humanmerelybeing

Don’t Skip Thanksgiving

2011-11-20T23:43:00.001-08:00

Does it feel at all like we are just going to skip Thanksgiving this year? Literally one day after Halloween the stores were already piped in with Christmas Muzak, Black Friday sales are starting on Thanksgiving evening when everyone should be making a turkey sandwich and falling asleep on the couch, and everywhere you look it’s Christmas decorations and gift peddling. We even have frost on the ground this week to get us in the mood. I have not turned on the Christmas music yet or partaken of an egg nog latte, but I just might have purchased this year’s Starbucks mug ornament so I could be sure to have one before it flew off the shelves. That being said, before I get too sucked into the holiday madness, I am trying to let this humble American holiday give me a good excuse to remember that in the midst of many things that are not complete and wonderful and perfect, I do have much to be grateful for.

Usually I think about and write about all the benefits of being grateful, but tonight I’m more aware of all the negative things that happen when I am not being grateful, which sad but true is more of how I have been feeling lately.

When I am not grateful, I act like I am in charge. If there’s one thing that I do and want to believe, it’s that there is this great big God who creates, guides, and provides. I believe that he is real, and that he is intimately interested in my tiny life. But too often I forget those things and I let my tiny little life begin to feel Really Important. I get cocky and self-reliant and forget that God is leading and guiding, and I am to be paying attention to where he might be taking this tiny life and making it something that is Really Important in a holy way.

When I am not actively grateful, I forget the idea of Provision. I start to convince myself that it’s just common sense: I have this job and they give me this check and then I can have a house and a car and food and a bunch of other stuff. Who got me the job? Who gave me the creativity and skills to do it day by day? I forget that too quickly. Many are the days that I forget even to thank God for the food that I have, for the ability to put gas in my car, for a warm place to sleep on a very cold night like tonight. God has provided for my basic needs.

When my heart is not grateful, I get bitter about all the things I don’t have and all the things I am not. Bitterness has become all too familiar in this particular soul lately. I am seeing too many things in a negative light, becoming cynical about too many situations. I look at my life and see all the goals set that I did not meet and all the missed opportunities. I forget how fortunate and how much hope there still is because I am too busy seeing all the things that others have that I want. None of us thinks when we are an idealistic youngster that the verses about jealousy and bitterness could ever be about us, right? I remember those words from Mark 8:36 about this fictitious man who gains a fortune but loses his very soul…and I shudder to think that too many times, that’s me. I have filled my time and my finances and my brain with so many things that have basically nothing to do with the core of my being, my soul.

When I am not living in thankfulness, I expect things from people instead of looking for how they have blessed me and I can bless them. I selfishly want people around me to be there at the times I want and in the ways that I want. I put expectations on people that are unspoken and keep too close of tabs on if they met my unstated expectation or not. More importantly, when I am not grateful for my family, friends, and co-workers, I am looking first for what they can do for me then perhaps how I can serve them.

When I am not grateful I forget that I am connected to and dependent on others. I try to do it on my own and then feel lonely, when really help might just be one brave-ish conversation away. Somewhere deep in my DNA is this idea that I need to have all of my crap together in order to be of good to people, but my life is rich with these beautiful moments of help, and acceptance, and pure grace when a wife, a friend, or a family member has accepted me just where I was and then helped me move forward. When I am living in gratitude, I can remember these times and find hope. When I am living in self-reliance I forget and get fearful.

Perhaps most importantly, when I am not grateful to God, I am not in my proper stance toward him of thanksgiving and praise. There’s that haunting verse that I first encountered as a lyric in a worship song “a grateful heart prepares the way for you, my God.” Tonight I feel like the converse is true… that a heart that is not grateful puts roadblocks on the path between me and God. It’s not that he’s not providing, it’s that I am not seeing and recognizing and then walking toward him and entering his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise like the Psalms talk about.

It’s hard to be super depressed when you are thinking about all that you have to be grateful for, and I’ve been feeling pretty funk-y today, so tonight I need to remember all that I have to be grateful for:
- All of my basic needs are met. I have food, shelter, clothing, and health, which is something that SO MANY people on earth cannot say.
- I have a loving and patient wife who no matter what else happens is always the highlight of my day.
- I have two families full of people who are healthy and who believe in this same Provision.
- I get to spend my days doing very meaningful work with kids alongside awesome adults.
- I have great friends who listen to me, laugh with me, and truly care about how I am doing.
- No matter how much of a funk I can get in from time to time, I am grateful for this pesky little bit of Hope running around in the corners of my fears and worries and cynicism.

Father God, thank you for reminders today about our place in the world, and our relationship to You who provides, You who gives hope, You who sustains. Keep this hope running in our minds, and help us to look for it, even as we look for all the ways in which you have provided for us. Amen.

***

If you are looking for some good reading related to this topic, check out John Kralik’s little book 365 Thank Yous: The Year a Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life. It’s a powerful reminder of the simple power of the old school thank you note, but more importantly of the good things that can happen when we remember our dependence on others to make our life richer and more bearable.

A Prayer for Tenderness

2011-05-07T08:31:00.001-07:00

Leave it to a 17-year-old girl to help you see things just as they are. My niece has been posting status updates this week to let her friends and family know about the health of her younger brother. He’s been at Children’s Hospital for a week now after doctors discovered and swiftly removed a large-ish tumor in his brain. She’s been with us in the waiting room, quietly reading and talking, a bit more plaintive than usual. But she’s been watching, and noticing things. She posted this as her status update early last week:

strange how whenever things take a turn for the worst, the family grows closer together and we all become more hopeful in God

So the 17-year-old schools me this week in faith and in human behavior. Sure I had been grateful for all the support the family and our nephew has received, and I have been grateful for the ways we have been able to help one another. But this simple sentence tapped into the phone of a seemingly quiet girl helped remind me of our propensity to save hope and tenderness and awareness of our frailty until things get bad.

It’s one more way I am too reactive. When things are good, it’s far too easy for pride and self-reliance and laziness to creep into this particular soul. When things are going according to plan, I live a pretty small little life with pretty minimal faith. But then you get that late night call, or your pride swells to the point of sin, or some circumstance smacks you in the face you suddenly realize how small and powerless you really are. This week I have felt so dependent – dependent on the doctors to do their best with this precious eight-year-old, dependent on the understanding of others as priorities shift and schedules change. I have felt so dependent on God the good Father. I have had to actually trust him this week, with tears and fear, to take care of one little boy. As a family we have had to trust God over doctors, God over nurses, God over MRIs and CT scans and biopsies. This morning ringing through my ears are the words of the Heidelberg Catechism:
This is my only comfort in life and in death: that I belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.
He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.
He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven: in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.
Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

What a beautiful promise, not just from some unfamiliar liturgy, but straight from scripture. Not a hair will fall from my nephew’s head without capturing the attention of his Father in Heaven.
Today I am thanking God for the tenderness that comes when tragedy arrives, but I am praying for tenderness to not be a far-off memory or a distant relative, but a regular companion.

When things are good and healthy and hopeful, God,
help me to remember that you are good.
When things are bad and scary and bleak, Father,
help me to remember that you are good.
When I am tempted to do things on my own,
whisper to me about my need for community.
When pride is swelling, shout to me about how my power,
my creativity, and anything good within me come from You.
When I am more frustrated than grateful,
more disappointed than hopeful,
more fearful than trusting,
bring me to a place of tenderness again –
a confident tenderness that says with You we can let our guards down,
with you we can surrender to the things we can’t control,
change, stop, start, or will away
with you, the God who lifts up the humble,
tenderness is safe and right.
Pop our pride, fan into the flame the tiny hope we have,
and help where we can’t help.
Do what we can’t do.
Show your real power.
And we will try to stay tender enough to see it and not explain it away.
Amen? Amen.

A Man After...

2011-04-10T08:27:00.000-07:00

Somewhere along the way I heard, I think from my older brother, that the best people are those that can kick you in the butt one moment and give you a hug in the next. We all need some comfort, and we all need some challenge. The problem comes when we take the comfort and leave the challenge, when we take the consolation but leave the conviction. I have always felt so comforted by the biblical David. I've written and thought lots about how wonderful and impossible it is that here was a clearly flawed man who is still described as "a man after God's own heart." But I've had a mini-revelation recently about my thinking about David: the problem is that I have taken the safety net of knowing that if God could accept David after murder, adultery, trying to cover things up... then he can accept me. I've taken that part - the hug, if you will - without taking the conviction.

The truth is David was a man after God's own heart (Acts 13:22). He was active in his pursuit of God. We read the Psalms and know that he was striving toward God - he called out to him in pain… he called out for help… heck, he even praised him in song just because he believed that God was worthy of praise, even when he didn't "need" anything. I have for too long wanted the "man after God's own heart" comfort without the actual striving toward him. David put his life on the line and he called upon power from God. Eugene Peterson used 2 Samuel 22:30 as the basis for his reflections on the life of David : David claims that through God’s power he could “advance through a troop” and “leap over a wall.”

I am looking, this rainy Sunday morning, a cup of lukewarm Via in hand, for ways to embrace a pursuit after God, not just the comfort of his acceptance or the consolation of his forgiveness. I want to find ways to claim God’s power in my life, to praise God for WHO HE IS and not just when I need something. I want to find ways to strive after God in an active way not just passively getting comfort from him in a vague way.

***

Part of that pursuit is being honest with God, with myself and with those around me about who I really am. Although I enjoy trying to get thoughts out onto paper or into the keyboard sometimes the words of others capture so perfectly that we want to say. So just like a good teacher who begs, borrows and steals ideas to best meet the needs of their students, I am shamelessly stealing from my other go-to Peterson, Andrew. He wrote a humble and honest song, and one that reminds me of the songs that David sang a played that now comprise much of the book of Psalms in the Bible. While I know that some of you (insert obvious throat clearing here) skip over quotations, verses and lyrics in my posts, these are for all of you, so read on:

{If you need to hear it instead of just reading it, follow this link for a video of Andrew playing a pared down version of the song.}

It's so easy to cash in these chips on my shoulder
So easy to loose this old tongue like a tiger
It's easy to let all this bitterness smolder
Just to hide it away like a cigarette lighter

It's easy to curse and to hurt and to hinder
It's easy to not have the heart to remember
That I am a priest and a prince in the Kingdom of God

I've got voices that scream in my head like a siren
Fears that I feel in the night when I sleep
Stupid choices I made when I played in the mire
Like a kid in the mud on some dirty blind street

I've got sorrow to spare, I've got loneliness too
I've got blood on these hands that hold on to the truth
That I am a priest and a prince in the Kingdom of God

I swore on the Bible to not tell a lie
But I've lied and lied
And I crossed my heart and I hoped to die
And I've died and died

But if it's true that you gathered my sin in Your hand
And You cast it as far as the east from the west
If it's true that You put on the flesh of a man
And You walked in my shoes through the shadow of death

If it's true that You dwell in the halls of my heart
Then I'm not just a fool with a fancy guitar
No, I am a priest and a prince in the Kingdom of God

***

There’s a theme in the Psalms of David praising God and finding hope – pursuing hope, really – in the midst of horrible circumstances. David is always honest and through that honesty comes hope. Would that I be quick to be honest with myself, with God and with others and to find the hope that comes from knowing our honestly messed up selves can find both the comfort and the conviction of a life striving after God.

Amen, readers. Amen.

Flesh and Blood

2010-11-13T10:09:00.000-08:00

I guess if you spend five years reading a book, you should probably commemorate your completion of it. Five years ago, I was really on a reading kick. I got on Amazon and ordered a dozen books, mostly used ones. It was a smattering of theology books, memoirs and poetry collections. The thing about reading is that you get introduced from one author to another. It’s like a little low-tech friend suggestion. Friends of Anne Lamott also like Annie Dillard. You notice that there are lots of common friends between, say, Wendell Berry and Eugene Peterson. That’s how I landed with this particular book in my hand: Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: a conversation in spiritual theology. You could say that the author and I had some mutual friends. It was the title that first grabbed me. While my 8:00 am Survey of Literature classes were not prime learning time for me as a sophomore English major, I did manage to recognize this snippet of a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins and I remembered really liking it. Plus, it was a like-new used copy of a hardcover book for only around $11, so I clicked and it became mine.

Here’s the thing about Peterson: here is a man who has spent literally a decade of his life poring over the Bible, word by word – in Greek, nonetheless – to create his translation called The Message yet he remains humble and in the best sense of this folksy phrase “down to earth.” The common thread in all of his books that I have read is this: Jesus really did “become flesh and blood and move into the neighborhood” (John 1:14-15). We as real flesh and blood people can and should strive after this real Jesus as we try to live out life in a community. While I am somewhat embarrassed that I have been reading this book for this long, it is a meaty one and it has been good in some way to have its content marinate throughout the past five years of my life, a five year period in which I have met and married, got my Masters, moved into leadership at school, moved a ways away from many family and friends, learned how to do 100 things I couldn’t do before… Peterson has been a good companion through all of it.

So what have I learned about myself and about God through this book, over the years? As I look through my notes scattered throughout the book, scribbled in pencil, red pen, inky blue pen, liquidly black pen, fine point Sharpie that bled through the pages, I’ll share with you some nuggets from Eugene:

“Living, living fully and well, is at the heart of all serious spirituality” (29).
“Spirituality is never a subject which we can attend to as a thing-in-itself. It is always an operation of God in which human lives are pulled into and made participants in the life of God, whether as lovers or rebels” (31).

As I have written about here so many times, Peterson insists that we don’t deal in abstracts when we talk about spiritual things:

“Jesus is the name that keeps us attentive to the God-defined, God-revealed life. The amorphous limpness so often associated with ‘spirituality’ is given skeleton, sinews, definition, shape, and energy by the term ‘Jesus.’ Jesus is the personal of a person who lived at a datable time in an actual land that has all the mountains we can still climb, wildflowers that can be photographed, cities in which we can still buy dates and pomegranates, and water which we can drink and in which we can be baptized. As such the name counters the abstraction that plagues ‘spirituality’ (31).

If anything has happened in America in the past five years, we’ve only gotten more numb to vague spirituality that motivates some to action, comforts others, and takes real Jesus and makes him another powerful leader or thinker. Thinking of this real Jesus who really lived might for some take away the mystery. But maybe understanding this is just the beginning of real mystery – things like how could it be that God could know us in all our faulty fullness and still send Jesus? Things like how can we as such flawed and selfish people really put ourselves aside and love someone else and let them love us? Peterson has helped me learn that living as a follower of Jesus is not an abstract matter, but something wonderfully do-able in our workaday lives:

“Jesus keeps our feet on the ground, attentive to children, in conversation with ordinary people, sharing meals with friends and strangers, listening to the wind, attentive to the wildflowers, touching the sick and wounded, praying simply and unselfconsciously. Jesus insists that we deal with God right here and now, in the place we find ourselves, and with the people we are with. Jesus is God here and now” (34).

Peterson helps remind me that Jesus did not withdraw or disengage or seek out the perfect ones. He worked a 9-5 and made friends who would sorely disappoint him, he had dinner with friends, he didn’t have an internal bar someone had to reach in order for him to engage with them. Jesus was “born, born, born in Bethlehem” and then lived his life in a relatively small area geographically. On the web map I just pulled up, it’s about the width of the tip of my thumb between the place of his birth and the place of his death, the places of our two great celebrations. And in his travels in these real places with real people, Jesus shows us how to really live with all five senses – eating, walking, talking, listening, teaching…all these real things. So we are in part following Jesus when we allow ourselves to live real life.

“If we are going to live as intended, which is, to the glory of God, we cannot do it abstractly or in general. We have to do it under the particular conditions in which God works, namely time and place, here and now” (84).

I have learned from Eugene Peterson and Andrew Peterson (no relation) and Anne Lamott and Rich Mullins that beautiful and evocative words are those that are specific and tangible. Peterson give us more specifics of Jesus’ engagement with the real world, calling Jesus

“Very God in the utterly ordinary – waterpots, mud, fragments of bread, basin and towel, the 153 fish – that we continue to handle and deal with wherever we live. And very man speaking simple words that give content to salvation – vine, door, shepherd, water, light – words that we continue to speak as we go about our daily work” (107).

If there’s one thing I’ve learned – in a nutshell from this book and the others it’s pointed me to – it’s that I already have everything I need to live a life that strives after Jesus and honors God. I have work, I have a home and a table at which to host, I have a voice to use and eyes to see. I have ears to hear. I have real friends and family, flawed enough to keep things interesting. I have all the context all around me. It’s just my job then to notice, and to act, and to speak, and to respond and obey and realize that all of it is itself a gift of grace.

