Hooray It's Christmas

I really like the "other" verses of Christmas carols--you know, like you're out with a randomly gathered group of people ringing other randomly selected people's doorbells to sing them some songs (much like I, coincidentally enough, was last night), and after you finish the first verse, everybody just kinda hums except for the one person who actually knows verse two. Well, I'm not that person.

As evidence, I offer last night's adventuring (which is probably the only time Christmas caroling has ever involved trespassing for me): At first, I was doing pretty well, holding my own. In fact, they let me hold the music. So whenever we finished the first verse, I would switch songs, the guitar player would start the next song, and I knew all the words. Soon, though, it became obvious that, of my many skills, holding still is not one of them. So, at the behest of Guitar Guy, I was replaced as music holder.

At the next house, we sang "What Child is This?" a song which, I'm pretty sure, everybody loves but only kinda sorta knows the words. After struggling through the verse, we got to the chorus (aka the part I kinda know), and then--to my horror--jumped straight into verse two. Verse two???

Speaking of verse two, "Silent Night" has a verse two, too. One of the lines in verse two is glories stream from heavens afar. I could have sworn that the line was glories stream from heavens above. You know how when you start singing the wrong word you just kinda switch to the right word in the middle? Well, I do that at least, so several times last night I definitely sang glories stream from heaven's a bar.

Anyway, even though I don't really know them, I really love the other verses of Christmas carols. It's probably just because those songs are really well written in general, and since I haven't heard verse three of "O Holy Night" 72 000 times in my life, I actually listen to the words. The words to verse three (or two, depending who you talk to) of "O Holy Night," by the way, are:

Led by the light of Faith serenely beaming,

With glowing hearts by His cradle we stand.

So led by light of a star sweetly gleaming,

Here come the wise men from Orient land.

The King of Kings lay thus in lowly manger;

In all our trials born to be our friend.

He knows our need, to our weakness is no stranger,

Behold your King! Before Him lowly bend!

Behold your King, Behold your King.

Last night, after the caroling, a certain set of girls in our group sang this song a capella, each taking a verse. They did a great job, so much so that I wish that I had a recording of it, especially this verse (hint hint, Colleen...). I think what really hit me about this verse is how it just completely encapsulates the gospel message. We are now the wise men, drawn by the light of hope to give whatever we have to the King.

plj

december is here, and so am i

So, a few updates that are short. Very short, I guess, but stuff y'all would probably care to know.

1. I failed at NaNoWriMo this year. Sadpanda times, indeed. I'll have to try again next year.
2. I finished my senior paper. It's notbadokish. If you like reading 40 pages of boring, it's online over at Books & Papers. It's the first entry under papers, titled "Finding God's Agenda for Homosexual Students."
3. I defend said senior paper on Thursday afternoon. I have no idea what that means, but I'm pretty sure it'll be a gimme putt.
4. I will be done with college a week from Monday. That's just crazy stupid.
5. I will be moving out to El Segundo, California, during the first week of 2008. If any of y'all know anybody out there who wants to throw money my way in exchange for some work, let me know. ;)
6. I love Miles Davis, green tea, and Febreze NOTICEables air fresheners.
7. I plan on writing much more once school is fading into the background...it's scary how soon that is.

Anywho, in the meantime,

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

NaNoWriMo Update

10 000 words.

7 000 in the past 24 hours.

A Passage from NaNoWriMo 07

I'm about 9 000 words in right now, and I really enjoyed this. It's a retelling of some stuff from the first book (which is over on Books & Papers if you want to read it). Oh, and don't worry, most of the novel isn't quite this sap-saturated...

"The night was perfect, the stars were perfect, the ring was perfect, the air was perfect, and (as always) Sophronia was perfect. The waves crashing below us provided a soothing, rhythmic background of soft sounds while the fireworks exploding above us illuminated the most beautiful eyes God himself has ever sought to make as I descended to one knee and removed the ring from my pocket. I told Sophronia how much I truly loved her, how I had always loved her, and how I always would love her. I asked her to marry me.
"She said no.
"She left that place with me on that hill and disappeared back into her palatial life, a life which I somehow had always known could not be ours together. I, I remained there on the crest of that hill, and — though not moving — descended into the deep, dark gloom that captures the night and makes it frightening and cold and alone. I remained there — on one knee — as the world melted away into a horrific melodrama of the grandest of possible failures in my grandest of possible adventures. I remained there — still holding the ring up — as though the stars themselves would accept my love and swoop down and recall me to the heavens above, the archetypical Greek, a tormented lover whose tragic failings had merited him a constellation of his own."
I paused here. I always must pause here.

"Eventually, though, eventually I released the ring, letting it drop back into the soil from which its gold and its jewels had been wrought, hoping that the next discoverer of that ring would have better fortune with his love than I had had with mine."

plj

A Quick Note

What this all feels like.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Exhibit C

plj

The Complete Timothy O Margheim Collection...

...is now available online over at Books and Papers, a rather cleverly titled site I'd just set up. Mainly I set it up as a way to get the first complete draft of my senior paper (about youth ministry with adolescent homosexuals) available to anybody who wants to read it. And maybe even give me some editorial pointers... :)

plj

a strange night

so i wrote 30 entries in september--and 1 in october...oops.


anywho, i found out tonight that my favorite author and my favorite speaker are friends with tulsa's favorite "heretic"

plj

Someday I'll See Clearly

I don't get it.

There's so much bad in me still. Don't get me wrong: there's some good in me, too, and much more than there used to be. I think that side's winning.

But the fight's not over, I guess.

This is probably a weird post to come back on, after the whole Sentence for September experiment, but I guess this is where I'm at right now. And I wanted to write, so this is what you get.

According to my sidebar, there are only 65 more days until I leave this chapter of my life. I thought it'd be different than it is. I thought I'd spend four years at a Christian school, confront the sin in my life, and walk away victorious and unconquerable. That's just not the case.

I wanted to find a book on my shelf tonight that would give me hope. There are books that I turn to when I feel especially useless or lost or confused, books like this and this. But they weren't here tonight. (They must be in Colorado...)

So I grabbed a new book, one that I had bought for the chapter in it about homosexuality for my senior paper. This book has one of the greatest subtitles ever: "How the Culture-Controlled Church Neutered the Gospel." It's by Brian McLaren and Tony Campolo for those of you who didn't click the link (but I'm going to make you work for the actual title).

Anyway, I opened the book up to the chapter on sin, and I stumbled across something that really struck me, especially in such a time as this. (In case you haven't heard, things are a little tense here at the ORU) Here's how it goes: (this is, btw, from Tony Campolo's response to the chapter by Brian McClaren)

A decade or so ago, when television evangelists right and left seemed to be falling by the wayside, I spoke at a denominational meeting of mainline pastors. Before I was on, the master of ceremonies said something like this to the audience: "We must distance ourselves from the likes of Jim Bakker. Men like this have disgraced the church, and we must make it clear to our people that we are not like that."

His words infuriated me, which explains why I started with words to this effect: "The difference between Jim Bakker and the rest of us is that they haven't found out about the rest of us yet. This is no time to distance ourselves from Jim Bakker, but to acknowledge that what was in him is in us all. The line that separates good from evil does not separate one group of people from another, but runs right down the middle of each of us. Each of us has a dark side--and if the truth were known, each of us would have to run away and hide."

I often find that the times when I am most outspoken about the evils of society or culture or the Church or whoever else are also the times when I am faced with the strongest evidence of my own dark side. I don't know if seeing the specks in other people's eyes just sets me up for walking into a log, or if it's the other way around; I expect that it's the second. It sounds much more like me to run away from my own failures by reminding everyone of someone else's.

Either way, I guess this is where I'm at.

Always striving.

A Sentence for September (30/30)

I have so much more to say.

A Sentence for September (29/30)

I suppose I should be thinking that it's problematic that my sense of self-worth is so strongly attached to my sense of my productivity.

A Sentence for September (28/30)

I miss everything.

A Sentence for September (27/30)

There really is so much work to do.

A Sentence for September (26/30)

Maybe it's just the drugs they prescribed me, but I'm kinda getting excited about this idea called cohousing, living with a group of people, even after I "grow up" and even in the event I get married.

A Sentence for September (25/30)

This is amazing.

A Sentence for September (24/30)

I'm mainly pulling for everybody to get into the kingdom 'cause I'm acutely aware of how messed up I am, and if I have any hope than so do they.

A Sentence for September (23/30)

It wouldn't really be me "working" on a big project for school without me writing, recording, and uploading a new song ("Oliver Sipple") to the virb.

A Sentence for September (22/30)

I never want to lie again.

A Sentence for September (21/30)

I'm relatively certain that before this senior paper thing is said and done I'm going to omit the last hour and a half of work from it.

A Sentence for September (20/30)

I miss California.

A Sentence for September (19/30)

If this ship is going down, I'm going to ride it at least 'til my feet get wet.

A Sentence for September (18/30)

I thought about it today through most of Pentateuch, and I'm pretty sure that even if there's no indoor plumbing in Heaven, I still want in.

A Sentence for September (17/30)

"Negation is ignoring what is bad; redemption is making what is bad, good."

