble. Even spending the last coffee filter. Even forgetting the heart...
…for a year.
(Thanks B.G.)
I don’t know (without going to look) how many coffee filters come in a pack. I am going to guess that we buy these things in lots of a hundred or so.
And I use one per day.
Easy math, right? The “last” filter means three months gone since the last, “last” filter. More than three months. What is that, 15 weeks? Give or take?
And what have I done with 100 days? Hmm?
I heard a sermon a year or so ago that must have caught me at or near coffee filter day. Our pastor was talking about time. He told a story about a man he knew who got so concerned about the manner with which he wasted time that he projected out how many years he likely had left, multiplied that number (40, let’s say) by 52, then filled a jar with a marble for every Saturday from today until, well, his… end.
That’s 2,080 marbles.
Each Saturday morning would start once the man removed a marble from the jar – his chance to measure the time he had left and ensure it was put to good use.
The man’s wife thought the whole thing was pretty morbid.
I’ve thought about that man quite a bit since then, on and off. The pastor was illustrating an idea from the Psalms where the speaker is asking that God “teach us to measure our days.” Why? So that “we may gain a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90)
Gain a heart. A heart of wisdom. A wise, experienced, knowledgeable, deep, full heart. A heart.
I actually think this man was gaining. I can envision that he was a person who had spent his days too freely -- or not at all. A man who might go to buy coffee filters and suddenly realize he couldn’t really remember anything important about any of the Saturdays from the past three months. A man who determined to be more determined about what each Saturday could be…and who maybe still chose to sit in a recliner now and again, but not for lack of consideration, first.
But I also thought of a different story about a man who stored up everything he owned and piled it in a secure place so that he could keep it safe and live off it forever. And to that man God said, “Fool…today your life will be taken from you. What good is all your stuff now?” (Luke 12) I wonder: how far apart is a jar of marbles from that big pile of stuff? A good ways, I guess. So long as the jar really is full of Saturdays.
I have an inkling that sometimes the jar is full of morbid fascination. And sometimes it is full of self-congratulation over, well, the very idea of the jar. Pride, we might call it. Sometimes it might be full of a few extra marbles that carried over from the last few marbles inadvertently missed and forgotten.
But…
If the jar really is what I hope it is -- what the man must hope it is -- I think it must be brimming with desire. Not desire to see days spent well or poorly. Not desire to “do Saturday’s right.” Not desire that gets caught up in the should-have’s of missed marbles or lost days.
No. Not that. Not the heavy, heavy burden of expectation (none so heavy as that placed on ourselves) that gets twisted and squeezed into a poorly defined term we falsely name “desire.”
Wise desire.
Desire that knows time is precious. Desire that has things to do because doing them is fearfully hard and wondrously rewarding. Desire that loves and helps and sacrifices. Desire that isn’t contained by the jar or the marbles, that isn’t so simple as a bucket list or a honey–do list or any, any, any list.
Wise desire. That wakens and does. That hungers when it is quiet. That must. Must! Even forgetting the marble. Even spending the last coffee filter. Even forgetting the heart...
…for a year.
(Thanks B.G.)
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