If this earth and these fleshy details of life were good enough for Jesus, then they should be good enough for me. If Jesus experienced a jumbled bag of disappointment and joy and laughter and sadness from his “community” I should not be surprised when I experience the same. If the stuff of real life was enough for Jesus to use to describe the Kingdom of God, then I have all the vocabulary I need to do the same. So I’ll leave this real Starbucks right now and go home to my real house with my real wife and into real life, knowing that I can see and be grateful to a real God for all of it. Amen? Amen.

Joy In-the-Midst

2010-07-01T20:22:00.000-07:00

I have kind of a love-hate relationship with the Bible. I really do love, being a books and words kind of guy, that we have a text on which to base our living and our striving after Jesus. I love that we aren’t relying simply on the spoken word and on memory to help us know how to live or to know the big story of God’s creation and sustaining of the world. But there are all these parts of the Bible that we get all wrong, all mixed up and watered down when we don’t actually go back to the Bible itself for some guidance. And sometimes when you go back to the Actual Bible you find that some things in it are much harder than you'd prefer. I’ve been thinking for a few weeks now about those words from Psalm 51, about a need I have for God to restore to me the JOY of my salvation.

I’ve written before about Psalm 51, and I’m sure I’ll do so again. These are powerful and humble words from David at a pretty desperate time in his life – post-Bathsheba on the roof – and they give us some words to use when we pray in our own times of need. Here’s part of what David prays or sings to God:

Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
-Psalm 51:10-12

The thing that I have been thinking about is how I need a restoring of JOY. I don’t know if it’s stress or pride or laziness or what, but I have found myself lately being an increasingly bitter person. I used to think of myself as a pretty grateful person, but lately I have been more aware of how things are not how I would like them to be, how people are not how I would like them to be, than I have been grateful for how things are right now. It’s not that I don’t have much to be grateful for, it’s just that I’ve been missing it. I need a restoration of JOY to help me see things right.

The love-hate thing I mentioned before definitely comes into play with the word JOY, though. The joy that I come across in the Bible, across the Old and the New Testaments, is not a happy-go-lucky, all-is-well kind of venture. It’s not simply happiness, positivity or contentment. The joy that even a brief walk through the concordance of the humble NIV that was handy here at the beach house is a joy that is married to pain, struggle, to grittily real circumstances. It’s joy that’s tied to the presence of God and the Holy Spirit. It’s also joy that’s tied to the law, so to boundaries.

Not to sermonize here, but this is what I found out about joy that’s not some vague Ryan-y notion of something he needs to have restored, but joy that’s rooted in the reality of the Bible…
• Biblical joy comes in the presence of God (Psalm 21:6).
• Biblical joy can be our new clothing when the “sackcloth” of grief is removed (Psalm 30:11)
• Biblical joy turns brings about dancing (Psalm 30:11)
• Biblical joy causes us to sing and to respond (“to not be silent”) (Psalm 30:11)
• Biblical joy comes from God’s statutes, which the Psalmist calls his “heritage forever” (Psalm 119:111)
• Biblical joy is for those who promote peace (Proverbs 12:20)
• Biblical joy, complete joy, comes when we remain in God’s love and obey his commands (John 15:11)
• The kind of joy that Jesus had, as described in Hebrews was a joy that could see the joy on the other side of the cross (Hebrews 12:2)
• Perhaps most jarringly, James tells us that pure joy comes when we “face trials of many kinds” (James 1:2)
• Joy comes from believing in Jesus even though we have not seen him – Peter calls this kind of joy “inexpressible and glorious” (1 Peter 1:8)

Finally, in these verses in Psalm 51, David attaches joy to his salvation. Eugene Peterson always reminds me through his writings that David was a real person with a past, a present and a future who lived in a named, specific place. The very real David needed to be saved, and he was in the moment of this prayer painfully aware of just how specific his need for salvation was. He trusts that even in the midst of that that he has been saved and asks to know the JOY of that salvation.

Paul has this gem of a verse in 1 Thessalonians 5:16 that sums up how I want things to be, and how they are not right now. He encourages the church in Thessalonica to “be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

Lessons on the Human Heart from the Costco Parking Lot

2010-04-18T08:50:00.000-07:00

You can learn a lot about the human race by hanging out at Costco. Spend an hour in the big box and you will find that humans have a widespread love for tiny toaster-ovened sample appetizers, hot dogs served in fountain drink cups, flat screen TVs, books on the Oprah Book Club list, and 75-packs of AAA batteries. The other day I couldn’t even get in the doors of the local Costco on my way home without realizing a less innocuous thing that humans love to do. I saw a SUV pulling out from a Really Good Spot right in front and I put on my blinkers to turn down that lane. I then noticed that another SUV was backing out from a nearby spot. The two cars were not close to hitting one another, but they had each backed themselves into an angular situation where one of them would need to move a few feet in order for them to travel opposite in the wide lane and be on their way. This is not what happened.

The big gray SUV sat still. The big darker gray SUV sat still. You could basically see the sagebrush roll by at this point. For about 20 seconds, nothing. It gave me time to use the silhouettes in the backseats to determine the family make-ups: in one SUV was Mom, Dad, a car seat and a grade school head, in the other Dad, Mom and two tweenage-sized heads. After those 20 seconds, which in real time is a LONG time, there was some movement. The mom driver rolled down her window and put half her body out the opening with her arms out with an expression of “What gives?” The dad driver opened his door and stepped out and mouthed something a little less kind. At this point I had about five cars piled up behind me so I went over a few aisles and found a Pretty Decent Spot for It Being Five O’Clock at Costco. In the time it took me to park, grab out my Costco card, and present it at the front door, they had made no progress.

I immediately thought of the kids I work with at school all day. The Costco parking lot is the playground. The parking spots are friendships, a turn on the slide, a spot at the front of the class line, the first one to grab the Four Square ball, the one who gets to bring the ball in from recess after the fun is done. I thought about those kids in the back seats of those SUVs and seeing as how this Costco is about a mile from my school, I wondered if they were “my” kids. I kept thinking about how all it would have taken for things to keep moving would be for one of them to start to move back or forward – to move somewhere instead of getting stuck – noses flaired, faces getting redder, words getting angrier. It stuck with me for a couple of days.

But of course this part of humanity is not just something that I can observe in the parking lot from behind the wheel of my truck and feel self-righteous. At least not for long. It was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who wrote, “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary onlyi to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the human heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

I’m not typically a road rager, and I don’t think of myself as a competitive person. But when I really think about it, I have just as many turf wars as the next guy. I like to be right about as often as everyone else. I like to get my way as much as you like to get yours. The line between good and evil does run right through this heart. I talk to kids all day long about choices and how they can choose A, B, or C that help to solve the problem or they can choose D, E, or F that might feel good for a bit but will have consequences both internal and external. I talk about fresh starts and looking for progress and being hopeful that you can make a good choice next time. I talk them through what to do when someone is hogging the swings or when one friend won’t share their friends with you. All the things that we talk about at school are just mini-versions of the things that adults deal with all day long. Sometimes someone has to just take the first step and compromise and MOVE an inch or twoso that both of them can keep moving.

I bring to this Costco story a couple of guiding texts that have resonated with me lately – one from a modern translation of the Bible and one from a Palestinian-American poet. Indulge me in really reading these words. It is National Poetry Month after all.

Shoulders

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

-Naomi Shihab Nye
from Red Suitcase, 1994

This is a haunting, challenging, beautiful image, and so far removed from the Standoff of the SUVs. I am going to let it speak for itself.

The other guiding text is from Eugene Peterson’s translation of the Bible, The Message. How he envisions the Beatitudes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 really brought them to life for me. Read them in their entirety here, but here’s the Costco parking lot part: "You're blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That's when you discover who you really are, and your place in God's family.”
One pastor told me along the way that we can read each of Jesus' statements here as Right Road Blessings. So we can read this as, “You’re on the right road when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight.”

On this bright sunny morning at a quiet coffee shop with free WiFi, far from the reality of daily life and its struggles, I am trying to resolve to help people learn how to cooperate, to learn how to give – even just a bit – so that they can keep moving forward. And I am thinking about that line that runs through my very own heart, grateful for the grace that helps me to choose the good things.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling...

Amen? Amen.

Level Ground

2010-03-05T07:16:00.001-08:00

Sustainability is a word that has started to permeate our culture. If you watch HGTV for more than five minutes you will hear one of their tele-designers talking about being green and using sustainable materials in their building and designs. In my work as a school leader, I am always looking for sustainable solutions vs. quick fixes. I want to know that the things we are spending our time and money on will have long-term benefits for our students and can be continued over time. We are not always good about this in the world of education – sometimes in our quest to meet the challenging needs of our students we move from initiative to initiative, program to program, and edu-fad to edu-fad.

But I am not writing primarily this morning about the world of education – I am writing about the world of Ryan, the complicated internal landscape of yours truly. There’s a verse from the Book of Psalms that I first heard back in college that has stuck with me. In the good ol’ NIV it reads, Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground. (Psalm 143:10)

I’ve always really liked this verse – there’s something to this idea of being led on level ground. I am not always a “level ground” kind of guy. I tend to live my life in fits and starts, reacting more than responding, doing things based more on fear and appearances than a long obedience in the same direction. I can tend to be an all or nothing kind of guy. David, the person who wrote this prayer, was also not always a level-path kind of guy either. His life was clearly oriented toward God from a young age, but he struggled to be obedient, to be content with what he has, to use his leadership for good and not for ill, and to be understood by others. He committed adultery, killed a man, called upon his servants to kill others… and yet the main vocabulary that we have for honestly crying out to God is from David. Al l things considered, he is described as “a man after God’s own heart.” There is great hope in this for me, and I would guess for you as well.

So it’s David, this complicated man, who prays these comforting and challenging words that we read in Psalm 143:10. He asks God to teach him how to do his will. He doesn’t just ask to know God’s will, but asks for some kind of sustainability – teach me how to do your will so I can do it over time. He affirms that the God he is praying to is his God – “for you are my God,” not simply for you are God. He then asks for help from the Spirit. The Bible tells us that when Jesus left the earth he left us the Holy Spirit as a helper and guide, a powerful presence in his earthly absence. I can see the Spirit through the eyes of sustainability, something to help us endure over time as we try to follow Jesus.

Like I said, though, it’s this level-path stuff that initially captured my attention toward this verse. I can respond so much to the peaks and valleys of life that the straight paths seem foreign. Other translations of this verse ask God to lead us “on a firm footing” (New Living), “on a level path” (NIrV), “into clear and level pastureland” (Message). I kind of like this image of the level path as a clear and level pastureland, especially in light of how sustainability is thought of in ecological terms. My friends at Wikipedia told me this morning that sustainability in that context is how systems remain diverse and productive over time. I would like to have a life and a heart and a spiritual landscape that was diverse and productive over time, with a “potential longterm maintenance of well-being.”

In musical terms, the sustain is “the parameter of musical sound over time, the period of time during which sound remains before it becomes inaudible.” Maybe my life should be less about preparing for and responding to the crescendos and diminuendos (thank you, elementary music teachers for this knowledge) and more about the sustained note over time. David was a musician – these prayers that fill the Book of Psalms are prayers put to music – so he would jive with this idea.

Dear readers, take hope as you pray these words from David:

Teach me to do your will,
for you are my God.
May your good spirit
lead me on level ground.

Find some hope in this words, but don’t ignore the challenge to live life today in a way that’s aware of how today fits into the long haul. It’s by God’s grace that we can sustain anything good over time, by his grace that we can learn to walk on level ground.

Amen? Amen.

(Sidenote: If you have never read Eugene Peterson’s Leap Over a Wall , now is the time. It tells the story of David as the story of all of us, and brings the Old Testament alive in a way that I had not felt before.)

Replay: Ash Wednesday Service Make-up

2010-02-19T06:28:00.000-08:00

This piece, originally posted at the beginning of Lent in 2007, still rings true for me. Read on...

I didn’t make it to an Ash Wednesday service this week. This is one of the first times in a few years that I’ve missed having the cross marked in ash on my forehead. I remember walking around my Christian college campus and seeing people with the faint mark on their forehead and wondering what people would think about it all, driving by. Would they think we were some sort of strange, bubbled-in cult? I showed up to student teaching my final year there with the ashes fully intact and people kept trying to get me to wipe my forehead, as if I didn’t know it was there.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust… This is what I was expecting when I grabbed my Book of Common Prayer and found the Ash Wednesday service liturgy. I expected it to be words of preparation, with dark, moody overtones. I found it to be really comforting. I always find it a miracle that here are these words – some from long ago traditions of the church, some straight Scripture – that have been spoken by so many all over the world and yet they are fresh with each reading, and they always seem to be written just for me, just for today.

Pastor David talked about Jesus being tempted by the devil and how his first line of attack was saying, "IF you are the son of God…" He went right for his identity. This was lesson number one tonight; comfort number one: Almighty and Everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made… We start out affirming the best things: You have power. You are before all and will be after all. You made me. You love me. I’m already feeling like way more than ash. I guess the idea is that we are made from ash, we’ll return to ash, but what glorious ash we are through Christ!

The liturgy suggests some readings, and I'll try to share how I unpacked them with you. Do yourself a favor and actually take time to read the portions I provide.
Old Testament, Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Isaiah 58:1-12
Psalm 103
Epistle: 2 Corinthians 5:21b-6:10
Gospel: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

We are ash with hope

Return to the Lord your God for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love… Joel 2:13

We are called by the glorious cycle that is the church calendar to return. To focus in on Jesus. In these weeks since Christmas, Jesus has grown up and has gone public with his ministry. He has baffled the men in the temple, has been baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit, he has fulfilled scripture in his reading of it, and is now on his road to the cross. We come back to Jesus and find that this helpless baby is our Lord. He is our hope because of his character: full of grace, compassion, patience, and love.

We are ash with a job

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter – when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not turn away your own flesh and blood? THEN YOUR LIGHT WILL BREAK FORTH LIKE THE DAWN, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help and he will say, “Here am I.” –Isaiah 58:6-9

We are called to action during Lent, and like my Roman Catholic friends at work reminded me this week, it’s not only the work of giving up something, but the work of doing something. It’s a call to beware the sins of “what we have left undone.”
Each of us has chances to notice and work toward ending the injustices around us. Working in a public school full of families wanting for so much, I can take steps toward helping them work with and against and through the system to live their daily lives in ways that are wise and bring dignity to their circumstances. This week I am going to try to be aware of what I am doing. Much of it can become auto-pilot when it is day in, day out work. What can you take up during this Lent? You have three and a half weeks of doing left.

We are ash transformed
We live our days during Lent in preparation for what Jesus will do, in preparation for the cross. We want to not be too quick to bust out the bells and sing the joyful songs of Easter, but I just can’t help but want to claim the good stuff of the resurrection. It’s right here in these words from Psalm 103:2-5:

Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits – (“Preach, Preacher!”) who forgives all your sins, and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

I am forgiven, healed (!), redeemed from the pit. The compassion of our good Father gets transferred to us. We are crowned with it. What might I see around me this week looking through eyes of compassion? Who might I forgive? What might I start to let go of: What unmet expectations? What unfulfilled promise? What disappointing relationship? This is where it gets haunting: if the Lord “does not treat us as our sins deserve,” then all of these words of scripture about forgiving so that I can be forgiven come to mind and poke me like a shiv.

We are ash at an open door
I love that old painting of Jesus standing at the gate knocking. You know the one: he’s got rock star hair and a white choir robe and it’s some pre-Thomas Kincade garden. He’s there knocking, ready to come in. And when we come to knock at his door, the door is always open. We can always come back, come in, come home. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 5:20-21:

We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

This is one of the best messages of the Gospel: that the door is always open. That when we want to get right, when we finally respond to the call to get right, God will meet us. This is the message of Lent.

So walk these days, friends, remembering that this is a good road. It can be dark and lonely. The hope can be harder to find in the path to the cross, but it is there. Walk knowing that at the end of this path there is HOPE. God met mankind in the most powerful, beautiful way to leave the door open. Walk transformed. Walk with purpose. Walk with your fellow ashen friends. The destination is beautiful and the path will be redeemed step by step.

On Wisdom

2010-02-07T10:57:00.001-08:00

If you’re anything like me, you enjoy getting a compliment from time to time – maybe on your job performance, or a meal you cook, on how you handle a situation or in how you look. It’s nice to know that someone is noticing something about how you are living your life or striving to live your life. I know that I need as much or more affirmation on a daily basis than the average bear, so I tend to be fairly liberal in complimenting others. The compliment that I have rarely given anyone, and that I would love to receive one day in a well-done-good-and-faithful-servant way is to hear that I am “wise.”