A Sentence for September (16/30)

I'm pretty sure that I wasn't ever really all that sure to begin with.

A Sentence for September (15/30)

Weekends for me have become like your backyard the morning after a big snow, only instead of snow that is out there in a big, perfectly smooth sheet, it's the potential for doing homework.

A Sentence for September (14/30)

Shallow classes for shallow people like me.

A Sentence for September (13/30)

In the search for truth, I feel like a heavy fog has fallen on me and I don't know what's anywhere anymore.

A Sentence for September (12/30)

I discovered that the first ten percent of life is spent being younger than eight and I found this incredibly wasteful.

A Sentence for September (11/30)

Letters encouraging young students looking to go into ministry--students like me--to join the ORU Minister's Alliance read a lot like young mafioso's offering "protection."

A Sentence for September (10/30)

I'm writing this in the library because my computer is completely dead.

A Sentence for September (9/30)

I think the only real obstacle to people liking me and what I have to say is them listening to the things I have to say and taking them seriously.

A Sentence for September (8/30)

These are dangerous roads we tread.

A Sentence for September (7/30)

We were pretending to enjoy his show while he was pretending to have a show.

A Sentence for September (6/30)

I got bored with doing the things that I thought wouldn't make any noise around this place.

A Sentence for September (5/30)

First it was melanoma, then I was afraid that I had bird flu, and now I'm freaked out that I might have hypochondria... :|

A Sentence for September (4/30)

When it rains here, it smells like goose poop.

A Sentence for September (3/30)

Laundry would make a great metaphor for life if it wasn't completely linear, mechanical, and--in our case--automatic.

A Sentence for September (2/30)

The problem is me.

A Sentence for September (1/30)

When I grow up, I want to be a writer.

Where I'm At ~or~ Far From Home

So it's been a while since a general life update on here, or any kind of consistent posting. I wish that wasn't the case, but things got pretty busy really fast this summer, and this blog kinda slipped in the old priority list.

But now--now, I'm stranded here in Tulsa, alone on a Saturday night with a mountain of reading and writing to do and a complete lack of any desire to do it. It was out of moments like this that this blog was birthed.

I guess I should start at the beginning. Of June. This summer in El Segundo was amazing. Absolutely incredible. It was probably the best summer of my life. The city is gorgeous and friendly and everything I hoped it would be, with a bustling Main Street within walking distance of just about everything, tons of local-owned sandwich shops where they enter your order almost as soon as they see your face, and a Farmer's Market that shuts everything down on Thursday afternoons. The weather is pretty much always room temperature, with a high of 75ish and a low of 65ish; the windows in my bungalow were open every day and every night. Oh, and the Pacific Ocean is just around the corner; I snuck down just to look at the water to fill up a couple of lunch hours on slower days.

While I was down there, I never really thought that I went to the beach all that much, but, sitting down and thinking about it now, I probably hit it up four or more times a week. Something about the sand and the water and the wind and the nature of it all just never got normal to me. It was always breathtaking when I reached the top of the hill on Grand and could finally glimpse the waters beneath.

The church was awesome, too. Instead of assigning me the random intern jobs that no one else wanted, they actually took the time to find out what my passions and strengths in ministry were and then worked with me to design places for me to use those in conjunction with their ministry. It was really cool and gave me a lot of opportunities to test myself in real youth ministry situations. I was amazed with how quickly the staff welcomed me into their lives and their work and supported me and valued my opinion on all sorts of things that I didn't really feel qualified to give an opinion on. It was scary, but in a good way.

The people were also great. My biggest fear going into the summer was that it usually takes longer for people to begin liking me than I was going to spend out in El Segundo, but as the summer unfolded I really quickly fell into some really great new friendships and reopened a couple of old ones. When I first arrived I thought that I'd have loads of time alone in my bungalow to read and study, but between work and hanging out with all the great people I met, I ended up spending very little time back there at all.

There was also a girl. She's pretty amazing. If you want any more of a story than that, shoot me an e-mail, or call or IM me or just stop me walking through the GC and I'll be glad to tell you all about it.


But that's the summer...I think. I mean, there are a ton more stories than that, and maybe over the course of time you'll hear them all. But for now, I think that'll do.

Now I'm back in Tulsa. I've got a ton of work ahead of me this semester. But then there's a bright glowing future somewhere after that and I can't wait to get to it.

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

So there's this girl.

Stories from this Summer (some with photographic evidence even)

Dear Everybody,

The other day I started writing haiku. It's been pleasurable.

Some of them are about things that have happened this summer. I like these specific haiku, maybe even more than some of the other ones.

But I like the other ones too.

So, I've decided to post several of them over here so you all can enjoy them and hear what kind of stuff has been going on down here. Kind of.

And since they're only like seventeen to seventeen-and-a-half syllables each, they will not bore you to death either.

Haiku 1 (Wed 8/1/07)

$85
More than a week's worth of work
Parking tickets suck

Being parked in the El Segundo Beach lot after dusk: $50
Being parked on Virginia St between 8 & 10 am Wednesdays: $35
Being a part of funding the largest metropolitan network of roads in the world: Priceless.

OK, so I don't know if it is the largest metropolitan network of roads, but LA's pretty freakin' huge.

Haiku 3 (Fri 8/3/07) my foot is on fire quickly now right foot go down crap am i a dumb

So, beach night was Thursday...and I thought I could do the whole walking across coals thing again. But I hit a wet spot, so this is what my foot looks like now:


The bottom side is definitely worse, but my camera only occasionally works, so this is the shot I got; as you can see, my foot sank into the coals and it burned all the way around. A little light second-degree and quite a bit of strong first-degree means I'm having a blast everywhere I go.

Haiku 6 (Fri 8/3/07)

working in baja
we ate the orphans' last rice
then we came back home

That story is straight up true, y'all. I'll have to tell it sometime in person...the blog thing is cool and all, but it's just going to miss the mark on this one.

Haiku 8 (Sat 8/5/07) my beard looks awesome without it i look fifteen; die, facial hair code!

That first line's true...the senior pastor at my church said so this morning. So I mean, you can disagree, you're just disagreeing with God. ;) Here's a pic of me laying the law down on some troubled youth at beach night. (or something along those lines...)


Peace, love,
and joy to
you all.

State of Emergency

OK, so, this blog is kinda turning into me just talking about what I'm doing in youth ministry, but that is basically all I do out here, so that's all y'all get. And since a bunch of you are already involved in youth ministry, and a bunch more of y'all should be, maybe these kinds of posts will give you some good ideas about where to go or what to do. Or, you can also shout things back at me in the comments like "that sucks!" or more constructive things like "i think it would be cool to do that same thing with shards of pottery and glass" or whatever.

I think it'll be fun.

So tonight was my last official regular old Uturn of the summer, which is crazy how fast this summer has gone by. Anywho, Jon (the youth pastor) set it up long ago that I would be speaking tonight, so I prepared a whole lesson based around the life of Joseph (Old Testament). I mainly talked about how God uses the parts of our lives that we don't like or don't make sense to us to bring us to the place where he wants us. I called it "State of Emergency" because Joseph rose to power just in time to save the world in that huge famine. But mainly because I listened to this Bjork song "Joga" and that's where the whole idea for the teaching came from. I think the speaking portion was better last time I spoke. Also, I definitely heard from a bunch of people afterwards that I pace like mad. There was one freshman girl who said she felt like she was watching a tennis match. Note taken.

The cool thing, though, about tonight was that we put together this awesome mosaic. I told a story from my life that a lot of y'all probably remember from a few Christmases ago, and just talked about how in that situation, and in a lot of situations, I just don't understand why God has certain things happen. So I asked the kids to write down a situation similar to that in their lives on these little sheets of paper. The sheets were covered in dots of random colors and sizes which everyone just kind of wrote over.

While I was talking about the life and times of Joseph, the students on the student-leaders team at Uturn arranged the dotted images into the mosaic which they were each a part of. Anywho, this has been kind of confusing to write, so I took some pictures so that you could see it in action.

This is the full image. I talked about trees at the end. I don't know how well that part stuck. But I think this image came out perfect.

I also took a couple of close-ups:

How amazing are these students?

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

An Update ~or~ A News Report, a Girl, and a Poem

I'm tired. I've been working hard and staying very busy all summer. It's been pretty awesome.

But really, I'm still the same me. I don't really watch TV, cause I don't have the time. And I haven't touched a guitar since May, cause I didn't bring one out here. Other than that, I'm still basically the same me.

Oh, except for I kinda fell in love with this girl. At first, I didn't know what to think of her, but the more time I spend listening to her, the more I like what I hear. The problem is that her hair is shorter than mine, and mine's pretty freaking short. Oh, and she's like twice my age.

I am, of course, talking about none other than Sinead O'Connor, who's newish album "Theology" has been playing over and over in my head for the past couple of days now. I recommend it with the caveat that it's not a systematic theology textbook, so if you are going to take issue with her riffs on the Old Testament, then just let it be. But, until somebody else writes awesome music about Job, Jesus, and Psalm 91, I'll be listening to this.

Lastly is a poem. That I didn't write. But I like it. The only way I came across it was through one of the blogs I read to try to stretch the boundaries of how I define ministry. The blog is jonnybaker but the poem is by kester. Enjoy!

If we could all
just stop throwing stones,
and stoop, knees bent
and write in the dust,

we'd see that the dust
was once stone -
grand, and hard, and proud, and tough -
now ground and dissolved
in grace and tears.

So... how much better
to be a grain of dirt
on that kind prophet’s hands
than a stone
in the cold, accusing Temple
of the pure.

an avant-ish page from my notebook

Today was cloudy.
It was sunny once. Lunch. Fun.
But then it was cloudy. I don't
remember when or how. But it was
cloudy.
It was cloudy when I went to
dinner. I brought a hoodie to be safe
in my backpack when I grabbed
my iPod.
There's a feather next to me blowing
all about in the wind. It hasn't left
yet but it's so small and the breeze
is strong
I listened to Jay Bakker during
my walk and my meal. The hash
browns were very good.
The message was about God having
forgotten our sin. It's on iTunes.
I started walking toward the water.
Jay made some jokes about Brad Pitt,
Ty Pennington and Brennan Manning. I
laughed out loud.
He ran out of words at Grand & Main.
I tried to listen the songs I
put on my iPod today. They didn't
work until I hit Evolution.
The Cinematic Orchestra makes my
life seem like art.
It sounded like it was skipping or something.
THE STARS
LIGHT UP MY LIFE
And I thought of Jay Bakker and Phil2 and
DC Talk and shining like stars.
EVERLASTING
THE SUN (SON?)
LIGHT UP (OF?) MY LIFE
I was struck.
WHAT I MEAN
THE SON
IN DAWN (?)
YOUR LOVE
YOUR LIFE
SO BRIGHT
EVERLASTING
I hit the crest of the hill. I saw
the water. The clouds broke.
EVOLUTION
A change.

The Pleasure Cruise of the Disciples

So, youth ministry has always been a big thing for me, right? A bunch of times you'll see it show up in my posts or whatever.

It's always weird to me, though, because it's such a huge part of my life but most all of my friends and even family members have never really seen me doing youth ministry stuff.

A few weeks ago, I got the opportunity to speak to Uturn (which is the youth ministry here at El Segundo Foursquare Church). I talked about trusting God and facing your fears, which have kinda been the things that I'd been working through with this whole internship experience.


Anyway, the message got recorded, so I thought it might be fun to post a little bit from right at the end, kinda as proof to you guys who haven't really ever seen or heard me do youth ministry that I actually do it. Oh, and to give everyone the opportunity to make fun of the fact that I don't seem to fully understand the concept of a microphone, or that it's pretty obvious that my speaking style is more influenced by dane cook and nick swardson than billy graham or some other preachery guy.

Anywho, here's a little ten minute chunk I like to call the tennis story.

019987

The number above is a code. It means that I'm still alive.

I'm just crazy busy.

But I'm working on a post. It's not yet done.


But I made a sample.

Cause I thought it was funny. Particularly upon reading it.

Friday afternoon was reserved for prayer and fasting for the Mission staff, so we planned a pool day.

Keep watch.

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

Updating the Liturgy

So, if you paraphrase The Message, what exactly is it at that point?

I believe I will call it the super-illegal-bootlegged-Margheimish-Message by Eugene Peterson Version (SIBMMEPV).

Isaiah 43.2ish (SIBMMEPV)

"Don't be afraid, I've redeemed you.
I've called your name. You're mine.
When you're in over your head, I'll be there with you.
When you're in rough waters, you will not go down.
When you're between a rock and a hard place,
it won't be a dead end—
Because I am God, your personal God,
The Holy of Israel, your Rescuer."



Ok, so I only changed one word. But that's my new Christian trend-setting crusade.

Anywho, this verse popped up in the ESV Bible RSS Feed just now, and I liked it.

Peace, love and joy to you all

Why I Hate Instant Messaging

I say lots of stupid things.

This is true regardless of the medium. Whether I'm in front of a group of people, talking to somebody on the phone, meeting up with a group of friends, blogging, or chatting via some magical instant messenger device, it's a pretty sure bet that if I'm saying something, something stupid either is presently coming out of my mouth (or fingers, I guess) or something stupid is about to.

Which is why, when I'm with a group of people, I am always checking to make sure that I haven't crossed the "This guy's a creepy annoying idiot" threshold, by making eye contact, listening to people's tone, and by keeping track of their body language around me. Through years of alienating peers, friends, roommates, siblings, and strangers, I've almost got this to a point where I am able to keep 10% of the people I come across on the good side of that threshold.

Unfortunately, this is nearly impossible via the pipes that connect my AIM to everybody else's AIM. So while I'm coming up with really really entirely ridiculous things to type, my only feedback is 'lol' or 'haha' or 'hmmmm.' Which could mean that somebody really is laughing out loud, or it could mean "This guy's a creepy and annoying idiot" or "I am seriously concerned for my safety after that last eye-gouging joke."

So, I've decided to let you all in on the hippest thing ever about instant messaging. It's called "ial," and it's the brainchild of my good friend Christine. ial=i'm actually laughing.

So feel free to use lol and haha to acknowledge a joke that may have made you smirk, or to somehow affirm the joker, but use ial whenever and only whenever you actually laugh at something you read.

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

Staff Meeting

From the "They don't quite know what tao do with me here" Department

The other day at church somebody asked me what my favorite flower was. I responded, "Wheat."

From the "All my posts somehow are about girls" Department

I regret that I'm not blogging more about my experience here in El Seg. It's kinda like there's this girl I really like and I think she might read my blog so I don't talk about it much. Only the girl's name this time is Everythingabout Thissummer.

From the "All my posts are ridiculously self-serving" Department

My favorite sentence that I've written on transparency|inaction:

"An old deaf man came up to me and we had a whole conversation about the hail and driving in it and tornadoes."

from Coming Home (Part 3/3)

From the "Business as usual" Department

I suppose that I'm a little bit sadder of late (not entirely sure why)...but I'm planning on getting down to the beach in the next day or two, so I'm hoping that's all that I need.

From the "Completely random" Department

Earlier today I realized that I've become one of those sadpanda people who holds conversations with their pets while progressing through a series of crossword puzzles. Oh well. I suppose there are still opportunities in monkery.


Peace, love, and joy to you all.

A Story about Singapore

Maybe it's just the ORU that's all over me, but wherever I look it seems like I find stories about God.

Like the Muslim who converted to Christianity about a decade ago: he first heard about the Christian God from a fellow prisoner in Babylon, then escaped to travel around the world before finding God in Paradise. He was a very nice man.

But more than that, there's this story about the founding of Singapore which I love.

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

'Heard

We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.

-Francois de La Rochefoucauld

5 Things

5 Things that are different about my experience in Tulsa and El Segundo

1. Tulsa: Nasty river bed. El Segundo: Beach.
2. Tulsa: Moderate level of traffic. El Segundo: [almost] No traffic. Los Angeles: tons of traffic.
3. Tulsa: Everyone acts like a Christian. (Nine times out of ten they are a Christian) El Segundo: Everyone acts like your friend. (Nine times out of ten they are your friend.)
4. Tulsa: Gas costs $2.80 a gallon. El Segundo: Gas costs $3.39 a gallon.
5. Tulsa (particularly ORU): People wear quite a bit of clothing. El Segundo: Everybody wears less.
   

5 Things that are the same about Tulsa and El Segundo

1. People are really nice.
2. There are oil refineries nearby.
3. I live in a safe, affluent neighborhood only a few miles from a city or neighborhood nationally known for poverty and crime. (North Tulsa and Compton)
4. Me.
5. I live really, really close to really loud things. (The other guys at ORU, LAX here in El Segundo)

5 Things that I've done in the past 48 hours that will make ridiculous stories

1. Thursday 9:00pm-11:00pm: Finished Uturn, set the stage for Sunday, and then headed to In-N-Out with the sibs and some of the cool kids here in El Seg.
2. Friday 7:00am: Left the house with the sibs for a full day at Disneyland (pictures here, if you haven't already seen them).
3. Friday 10:30pm: Returned from Disneyland. Pretty much straight to bed.
4. Saturday 2:20-7:00am: Woke up, showered, and went to church, where I ran camera 2 on an insane program for the youth group here. I'll have to tell you about it someday.
5. Saturday 9:00pm: Remember that I need to do laundry in order to have something to wear to church tomorrow. Decide to write something to force my body to stay awake.
   

5 Things I'm worried about getting done this week

1. Script for a theatre/video thing for summer camp.
2. Outline for teaching coming up in a week and a half.
3. Catching up on Summer Greek.
4. Keeping my ministry journal up to date.
5. Whatever that other thing was that I was thinking about but forgot.
   

5 Things I've spent too much time doing in the past week

1. Staring at ceilings looking for inspiration instead of just writing a script.
2. Driving to LAX (even though it's only five minutes; four trips there in a week [eight if you count the In-N-Out runs, which I do] is still quite a bit)
3. Trying to figure out who I know in Southfield, Michigan.
4. Reading sports news.
5. Thinking...