Wisdom is such an out there concept, but in my experience you know it when you see it. Wisdom seems to me to be something that’s developed over time, that’s tested by tough times, and that’s quiet. Wisdom takes its time, weighs options, has a wide angle lens, and is in some vague way a generous thing. Wisdom is something that I am striving for in the long view, and that I have by no means attained. I have learned over time, though, that life is about striving toward some things and looking for signs of progress – in other words about not giving up when we don’t initially measure up.

I was reading in the book of James in the Bible the other day, which is a good place to read when you need a swift kick in the pants. James’ writing is a challenge to those of us trying to follow Jesus to be more than soundbites, words, and intentions. He calls us to LIVE this stuff out in how we talk and think and make our decisions and spend our time. He has a few things to say about wisdom, and even at the early hour that I was reading and trying to process his words, I learned a lot about wisdom from a Biblical or Godly perspective. Here’s how he puts it:

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, but deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven, but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and every evil practice. BUT (emphasis mine) the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure, then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. (James 3:13-17 in the New International Version)

Reading those words, which I am sure I have read a dozen or more times over the years, I was surprised by James’ perspective on wisdom. I have to admit that on my first read I kind of skimmed over the part about bitter envy and selfish ambition to get to the good stuff at the end. But that part is core to what James is trying to say to boneheaded people like me. Before giving us the list of what Godly wisdom looks like he wants his readers to know that it will be difficult to get there if you are bitter or selfish. Those are two words that I don’t particularly want to be called. But if I look back on the past several years, there are undeniable times when I have been just that. If I am going to strive toward wisdom, James teaches me, then I can’t be envious or jealous of others in way that produces bitterness. I also can’t be so concerned about where Ryan is going with all of Ryan’s glorious skills that I do not see or care about others or what God would have me strive toward.

I think I have always put the concept of Wisdom and the image of those I consider to be Wise on a pedestal with good lighting and some airbrushing. But reading these words I realize that wisdom is something that can be very tangible and accessible for all of us. Read in the context of the rest of the book of James, wisdom is really about how one acts and behaves. The last time I checked, our actions, behaviors, and choices are all a daily thing. Sure some choices have long reaching consequences good or bad, but we are still faced with hundreds or even thousands of choices a day and we can choose to be wise in those decisions. That’s empowering, challenging stuff!

I said before that wisdom has a sort of generosity. I get that idea from how James describes wisdom in the later verses I mentioned earlier. It’s not about the person being wise themselves. Wisdom seems to be others-focused and for the common good. When I think of people I consider wise, I can see this is true. I’ve tended to think of those I consider wise as those that take their time weighing decisions and respond more than react to situations. There’s some of that in there, but in the end it’s more about the actual decisions than the process to get there. I was trying to process all of this in my journal the other day, and being the concrete kind of person that I am, I made a bullet pointed list. It looked like this:

Am I making decisions and acting in a way that’s guided by:
* Purity – Am I without fault, blameless, striving toward being holy (set apart)?
* Peace-making – Do I bring people together and keep them together through conflict?
* Consideration – How often am I putting others needs before my own?
* Submission – Am I willing to lay some of my “rights” aside for others? Lay down some of my rights for God?
* Mercy – Can I going beyond justice and giving others what I think they “deserve?”
* Fruitfulness – Does my life and do my choices do anything for the world? Impact anyone? How many of my good deeds are multiplied by and to others?
* Impartiality – Do I treat some better than others? Am I too quick to take sides?
* Sincerity – Are my choices made from a heart that does the right thing because it’s the right thing to do or a heart that does the right thing for others and for God more than for myself to feel good or get the credit?

I don’t want to be one who reduces the Bible to a list of checklists, but it was helpful and challenging to think in terms of my real life and how to try to live beyond these vague nouns. It helped me to think about these strivings in the form of adjectives – pure, peace-making, considerate, submissive, merciful, fruitful, impartial and sincere. I was most struck by how James words it in verse 13: “Let him show it by his good life, but deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.” It gave me a newer vision of wisdom as a humble thing.

Around the same time I was reading this in James I was trying to get back into Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places by Eugene Peterson, a thick-ish book I have been reading off and on since 2005. I think that Peterson kind of tempers James a bit. A continual theme in his writing is that faith is an earthy thing – it’s dirty, messy, and very specific to our lives. I’ll let him speak for himself:

What we often consider to be the concerns of the spiritual life – ideas, truths, prayers, promises, beliefs – are never in the Christian gospel permitted to have a life of their own apart from particular persons and actual places. Biblical spirituality/religion has a low tolerance for “great ideas” or “sublime truths” or “inspirational thoughts” apart from the people and places in which they occur. God’s great love and purposes for us are all worked out in messes in our kitchens and backyards, in storms and sins, blue skies, the daily work and dreams of our common lives. God works with us as we are and not as we should be or think we should be. God deals with us where we are and not where we would like to be. (p. 75)

That about says it. If I am to strive toward wisdom I'll have to do it choice by choice. I do it as what Peterson calls a “specific, named person” – Ryan Henderson – in a “specific, named place” – my little life in suburban Marysville. Let’s try, dear reader, to remember that the spiritual thing that we try to develop in our lives is played out choice by choice in our real, daily lives. That makes it wonderfully tangible and grittily difficult. Praise God that we don't do it on our own but through grace.

Amen? Amen.

Taking a Step Forward

2009-09-03T23:28:00.000-07:00

A prayer from Thomas Merton:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me, I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Blogs are hard. Part of you wonders if anyone cares about what you have to write. Part of you wonders how in depth to be about your life, worried about future employers or stepping on toes or just being needy. But I know that writing is a good outlet for me, and I usually find that the things I am worrying about or struggling with strike a chord with someone, so I will press on. I could go into all kinds of details about the strange start of this school year but I will spare you that.

You do need to know that this prayer from Thomas Merton that you read above has never really resonated with me until this particular moment. I have always had a clear path in front of me, and have always stepped right into things. I have always moved forward, and upward, and confident. This year is different. Being qualified and having the experiences that enable me to be a school leader does not mean that jobs will magically appear in these times of unprecedented tiny job markets in that field. I have had good leads, had great interviews, have received good feedback and have put myself out there and genuinely connected with great leaders and districts. Still I find myself starting this school year in a more limited role than I have had in the past and in two constantly shifting work environments.

My new role has me working in the most wonderful place on earth: the local public elementary school. It still has me working alongside very caring and competent teachers. It still has me working to meet the needs of kids, which is why I went into this career in the first place. I am grateful to have a job, and to have a job where I can use my gifts. I am just, shall we say adjusting. I am adjusting to sharing space with others, to things being beyond my control, to things that can’t at the moment be neatly defined and packaged up. I am adjusting to having a bit less power and control. I am adjusting, if I can be honest with you, to having to trust God in a deeper way than I have had to in the past.

I can’t control every aspect of my life, as much as I can try at times. I can’t change things or speed up time or position myself in some way that makes things happen. I have to remember that ultimately my life is not simply a product of all of my doings. There is the good hand of a faithful and loving God throughout it. Like that Caedmon’s Call song says, “Looking back I see the lead of love.” I really do believe that God is looking out for me and that he wants the best for me. I just don’t believe it very deeply right now. I’m at this point tonight of remembering that sometimes action precedes belief. It’s the “fake it till you make it” part of following Jesus, and I think it’s a very real part of faith and life. I have to take a step forward into my new role, explore it, look for the opportunities in it. I have to just walk in the door to these places full of challenges and kids and colleagues and parents and be who I was created to be. In the end, anything that I have done in these 31 years on planet earth that’s worth anything has come from that, has flowed not from WHAT I am doing or HOW I am doing it but from WHO I am.

I do desire to do what God would have me do. I have long anticipated that day when God says to me, “Well done my good and faithful servant.” That requires some moving forward even when I am half convincing myself to do so. I will keep walking even when I am starting to wonder what’s up God’s proverbial sleeve. I will trust that when things are not going according to my step by step plan for my life that God has a plan that might (just might) be better or bigger. I will know that I am not alone, and I want you to know that you, dear reader, are not alone either. In the midst of your own fake it till you make it aspects of life right now, you are being guided and looked out for in a deep way. In the mean time, join me in taking some steps forward into things that you are questioning knowing that sometimes action precedes belief, and that sometimes our job can simply be believing that the desire to please God does in fact please him.

Amen? Amen.

The Theology of "OK"

2009-08-18T09:37:00.001-07:00

I said in my last post that there was some more to write about concerning contentment. I tend to think of being content as being “okay.” That’s not an overtly spiritual or very deep word, but I think there’s a theology of OKness, and I’ll let you in on a little bit of that this fine morning. I think we all want to feel OK, and you can probably think of times in your life when things really did feel OK – when all was well “and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well” to steal some words from Julian of Norwich. Can you call to mind some time when you felt like everything was OK and everything was going to be OK? A time when your past made sense, your present was good, and your future had some glimmer of hope… Those times can be fleeting, but the quest for contentment is a good one.

The most frequently used verses about contentment come from Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi. The Message translation puts it this way: “I'm glad in God, far happier than you would ever guess…Actually, I don't have a sense of needing anything personally. I've learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I'm just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I've found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am.” Keep in mind that Paul wrote this while he was literally chained to a soldier in a sort of house arrest in Rome. Paul’s brand of OKness comes from the strength and comfort that he gets from God.

I am not one of those Christians who believes that if we are following after the good things of God, and trying to follow the example of Jesus, that it’ll all be good and we’ll live in McMansions, drive Hummers with a fish symbol on the back, and cruise to Barbados with our quiver full of blonde-haired, blue-eyed progeny. I believe that we all suffer for various reasons, we all struggle and that if anything that can increase when we are seeking after the things of God. But I do believe that such a pursuit should bring about a sense of things being OK. In my brief study of what contentment looks like from a biblical perspective, I have found that being content comes from being OK with who you are, with what you have, and with where you are. Nothing earth shattering, but I needed the reminder and have the sneaking suspicion some of you might as well.

A little birdwalk… Have you met some people along the way who would identify themselves as Christians but who seem to be sour, wound tight, and at their core not content? 1 Timothy 6:6 is a verse I have heard a lot throughout my life but haven’t really pondered: “But godliness with contentment is great gain.” I want the kind of faith that is pursuing the good things of God, but that is paired with contentment. Heck, I’d even like a little bit of JOY in the mix. I believe that there has to be some sense of being OK and even joyful if I believe that I am not here by accident, that I have a hope that extends beyond my life here on earth, and that I have reserves of strength from which to draw when times are tough.

| Contentment comes from being OK with who you are |
If the Christian life is something that we live from the inside out, it makes sense that being content has to come from a sense of our identity and being OK with who we are. I love how The Message captures this idea in the Beatitudes: “You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are – no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought” (Matthew 5:5). Isn’t there something so attractive about someone who knows who they are and who is unapologetic about it?

This identity is not navel-gazing or some effort to find yourself. It’s knowing who you are because you know who you are in and according to God. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul writes, “Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life—even though invisible to spectators—is with Christ in God. He is your life. When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you'll show up, too—the real you, the glorious you. Meanwhile, be content with obscurity, like Christ.” Doesn’t that fly in the face of much of what seems natural to us? I am supposed to be OK with being obscure when there is a deep part of me that wants to be on a pedestal, wants to be revealed now as something special? Paul even says later that we are to be “content with second place.” After some of my recent job pursuits, those words are a timely challenge for me.

| Contentment comes from being OK in the midst of suffering |
This kind of contentment is compatible with suffering. How can you be OK when you are being mistreated? Peter points us to Jesus’ real life here on earth: “They called him every name in the book and he said nothing back. He suffered in silence, content to let God set things right.” We can be OK in a deep way knowing that God sees our suffering and is with us in the midst of them. He will sort it all out in the end.

| Contentment comes from being OK with what you have |
What do we really need to be content? Not much, according to the Bible. One translation puts it this way: “But having sustenance and covering we will be content with these” (1 Timothy 6:8). Sustenance: fancy for food. Covering: fancy for clothing and shelter. I have all of these three things, but they rarely feel like enough. I don’t think of myself as a greedy person and I am satisfied with pretty simple things. Still I can try to convince myself that I need that iPhone with all of its fancy apps, or this book or that piece of clothing or that thing for the house. The reality is that very few of my OK moments have involved things. Sure I feel content right now with my borrowed laptop, my grande Pike Place blend, my scribbled in journal and my comfy flip flops but my contentment is not and should not be dependent on any of that. I like these verses from I Timothy that fly in the face of prosperity gospel thinking: “These people think religion is supposed to make you rich. And religion does make your life rich, by making you content with what you have. We didn't bring anything into this world, and we won't take anything with us when we leave. So we should be satisfied just to have food and clothes.”

| Contentment comes from being OK with where you are |
And then in my quest came the singular verse of the Bible that I most needed this morning. It comes from 1 Peter 5: “So be content with who you are, and don't put on airs. God's strong hand is on you; he'll promote you at the right time. Live carefree before God; he is most careful with you.” I am sitting around fretting the fact that I most likely won’t land a job as an administrator this year after working so hard for the past few years to get my Masters and my administrative credential, and this letter that Peter wrote to real people thousands of years ago hit me like a brick across my bald head. “He’ll promote you at the right time.” So my final lesson is that biblical contentment comes from being OK with where you are.

Am I content this morning, you ask? Am I OK with things as they are? I will be honest and say I am trying to be. I am trying to let who I am in God to be the center of my identity. I am trying to be content with what I have, being grateful for all of it. And I am trying to be OK with things now, as they are. I am trying to be OK because God will “never leave me or forsake me” regardless of my circumstances. Dear reader: he will never leave YOU either. Did I just hear an Amen?

* * *

I think that Jadon Lavik was onto something with his song “Changing Happy” – a song I play regularly when I need a little lift at work or on my short commute there. So I’ll leave you with those words:

I’ve always found that happiness hides
Just around the corner just out of my reach
And the moment its found the next that it’s missing
And I need to change my own definition la da da da, da da da da da

Cause nothing’s ever quite all that it seems
And I am not convinced that anybody is ever living the dream
And expectations kill as reality plays this show of your life
It’s a whole different scene

Yeah, I’m changing what it means to be happy, what it means
Yeah, back to the way I know that it should be,
Close to you is where I need to be

No matter how hard we push or how hard we pull
There’s just a little bit more ‘til we’re full
Cause we’ve all tried to cover sadness and sorrow
With temporary things that never seem to last

Yeah, I’m changing what it means to be happy, what it means
Yeah, back to the way I know that it should be

So explain to me why we fill up empty with empty and at the end of the day
We’re confused by the longing

Change it back, change it back…
Close to you is where I need to be…

God's Track Record - some thoughts from the beach

2009-08-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

So we’re sitting at The Maltby Café, one of my favorite places to eat and meet friends, and over my delicious California omelet Andy, Jen & Sarah inform me that it’s time for me to blog. I was a bit defensive because I was smack dab in the middle of typing away at page after blasted page for my last eight credits of my Masters degree. But I heard through their thick sarcasm and had to think about why I was not blogging. The main reason isn’t busy-ness, as easy an excuse as that is. The main reason is that I am in a funk. Jen said I should just write about my funk and now that my papers are done, I guess it’s time to do so.

Part of my funk is that I have been stuck in a downward spiral of things not working out the way I would like at work, in various interactions and circumstances and I am left wondering who is looking out for us when it seems like everyone around me has someone who has their back. I have been completely forgetting that God is looking out for us. How quickly one can forget the whole “if God cares about one tiny sparrow, then…” thing. One thing I know about the Bible is that it’s very useful to look back and remember what God has done over the years for his people, and then to place yourself in that bigger story to remember the ways that God has taken care of you.

It’s easy to remember that God cares about the world, but as Eugene Peterson reminded me through one of his talks a few years back, God’s love for us is not an abstract thing. He loves “specific, named people with a past, a present and a future.” It’s that future part that I most need to remember right now. I know that God has taken care of me, and that in some ways he is taking care of me right now, but it’s hard to trust sometimes that he is ready to take care of my future. As much as I was trying to avoid being affected by the recession, the position I have at school has been cut as a cost-saving measure. I am deeply grateful for my time at this school, and in this role. I have truly grown up in these past three years into leadership and would not trade my time there for anything. I am fortunate to have a contract and a position for next year, but it is not as an administrator, which is what I have been working toward for the past several years. I will be doing meaningful work, but it feels at times like I will be stepping backward.

Things have always seemed to work out for me – jobs, housing, friendships, places to connect, meaningful ways to serve – without a ton of effort or fennagling on my part. Charismatic folks like to speak of this as “God’s favor” and this part of their tradition really resonates with me. I know that God has shown me favor – opened doors for me, set me up in places where I needed to be and where they needed me. I need to recount those things as well.

I really have been able to step into many things. I recently read a book for those aforementioned last 8 credits called Primal Leadership, and one of the things it talks about is how leaders can trace back their leadership to very early in their lives. They develop skills very early on that they see modeled, try out on their own and then add to their repertoire. My first real leadership experience was serving on the Student Council at Sierra Heights Elementary in Renton, WA. From there I served as a leader at church, in youth group, in high school as the editor of the school paper. I grew up as a leader most significantly at Warm Beach Camp where I spent six summers between the ages of 15 and 22. Away from home and friends and normal life I learned about how to work with kids, how to organize my time, how to lead a small group of people, and how to have a lot of fun while making real impact at the same time. I also was given real responsibilities to lead and serve at SPU, where in both ministry and student government I was affirmed that teaching was for me. There were a couple of times that I thought I knew where I should live or what position I should be in. I was sure that one particular way was the right and best way. Then I would be serendipitously derailed from what I thought was best to discover what was actually best and just what I needed. I tell you these things to recall for myself God’s good track record in my life.

I come back again and again to those beautiful words which I have shared with you, dear reader, before. The lyrics of Sara Groves: “I can’t remember a trial or a pain / That He (God) did not recycle to bring me gain / All I have needed His hand has supplied / He’s always been faithful to me.” There are so many things I love about those words: the idea that God does not throw out our past pain but uses it, the idea that God has always and will always provide for us, the reminder that God will always be faithful because faithfulness is part of his character and as the Bible says, “He cannot disown himself.”

When I was graduating with a BA and a teaching certificate, I applied all over the city of Seattle. I was determined to get a job in the Seattle Public Schools. I interviewed several times and did not get chosen. I was number two four times. I was new and enthusiastic and getting very discouraged. Then I got a call from my “backup” district, Highline, which ended up being a perfect place for me to spend the first five years of my teaching career. It was there that I felt affirmed that being a principal would be a good professional next step for me. They invested in me deeply there, and taught me much by their example and by what they allowed me to try out as a leader.

Sarah and I had a friend of her family sing “God Blessed the Broken Road,” the song made popular by Rascal Flatts, at our wedding as a way to recognize that God had led us through the difficult terrain of friendships and relationships and led us eventually to one another. It was not an easy road, but each step of it was vital. In those dark moments of wondering if there was ever going to be a right person at the right time for us, God had in store for each of us the other. “Every long lost dream led me to where you are / Others who broke my heart they were like Northern stars / Pointing me on my way into your loving arms / This much I know is true / That God blessed the broken road / That led me straight to you…”

When we had decided to get married and settle up north that meant finding a new professional home for myself. I again applied a few places and felt that sting of rejection a few times – sometimes by being placed in a no pile, and sometimes by the post-interview call that said it sure was nice to meet me. Then one key conversation took place between two people who barely knew me and I ended up at my school and in a tough to get position as a quasi assistant principal. The people there, the experiences I have had, and the chances I have had to lead have fully prepared me to be a school leader. Now it’s just a matter of trusting that God will again lead me to the right spot at the right time.

Today I know that there is a good next spot for me to lead and teach and grow, but I want it to be NOW. I most of all want to feel like I am moving forward, not moving backward simply because there are so few administrative position in the state (let alone the region) and simply because my quasi-administrative gig has ended. I am trying to be content “no matter the circumstances” but I am still a bit funk-y, a bit restless, and having a hard time trusting.

So there you go – I am writing about and writing through the funk. In the midst of any funk you might be in, look back at our good God’s track record in your life and try, alongside me, to trust in the midst of it.

There’s some more here about what it takes to be content, about how to be hopeful in the midst of a funk, and about trusting God to provide. Who knows… I might even blog about it.

Sliver of Silver

2009-04-20T06:14:00.000-07:00

When I got up this morning and put on my grubby jeans and my faded "Hawks Rock!" school sweatshirt it was dark. There was a moon that my friend Rich would describe as "a sliver of silver, like the shavings that fell on the floor of a carpenter's shop..." It was chilly, but the sweatshirt, T-shirt, and obligatory white tank commonly known as a "wife beater" kept me plenty warm. Our new pup Fergie and I have been walking in the morning, but we have been out of practice after a week or so of being sick. This morning from the minute we left I was looking forward to the walk on the way back because I knew that that sliver of silver would be faint in a sky bright with the sunrise. It's an hour later now and the sun has still not made a grand appearance, but all is muted brightness. My other companions on my morning walks are my phone and my iPod. Oh my poor iPod. It has been frozen in time for nearly a year since the computer it was synced up to crapped out. I know all I need to do is follow the 99 steps to get the songs off the iPod and then I can restore it. Sarah says to just scrap it, that we have most of those albums anyway and that I could buy the songs again that I just have to have. But there's something about the songs on an iPod that's comforting. There are all these good old friends in there just ready for a particular mood. Trust me, after six months of the same songs every time I mow the lawn, go for a walk, or work out in the barn, I know these songs. I know that these songs are so often like those morning Bible verses I get text messaged to me each morning - they seem to fit. This morning, just as I was walking up the hill past the golf course, this song came on from David Crowder Band. I know, it's a good six years old, but let's remember the state of my iPod...

you should see the stars tonight
how they shimmer shine so bright
against the black they look so white
comin down from such a height
to reach me now, reach me now

you should see the moon in the flight
cuttin cross the misty night
softly dancin in sunshine
reflections of this light
reach me now, you reach me now

and how could such a thing
shine its light on me
and make everything beautiful again

and you should feel the sun in the spring
comin out after a rain
suddenly all is green
sunshine on everything
i can feel it now, i feel you now

and how could such a thing
shine its light on me
and make everything beautiful

and you should hear the angels sing
all gathered round their king
more beautiful than you could dream
i've been quietly listening
you can hear 'em now, i hear em now

and how could such a king
shine His light on me
and make everything beautiful
and i wanna shine
i wanna be light
i wanna tell you it'll be alright
and i wanna shine and i wanna fly
just to tell you now
it'll be alright, it'll be alright
it'll be alright.

cus i got nothing of my own to give to you
but this light that shines on me shines on you
and makes everything beautiful, again.
it'll be alright, it'll be alright.
-Stars, David Crowder Band, from the 2003 album Illuminate

So that's what I have for you today, this little musical treat. Take a listen/look here.

Triumphal Donkey

2009-04-05T08:25:00.001-07:00

This morning is beautiful. It’s cold and the windows on the cars were fogged up, which my wife tells me is a tell-tale sign of a nice day. The windows are cleared now and the sun is firmly planted in the east. It’s still pretty darn cold outside, but soon it will be like yesterday: warm enough to open up the windows in the house to let some fresh air in.

This morning marks the beginning of Holy Week, the time in the calendar of the Christian church when we walk through a week in the life of Jesus which leads through the Last Supper to his death on Good Friday into Easter. Today is Palm Sunday. In a Bible you’d find this in a section called “The Triumphal Entry.” Jesus is coming into Jerusalem, and he sends an advance team to make sure it’s very triumphal, which is a word I have never used before. He has them gather a donkey from the next village and bring it to him. . A donkey does not exactly spell triumphal for me. The disciples covered it with their cloaks (another word I don’t often use) and Jesus rode on the donkey into Jerusalem. A humble entry, for sure.

I am sure that there is much more for me to know about this, if I were a biblical scholar or theologian, but what happens next is beautiful in a very simple way. As the donkey plods along, people get a sense of something happening, of Someone happening, and spread out their cloaks and lay down branches for him to pass by on. It’s like a natural, spontaneous red carpet entry for Jesus. A few decide to go ahead of him, saying, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

Hosanna is so often used in the same way one would express praise by saying something like “Hallelujah!” But Hosanna is a rich word that means “Save: now!” It’s come to mean in Christian circles praise for being the One who saves us. This is the moment when many say out loud that this Jesus from the town of Nazareth is the Messiah, the One sent to save. Some say along that road, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David” meaning that this Jesus is the One they have been waiting for.

There’s much more to come in this Holy Week, but for this morning just linger with me here a bit, along this road where people offered what they had as an offering of acknowledgement that Jesus coming down the road is a beautiful thing. That Jesus was more than just a man who claimed to be God. He comes down the road humbly, choosing a donkey over a chariot and accepting the simple offers of confession that Jesus the man is Jesus the One sent to save. I will keep sipping on my grande drip here, a couple millennia later, and offer a simple “Hosanna!” on this bright, cold morning in praise for all that God has done for me through this Jesus who rode on a donkey.

Amen? Amen.

Prayer 1.6.09

2009-02-16T10:36:00.000-08:00

A little snippet from my journal from earlier this month, during my couch time in the morning with Fergie on my lap and my Bible and journal open. This is one that rings true today as well.

God who invites me to know him as Abba...Papa..Daddy...
help me in this new day

There are deep ruts and grooves in this day - a well-traveled path
Ruts of routines and schedule
Grooves of who I interact with and who I pass right by
Ruts of doing what I do and avoiding what I don't want to or feel like I can't
Paths deep with tread of what's possible and expected

Today is in itself a miracle - there is no brilliant sun to greet it (at least that I can see) there is just this darkness and rain and cold

This is how you have chosen to lay out my life - in days - in these cycles of awake and asleep and dark and light
The Psalmist asks you to "teach us to number his days aright..."
Help me to remember today - and live today - as if this day counts

Give me a sense of how many days I have on this earth and help me surrender to what you might have for me today

Grace me...
grant me...
gift me...
one moment today that contains in it something eternal, unexpected, something rich with YOU

Not because I have earned it or deserved it, but because you are the good God who give and gives and gives again "out of your infinite riches in Jesus"

Amen.

Fortune Cookies from Jesus

2009-02-09T22:15:00.000-08:00

I get a text message every morning at 8:00 rain or shine, come hell or high water. It’s not from Sarah, it’s not from my mom, and it’s not from my friend Matt as we try to hold one another accountable to get up earlier. It’s from Scott and Sam, the uber chipper hosts of the morning radio show on Spirit 105.3, the local Christian station. They are the “DJs” that say things like “Wowie!” “Super!” and invite callers to share stories of funny things that their homeschooled kids said about Jesus the other night. A while ago I was listening to aforementioned morning show with Scott and Sam (who are either on uppers or some sort of IV drip quad Frappuccino arrangement) and heard that you can text them at a certain number and they will send you a text message every morning with a Bible verse of the day. I thought that that would be a nice way to start the day, so I signed up. Let me tell you, it has been really cool, and also really creepy. It’s like a fortune cookie from God. I have always loved that verse about God’s word not returning void…that idea that God’s word has power and can do something. Here’s how that verse, Isaiah 55:11, reads in the New International readers Version (NIrV):

The words I speak are like that.
They will not return to me without producing results.
They will accomplish what I want them to.
They will do exactly what I sent them to do.

Fortune cookies are great to eat, especially when you dip them in that tiny little teacup into which you have dumped a complete packet of C&H Sugar. But they are sometimes creepy in their ability to predict the future such as the one I had recently, as I apply for principal positions in the area: “You will be chosen for a place of high honor.” Sure, there is always the one that says, “You like Chinese food” but for the most part, they are right on in predicting some sort of vague event, learning, or good thing coming your way. (Does anyone else get that image from Mickey Blue Eyes in their head every time they think of fortune cookies? “Not waitress…OWNER! Eat cookie! Eat the %$&*%$ cookie!” Guess not. I digress.)

So I get this verse every morning and it is amazing how it fits for the day I am beginning. Sometimes I don't know why that is the verse of the day, but as I look back mid-day or at the end of the day I know just why that was the verse for that morning. Here are a few I have received recently that have been a genuine blessing to me. They may be for you as well.

He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. – Colossians 1:17

Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life. – Philippians 2:14-16a

Do not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it is in your power to act. – Proverbs 3:27

Many are the plans of a man’s heart but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails. – Proverbs 19:21

And these two, which have been like water for me at this juncture in my life:

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” – 2 Corinthians 12:9

Jesus replied, “What is impossible with men is possible with God.” – Luke 18:27

A few of these got me to spend some time in Proverbs, and I found these gems as well. Indulge me.

Who can say, “I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin?” – Proverbs 20:9

Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth. – Proverbs 27:1

There is surely a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off. – Proverbs 23:18

The thing that’s wonderful about that verse about God’s Word not coming back void is that there is power in it. When words of scripture are spoken, we are told that something can and will happen. That’s great in a vague, other sort of way. The challenge is that the power might come in us doing something about we are hearing, bringing to life…fleshing out…these words. May we find hope in the words, and may they also serve as a spur in our backsides to do something ourselves.

Amen? Amen.

On a practical note, if you would like to receive these text messages, check out the Spirit 105.3 web site at: http://www.spirit1053.com/textmessaging.php?articleID=61

Book Review: The Shack

2009-01-19T22:07:00.000-08:00

The first time I heard of The Shack, Matt and Meredith were interviewing its author, William Paul Young, via satellite on the Today show. He was standing in a lodge-looking living room with his family who all seemed nice and good looking. He emphasized that this book was not written to be published, but as a gift to his family. After reading the book for a few weeks now, and just finishing it tonight, I am glad the he decided to share it with a broader audience. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the book, it focuses on the journey of Mack, a father who is grieving the tragic loss of his youngest daughter Missy. He returns to the place where she was presumed to be killed after receiving a mysterious note three years after her disappearance inviting him to come back to “the shack.” (Spoiler alert: I will try not to give anything away that you won’t find on the dust jacket of the book.)

I guess I should mention that half of why I read this book was a bold claim by Eugene Peterson on the front cover: “This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress did for his. It’s that good.” I hold Eugene Peterson, the former pastor who translated the Bible from the original Greek and Hebrew into really accessible and beautifully every day language called The Message, in pretty high regard. After reading it, I can see the parallels. I’m not sure of the technical definition of allegory, but I am pretty sure The Shack is one. It’s a story full of symbols that point to deeper truths. Not all can be taken at face value, nor is it intended to be.

Back to the story… After walking the reader through this horrific experience in Mack’s life and The Great Sadness that follows, the book centers on what Mack finds when he gets to the shack. He goes fearing he will meet his daughter’s killer face to face and simultaneously hoping/fearing that he will find God there. As someone whose understanding of God helps to shape his understanding of the world, it sounds odd to talk about God being person-ified, but like I said I was an English major so I need to throw around fancy words like that. God is personified in some unconventional ways in this book. He is primarily called Papa, which points to the word Abba that Jesus used when he talked to his Father in prayer. Young is imaginative in the gender, culture, personality, and language of each member of the Trinity.

I hope that if you choose to read this book you can get past some of how the Father (God), Son (Jesus) and Holy Spirit are portrayed. I know some people won’t be able to for various reasons, but I hope that you, dear reader, can. For me what was intriguing was not what body or culture they took on, but how Young fleshes out the relationships among the three forms of God. It’s really beautiful to imagine this mystery of the Trinity, and it seems to have some seeds or hints of how things might be. There’s one scene in particular where you get a real sense of how these three might work and live and operate together. I heard once that God would not ask us to do something he hasn’t himself done, and this one helps me know that God wants us to live in community because he himself does this.

In the spirit of full disclosure, there were a couple things that drove me crazy about this book. (1) As a former English major, there was some language that was overly flowery. There was a lot of color and light and brightness. Some of the metaphors were overdone. By the end I was thinking, “The Spirit is like the wind. She is elusive. Got it.” The depiction of Jesus was simple. Jesus didn’t get much play time, but I thought that was okay. He seems to be the easiest part of God for people to understand, so it made sense to me by the end. (2) It might sound ridiculous to say that the dialogue seems contrived in a novel in which a man spends a weekend at a lake cabin with Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit, but really it was a bit overdone. No one really talks that way, but the content of their dialogue was really engaging, so I can forgive it.

I expected this book to be vaguely spiritual in the feel-good Oprah sort of way, but was surprised to find it to be pretty faithful to what I believe as someone who has grown up in the Church. If you based your whole life on this book, you would have a tilted spirituality, but you would probably be better off than if you had not read it at all. You’d definitely have a sense of God’s role in our every day lives and would be armed with some perspective for difficult times. You would be grateful and humble, at least for a while.