5 Things to Close

1. Peace,
2. love,
3. and joy
4. to
5. you all
   

A Bedtime Story: The Story of Icarus and Atlas

This is totally a rerun, so if you've been reading any blog written by me for a year or so, you may recognize it. I wrote it from a specific context in my life, but it's kind of a riddle that I've never really felt resolved about. Any help?

The Story of Icarus and Atlas

Once upon a time, in a village not far from here, there lived two men (neighbors, as a matter of fact) named Icarus and Atlas. The village in which they lived had no name, for it was surrounded by a mystical and enchanted forest that was too thick to traverse. People who were courageous enough to venture into the woods quickly lost their way home, because there were no roads and the woods were so dense.

One day, while Atlas and Icarus were strolling through the village, they began to talk about the possibility of their being other villages like their own somewhere outside, beyond the bounds of the mystical forest. "If we cleared a road through the forest," said Atlas to his friend, "we could safely travel outside of the village in a straight line until we came upon some other people."

"Great idea," answered Icarus. "We ought to begin first thing in the morning." And, as the men separated at their houses, they settled in for a night filled with hope and anticipation for the exciting journey that was to begin at sunrise.

The next morning, however, their hope soon met with frustration when conflict about which direction they should clear. "It seems quite obvious to me," said Atlas, "that since the Sun sets in the west, this is the direction in which we will find other villages, because the Sun must visit us first," for it was common knowledge in the village that evenings were so much warmer than mornings because the mornings were when the Sun was first getting started and needed time to warm up from the cool of night. "If anyone lived to the east," Atlas concluded, "the Sun would be fully warmed by the time it reached us."

"Only a fool would believe such nonsense," said Icarus, since he felt himself a rather wise and educated man. "If anyone lived to the west of us, the Sun would surely be too warm by the time that it was over them for any kind of comfortable life. Instead, we should strike out east, where we will find a cooler but still somewhat hospitable land."

The two men argued and argued outside of their homes in the center of the village. As the Sun was setting (in the west, an event which Atlas continually referenced as his proof), the two men realized that they would never agree, and each determined to set out in his own direction the next morning.

At the sunrise the next day, the two went out to opposite ends of the village and began their work. From sunrise to sunset the two men chopped and chopped, each trying to outpace the other and comforting themselves with the futility of the work of the other. "After all," each man thought, "there are no people where he is heading." And on they chopped until nightfall.

The next morning, after both men had had some well earned sleep, both men were surprised and disappointed to find that the entirety of the forest each had cleared the day before had completely regrown in the night. Resilient, each man picked up his axe and began clearing again.

And so it continued for years, each man heading out in the morning, chopping all day, and sleeping all night, only to return the next morning to find that all of their clearing had regrown. After seven years of this daily pattern, Atlas decided that he had had enough. "This is foolishness," Atlas said to his neighbor. "Everyday we slave and toil, and every night the magic restores every branch of every tree we chop down."

"I'll never quit," replied Icarus, "for that is a greater foolishness. One day, Atlas, the magic will fail, and I will be able to clear the forest and make progress on my road."

The next morning, Icarus went out and chopped and Atlas stayed at home and drank tea, as was the custom in that village, and--for Icarus--the pattern continued. He went out at sunrise, chopped down trees all day, slept all night, only to return the next morning to find that all of his clearing had regrown. After another week of this, it occured to Icarus that maybe the forest was always growing and that he and Atlas' work was just keeping it from further encroaching on the village.

To test this thought, he went to the west edge of the village, to where Atlas had been chopping, to see if the magic that was restoring the forest was also enlarging it. To his great surprise, he found that the last day's work of chopping that Atlas had done had not regrown. "That fool," he said to himself. "He stopped chopping the very day that the magic quit working. It's power must be fading! If I continue to chop, it will eventually stop working on the east side of the village as well."

So he returned to his routine: every morning at sunrise he would go out, chop down trees all day, sleep all night, and find every morning that the magic was still working in his portion of the woods. The hope that he was close to outlasting the magic faded within the coming months, yet whenever he would ponder abandoning the project, he would remember that Atlas had quit the day the magic stopped, and that as long as there was any chance that the magic might stop, it was worth it for him to keep trying.

And so the pattern continued: wake up, chop, sleep, find that it had regrown. Days turned into weeks, weeks to months, months to years, and years to decades.

Until one day, Icarus died.



Now then, having read the story, who is the fool? Is it Atlas, who gave up a hair shy of the moment that he would have received the reward for his work? Or is it Icarus, who worked away a lifetime striving after a prize that would never be?



Peace, love, and joy to you all.

A Realer Post About California

It's awesome.

El Segundo, for those of you wondering, really is a small town stuck on the side of LA. I'm right south of LAX (and am nearly constantly reminded of the fact when I'm at the house where I'm staying), north of a huge Chevron oil refinery, west of highway 1 and east of the ocean. It's pretty rockin.

I can't go anywhere with staff members without running into several sets of people that we (meaning they) know. Last night, just to pick up some Chicken Dijon we ran into no less than 3 different groups of people, all out on unrelated errands who wanted to talk to us.

I, having lived here only five days, have already run into somebody that I know out on the streets. Walking home from work today, I ran into one of the members of El Segundo Foursquare Church who happened to be picking his child up from daycare as I was walking by. I refused his offer for a ride home not because I had anything against him, but because it was such a gorgeous day in El Segundo today.

I've been to the beach a little. I'm planning on going back on Friday sometime.

This experience is really stretching and exciting and scary and hard and amazing. I love the people here; I don't know that I've ever felt accepted into a group so quickly. And, instead of really putting me to work on their pet projects, they've really given me the opportunity to tell them what I enjoy doing and try to figure out ways to build ways for me to do that as part of the greater mission of ES4sq.

Which is really cool. And at least a little frightening. I just really want to do well.

I think that's all I've got tonight. I hope y'all are having wonderful summers, and I hope to hear from all of you soon.

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

I'm the orange one...

A Story for a Bad Day

So, this is just a story I put together (mostly) before NaNoWriMo last year to test how many words I could get out in ten or fifteen minutes. Anyway, I picked it up tonight and finished it.

If you just had a bad day, then this one's for you.

If you just had a good day, then remember this post for when you have a bad one, and come read the story again.

I don't think there's any deeper meaning to it, but whoever comes up with the cleverest moral to this story, or allegorical interpretation, or other hermeneutic for it and leaves it in the comments wins some sort of prize.

Everyone plays!

1 - N/A: Hungry cold and lonely (0 words) DRAFT

Early one morning, Harvey the Bear arose to eat a meal, as was his custom. Every morning, it seemed, he would rise with the sun and venture out of his sleeping cave and look left, then--if there was nothing left--right, then--if again no food was found--left, repeating until he found something to eat or fell over from dizziness. On one summer morning of the latter variety, Harvey the Bear spent the first hour of the day merely looking about his cave, back and forth, forth and back for a solid hour. Just as the combination of cranial motion and hunger and dehydration were about to cause him to faint, Herb the Deer sprang forth quite quickly from the brush, shouting behind him, "Y'all are hosers!!!! I'm going somewhere cool."

Looking over his shoulder as he was, Herb did not even see Harvey standing, mouth agape at the mouth of his cave, salivating over the prospect of this nice venison steak that was just walking up to him, rather blindly. (This did not trouble Harvey the Bear as it may have you or I; you see, it really is true that you are what you eat, and Harvey had eaten much dumber and more oblivious creatures even than Herb the Deer in his days, and so, despite the fact that we now have an herbivore--and a delicious one at that--walking quite blindly into the trap of a carnivore--and a quite hungry one at that--it is important that we do not leap to the conclusion that Harvey is smarter than Herb; of course, all of this will become clear in due time, so let us now return to the story at hand) Just as Harvey was raising his meaty right paw (known to him only as Elthazar the Mighty), Herb turned to see just whose clearing he was now meandering through, and--in a move all will admit was quite deft--immediately crouched on his hooves, ducked his head (towards which Elthazar the Mighty was quite quickly en route), and pushed with all his might away from the raging bear he had now spotted before him.

Harvey, then, having missed the first meal of his day by mere inches, let out a mighty, bellowing, and truly foul-smelling roar. It is important for the reader to note at this point in the story that Herb was a rather brave deer, voted "Most Likely to Shoot Back" in his graduating class, and was not as stupid as his most recent actions may make him appear to be. You see, Herb, having just heard the terrifying groan of a hungry--and stupid--predatory giant, laid down in the grass not two yards from his attacker, and calmly said, "Good morning, my good sir, I was quite afraid that I was to find nothing but savages out here in this part of the forest. But as I see that we are both civil and honorable creatures, I must admit my mistaken assumption, and it is with great relief that I inquire if we might sit together and enjoy ourselves a picnic lunch, since it is almost the noon hour and I, if I may be so honest, am quite famished."

The Bear let out a slight gasp (as he was most certainly astonished to have been recognized as a cultured member of the Upper Forest Community--he was an avid reader of Kafka and Beckett) before he responded, in his most genteel tone: "Why, indeed, I do belief that amongst this see of savages it is in deed most fortitudinous that we more revolved specious should enjoin the company of one another for a meal. What, though," (his voice betrayed his concern here) "shall we eat?"