As I prepare to pass this book on to someone (perhaps my lovely wife), I will take with me a few things:
* God is especially fond of me. I was so taken by how Papa talked about people who he had created.
* The idea of God being a verb, not a noun. Beyond that, God always preferring verbs to nouns. Think of how much of our spiritual life is restricted by nouns and concepts instead of doing words.
* God wanting us to live our life in expectancy, not expectation. This was a convicting chapter for me, and yet very freeing.
* God wanting not a piece of my life, or to be at the top of the pyramid of priorities, but wanting the whole thing and to be at the center. Not a new concept for me, but a beautiful and welcome reminder.

Mostly I appreciated this book because it affirms one of the things I believe most deeply: that God can redeem all of the bad stuff in our lives and help transform it into something good and beautiful. It reminds me of those words I love, that I come back to again and again, from a Sara Groves song:
I can’t remember a trial or a pain
That He did not recycle to bring me gain
All I have need of, his hand will supply
He’s always been faithful to me…

Some people will tell you to take this book with a grain of salt. That’s the easy way out. I would say to read it with an open mind and to think about what it might mean for you. Don't expect it to be 100% biblically accurate. Don't expect to be reading award-winning literature. But three million people have found it to be powerful, and it left your favorite blogger Ryan with some things to think about, so I’d say it’s worth a read.

Do. Remember Me.

2009-01-14T05:24:00.000-08:00

I grew up in hymn-singing churches for a good chunk of my life, and just like my nephew Drew once I have sung a song a couple of times it’s engrained in my memory. One of these hymns that we used to sing goes like this:
He giveth more grace as our burdens grow greater,
He sendeth more strength as our labors increase;
To added afflictions He addeth His mercy,
To multiplied trials He multiplies peace.
(Annie Flint, Public Domain)

It’s amazing to me how this works, but it does time and time again. My friends Ryan and Jen Willson are home from Malawi in Central Africa for a few weeks. They are here because their friend and colleague there Ryan Bartlett died in a car accident. They accompanied their friend’s wife and children back to the States to attend a memorial, provide support to the family, and then get some support themselves as they gear up for new roles, challenges, and a new home base for ministry that is hours from their current home. Just like Paul and Silas singing away in the prison when they were arrested for sharing the recent good things of God, God has given Ryan and Jen strength and grace. He has used them, in this weak time, to minister to others. Ryan preached a Sunday ago and talked about some of their pain and ministry there, relating it to the story of Jonah.

Do you remember this one? Dude has clearly been told by God to go to Ninevah, a place with a bad rap and preach telling them that they are wicked. This does not sound like a good job posting to him, so “ran away from the Lord” to Tarshish. Long story short and some sweet maritime action scenes later, he ends up in the belly of whale. The Bible says that God “provided a great fish to swallow Jonah.” I had always found this story kind of haunting. I have thought many times about ways in which I have run headstrong into some sort of Tarshish when God was preparing me for Ninevah type work. I had never thought, though, of God providing the fish to swallow Jonah. Reading this this dark winter morning, it makes me think that the fish is a grace in itself - is a fresh start, another chance. God provided Jonah a context for coming back to what he knows he needs to do.

Just like Paul and Silas singing away while their feet were bound, Jonah uses this time to think and remember. He trudges up a prayer in the midst of the bile. He acknowledges that God had saved him from drowning. He says, “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple…with a song of thanksgiving I will sacrifice to you.” Ryan preached about that word remembered. He talked about how remembering at its best means not simply calling something to mind but calling it to mind and then doing something about it…taking some action. It would have been easy for Paul and Silas to “remember” God in some vague way but to dwell more on the fact that they did not have full use of their limbs and thus were not in control of their fate at that moment. I would have been easy for Jonah to call to mind some image of a distant, angry God, but he found a way to see this smelly belly of a fish as something provided by God. He remembered and prayed. Paul and Silas remembered and sang.

I am praying this morning that God would help me to remember some things in the do-something-about-it way. I am praying for it to be true in my life that when things seem hopeless I can remember God and what he has done, and what he said he would do, and to find one way to look through these crooked eyes of mine and see what he might be doing right now. I am praying that God would give me songs to sing when I am in the midst of tough stuff.

We just came off an awesome weekend with two of my favorite families – the Willsons and the Trempers. We also had a couple cameos from the Porters and the Nelsons. We spent the weekend talking, playing, holding babies and dogs, and of course eating. It was a way for us to remember the good memories we all have together and the bonds we still share. It was healing for all of us in the best way because it was along-the-way healing, not laying-on-a-leather-couch or sobbing-at-the-altar kind of healing. It is good for the soul to chat, to hear Matt and Ben talk about their bowel movements, to have precious little ones hop on your lap, to hear Jen teaching the kids songs in Chichewa, to see photos of their life in Malawi, to hear faint accents from Curtis and Kara. Soon we will send them back to Malawi in the belly of some 747 that is theirs by provision of our good God. They will remember, in the midst of drastic changes in their lives there, and I am confident that they will do something about it.

When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources
Our Father’s full giving is only begun.

His love has no limits, His grace has no measure,
His power no boundary known unto men;
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again.

A Prayer for Resiliency

2008-11-28T12:45:00.000-08:00

I’ve heard it said again and again that children are resilient. We have all seen kids bounce back from physical injury, which we all praise. “Look at my little bruiser! Right back at it…” It’s easy to reset a bone, to nurse a gash and make sure it does not get infected, to put a bandage on the scrape, give some love, and move on. I’ve been fixated these past weeks, though, on the internal wounds that can be easy to see, but much harder to heal. The wounds of a fragile little psyche, a broken self image, a lack of a sense of place and stability in the world. The words that were ringing in my ear as a child were “G’night…love you.”and my mom always reassuring me that no matter what we did, we could always come home. I worry about the words that ring in the ears of the ones that fill the chairs in my office

I am praying this morning that this is true that kids are resilient, that kids are somehow wired to be able to bounce back from all of the crap that life can throw at them. It’s probably no surprise that many of the children I see throughout the course of the day are hurting. They are there because A hit B because B made fun of A’s mom. Or because A and B used to be friends and now A is hanging out with C so A ran over and sucker punched B in the gut.

They come to my office because they cannot “allow the teacher to teach and others to learn.” But many of them are really there because of Mom and Dad’s indifference, Mom’s addiction, Mom and Dad’s work schedules that mean they are essentially raising themselves and their siblings, Dad’s abusive hand and tongue. They are relegated to Gramma and Grampa, to their room, to the neighborhood, to video games. They are not raised or nurtured in the way most of us were, and these wounds are deep and real and shameful.

I love the work that I do because I know that, cheesy as it sounds, I really am investing in the future. These kids will grow up. Just like I used to fill desks with my pudgy little butt at Sierra Heights Elementary and am now a contributing adult member of society, they will all grow into roles as workers and students and spouses and parents. In educational leadership circles, we talk about communicating “a sense of urgency.” One of my mentor principals, Leslie, used to remind me at our weekly meetings that the hourglass was glued to the table and we had no time to waste. We had to do all we could to support teachers so that they could support kids.

The sense of urgency is palpable when you are dealing with hurting children. They are right there in front of you, and they are beautiful and frustrating and broken and so creative in their naughtiness. Sometimes it’s just anecdotal stuff, but often this behavior is a symptom of the deeper stuff inside. As a classroom teacher, I used to remind myself that I could not solve all my students’ problems, nor was it my job to do so. It was my job to provide as much consistency and community and care and challenge to them as I could. It was my job in my little kingdom of Room 22 or Portable 4B to try to provide 6.5 hours of something good, to counteract all the bad. It was also my job to make sure that I was not making any excuses for them as far as their academics or their behavior – I had to believe that each of them could grow and change and overcome anything horrible that had happened to them.

Public schools are truly a beautiful place to spend your days. The people who choose to work with kids in this capacity are good people. No two days are ever the same. You get to work with 699 other people who are all quirky and talented. You get to have little people high five you and side-hug you and tell you jokes that only they get. You get called “prinstiple” a few times a day, or Mrs. Henderson, or Teacher or sometimes even Papa.

My particular public school is a wonderful place because people work together to meet the needs of kids. Most students have no idea how many stakeholders they have in their little lives, or how much conversation takes place about how to best meet their unique needs. When the counselor of a young girl came to meet with us recently, he was pleasantly shocked to see how full the conference table in my office was. Her classroom teacher, principal, Solution Room aide, counselor and quasi-principal Ryan were all there to talk with her guardian about what they are finding to work at home so we can implement these strategies at school. It was one my proudest moments at work. It was nothing of my doing; it was just awesome to know that I work as part of a team that really cares about kids and can work together to help them.

Today I am praying that kids are resilient, but I am also praying a simple Thank You for the fact that I have Someone to entrust these kids to when they are not within the walls of our school. I am grateful that we have a good Father who can see and hear and be there when I cannot…when our team at school cannot…when their friends and families are not or cannot. I am thankful, this day after Thanksgiving, that we have someone to ultimately thank for all the good, and for the way that God can turn our tough stuff into good stuff in some strange and beautiful way. Amen? Amen.

Heaven, Uncle John and Sunrises

2008-10-27T20:44:00.001-07:00

My commute is nothing special: a turn out the driveway, up the hill and onto Highway 9, a few short miles from Marysville to Lake Stevens. As highways go, it’s pretty standard with signs leading the way to new subdivisions, a glorified strip mall, a gas station or two, and really tall trees on either side. The road is one lane in each direction, no barrier in between, and for the majority of the miles I drive, there’s nothing much to see at all.

There’s this beautiful part of the drive, though, that takes my breath away at least one day a week. Just before I hit that glorified strip mall, there’s a break in the trees and I can see Lake Stevens (the lake, not the city) off to the left. We have been blessed with a beautiful fall here in the Seattle area with crisp, bright days, and even some warmth. This morning there was a bit of haze on the Cascades, and a ring of light fog around the lake and off toward Mt. Rainier there was a broad shaft of light with pinks and oranges and yellows all blending together into a delicious sunrise. Sunrises are always hopeful for me, and they always make me think of heaven.

I will be the first one to tell you I know very little about heaven. I think a lot of what I picture is probably way off. Who knows what angels look like? Who cares? Who knows what we will do all day long? I can get caught into these intense dreamscapes of heaven being me sitting on a blanket teaching well-mannered children about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Or heaven as this never-ending, fun event: like a family reunion on steroids, minus the going back to real life part or the warm macaroni salad.

I don’t know much about heaven, but I have some sneaking suspicions about who I might find there. Rich Mullins used to say that we will be surprised in heaven to see some of the people who “made it in” and we will be equally surprised by those we’d expect to see who aren’t there. The little I do know of heaven tells me that we only get in by grace. We are only allowed this invitation, this homecoming because of something and Someone beyond ourselves.

* * *

My uncle John was one person who I’d be willing to bet is in heaven right now. John wasn’t always my uncle. He came along when I was in middle school, the new pony-tailed boyfriend of my Aunt Lila. We were all a bit baffled by John at first when he showed up at a family Christmas party with a dreidel and stories and songs looking exactly like Burl Ives. But he and Lila were married in a beautiful garden ceremony where I swear Bette Midler’s “The Rose” played on repeat for about four hours. (This was before the days of iPods and play lists, mind you…)

Over the next twenty-some years John became a regular part of the family, and regularly graced us with his stories and jokes, and with his delicious cooking. Every year John and Lila invited a smattering of friends and family to a Christmas open house. They have this tiny place on Capital Hill and each year it’s crammed full with dozens of nativity scenes of all sizes, shapes, colors and histories. They were hidden on the tree, set neatly on the packed bookshelves, and even in the bathroom. We’d sit around and sip on overspiced spiced cider, munch on chips and chutney dip, and eat little cookies that you only make for Christmas. They set the stage for great conversation and always had such fascinating people sitting around their living room. You’d see the same folks most years, and you’d always feel welcome and warm and like they were genuinely glad you came. John was always affirming of my career choice of education because he spent the majority of his adult life teaching Bible and Religion to middle schoolers. Reread that sentence. Can you imagine anything worse than trying to teach middle schoolers about religion…about things that happened thousands of years ago, many of which are very confusing and multilayered and seemingly irrelevant?

It wasn’t until John’s funeral mass that I learned just how amazing was the grace in John’s life. A couple months back there were hundreds of people filling the oldest Catholic church in Seattle, hearing the stories of John’s faltering faith and God’s faithfulness to John through it all. I couldn’t quite piece it all together, but I could tell that John felt called to serve the church as a young man. He had worked with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Central Africa. He married and had two kids. He left the ministry of the church and became a teacher. He got divorced, which you’re not supposed to do when you are not just a Catholic but a devoted, invested Catholic. Then he sucked up his pride and went through all the steps needed to be back in good relationship with the Church. He eventually met and married my Aunt Lila, and after she became a Catholic they had their marriage recognized by the Church.

John was a teacher by vocation, but he was also a teacher by nature. He was a teacher because he loved to create community and he loved to tell stories. The longer I am in education, the more I realize that these two things are essential for good teaching: making something common from many different individuals and connecting them through stories. John was a teacher because he cared deeply for people around him. He was a teacher because he was humble, and ready to learn lessons from anyone, anytime. He was a teacher because he was teachable. I never got the sense from John that he had arrived in any sense. John was a teacher because he could use anything that was thrown his way to tell a story and make an impact. He taught his puberty-stricken students the stories of the Bible through engaging, hilarious, heartfelt stories, and even had them published a few years ago into a book with a real ISBN number.

John’s best teaching might have come after he was given his worst assignment: Lou Gehrig’s Disease or ALS. John was a walker and he was a worker. Giving up his independence was hard for him, but he was very gracious in how he allowed others to fill in the gaps for him as the degenerative parts of his illness showed their ugly heads. The guys from the men’s group at church stepped in to keep him company so Lila could keep working and as things became worse, they helped to move him from place to place and to bathe and clothe him. My cousin Jason moved into the building and was available 24/7 to help his stepdad as he had need. John kept plugged in. He went to Mass each morning. He stayed in touch with his friends from St. Joe’s school. He kept his eyes looking at the sunrises, even when things were increasingly dark in his mind and slow in his body.

I guess I feel so compelled to write about John’s life, even if it has taken me a while to do so, because I think John got it right. There were so many things that he got wrong. It sounds like he had a problem with anger and alcohol. He had a failed marriage. He had a hard time following the expected norms of society, and took delight in not fitting into the box. But he got life right because he really loved people. He invested. He kept coming back to Jesus and what he taught, through it all. On the back of the program from John’s funeral Mass are these beautiful words from Pedro Arrupe from the Society of Jesuits:

Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is,
than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way.

What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination,
will affect everything.

It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you will do with your evenings,
how you will spend your weekends.
what you read, who you know,
what breaks your heart, and what amazes you
with joy and gratitude.

Fall in love, stay in love,
and it will decide everything.

* * *

And to that I say Amen.

Happy Second

2008-09-07T14:13:00.000-07:00

It's our second anniversary on Tuesday, and Sarah surprised me after church with a little picnic today in our quiet back yard. We love our house and our yard which is now starting to grow in greener and lusher (is that a word?). We are enjoying the last few weeks of summer, and it was a treat to eat some of our favorite simple things in the shade, listening to the wind through the poplars out front. In the midst of the chaos of starting to school and heading into fall, it was so nice to enjoy our summer time pleasures for a bit.

I was talking to my office manager MariLee, who is a constant support of encouragement and wisdom to me (as well as a provider of fresh brewed coffee, praise the Lord) the other day, and I said, "I married a good woman." It sort of hit me all of a sudden just how loving, creative, hilarious, and forgiving she is. The past two years have not been all roses as we have gotten to know one another, lived through lots of stress and projects, have had to give and receive forgiveness and grace for things big and small, but the prayer at our wedding that our friends and family spoke over us was basically this: that God who began a good work in us will be faithful to complete it. God was there when we committed to each other, only half knowing what we were getting ourselves into, and he has walked with us through these days and weeks and months of becoming Mr. and Mrs. Henderson.

I am thankful for simple pleasures like watching design shows all cuddled up on the couch, filling our home with treasures from yard sales and thrift stores, having tender moments of being so thankful to have one another, creating a home out of our house, "singing" with Zoe, singing in the car, singing from the moment we wake up in teh morning. I am thankful to have a life together where we are living in a musical and can burst into song at any given moment. I love when she sings, "My milkshake brings all the boys the yard" like an opera singer. I love that she has taught me how to harmonize to "Sweet Little Jesus Boy" and "Dream Lover." Most of all I love that she has taught me to be a better, more intentional, more holy person - all in just two short years of official togetherness.