"Eat?" laughed Herb the Deer. "Well..." Herb had failed to plan this plan properly, it seemed, and with each ever quickening heartbeat he sensed the approach of his imminent demise in the mouth of the massive menace before him. "A supremely civilized creature such as yourself certainly would not find it meet to eat meat, would you?"

"Never!" lied Harvey, desperate to maintain this portrait of cultured credulity which Herb had so kindly painted, framed, and hung around the Bear's neck. "Why, only the most chaste among the woodland creatures would!"

Herb was confused by the use of the word "chaste" in the current context of conversation. Harvey also was confused by the use of the word "chaste," but he had hoped that since he had no idea what the word meant, perhaps his new friend would not either.

"Indeed..." came the cautious and polite response of the Deer. And they sat together, Bear and Deer much like Lion and Lamb, and ate Tofu steaks and Portobello Mushroom Burgers and sipped organic black tea while talking about the meaning of Metamorphosis and the wait for Godot. To Harvey, the vegan lifestyle was worth the acceptance of his peer the Deer, and Herb preferred to be a friend to an unnatural herbivore than a meal to a quite capable carnivore.

And so the two determined that this ought to be there custom on every Tuesday morning at about this time, and they remained friends from then on, until they both were very old and tired.

The End.

Peace, love, and joy, even on a day like today.

A Quick Note

You are what you eat.

You write what you read.

As such, I'm not writing tonight; I have nothing to say.

Still wishing peace, love, and joy to you all.

i'd rather be assassinated than murdered, cause at least then i'd have done something

Unlikely Places: Swimming Continued

If you don't already, allow me to highly recommend reading the comments to whatever this blog is; I've known for a long time that everyone who reads this blog has far more interesting insights than I can conceive of, and the people who comment here serve only to prove that. (I only wish y'all wrote more on your blogs!! I love hearing all that y'all have to say, and hope to hear what it is that you spend your time thinking about!) To start this post, here are some that y'all left on the last post:

"I totally agree, God never intended for us to try and walk it out on our own strength." You know, this is what I was trying, rather violently and unsuccessfully, to say in those flailed words below, so I'm glad that you got it, Jessica. Oh, and I really, really didn't want to do swimming either...but it ended up being one of the greatest experiences of my time at ORU. Look for the lessons.

"In my swimming class, we'd all take turns and watch each other, there was no hiding the fear, either you got over it or you were scared and every one knew which one it was. I kinda wish it was harder to hide our problems in the church. Ya know?" You completely knocked it out, Malia. But, you know, instead of wishing that it was tougher to hide my problems I find I more often wish that I had the courage to admit my problems and deal with them in the context of a healthy community. I think that everyday I'm moving closer to that, but it's definitely a struggle.

How do we find such a healthy community? (which is the segue* now into the meat of the post)

True community arrives whenever we say, a la Aaron Weiss, "If I'm afraid and you're afraid, then we don't have to be afraid anymore," and agree to put down our weapons against one another (isolation, rejection, abandonment, negativity, fakeness, condemnation, et al.) and choose instead to humbly love, one broken piece to the other.

An illustration of this is found in the story of Josh from Beginning Swimming (which is certainly not his real name). I had passed my swimming proficiency test (25m front swim, 25m back swim, 2min tread) very early in the semester, partially because my fear of water was not as developed as many of the others in the class and partially because my feet and hands are like natural flippers, so I've got quite a distinct advantage over the common "well-proportioned" man. Still, I waited until after class so that if I would have failed, as few a number of people as possible would be around to see it.

Josh attempted it a couple of weeks later, after a handful of others had completed various portions of the test. In the middle of class, he got out of the water and told our instructor that he thought he was ready. He began the long journey down toward the deep end. She swam down. We all watched at the edge, standing at the various depths at which we could keep our heads above water by standing on our tip toes.

He jumped in and began swimming toward us on his back. Now, I'm certainly not a swimmer of any merit (I mean, I was in Beginning Swimming). But everybody else seemed to have trouble getting anywhere when they were swimming compared to me. Like, I definitely wasn't fast, but I was always moving when I wanted to be (and even when I wasn't really trying to be). Josh was one of those who splashed a lot and moved through the water very little. It was like one of those nature documentaries, where the great white is devouring the family of sea lions, only the violence on the surface lasted more than mere seconds.

Minute after minute passed as we watched Josh thrash about in the water, fighting with what seemed to be his whole life for every inch. But we weren't just passively watching. We were shouting and cheering and encouraging and doing our very best to will Josh halfway across the pool. But, you know, it's strange now thinking about it--not one of us yelled anything all that practical, or at least, what you'd think would be practical.

You'd think we would have yelled out corrections to his form, or the distance he had left to go, or instructions for every motion, but instead we just yelled out unmitigated support. "You've got this!" "You can do it!" "You're doing great!"

These kinds of things probably would have seemed to ludicrous to an actual swimmer passing by, since Josh obviously wasn't doing very well. But for those of us in the pool, we loved him and we saw only success in each failing stroke. Maybe it was because we didn't know what we were shouting about, or maybe it was because when we looked at Josh, we saw ourselves; our hopes and our fears swam alongside him.

But, strangely enough, he was making it. Whether he was riding on our encouragement or the current from the deep end, he was less than five feet from the ladder which was our finishing mark. And then it happened.

He tried to turn his head to see where he was at. His body failed to properly balance itself. His face ended up underwater. Struggling to surface, he turned himself perpendicular to the path he had been on. We screamed as passionately as we could at him. He was so close. He started to panic. He started coughing. He thought he was going to drown. His hand instinctively grabbed the lifeguard buoy that the instructor had held the whole time.

He had failed. Four or five feet from the finish line, he had failed in front of his friends, peers, and most fervent supporters. There was a silence as he settled his mind and discovered just how close he'd come.

And then we cheered. Josh had failed the proficiency, but what he had done had been an incredible feat of endurance and mental fortitude. And we cheered for him. We knew that he'd pass the proficiency test, sooner rather than later, and that what he most needed at that moment was the same unconditional support which we had given him throughout.

Imagine if the Church was like that.

Instead of everybody yelling what you should or should not be doing instead of what you are or are not doing, instead of the constant judging of whether your Christianity is kosher enough, instead of the disgusting and depraved response of fully rejecting our failures, imagine a Church filled with unconditional support that was actually unconditional.

In the meantime, I wish fully peace, love, and joy to you all.


* I totally thought that this word was spelled "segway" until FireFox red underlined it. After ninjawords and dictionary.com confirmed the incorrectitude, the OneLook Reverse Dictionary came to the rescue.

Unlikely Places: HPE 026 and the Story of the Church

As an introduction, I am a theology major at what purports itself as the largest charismatic Christian liberal arts university in the world. This means that I take lots of courses whose course number begins with THE, where we talk about who God is; BIB, where we talk about what he wrote (more or less); and CHRM, where we talk about how to be his body.

One class in the last category, Intro to Youth Ministry, met in the Aerobics Center so that we didn't have to come dressed in the Code (which was a collared shirt, dress pants and shoes). It was great. Some people came dressed in shorts and flip-flops (which was unheard of in those days) and we talked honestly and openly about God and working with teenagers.

As it turns out, the class which has informed my faith in some of the most startling ways, and probably taught me the most about being the body of Christ, met in the room across the hall. HPE 026 -- Beginning Swimming.

I feel at least a little bit obligated to tell some embarrassing story about myself here. I didn't grow up a swimmer; instead, I grew up afraid of most everything: the dark, spiders, heights, water, touching electric poles (not the wires, the wooden poles that they're connected to [or to which they're connected, if you're a grammarian]), lightning, and so on. (I'd like to point out that I have conquered these fears and moved on to new, more rational ones, like failure, rejection, abandonment, isolation, and babies) When I was 9 or 10 my parents decided that it was time for me to learn the things that came early for normal kids, like riding bikes and swimming. So they signed me up for swimming lessons at the local YMCA and I was off. The first couple of lessons were pretty chill: wading around in the shallow end, ducking my head under water, doing the whole hold-on-to-the-wall-and-kick-your-legs-furiously trick.

But then came a day of dread and terror: Jump-Into-The-Deep-End-Day. I couldn't do it. I was just too scared. Looking into the clear, 12-foot deep water, it didn't make sense to me that anything in that water could support me, that instead the Abyss would consume me. And there was this little, 4-year-old girl who just kept doing it over and over again and I was the one standing there in my swimming shorts to chicken to do it.

To make matters worse, this wasn't just a private trauma. No, instead there was a wall of windows directly behind me allowing everyone in the lobby of the Y--everybody's parents, random strangers, and God-knows-who-else--to watch the awkward 10-year-old boy sob and moan about dying if he jumps into the deep end.

So let's just say that swimming wasn't exactly something that I did for fun growing up. As such, I wasn't really in shape to pass the swim proficiency required here for graduation. Which led to me having to take HPE 026 this past fall, an experience I was not really looking forward to that much.

{{A brief interlude whereby I list reasons for hesitation:

1. I had, to that point, made a reasoned and passionate effort to avoid the men's locker room in the AC at all costs.
2. Aforementioned traumatic little-girl-being-more-manly-than-me experience.
3. My hatred of being wet which, as it turns out, is quite a bit of the whole swimming thing.