This little post is for you, Sarah. It's a public way to say thank you for allowing the pudgy teacher man from the ghetto into your world. Here's to decades of wonderful marriage together, as scary and as wonderful as that sounds. I know that God will be faithful to us each step of the way.

Amen? Amen.

Grateful by the River - Part Two

2008-08-18T22:46:00.000-07:00

This is part two - read the other one first.

This gratitude is tinged with some harder realities, like the fact that school will start up full force on Tuesday morning when my administrative internship will be in full swing. As I stare out the river (I think it’s called the Sauk) I’m thinking about all of the things that have taken place in the past two years. Sometimes it kind of catches up to you – getting married, moving an hour north, starting a new job at a new school, moving into Sarah’s tiny house, learning how to live with and love a jittery little dog, learning how to (slowly but surely) become a husband, being a leader in a new school and district, moving into and renovating our crazy drug house into a beautiful and respectable farm house, and working to establish new friendships closer to our new home.

As with any change, you slowly live your way into these changes. You realize that proximity plays a very important role in fostering relationships and you long for reciprocity with family and friends. You think when you leave a place and a community that A or B may be your long term friends and find that it was really C and even D a little bit. You adjust and you work to invest. I’m learning that it all takes time. I’m praying that God would give me open eyes to new friends and a new community in this place. In the meantime, we are savoring the friendships we do have with new friends and family and old friends. I am praying for grace in these changes - grace to let some people be “friends of the road” for a specific time rather than “friends of the heart” like the Parrotts talk about.

I’m grateful for something many of us take for granted: the ability to drive. Back in late February I passed out on a Sunday morning for no good reason. We went to the doctor and they ran a few tests, had me wear a heart monitor for 24 hours, did a CAT scan, and eventually an arrogant doctor with an English accent gave me a “poor man’s MRI” (his words) and passed on this sentence: no driving for six months. No if’s, and’s, or but’s about it. Imagine being told such news when you were working full time, in grad school two night a week an hour’s drive away, and were asked to be at meetings during the day for work, let alone running errands, surprising your wife with anything, or contributing in any real way in a society (of which I am a proud member) totally obsessed with cars and driving.

I could not have made it through were it not for Sarah who was willing to hang out in the student union building and be gracious to drive us everywhere (a role that I usually and gladly take in our relationship) including to work and church and the store, to the TriCities when it decided to snow a blizzard in April, when she was tired or sick, when I had a meeting or class or we had somewhere to be with my family or friends. Thanks to Andy and Steve, two friends who came to rescue me multiple times from the helpless and sometimes boring times of not being able to use my God-given, American right to get behind the steering wheel of a car. Thanks to Samantha and Foster, two friends from my masters cohort who gave my sorry ass multiple rides to and from class with nary a complaint. Thanks to Debra and Denise and Tamme and Melissa and Steve and whoever else it was who drove me to and from meetings during this time. I will decidedly NOT give a shout out to Metro or Community Transit, who made trying to commute by bus from Snohomish County to North Seattle the most confusing and long and stupid process possible.

Maybe another thing that’s catching up to us is how grateful we are to people around us who have helped us in ways big and small during these crazy two years. Thanks to the small but mighty crew of friends who helped us move twice in the same summer, people like the Hicks who loaned us their huge van, the Sullivans and Joneses who surprised us by offering to help with the unglamous job of moving box after box in the summer heat. Almost two years after our wedding we continue to be amazed by the people who pitched into make our wedding happen. We literally could not have done it without them. We’re thankful for people who have made the not-so-convenient drive to come visit us at our new place in Marysville. While it’s fun to work and work and work on our place, it’s especially fun to share our place with our friends and family and build a bank of memories with people that we love.

Perhaps more than anything, we are grateful to enter a school year not being in chaos. Two years ago we started school just a few days before our 450-of-our-closest-family-and-friends wedding, which we would not recommend. Last year we were living in the guest room at Sarah’s parents house (which was on the market, so we had to be very Corrie ten Boom about the whole thing) while we did some have-to things at our new place like new flooring and painting every room with Kilz then with our colors of choice. We were living out of two laundry baskets in the back of our cars and a few semi-professional outfits on plastic hangers so we wouldn’t look totally disheveled for Back to School Night. This year we get to work on Sarah’s classroom and prep her for a student teacher who will be with her all year and we get to set up my brand spanking new office in my renovated school. It feels exciting because we have some time to think about and plan for it for the first time in a while.

Just a few thoughts by the river. The river will keep on moving, flowing, changing, sweeping past and around tiny pebbles and huge boulders. It will keep going and forge a path and will both respond to and change the landscape around. We will keep on moving, too, but for now we will just sit here, and enjoy the breeze and think back a bit, and think forward a bit… with gratitude for the past and hope for the future.

Grateful by the River - Part One

2008-08-18T22:22:00.000-07:00

This is a doozy, so I decided to split it into two parts. This is the first part.

While I don’t want to one who takes his spiritual cues from Oprah, I overheard recently that she encourages people to keep a gratitude journal. I’ve always been a fan of gratitude, remembering that the Psalmist (via the band Waterdeep) says, “A grateful heart prepares the way for you, my God.” Today it’s easy to be grateful. I am sitting at the river in a quite comfortable portable aluminum hammock chair with my feet resting on a not-so-comfortable stacking lawn chair.

We have been acquiring the stuff that we always borrow from our family when we go camping, and our little site is outfitted with our trusty tent and screened shelter (a must here by the bug-ridden river), a table and our chairs. We set ourselves up with plenty of snacks, the Sunday Seattle Times, a small pile of magazines, games, DVDs, and a couple projects just in case we get a sudden burst of creative energy. The site has power, so we are also enjoying a few comforts of home, like the laptop on which I’m writing this, our wireless iPod speakers, and a little fan because it’s blazing hot. Not exactly hard core camping, but there is an outhouse here, so we are roughing it a bit.

My little dog Zoe (who by the way is quite the obedient dog lately in the no bark category) is next to me on her long chain. It’s just long enough for her to explore the concentric circle from my chair leg, an area full of flies and mosquitoes and delicious smells of other animals that she feels compelled to roll around in. It’s also just long enough for her to stand at the edge of the bank and listen to the river.

My wife is taking a nap (she’d like to think it’s a “power nap” even though it’s been longer than twenty minutes) in the tent. We’re up here at our friend’s property camping for the first time just the two of us. I had to drag her up here since this is the hottest weekend of the year (we’re talking record setting), but I think she’s having a decent time. If nothing else, she sure is enjoying watching me sweat my brains off in this hot and humid weather. Just a bit ago she had me (sorry for the mental image) get down to my scivvies and take a little swim in the river. I have been cool ever since, which is a miracle considering how hot I was prior.

Sarah really is the perfect woman for me. She gets me like no one else. She loves getting my goat, and is quite good at it. She empowers me and supports me and yet she can be tough as nails, which sometimes I need. We taught summer school together (that’s a blog post all on its own) these past two weeks, and even though they were crazy circumstances, I kept finding myself eating out of her hands as much as the kids were. She is unpredictable and hilarious and competitive. We did a Mission:Impossible theme with our classes and I kept going into her room as a spy to see what good stuff she was doing with her kids. I always tell people that as a teacher myself and an aspiring principal, I couldn’t be married to a bad teacher. These two weeks confirmed what I already knew: that I am married to an excellent, caring teacher. So I’m grateful for Sarah and for her daily love for me.

I’m grateful that even though this summer went fast and was full of lots of school and work and projects, we did have some bright moments. Moments like:
- hosting friends for meals out on the patio, playing cards and sitting around the
fire
- camping with the Sturlaugson side at Kalaloch in the Olympic National Park (our
second annual after renewing this tradition last year)
- going yard sale-ing on bright summer mornings and getting some fun stuff for our
home, Sarah’s classroom, and my office
- being home just the two of us, something we haven’t gotten as much of since our
roommate moved in in February (he leaves in a few weeks)
- Fourth of July at the beach house with the fam and going crabbing
- visits from my folks who will always drop anything to come see us
- having our first huge, crazy Barn Sale in June
- impromptu picnics (okay it was take out from a sandwich place) at Jennings Park
- finishing or getting further on a few things around the house, especially the
kitchen
- helping our sweet niece Grace celebrate the milestone of her own bedroom by
shopping, painting, refurbishing, arranging, and personalizing her room
- planting a new lawn that is not quite lush but is getting there despite being
planted in the heat of summer. This rain has helped.

A neighborly day for a beautywood…

2008-07-01T09:37:00.000-07:00

One thing I have always loved about my mom and dad is how they reach out to get to know their neighbors. It didn’t matter where we lived or for how long, they always went out of their way to get to know the people who lived around them. When we were kids we lived on a great street in a great neighborhood. It even sounds charming: Northeast 24th Street. (Okay, maybe it’s just nostalgia that makes it sound so good. My apologies.) There were probably 75 houses just on our long street, and we knew seemingly every one of them, from the Langs and Wilcoxens on one end to the Hulberts and Skinners on the other. We all played together at Glencoe Park and helped celebrate each other’s birthdays and were at all the same skate parties that mom and dad organized for our elementary school.

Right now my folks live in a townhouse where they share a front yard with symmetrical house next door. In their ten or so years there they have been next door neighbors with a young couple with one then two kids, then a Eastern European family (who my younger brother was just sure was tied to the mafia) with two teenage daughters, and now there is a multigenerational Korean family. They have held their babies, brought them cookies, watched their place when they were away, and said goodbye when they moved on to another neighborhood. What did they get in exchange? Beyond the occasional plate of cookies or a piece of neat furniture when they moved, beyond the semi-creepy Lucite statue of Jesus on a lighted stand that spun and the out of place bottle of super expensive send-from-the-homeland Vodka, they got a neighbor out of the deal.

Quite simply, they engaged with them, which is something I was hoping would happen when we brought our little piece of real estate heaven here in Snohomish County. Sarah and I knew several of our neighbors at our little house in Lake Stevens and they all loved Sarah for being her witty and creative self, but half of them we got to know just before we moved. It’s amazing how putting a For Sale sign in front of your house gives people the green light to stop and chat. It’s an entirely different thing to buy a house with a reputation. Everyone in this neighborhood (and beyond) seemed to know this house and barn. Either they were still torqued because the teenage son had tagged their car or fence or window with “Mortal” or “MOB” or “Grim” or they were tired of the semi-constant flow of riff-raff up and down their street or (my favorite) was the neighbor directly behind us who said, “Don’t get me wrong, I like Eric Clapton. I just don’t like Eric Clapton blasting on repeat at three in $%$#&$* morning.” The cop who stopped by our big barn sale the other day said that multiple times he was propositioned to buy drugs when he was running sans uniform. They are all glad that we are here, and that slowly but surely we are fixing the place up.

This is all to say that I had a day yesterday of engaging in conversation and pleasantries with neighbors: Trent next door who is contemplating a move back home to the Midwest, a very earnest couple from down the way who were so grateful for me cleaning up in front of the barn, Bernie and Ronnie who always stop to chat it up and spin a yarn or two about the former owners of the house… I had this moment where I felt connected in the neighborhood, and known in some way which is a beautiful feeling.

If you want to get to know your neighbors, I have a plan that has seemed to work pretty good for me so far. It goes like this:

1. Be outside as often as possible. Keep your door open. Say hi to people when they walk by because most likely they will be the same people who walk by every day.

2. Have a dog. I always felt a little out of it hanging out on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle when I lived there not having a dog. Everyone was so urban and so canine friendly and would have conversations all about their dogs. The dogs would be sniffing one another’s privates and the humans would just watch on lovingly. I am now totally in the loop on that whole angle when Zoe’s out or I take her on a walk. I have gotten to know several people simply because of our little Jack Russell.

2. Look for needs. I will admit I have been on the receiving end of this many times. Yesterday I went to ask our neighbor Karen if I could borrow a wheelbarrow and she ended up also loaning us two of her empty green yard waste bins. It was a simple way to help, but it was like manna from heaven on a day when my landscaping project exceeded the space in my big green bin. I did get to pass on the love, though, when a newly driving teenager blew out the tire on his lowered Civic hatchback right in front of our barn and his mom came to help him change his tire. He was as overheated and frustrated as I can get when I am out there working away, so I went and grabbed a few bottles of water for him, his mom and his nagging little brother.

3. Have your iPod on – it’s like playing hard to get. You will find out which neighbors really like you if they motion you to take them out and engage in conversation. Plus, like I’ve said before, those sweet white ear buds help you pass the time away when you are working.

4. Ask people their names and then remember them. This is a craft I have been working on since my days as a camp counselor when I challenged myself each week to get to know each of our seventy-odd campers by name. It’s also a skill that I’m working on honing at school. We have about 700 kids at my school, so I’m not there yet but am working on it. The second part of this is to ask the person if you forget their name. They feel honored that you care, so they forgive the forgetting part. The third part I’m not so good at: telling people when they have your name wrong. Bernie who walks his Scottie dog by our house at least twice a day thinks I am Brian but he says it so confidently that I don’t have the heart to correct him.

5. Be as sweaty as possible when meeting neighbors. Make sure you have worked in 80+ degree weather for at least four hours and that you are soaked through to the bone. If possible have your white T-shirt and your bald head (if applicable) covered in dusty dirt. This makes you appear hard working and approachable. It starts you out humble, and who doesn’t like humble?

Follow the sure fire plan. Get out there, wherever you live, and get to know the people around you. It has helped me feel grounded here in Marysville on our little street. It has helped me be a little like my mom and dad, reaching out and enjoying the fruit of engaging in relationships with strangers who share a little piece of earth with you. Plus I think Jesus said something about neighbors…

From Luke chapter 10 (NIV):

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
"What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?"
He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"
"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"
In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins[e] and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'
"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"
The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."
Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

Amen? Amen.

Signs of Summer

2008-05-19T06:41:00.000-07:00

We had some heat this weekend, and it was welcome in that uniquely Seattle kind of way. People pulled out their pasty whites and dusted off their sunglasses and pondered elaborate outdoor furniture groupings, even though we have about 25 days a year where it breaks 70 degrees. I bought into all of it this weekend…it really was gorgeous…blue skies…hot but not miserable…a good excuse to dust off the fans and bring out the old board shorts and enjoy semi-frozen mango scooped straight from the skin.

We took a personal day on Friday, so our weekend started early on Thursday afternoon. We got some unintentionally hot teriyaki and enjoyed it (with a generous glass of milk) over a few DVRed episodes of our favorite shows. We slept in then headed out into the sun. We spent some time in the sun around Marysville and Snohomish then came home to plant some plants, trees, and flowers around the house. We enjoyed a delicious lunch out (who would have thought that butternut squash lasagna would be so tasty?) then had the father-in-law over for dinner so we could work on a new flyer for their house that’s on the market. Anyone looking for a high-end Victorian on an acre and a half conveniently located in the Snohomish/Lake Stevens/Everett area?

On Saturday we went yard saling with Kim and Drew and found a pair of awesome tufted side chairs, one of which has taken up residence next to the window in our living room. We also found our way to Subway, which is still offering a footlong sub for $5, not a bad deal and way better than other convenient food. We worked on some projects around the house, inside and out, and ended the day with those great SNL reruns they play on E! earlier on Saturday nights. The best part of the day, which I almost forgot, was a quick little nap in the hammock with Sarah, listening to the Farmhouse playlist on our iPod – Eva Cassidy, Chris Rice, The Martins, and Sarah Groves lulling us as we swayed back and forth in the breezy shade. Gotta love it. We then got to work, creating new business cards and menus for Sarah’s sister’s hair salon and Sarah looking up ideas for a landscape plan for our currently half torn up lawn.

This morning I woke up early and Zoe and I took a l-o-n-g walk. We explored that park I keep mentioning and walked down the world’s longest, straightest sidewalk with the sun beating down on my bald head. The sweat was beading down and all I have to keep it out of my eyes is my poor defenseless eyebrows, so it was an uphill battle. At a couple points, I felt like Clark Griswold walking through Death Valley in National Lampoon’s Vacation. But we made it home and it was worth it. I enjoyed a cup of my favorite new coffee, Starbucks Pike Place Blend. It’s smooth and smells delicious and is perfect with just a bit of fat free half and half and a single packet of Splenda. Now I know that there are all kinds of local/organic/fair-trade/straight-from the-fields places that sell delicious coffee that’s great, too, but frankly they don’t have a store located conveniently in every strip mall and larger grocery store. They also don’t have those delicious Petite Vanilla Scones for 75 cents, thankyouverymuch. And hey, as my friend Jami can attest to, Pike Place Blend is certified good stuff according to Conservation International.