Regardless of these three entirely valid and reasonable objections, degree requirements are degree requirements. As it turns out, I learned a lot more than just how to swim.

Here's why: this class takes people from all different majors, backgrounds, and dorms, and puts them all into this bizarre and, for many, frightening experience that no one's really fully prepared for. It's a completely foreign environment filled with strangers and everyone's self-conscious and everyone's worried that they're going to look stupid--probably because most of us have stories like mine above where they had some shaming experience or recognition of their inadequacy in a very public and affecting way. Sound familiar yet?

This is what the Church is. None of us really have a clue what we're doing and we're all hoping with all our hearts that nobody else notices.

And while I was out there in that pool, treading for the first time in my life in the deep end for the entirety of class, I learned something. You don't go to the pool in order to walk around in the water. You go to a pool to swim.

Swimming is weird, because if you're just watching it looks like you're floating on nothing. On top of that, it is by far the most efficient way in which a person can get through water.

We often use watery imagery in the Church to describe grace ("Hallelujah grace like rain falls down on me") and I think that the metaphor fits here at least as well as it would anywhere else. See, I grew up on this idea that God's grace is like a safety net for when we don't quite measure up. "Oh, you messed up a little, good thing this grace was here to catch your fall."

But now I don't think so anymore. I think that God's grace is the water in the pool. And it was never the point that we walk by our own strength when we're in it, but rather to glide through it in a wholly supernatural way.

I hope this makes sense.

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

[mostly] New Music (virb.com Update)

I uploaded a couple of tracks I've been working on to my virb page, which you can find here.

If you've never been there before, it should all be pretty new to you, but, for those who have the stomach for more, here's what I added:

1) The City-States Tracks, which are "Vaticanae" and "Singapore," which are a little bit mellower wannabe Sufjan playfully serious songs.

2) The Fat Tim and the Secular Humanists tracks, which are a band performing my stuff, doing yet another version of "Listerine" and a cover of the Radiohead song "Creep."

3) A music video for the Fat Tim and the Secular Humanists "Creep" cover, which I'm embedding right about here:




Hope y'all enjoy!

Coming Home: A Half-Hearted Epilogue

Coming Home was a really long story. I think there were three basic lessons in it, for me at least; one for each part. Maybe two. I'm not really sure. I decided to include my outline for each of the parts so that you can more easily remember what was going on in the story without having to reread the whole thing.

Part One

* the rain
* the morning
* the drive part a
* the bridge
* the car
* the police escort
* the woman

The lesson here, for me, is that though my heart is growing, I haven't yet gotten to the point where I'm really applying that correctly. The internal struggle seems like a good sign that I'm moving toward the ultimate goal of perfect love, but the outcome of the struggle really illustrates how far I still have to go.

Part Two

* the tow driver's story
* the dealership
* the book part a

The tow driver's story is what most impacted me from this section. While it, at the time, just really seemed to be a story about listening to God, reflecting on the situation now makes me think it's more just another example of my self-focusedness. I mean, the guy told me his whole life's story, even the most tragic parts of it, and I never even learned his name.

Part Three

* the dinner (vaguely)
* the night
* the breakfast
* the drive part b
* the casino
* the dinner
* the storm
* the star
* the book part b

There are lots of lessons in the storm and the star about hope and perseverance and God's grace through struggles, but I thought those were pretty clear in the main text, and I'd rather talk about the book anyway.

What made Blue Like Jazz such a phenomenal book for me, I think, is that the author's faith is obviously not motivated by fear. So much of what we do as Christians is completely motivated by abject terror; while I was sitting in the Saturn dealership in Tulsa, Pat Robertson spoke on TBN about how the secret to having a healthy marriage, from the perspective of the husband, is to follow three rules: never be in a room alone with a woman not your wife, never be in a room alone with a woman not your wife, never be in a room alone with a woman not your wife.

While there may be some real practical value to that kind of advice, it seems like it's just another form of bondage. What this leads to is a ridiculous level of insulation which deprives us of much of what God has for us. I think.

Donald Miller, on the other hand, seems more willing to be free and active within the context of his faith.

That's where I want to be, but it seems like I can't be free...I'm just too afraid.


I'm working towards it, though.

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

all of everything must be wrong ~or~ 1

Surrounded by failure
the future
and everything seems

different now. I thought
I knew it
but now I'm not sure.

I'm just scared
I suppose
But if I'm scared then

all of everything
must be wrong.
How am I ever going to

to find a job in
ministry?
I can't save you

I can't even save myself

Herein lies the problem:
If I could
I probably wouldn't anyway.


Peace, love, and joy to you all.

A Metaphor

I sat down to write an epilogue to close off the Coming Home series. This came out instead. And I don't know where exactly it came from, but I like it very much, and I hope you find something of value in it.

***

Last night as I drifted off to sleep I contemplated running away. Running away from home, from school, from church, from ministry, from friends even. Hoping that I would find God, I guess.

This morning I woke up with a mouth full of blood. Life's like that, sometimes.

When I first woke up this morning, I didn't even realize it. As I was washing my hands, I happened to look in the mirror and spot a little bit of dry, crusty blood attached to my beard where my lips meet on the left side of my face. I opened my lips to survey the damage.

My teeth were this faint, dull brown, and dried blood filled the gaps between my teeth. How blood dried inside my mouth, a place known for its moistness, I don't really know. And I don't really care to either. All that matters is that it was there.

I checked the sutures I can see. From my count in the chair there are somewhere around two dozen in my mouth right now, one-third or so holding together the two ends of a gap on the left side of the roof of my mouth and the rest holding a piece of flesh from up there to the spot where you used to be able to see a screw right at the front of my bottom jaw, just beneath those mostly real teeth. One of the sutures actually connects the gum tissue on the front of my lower jaw to the tissue on the back by stretching over the teeth. It's really very annoying. But the sutures were all solid and no new blood seemed to be entering my mouth.

It tasted awful. I have this bizarre obsession with taste...that's where the whole Listerine thing comes from. The taste thing--if I'm honest and a little bloody in front of y'all right now--I think comes from some article on kissing I found on some dating advice for teens website back when I was in my second or third year of high school. There's a lot of jokes in that sentence just waiting to be formed. Ultimately, I can't decide which is more pathetic: a 16-year-old turning to the Internet for a how-to guide on making out or a 22-year-old remembering it and, in fact, building a whole set of compulsive behaviors on it. Either way, the article had some line written in the language called trendy that said something like "If you can taste anything other than minty-freshness, don't even think about trying to kiss her."

So I became a compulsive gum chewer. It's not that I constantly had girls wanting to kiss me until they experienced my halitosis; I guess I was just motivated by the fear that "The One" would come along and I'd screw it up unless my mouth was screaming FreshMint. Or CinnaBurst. Or WinterFresh. Or MintWinter.

That was a long diversion, the point is that I can't stand bad tastes in my mouth (this has, I think it's safe to say, progressed far beyond this boyhood fantasy of random attractive women wanting to make out with me and developed into an independently paralyzing compulsion; in other words, just because you smell Lister, don't assume I'm looking to lock lips). Morning breath is made significantly worse by the presence of blood. So I walked into my kitchen, grabbed a glass from the cupboard, filled it with water, and began to rinse out my mouth.

I hadn't thought anything of it until I started typing up this entry and thought that it would make a killer hook to write: "I woke up with a mouth full of blood." Connecting it to my thoughts of leaving everything last night just made the hook better. Maybe they'll think I'm a drug addict, or I got the crap beat out of me, or that I did run away. Then they'll read.

And then it all seemed so clear.

I have wounds. We all have wounds which we bring with us on our spiritual journeys. Mine don't really come from before I was "saved," since life before I was four was pretty peachy, but I think we can pick up wounds after that, too. Maybe we're even more likely to--I don't know. A lot of Christians give off the impression that that's not the case, that salvation is just some big healing moment and no longer are we capable of anything negative; I guess I just think they're wrong.

I think of salvation more as sutures...the metaphor could even expand. Salvation is this soft tissue graft. Something from above gets sewn into us--when they do it, they have to harm the tissue their attaching the graft to. Last time they scraped and cut and burn...this time they just cauterized it with a laser. This way the tissue will start its natural healing process, grab onto the graft, and grow together.

Unfortunately for us (maybe, I'm still not sure), this takes time. And what we get in the meantime is these sutures. They hold everything in place, but it's not perfect yet. The tissues are still independent, growing slowly into one flesh. Jesus set up the relationship between us, the Father, and himself as "I in them, you [the Father] in me, that they may become perfectly one." I think we're just in the suture phase.

And sometimes, because these tissues haven't all connected yet, there's blood. There's pain. And, more than occasionally, I look at myself and I see the blood in my mouth. The failure. The disconnect between the me in me and the One towards whom I claim to be ever trying to progress. That's where the blood comes from, the pain; it's not from the new tissue, it's from that spot where the old tissue and the new tissue haven't yet come together to form one tissue.

Last night, I saw the disconnect in my life as clearly as I saw the blood in my mouth this morning. I wanted to give up. I wanted to leave. I wanted to hold it in, close my mouth and run somewhere where I would never have to smile, so that no one could ever see that inside of me was blood and a chaotic jumbling together of string and flesh.

This morning, the first step was so obvious: grab water, rinse out the blood.

Tonight the first step is so obvious.

The title of this blog is transparency|inaction. In that spirit, then, I just want to say that while my mouth is disgusting, and sometimes the sutures can't quite hold, and some days I'm going to wake up with blood in my teeth--while all that is true, I'm proud of my sutures, because they speak to a hope for tomorrow rather than yesterday's failure. I smile wide, bloody teeth and all, because they speak to a grace that I can't at all comprehend. And as for my disgusting mouth: a day is coming when this will be a finished work, and God himself will cleanse me from all the guilt of my sin.

Please bear with me (as I promise to with you) until then.

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

Coming Home (Part 3/3)

This post is part three of my story. Parts one and two can be found here and here, respectively.

There are roughly 684 miles between my spot in upper lot and my parking spot on the road alongside the house across the street from my home. It's a journey I've made at least a dozen times in the past few years; I thought that I knew every last stretch of road I would come across. But as it turned out, God had plans for using that very same road to stretch me.

This story is all true.

***

I sat down on my bed and I read the book. And I stopped for dinner out with friends, an unexpected second chance to actually say goodbye (which I had apparently neglected) and hang out one last time before the social winter of summer.

As vaguely as I can, I want to explain a perhaps peculiar belief of mine. Growing up, I never really understood why we pray over every meal. It was cultural in my family; that is, it was what we did. I couldn't imagine a meal without it anymore than a meal without plates. Each of us kids would take turns praying over the meal, an honor which had a lot to do with my salvation from a dead-end life of debauchery at the age of four.

I've always been a thinker, though, and this was one of the first beliefs passed down from my parents that I began to question and examine within any sort of what I would now call a theological construct. When I was in junior high, I linked this practice to the description in Daniel of Daniel's thrice daily prayer routine. "This has been misapplied," I thought, and felt smarter than everyone around me, peons still chained to this belief in prayer before meals.

As it turns out, that's actually in the Bible a little bit later as well. I think. I can't really find it right now. I did find that we should definitely pray over our meals if we suspect they may have been offered as pagan sacrifices. Anyway, with the biblical knowledge of the four of you who read my blog, I'm sure I'll soon find out where every proof-text for the necessity of praying over a burrito is in the Bible.

And it's a good thing, I guess. It fosters an attitude of thanksgiving and fellowship with God and all. And that's all really good. I don't know, it's just, it feels like posturing to me. And that's really difficult for me. I approach these things from the mentality that I would rather be known by people as the worst heathen and known by God than seen as a spiritual giant among men and yet not actually possess any sort of meaningful relationship with God.

This was supposed to be a short tangent. What I'm getting at, I guess, is that I'd rather show a waitress that such a thing as Love or Charity is with a great tip than be remembered as the guy who prayed ostentatiously over the meal and also made a huge deal out of being gratted--as if the server's decision. It's difficult for me to write about this without using terminology that is unnecessary--or at least improper for a future youth pastor--so I'll end by saying that God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of this crap. Everyone in food service knows that Christians are cheap and rude; could we possibly more reflect the antithesis of Christ, who gave his all in loving service for us?

But dinner was good.

I returned to my room and spent the rest of the night more or less alone, reading. I woke up the next morning, and read more. When I got the call that my car had been finished, I was honestly a little bit disappointed. During the quiet times of my ride over to the dealership, I tried to imagine a way to drive and read at the same time. I was that hooked on this book.

I started my drive and successfully navigated the craters sprinkled along the first twenty or so miles of 412. I stopped for lunch at about one o'clock; I bought a box of Ritz crackers and a liter of Mountain Dew from a Conoco that was built into a Subway that shared its space with an Indian casino. It was one of the more disjunctive experiences of my life, and disjunction is my chief delight, so that's really saying something. A woman won $72 from a nickel slot machine while I was waiting in line. Actually, I was just standing behind someone who was standing at the register, talking to the clerk. Which, while it sounds like standing in line, was actually just wasting time, since the old man I was standing behind was the casino/restaurant/gas station's security guard.

And Kansas was.

I'm very proud of that last paragraph. It almost substitutes for those five or so hours of driving in a remarkably straight line through Kansas without actually missing anything of my experience. Amazing.

One of the real highlights of my drive westward comes when I hit the town of Genoa, Colorado. According to wikipedia, my source for basically everything, a little less than 200 people live in Genoa. Holding my I-70 in Colorado speed of 80mph, it takes me less than half a minute to enter and exit the town. Main Street is only three-tenths of a mile long.

But the town is 5500 feet above sea-level and most everything between it and the Rockies is lower than that, so on a clear day you can actually see the Front Range from Cheyenne Mountain to Pikes Peak, even though you're still about 100 miles out. It's pretty exciting and a good way to get me excited about the drive about 8.5 hours in. I looked for a picture, but I couldn't find one. So you'll just have to take my word for it.

Anyway, that's what happens on a clear day. On this day, though, storm clouds billowed over Limon (a major junction town in the plains of eastern Colorado) and so, instead of mountains, I could only see a thick sheet of rain between myself and my home. But what's a little water, right?

Wrong. As it turns out, by the time I hit Limon right around dusk, a tornado warning had been issued and marble sized hail was pelting my car. I couldn't really see anything so I pulled off I-70 and hung out under an overpass for a while. I listened to the seventh and eighth innings of the Rockies-Reds game texting my family to try to find out what the forecast was for where I was. The conversation went something like this:

Me: weather limon?
Them: oh well it looks pretty dark out there. might rain.
Me: def raining and hail. any forecast?
Them: im at mall

At this point I broke off communications and waited for the storm to let up, which it did shortly thereafter. I started down the home stretch of my long journey, a two-lane highway numbered 24. About a mile into the road, I received two text messages from my mom and a call from my dad, all telling me to wait in Limon. Apparently, the storm I had just been in was only the first round in a powerful two-punch combo, the second of which was already raising all sorts of hell south west of me, traveling toward me up the highway I needed to use to get home. So I went into my second Subway/gas station of the day, reclined in a booth facing the window, and read some more of my new book.

The hail started small, but it was golf-ball sized within a dozen seconds or so. An old deaf man came up to me and we had a whole conversation about the hail and driving in it and tornadoes. I only kinda know what we said. I think he probably felt the same way. All those years of charades-esque theatre exercises really come in handy every now and then. My phone rang--or buzzed, since my phone is almost never audibly on--and I tried to excuse myself from the company of my new friend in a way that wouldn't seem rude. He quickly understood and wandered off to discuss the weather with someone else. I kinda felt like I was showing off, holding my phone up to my ear and gloating before a deaf man "Look what I can do!" But I wasn't and I don't think he felt that way. I just worry, I guess.

My dad was on the other end of the line. They had transformed my house into a veritable storm tracking bunker, and he instructed me to start my drive home right then. The first storm had left Limon, the second storm would be north of 24 by the time I intercepted it, and a third storm (which had just recently appeared) would remain south of 24 until I made it to the Springs. With all the excitement I could hear in his voice, I felt bad telling him that the wrath of God was still being poured out on Limon outside. But I did promise him that I would leave as soon as it let up, and I reminded him that I don't get cell phone service between Limon and the Springs, so if anything changed he would need to let me know right away.

Within a minute or two, the hail moved out. The tornado warning was still active, so nobody else left the truck stop with me when I dashed out to my car and sped out onto 24. In fact, as I got going on the highway, it became clear that I was the only one trying the run right then. As Limon faded in my rear view mirror, I began to feel alone and afraid. I cataloged the towns I would pass through to get to the Springs, trying to engage my mind on something other than the storm. Matheson, Peyton, Calhan, Falcon, Simla. I couldn't shake from my head the fact that, prior to all my trips to and from Tulsa, the only times I ever heard of these towns were when the meteorologist on TV would be frantically pleading for the people of these towns to seek shelter from tornadoes.

Because of the way that the storms were configured that night, there was constant lightning all around me. I should have mentioned this in the prologue in part 1 of this saga, but I'm also kinda afraid of lightning. I know, I know...not really a grown up fear. And I know that many of you see the wonder and power of God in it, and blah blah blah; but, for me, any time something is both wildly unpredictable and nearly certainly fatal, I get a little wobbly-kneed. Oh, and thunder's loud and loud noises scare me too.

I've never felt so completely alone as I did that night. Probably. I mean, I've never felt so actually alone as I did that night; the plains were pitch-black, no one else was in sight, and my cell-phone couldn't even provide me with the potential of human contact. But I've felt more lonely, I guess--hopefully that's a distinction that makes sense outside of my head. Either way I couldn't help but think of the stories where the disciples are out on the boat in the storm and then Jesus shows up in some way and calms everything down.

And we're so hard on the disciples. "What an idiot! Peter steps out on the water and then gets scared...I mean, Jesus is right there!" "They hang out with him all this time and they still don't realize what kind of power he had..." But you know what...forget that. It's scary being out there in a storm, all alone and dark and exposed. And they were way more exposed than I was.