When I got home and Zoe and I plopped ourselves on the couch and floor respectively, Sarah treated me to our favorite breakfast of Joe’s Special (eggs, sausage, spinach, red onion, parmesan cheese) and fruit salad. She also treated me to two other great meals today, all of which were enjoyed outside. It was very 1950s (that was for you, Jen.) We piddled around the house, planted a few more things, and created a really cool planter for the table for our patio area. This weekend really was Pimp My Patio when I look back on it. Pictures will come once we weed out the flower boxes and get that darned hot tub working. Anyone handy with a CalSpa?

This is the home stretch. We have four weeks left of school – report cards, paraprofessional evaluations, field day, all-school BBQ, packing up an entire elementary school, talent show, a few dozen second graders to do the DIBELS test with 1:1 in the coming week, and anything else we can try to cram into the end of the year. This weekend was our time to spoil ourselves with fun stuff and time to choose whatever random projects we wanted to do. This taste of summer was a teaser, but it feels more like a deposit. It feels like a promise that days are coming when the sun shines consistently, flip flops are a daily given, and the pace slows down just a bit. From here until mid-June it’s Go Time. In these coming weeks, my prayer will be that we would finish well – that all of the learning and relationships and work would culminate in a time that honors people around us, our little ones especially, and that ushers us calmly in to a different pace for a few weeks.

Bring the day, Lord.

Mystery of Mercy

2008-05-11T21:40:00.000-07:00

I love my iPod. It’s nothing fancy - just a Nano that’s a couple years old - but it serves me well. It has no fancy graphics or color screen or album art, but it does have many of my favorite songs all in one slim little amazing plastic contraption. It’s my iPod since Sarah got her own. We are both very happy with the arrangement. She can have her unique mix of ghetto booty music and singable tunes from all kinds of singers, and I can have my acoustic stuff that makes me smile and think and worship. My favorite time to use it is while mowing the lawn. There’s something good about being in nature and listening to music.

There a couple issues with this practice. One is that you have to have it turned up pretty loud to hear over the mower, so when you stop mowing for a bit you think your brain just might explode from how loud it is. Two (and this is the problem I had using my WalkMan on my paper route back in seventh grade) is I sometimes forget that it’s a bit strange for me to be singing when no one but me can hear the music. For instance (and this is completely hypothetical) I might be attempting to harmonize with an Andrew Peterson song and realize that I am singing VERY loudly and not necessarily in tune when an unsuspecting neighbor is walking by and I might just feel like a complete dork. Still, I love it and it is a sign of spring for me to be out there in my grubs working on the lawn.

This afternoon after a family Mother’s Day extravaganza with both our families and our sister in law’s family (35 in total) I came home and started mowing. The lawn was in desperate need of a sheering, and I’m pretty sure I heard it say thank you (ital) a couple times. I shuffled the songs and kept being in awe of how every tune seemed to be so apropos to my circumstances lately. Each song connected with some event or person or feeling or failing of the past week or so, and I was grateful for the company as I walked back and forth, back and forth throughout our large-ish lawn. One song in particular seemed to sum up my feelings lately. It’s a reminder of the contrasts of trying to live a life of faith. It’s not a song of victory so much as a song of reality. It’s a song that asks “Why me?” in a grateful not pitiful way.
I know that there are some readers, my wife and brother included, who tend to tune out when I include long lyrics or poems within a post, so to help them I have included a link to the song that you can listen to instead of just reading the lyrics. As is always the case with music, hearing the vocals and the instrumentation add to the experience. So enjoy then keep reading…

I am the woman at the well, I am the harlot
I am the scattered seed that fell along the path
I am the son that ran away
And I am the bitter son that stayed

My God, my God why hast thou accepted me
When all my love was vinegar to a thirsty King?

My God, my God why hast thou accepted me
It's a mystery of mercy and the song, the song I sing

I am the angry man who came to stone the lover
I am the woman there ashamed before the crowd
I am the leper that gave thanks
But I am the nine that never came

My God, my God why hast thou accepted me
When all my love was vinegar to a thirsty King?

My God, my God why hast thou accepted me
It's a mystery of mercy and the song, the song I sing

You made the seed that made the tree
That made the cross that saved me
You gave me hope when there was none
You gave me your only Son

My God, Lord you are
My God, my God, Lord you are
-Mystery of Mercy, Caedmon’s Call (from the album Back Home)

There are a lot of things that I feel like I am not doing well right now. A lot of things that I am doing that are not important. A lot of important things that are left undone. This song is a reminder tonight, at the end of one week and the beginning of another, that any doing is not of my own doing. The work of my hands that I asked God last week to establish is done through the grace and knowledge of God. I will play the part of the hero at times and the part of the beggar at others, but in either case God is there. God is there accepting me even when my offerings are “vinegar.” That is good to remember, but I pray tonight that my offerings and my acts will be more and more good and right and honest and true and brave and in the full light of reality. I pray that sin’s bricks and sin’s shame will give way to the open doors and clearer paths of doing things right the first time. I pray that I will develop the kind of daily character that says Yes to the right things and a decisive No to the things that break the heart of God and the heart of those around me.

The mysterious aspect of mercy is something Caedmon’s Call sings about in another song that I think I’ve written about before, one that says, “You’re the only one who knows my secrets…the only one…Still you’re the only one who’ll never leave and I wake up to this mystery.” Tonight I am grateful that I don’t have to understand that, that I just get to say Yes to it. I get to say Yes and Thank You for the mercy to get another chance when I clearly SO don’t deserve it. I’ll leave us tonight with the good words of the Collect that’s part of the communion service I grew up with. They are haunting and hopeful and good words for a night like tonight:

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Gaining Wait

2008-05-05T00:00:00.001-07:00

Those of you who have known me for a while know that I am a bit lighter man than I used to me. I am still what many would consider chubby, but I am considerably smaller and a bit healthier than I was for the majority of my life. I haven’t really taken up exercise in any way remotely close to a regimen, other than mowing the lawn and walking the gravel between classrooms on our temporary campus on a regular basis. I go through phases of being really hardcore about avoiding the snacks in the staff room, but since about Christmas I have packed on a few pounds that lie decidedly in the love handle area and in this strange pooch-like swelling just above my belt line.

If you’ve made it this far in the post, you’ll be happy to know this post really isn’t about that, though. It’s about gaining wait in the patience, one-thing-at-a-time sense. Today’s a good day to think about these things because it was kind of an overwhelming day. It was beautiful, and Sarah and I got to do a photo shoot for some friends and colleagues at our new favorite park. It was good. She has a great eye and makes people feel really comfortable. We came home and enjoyed the breeze on the front porch for a few brief moments. But in between it was these little reminders here and there about all that needs to be done. I unloaded some stuff into the barn today which serves as our garage and was totally visually overstimulated by stuff that’s ready for the big yard sale that’s coming up sometime soon, furniture that needs to be refinished, the new tools I’ve barely used, and remnants of a recent project. Don't even get me started on our yard, which cleans up okay with a lower case "o" but one day later is filled with mole hills and dandelions that multiply overnight.

I went back inside and saw my orange school bag sitting in the den, full of my books and binders of things yet to do for this quarter at school. I started working on some desktop publishing jobs that are great because they bring in some extra income, but I am starting from scratch on them since the Big Computer Crash of ’08 so they seem epic. Then my mind wanders to tomorrow and returning to work and all that needs to happen there in the next 30-odd school days. My mind starts reeling.

Where is my faith in the midst of this? Yes, I know that in the end “all things will work together for good” and that there is a happy ending in the biggest sense, but it’s hard to see that right now. We were watching an unnamed sitcom this weekend and this character was at her wit’s end and said she wished she just could fast forward her life to see that everything would work out okay. Sarah quietly said, “Me too.” I silently agreed. Things in the here and now can feel so big and insurmountable that it’s hard to know or feel or TRUST that things will work out okay.

So I want to gain some more wait. I want to grow in my patience. I want to grow in my ability to take things one step at a time, rather than clamoring for everything and now. Maybe it’s part of this instant culture I grew up in and am continuing to grow up in where we get things really fast and how we want it. I don't know. I do know that Sarah was in the kitchen today singing this song so beautifully that talks about waiting on the Lord. I can’t remember any of the words except “Wait…I say wait…Wait upon the Lord…” She was singing it so clearly and beautifully that it has stuck with me all night, even though the stress is still noticeable in my neck and shoulders.

The Bible is full of all these obvious verses about waiting and soaring on wings like eagles, but tonight I am praying these words from Psalm 90:17:

May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us;
establish the work of our hands for us –
yes, establish the work of our hands.

I need God to kick me in the pants sometimes, and to give me strength and courage at others, but tonight I am asking for his right-hand favor to REST on me. To find a home in this weary soul, so I can really see those around me, really see the created world as it was meant to be seen, and so I can be wise about the work of my hands.

I'm praying that this general downness that I feel late on a Sunday night/early on a Monday morning would be tempered by knowledge of the grace of God that surrounds me, that surrounds my sleeping wife and our tiny sleeping dog, that surrounds our marriage and our home and all that is our future. I want to feel that grace tonight, but I know I may need to wait. So I will wait in bed and look for it in the morning.

Good night, dear reader. And amen.

Rantin'

2008-04-29T07:09:00.000-07:00

There’s this section I love in The Sunday Seattle Times called Rants and Raves. They are a must read for me each week along with the Obituaries and the Target ad. They range from people raving about someone helping them without taking credit, to being honest when no one would have known, to paying for a stranger’s coffee. All the general pay-it-forward kind of stuff. Then there are the rants, about half of which are valid and make you frustrated as the reader. Today’s a rant kind of day. I got to work on time and was plugging away on some things when I heard a little “bink” from my Outlook calendar to tell me I had a meeting in fifteen minutes. Not a big problem, but I couldn’t drive over the district office (long story) so I relied on my sister-in-law who just happened to be (sucker!) dropping off her son at school. I had literally one thing I needed to do today, which was to create a schedule for an author visit we are having tomorrow. It’s one simple task and it should take about twenty minutes to do it. It took me literally all day because these pesky little people called children were in my office nonstop, and because I had to debrief that morning meeting which was frustrating to say the least. Thus the rant. Raves to come later…maybe.

That’s one rant down. The real rant for today, though, comes courtesy of my wife (who, by the way, is often full of raves as well). We have had it up to (picture my hands extending above my bald head) here with how our society sweeps in to help people who are at rock bottom. Now I am a teacher, and honestly believe in relevant social services that meet people’s needs, but I am also the guy who was kind of surprised to learn one day that it really wasn’t God who said “God helps those who help themselves.” I am a big believer in doing something to solve your problems. We live in a culture of victims and wimps. (There’s another post in here somewhere about what we as a society are teaching our kids about taking responsibility and having natural consequences.) If you watch enough help-people-through-TV-counseling-and-chic-design shows, you start to get a little miffed. You start to feel like our society values people getting to the worst possible state because that makes good TV and because they can swoop in and a) “counsel” you and b) redesign your home or start over from the drywall.

If you hit rock bottom, say, fill up seven fridges and two houses full of rotting food and As Seen on TV offers, or horde 3,000 pairs of shoes, then send us a letter and we’ll fix it and give you TWIN SUBZERO STAINLESS REFRIGERATORS! Rack up so much debt that there is no possible way you can get yourself out of it, and we got your back and you may just get A NEW TRUCK! Become a drug dealer because you have access to prescription drugs at work and we’ll throw in a new COMMERCIAL RANGE!

I feel like if the former owner of our house would have written in last May to one of these shows and said that she was going to have to sell her house because she used at work as a nurse and lost her license, because she pissed away her inheritance, because she had gastric bypass instead of even attempting to lose weight through her choices, because her home had become a flophouse for the most wanted in Snohomish County, because someone was whoring out a nearly underage girl in the barn, she would have been all set. They would have helped her kick the people out and refinish the floors and probably mount a TV in the wall behind a giant new soaker tub that we wish we had. Not okay, but good television.

Now I have to say that smattered in the midst of that are the genuinely worthy people who actually deserve something good to happen to them. They deserve a kitchen remodel. They deserve a brand new house with a flat panel TV in every room because of who they are or something beyond their control that has happened to them. They made it through Katrina, they adopted needy kids, they are left orphans or widows or widowers, they work at an after school program for underprivileged kids. They deserve it. There’s actually a whole show devoted to these folks other than Extreme Makeover Home Edition (the merits of which I have written about back in blog archives) one called Deserving Design on HGTV. Aside from the fact that Vern Yip puts a bowl of green apples in every room he does, it’s good stuff.

So where does this leave us this Tuesday morning, the morning after I started this post, this fresh new day with no rants as of yet? Wouldn’t you know, it leads us to a little hope and a little humility. God does help those who help themselves. And the sucky part is, he helps those who don’t help themselves at all. God helps those who scream a full-throated, “Help!” Or who whimper or whisper or sigh a tiny “help.” God helps those who he decides he is going to help. God helps me when I am at rock bottom. God helps Ryan the Ranter.

As I was thinking about all this in the shower this morning (I mean what am I going to do, wash my hair?!?) this line from The Message version of the Lord’s prayer kept coming back to me: set the world right. Here it is in context:

Our Father in heaven,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right;
Do what's best -- as above, so below.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
You're in charge!
You can do anything you want!
You're ablaze in beauty!
Yes. Yes. Yes.
- Matthew 6:9-13 - Luke 11:2-4 in Peterson’s The Message

So there’s hope today for Ryan the Ranter because God can set the world right. There’s humility because it’s not up to me to decide who gets help and how and when. There’s humility because I need to be set right. I don’t get to decide when and how I get help and for what, but I can pray that our good God, our Father who sees it all, will set the world right and make things here as they are in heaven.

Amen? Amen.

Can you do it in six?

2008-04-22T06:51:00.000-07:00

Could you tell the story of your life in six words?

Well, could you? I have yet to partake in many blogging community activities that have captivated many of my fellow bloggers such as the 10 on 10 photo essays, selling ads in the side bar, or fishing for comments by asking questions, but today I am asking for some reader participation. I got this idea from the good folks at Choice Literacy. They were inspired by folks at Smith College, who took their inspiration from Ernest Hemingway. Myth has it he was asked to write a novel in six words, and he came up with this:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Powerful, huh?

There are hundreds of these on the Smith site and others, among them:

I still make coffee for two
Got started. Learning how to finish.
Smart teacher listens to smarter student.
3 cultures cannot fit into 1
15 years without forgiveness from father
Not easy to walk through crowds
A mere six words? Not enough.
Done better than any teacher said
Cursed with cancer, blessed with friends
I still make coffee for two
Believed. Didn’t believe. Believed again. Repeat.
Born bald. Grew hair. Bald again. (And no, dear reader, this one is not mine.)
Don’t think too hard about this.
Believe six impossible things before breakfast
If only I had been chosen.

Like any good teacher, I wouldn’t ask you to try something I wasn’t willing to do myself. Here are my stabs at six word memoirs for my family:

For Sarah:
Life through lens all her own

For Me:
Sure hope I was grateful enough

For Zoe Dog:
Nervous energy translates into confident bitch

This work culminated in a book Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure soon available from Amazon. Bring on YOUR six word memoirs, friends. Commenting is easy, and you don't have to be a blogger to do it.

Simple Gifts

2008-04-13T21:58:00.000-07:00

The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was
is so we can tell them about our own. -Chuck Palahniuk

We are having one of those glorious and rare weekends where we had nothing on the docket when it started. We piddled around the house, went grocery shopping, watched Zoe play with her favorite new toy (a mini basketball that’s now decidedly lodged under the back porch), and just had some Time. It’s always good to slow down a bit and feel like you are choosing what you are doing. It helps you to be grateful for the little things. It helps you notice things a bit more that you taste, see, touch, smell, and hear. Here are a few of the things I noticed this weekend.

One of the first things that sold us on our house, aside from the strung out teenager in the hammock in back, was the covered front porch. It more than makes up for the smallish living room to have this fresh-air place where you can be when it’s raining. And thanks to the marvels of modern technology, I can actually post from right here, coffee in hand. On Saturday morning Sarah made a scramble and we ate it out on the front porch in hooded sweatshirts and our slippers.