It was intense, and there were portions where I was driving through two and three inches of hailstones lying on the road, pooling the water into the two narrow channels which the tires of the few intrepid somewhere before me had cut through the ice. I stayed hunched over my wheel until--a few miles before Falcon, I guess--I noticed that the lightning in front of me had kinda subsided. I started to examine the sky to check my assumption. And then I saw it.

That star was probably the most beautiful I've ever seen. It meant the sky ahead was clear. It meant that the rain and the hail was over. It meant that I was actually going to finally get home.

That star is a lot of things.

I was home with my family within twenty minutes. And I was happy and at home again.

After everybody else went to bed, I sat alone on the couch in my parents' living room and I finished the book.

***

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

An epilogue? Hasn't this been long enough already?


keep watch

Coming Home (Part 2/3)

This post is part two of my story. Part one can be found here.

There are roughly 684 miles between my spot in upper lot and my parking spot on the road alongside the house across the street from my home. It's a journey I've made at least a dozen times in the past few years; I thought that I knew every last stretch of road I would come across. But as it turned out, God had plans for using that very same road to stretch me.

This story is all true.

***

Tulsa is a bizarre place. I suppose it's because of how incredibly Christian the whole city is, but you can't seem to do much of anything without dealing with folk who are in the ministry.

Even so, I'm still always a little wary of telling people I go to ORU. ORU is a really polarizing place, for anybody who's heard of it--which, in Tulsa is everybody; they seem to either love it or hate it, both with very valid reasons. Nobody is knowledgeably indifferent. So when I got the smiling "Oh yeah?" that's always the response from the tow truck driver as we were pullling out of the QT parking lot, I thought that I might just be beginning a very long and uncomfortable ride.

Then the driver (I hate me referring to him as "the driver" and "the tow truck driver," too; the truth is I just never caught his name, or if I did I didn't care enough to remember it. Either way is a strike against me, not him) said, "I used to--back when I was in high school here--I used to go up to 41st and Harvard, up at ...'s--" He paused.

"Oh yeah?" I responded, faking like I belong in Tulsa and can actually communicate with anyone who really knows the city. Apparently, he was in the middle of a sentence, as he just kept going.

"...and it seemed like every time I went up there Brother Roberts was in the chair next to me getting his hair cut." A longer pause.

"That's funny," I said, sounding every bit as clever as I'm capable, I'm sure.

It was at this awkward pause in the conversation that I first noticed that we were listening to the country-western-Christian radio station...a combination I've stumbled across only in the bizarre milieu of Tulsa's brackish waters of cowboy and charismatic.

And so then he asked me what I was studying. And I told him that I'm a youth ministry major.

An aside is necessary here: I have no shame about my major (I can hear Prof Spears doing his "I am not ashamed of the gospel!" pastor impersonation here, which, if you ever have the opportunity, is completely worth hearing), but I really do prefer to live in peace with people and not hear them tell me about how I'm wasting my life or hear them tell me how teenagers are just all going to hell or hear them patronize me with a "Well, I suppose somebody has to reach out to them, too." It's gotten to the point where I've seriously contemplated manufacturing semi-pseudo-majors to tell people, especially people who -gasp!- I know that aren't Christians. Like maybe I'll tell them that I'm an Ancient Near Eastern Lit major. Or something.

Anyway, it was here that he told me that he was in the ministry as well, something which I still don't really understand his meaning. But, regardless, I asked him how he'd gotten here. Or there. I guess it all depends on how gripped by my story you feel at this point.

He had grown up in Tulsa. He was born in Birmingham, but only because his dad had traveled down there on the thin hope of finding work. All of his extended family, on both sides, lived in Tulsa at the time and, before his memory began to record everything, his immediate family returned. He had gone to school at OU for a time before enlisting. He served some eight years in the military before he became a golf pro. Seriously. Somewhere in Tulsa, there is currently a tow truck being driven around by some guy who probably still could beat the crap out of you and anyone you actually know at golf. And probably miniature golf, too.

Anyway, he worked as a golf pro (which is not the same as a professional golfer) in Tulsa for twenty-five years or so before he felt like God had called him to give it all up to enter the ministry. He served basically as an intern or a disciple to some local Pentecostalish evangelistish guy, signing up for a year-long commitment. About halfway through the year, one of the guys who was supporting the ministry he was working for offered him a job working for him.

Another aside. I know lots of y'all probably watched Friends or Seinfeld or ER or something else hip and relevant in the 90s and early 00s, but while I was in junior high and high school I watched a lot of Matlock. It's a great show. You can actually game plan the show based on what time it is. "Oh, we're at 30 minutes in, there's about to be a red herring and a black dude (whether it's Tyler or Conrad) is about to get beat up." Recently, while it was still on the air, I was heavily addicted to The First 48, which is a documentary show about homicide investigations.

All this to say that I love trying to solve mysteries. So when the driver got to this point in his story, I assumed that the job was somehow going to be related to driving a tow truck. Maybe some of you made that same assumption. Maybe some of you have already skipped a couple of paragraphs down to see how this all ends.

I was wrong, as it turns out. This man--not the driver, but the one offering the position--had invented the world's fastest workstation computer. "Wow," I said, pretty genuinely impressed.

"Yeah," he replied, smiling. "I was the only one who ever sold one. The guy fled the country before any of us could figure out that it was all just a scam. We had all invested, too; my wife and I had put in $200,000, our whole life's savings."

"Oh man," I tried to sound sympathetic. Don't get me wrong; I totally felt bad for the guy, it's just that that amount of money doesn't sound real to me. I can't remember the last time that I had $200 in my bank account.

"Yeah," he continued. "Once the money was gone, that just led to more problems, which led to the divorce." The ease with which he said this part was the really really troubling part. I didn't know how to respond. Divorce is awful for everyone involved, is about all I can figure. I tried to exhale.

"Look at that!" he half-shouted. His excitement was palpable. "That guy's lost his whole wheel!"

There was, in fact, a car stranded on the side of the highway with only three wheels and a distraught looking man standing outside of it. I guess when you're around this kind of stuff all the time, it just becomes a game to see the craziest stuff.

We never got back to talking about his life. I have no idea how this amazing golfer who had savings in the six figures ended up driving around in a diesel powered behemoth, running chain under cars and taking those who could pay from places of brokenness to somewhere where there was restoration, in some sense or another. Within minutes we were at the Saturn dealership.

The waiting room was long and narrow with a TV at one end, a row of windows along the long wall connecting the service area to this holding cell, a row of chairs opposite and facing the windows, and a dining-type table with chairs that rocked slightly in the other end of the room. The lights only worked on the TV half of the room and a woman was sitting, reading some romance novel at the table. Another college-aged looking guy was standing up close to the TV, his backpack in the chair closest to it. He was talking on his cell-phone to someone from church. Well, I don't know that he was talking to somebody from church, but he did call him brother a lot and use a bit of other Christianese, and I watched so much freaking Matlock that I'm pretty sure I'm right. Oh, and the TV was on TBN; this is Tulsa, after all.

And so I sat down, pretty near the center of the room and pulled out the other half of my sandwich and ate and watched them push in my so so sad car. This lasted precisely two minutes and 47 seconds, at which point I needed a new stimulus. I watched the TV for as long as I could before I thought my eyes would start bleeding. (That lasted not so long.) So I pulled out a book and began to read.

An interlude goes here. I want to put in a separate title, that would say something like "The Story of the Book," but I'm afraid that that will be too confusing. So just imagine that there's a big bold title here. Unless that confuses you. In which case, imagine a happy place, take four deep breaths, and continue reading.

It was wrapped in newspaper with some sort of marker writing scribbled onto it. I think it said "From: K.... To: Tim" but I'm not sure, I didn't actually read it. (PS, not really a fan of including names of other people on my blog. it kinda feels like i'm outing them or something. just kinda realized that just now.) I wonder what that says about me. I mean, I can't even emotionally invest enough in an interpersonal relationship that I read what the other person hands to me?

Anyway, it felt like a book...and I was confused. What book could it be? The irony in this moment is that this was one of those we've-had-conversations-about-you-getting-me-this-gift-and-I-still-am-surprised moments I seem to have frequently. It's a good thing that I enjoy surprises because otherwise my absentmindedness would get really annoying really quickly. I tore the paper off. I smiled. She smiled back. This was supposed to be my last night in Tulsa til August, and she tried one last time to persuade me to come partake of 31 cent scoop night at Baskin Robbins with a large group of our closest friends. She was successful in this pursuit, though that's completely irrelevant to the story.

The book was Blue Like Jazz, and it was about three o'clock on Thursday afternoon when I started it. I kinda didn't want to like it...I don't like liking cool things. But it was just so freaking cool.

I couldn't put it down. Every minute it took the mechanics to figure out what was wrong with my car was just giving me more of a chance to read. When they finally came out, they had bad news. I needed two wheels, and they only had one. Another would be coming in the next morning. My RA came and picked me up, and I returned, a little defeated, to my now empty dorm room.

***

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

Part 3/3 should be up by Monday. Oh, and it's probably going to be even longer. Sorry.