Which leads me to another love. Round about Christmas time, I got sick for a couple weeks and was off coffee. I didn’t really even notice it was gone, and since then I have tried to enjoy coffee rather than need it. I am no longer a jerk if I don’t have some coffee before lunch. To be true, I usually have some at some point in the day, but I am less dependent on it, which feels good. Today I made a partial pot before church then had a couple cups over lunch. It was just standard diner fare, but it was satisfyingly hot and they had Splenda and half and half on hand, just like I like it.

Sarah and I are blessed to spend lots of time together lately. It’s funny how when you see a person a lot you can notice them a bit less. Having time to just be around the house this weekend and not be in Total Go Mode like we usually seem to be helped me to see this woman more: her love for music, how she is so easily pleased and amused, how she wakes up jolly in the morning, how she loves nothing more than being warm and will do just about anything to get in such a state, how she takes ordinary stuff and puts it together in unexpected and appealing ways. Lately I have been most smitten with how very little in creation is lost on her. She is amazed by the peanut and the plum. Seriously, she could talk your ear off for a good few minutes about how amazing these two things are and how God created SO MANY of them. And we, she says with a huff, are amazed by things like lightbulbs?!?

The flip flops made their spring debut this weekend. They exposed my for now real white feet to the sun (it was almost hot yesterday by most reasonable standards) as we stepped out for some quality yard saling, shopping, and picnicking. (My word processor liked neither the word saling or picnicking in the previous sentence by the way.) There is nothing better than sandals when your feet have been cooped up in unnatural shoes for several months. They were a symbol of the promise of summer and warm days to come. Praise the Lord.

The picnicking I mentioned before (I am just throwing in that word to spite Word at this point) was at this great park we discovered on Saturday. Jennings Memorial Park in Marysville is a place we’d driven by hundreds of times, but never gone down into. Turns out there is another entrance from another part of town, and that’s where the action is. We were pleasantly surprised to go there and find a barn much like our own, huge play structures, a community garden, a fishing pond, plenty of benches and tables, and in the end a great new place for Sarah to do photography. The whole place was so manicured and well laid out and people were so genuinely happy there on that first warm day of spring that we felt like it was 1952.

The sandals had to come off when I came home and used my new key-start lawnmower. There is nothing I hated more as a kid than trying to mow the lawn and not being able to pull on the thing at just the right angle and with just enough oomph to make it start. When we went hunting for a mower a few weeks ago, this was a non-negotiable. I love turning up the iPod and mowing the lawn in stripes. Our grass is by no means golf course, but parts of it are very satisfying to mow. Other parts require some sort of industrial mower or maybe some sort of bulldozer, but that’s for another time.

Today the rain came, and with it a bit of permission to just rest. We went to church and then Uncle Jerold invited us to lunch at the Twin Eagles Café in Snohomish. (Now I should tell you that Word just added the fancy thing over the e.) There was definitely not one of these on the sign at the Twin Eagles. Gerald goes to church with us and often invites to lunch. Today it worked out and he treated us to bacon and eggs, our new roommate Nate to a Reuben, and his adopted grandson Brian to biscuits and gravy. He also treated us to his senior moments, witty banter with the waitresses, stories about his next crazy lawn “art” invention. We came home and I tinkered around in the barn a bit while Sarah created some playlists for her new iPod, a fancy one with a colored screen (Lucky!) where you can see video and album art work in full color.

Some simple gifts, some things that I took time to notice, some time to be grateful. All good for this soul. Now it’s nearing bed time, and we have a bit more of a DVRed American Idol to watch. Lunches are packed, the car is cleaned out, we have clean laundry for the week, and all is well with the world. I hope that you had some weekend in your weekend as well.

Spring Break in Collages

2008-04-11T18:57:00.000-07:00

We began our spring break with a quick trip over the mountains to the tropical oasis known as Richland. We had a great time with Nicole, Bill, the lovable Luke and the whole Englehart clan. As with all good road trips the journey was a great as the destination.

On the way home from the TriCities I tried in vain to take pictures of barns in a timely manner as we sped past. These are some barns that may serve as inspiration for our own barn which is in need of a bit of cosmetic work.

When we returned we worked on giving our house some much needed curb appeal. The before shots show how haphazard things were before. We cleaned up our act by adding in some boxwood to form a hedge in front, and heather on the side.

All in all, a good week. We were blessed with great weather and many good times with family and friends.

Closure for Kathy

2008-04-06T20:50:00.000-07:00

I’m a big fan of closure. It’s why I would cry my eyes out on the last day of camp, it’s why I like when Sarah and I pray together at the end of the day (even though it doesn’t happen every night), it’s why even though Sarah hates them I still like watching some of the extra features on a DVD to keep the experience of the really good movie going, it’s why I love the Doxology or in lieu of that, a good benediction at the end of a worship service. It’s also why I like funerals. I really do. There are few things more sweet, okay bittersweet, than being in “so great a cloud of witnesses” celebrating together the life of someone who has lived a good life. And everyone has lived a good life in some way, to some one.

My friend Ryan and I once drove an hour and a half to attend the memorial of a good man whom we didn’t know all that well. We thought we might learn something about legacy. We certainly did. From each memorial I’ve attended throughout the years, mostly for older folks but a few painful ones for younger folks like my best friend growing up Scott who died this past fall, I have learned something about how to live a life in a way that matters. In education there’s a lesson planning guide called Understanding by Design that encourages you to “begin with the end in mind.” It’s called backward planning. You develop the enduring understandings and the concepts that are most important for students to remember at the end of the unit then you plan each lesson from there. There’s a whole blog post in that in relation to the Christian Walk, but really that’s what a good memorial service does for you: it helps you to think about the end. The Psalmist says, “Teach me to number my days aright…” Chris Rice sings, “Teach me the number of my days…” The memorial placard of that man whose memorial we drove an hour to attend reads, “I asked you for life and you gave it to me - length of days, forever and ever.” A beautiful thought – that we can ask God for life and we will get it! It may not be on earth, but Lord will there be life!

I grew up in a great church. I think I had the rare experience of really feeling like part of a church family. My parents were first generation Christians that were brought to faith by people from the Rainier Avenue Free Methodist Church, a smallish (about 100 people the whole time we were there) church in the middle of a very diverse, then quite poor neighborhood. My mom was the secretary and was on the fellowship (read: potluck! dinners!) committee and rocked babies in the nursery, my dad took up the offering and was a trustee. We all came for church on Sunday morning and again in the evening and on Wednesday night. If there was a work party we were there. If someone was moving, everyone showed up to help. If Mrs. Todd had extra zucchini we stopped by and lobbed the huge things in the back of our olive green Plymouth and headed home to make bread. Because we were such family, I feel like many of these people had a hand in raising me. They told me and my gaggle of brothers and friends to slow down when we ran through the hall of the church basement. They supported me on mission trips long after I was part of the church. They celebrated with me my graduations from high school and college. Many of them were part of our wedding that overcast day in September 2006.

One of these people was a woman named Kathy Fisher. She was what got me thinking about all of this in the first place. 99% of the time when there is a happening among the old church family, be it a 50th wedding anniversary, a death, a special church service, or a fundraiser for the now thriving church we hear about it through the grapevine. We happened to not hear of Kathy’s passing until after her memorial service, so I wasn’t able to drive down Rainier Avenue past the apartment where Grandma Annie taught me The Lord’s Prayer and past Franklin High School, my parents’ alma mater. I wasn’t able to see Ken in the sound booth in the back of the sanctuary where he’s been for a l-o-n-g time and I assume he still is. Saddest of all, I wasn’t able to gather together with others whose lives were touched by Kathy.

I have a few crisp memories of Kathy that I will share with you, for the sake of closure and because there are some good lessons hidden in them, I’m sure. Kathy was part of my life as long as I can remember. She was my Sunday School teacher for multiple grades and she took care of my younger brother at the church day care that she started and directed for many years. Kathy respected kids. She knew that we were old enough to handle big kid songs like This is My Father’s World. She explained phrases like “the music of the spheres” and “let me ne’er forget” to us in ways that made sense to us.

She talked to us about marching with civil right activists in the Midwest in the sixties as she taught us the song We Shall Overcome. Sitting in those painted wooden chairs in the church basement with my brother, Vanthong, Christy, David, and the other usuals in Sunday School, a mixed bag of socioeconomics, I thought maybe we will just overcome. She helped a pudgy white kid from the suburbs feel like he was part of the “we” in that song, which was no small feat.

The second memory is a bit less spiritual, but no less vivid. My parents have always been good about taking time out for themselves. When we were younger, before my older brother Chris was old enough to watch us himself, we went through a litany of sitters. Three boys can be hard to handle on a Saturday night when Charles in Charge was a rerun and we were tired of playing with our Legos. So when my folks left for a weekend trip to Canada, they called in the real reinforcement. Kathy showed up with a bag of things on a rainy (ominous) Friday afternoon. On Saturday we suckered her into letting us invite John and Mark come over and play. We romped around in the backyard – I’d say we were playing football, but let’s not kid ourselves here and act like I was part of an organized sport for longer than fifteen minutes – until I was a muddy mess. With everyone out there still playing, she insisted that I strip down to my Underoos. For a pudgy kid who insisted on locking the bathroom door in his own home, this was a nightmare. I pleaded but she stuck to her guns. No real lesson there, just fodder for a few counseling sessions. And it shows the kind of pluck Kathy had.

One of the most special times, though, was when I stopped by her little house just across the street from the church a few years ago. She lived there with her dear friend Naomi, and I stopped by one summer afternoon for a visit. They served me ice water and we chatted about everything under the sun, a bit of healthy gossip peppered throughout. She was a former teacher and she was sincerely interested in how my teaching career was going, what life was like for my students, and just when was I going to find that special lady of my own. She was there to see me join my wife with that "special lady" and was overjoyed and whooping it up as our little car sputtered away from the reception.

During that afternoon visit we also looked across the street at that building that was a second home to me for so many years. She told me about how things were going there, how they loved their pastors, how new people were coming all the time. What struck me from that conversation was how deeply invested she was in her church. She took a strong sense of ownership in it – as well she should have, having been a member for close to thirty years.

She was a Christian, and she was a member of Rainier Avenue Church, and she loved kids. That much I knew. What I didn’t know was the extent to which she suffered in her life. It never showed. Sure, in the later years she was in a wheelchair after a bad stroke, but she was still Kathy, as invested and caring and alive as ever. In reading her memorial program that Naomi sent my folks, I learned that she had bad eyesight, that she overcame a fearful and painfully shy childhood, a horrific traffic accident, ovarian cancer and multiple strokes. The lesson here is that you would never know it. You would never know pain was part of her story, but she used it to fuel her compassion for others, and in some strange and holy way despite the pain she felt incredibly fortunate. I feel incredibly fortunate that she befriended my family, and that she was part of the village that raised this child.

So that’s it. That’s my closure. And that’s my reminder today to begin with the end in mind. To think about the legacy I would like to leave for my family and my friends and colleagues and students.

In the Company of Children

2008-03-23T23:50:00.000-07:00

Adults are nothing but tall children who have forgotten how to play.
-Robin Williams, in Hook

I read a book a few years back that helped change my daily life as a teacher. It taught me about what literacy instruction could look like in an authentic classroom, something that I could write a LOT about, but will spare you (for now.) It was titled In the Company of Children. This title grabbed me and gave me words for how I spent each of my 180 days in the classroom during my years as a classroom teacher.

It is a strange thing indeed to spend one’s day in the company of children. The colleagues who I work with and for, these little people with whom I meet, walk around campus, teach in small groups from a little plastic tote with a mini whiteboard, whose parents I call, who I write emails about and make plans for – are three to eleven years old. They are my colleagues and my clients, and in many cases my little friends. I wish I could introduce them to you one by one, using their real names and their pictures and their crazy mannerisms.

There’s the boy M who showed up at the little table in my office with his pizza lunch last week and motioned for me to sit, as if our little lunch meeting were a regular occurrence that I simply forgot about. There are the little trios of preschoolers holding hands heading to the bathroom who wave to me and talk to me through the window about Little Bear from the story I read them last week.

There is the wonderful and strange little girl who sat in the chair in the office for the first hour of the day on Friday and refused to move or talk for the better part of an hour and then who snuck out like a cat when I turned my back. There’s the little E who we ran into last week who was announcing to the whole of the Lake Stevens Target that Mr. Henderson, “The PRINCIPAL of the PREschool” was there. There’s the oblivious Kindergartner who has no minor hint of a clue when he comes to my office that he is in trouble, despite what I say and do. He is happy to be at school and he just got his haircut and do I know his big sister and what is that that toy bear doing in the window and when is recess gonna start and look there’s my teacher she has a dog do you have a dog like mine?!?

There is the little man D who will leave our school this week for a special classroom down the street for children with behavior challenges. He was my first real friend at this school, and part of me feels like I am failing him as he leaves, and the other part is rejoicing that this could be his real chance to get help and feel successful in school. I will miss his air drumming, his real drumming with pencils and rulers and carrot sticks. I will miss hearing how I completely ruin his freaking life everytime I pick up the phone to call his mom. I will miss him telling me again that he didn't get to go in the HOT TUB because of me and making him be in trouble. I will miss the compliments he gives even when he is angry and his shy sidehugs of apology when he knows he crossed over the line the day before in his anger. I will miss my conversations with his mother as a fellow stakeholder in his life.

It is truly a privilege to spend one’s day in the company of children. As a classroom teacher I would often say that no two days were ever the same, and no day was ever boring because of the 25 little variables that would walk in the door each morning. I now feel the same with the 700-some variables that ride the bus or show up in the family car at 9:15 each morning.

There is a JOY to my work with them. I often do not see kids at their best, and to be honest I know best those kids who just can’t seem to make the good choices their daily pattern. Still there is joy in their laughter and smiles, in their creativity in breaking school rules and disrupting classroom decorum. There is joy when J and C bring in their clipboards thick with daily behavior contracts at lunch to reveal rows of smiley and straight faces highlighted showing their positive choices for the day. There is joy when one of them can get a sad face highlighted and still "turn it around" and make it through the day. There is joy when a conflict among friends is settled. There is joy when this little ray of light with blonde curls grabs your hand unannounced as you walk from her classroom to the office and tells you all about her “siwwy baby bwuther” named "Ephan." There is joy when you get to work with some big kids with a Mr. or Ms. before their name to help solve a problem for one of these children or connecting their family with much-needed resources.

There is also a palpable BURDEN to this work. In dealing with children, you deal with families – with older siblings who bear the burden of childcare for younger, with grandparents raising a second generation without so much as a thank you from their birthparents, with adults struggling to keep a job, with parents frustrated with the system and weary from trying to navigate it. There is a burden when kids are acting out just prior to a school break because they are nervous at best and afraid at the worst for time away from the safety of school. There is burden in the anger that comes out in harsh words and fists and kicks. There is a burden dealing with teachers who feel a lack of respect from kids and their parents. There is a burden in having to call a parent to let them know their child can’t come to school tomorrow. There is an even greater burden in asking them to leave their work to come pick up their struggling son or daughter right away. There is burden in looking at lists of raw data on childrens’ reading abilities or math skills or science knowledge and seeing your building fall behind the district and state average in a few categories. There is burden in knowing that we only have this group of fifth graders for three more months before they enter the strange landscape that is the middle school. There is burden in knowing that sleep will be interrupted tonight for some of these little people from a police visit, from mom getting slapped around, from dad shooting up, from hungry tummies.

Still, there is HOPE in my work with them. I truly believe that people can change and that despite many odds stacked in their favor that there is hope for good things to come for these little ones. I take comfort in the fact that we provide a safe, consistent place with safe, consistent adults for these kids. I have to search a bit for the hope when I see a certain handful of students waiting for me in the chairs in the lobby as a return from another part of campus. But I feel it again when two girls who have been long rivals and whose parents are on the outs from a neighborhood dispute decide to be secret friends and not let their girlfriends stir up drama any more.

- - -

Joy. Burden. Hope… Those seem like Easter words, don’t they? In this last hour of Easter Sunday, I know that the joy I see as I work in the company of children is best seen through eyes of faith. That that burden is bearable because of the cross. That the hope is there because of the good conquering over the evil in a particular place in history, and on Monday, March 23, 2008 when the bill rings and classes start. God revealed in real human history? Hallelujah! God in the here and now? Double Hallelujah. Hallelujah for the joy. Hallelujah in the burden. Hallelujah with real hope.

Of Course

2008-03-16T23:20:00.000-07:00

How you spend your days is, of course, how you spend your life.
-Annie Dillard

Sometimes I look back on a day, and I wonder what I did. I surely haven’t gotten to that beautiful two column to-do list I made at work on January 28th, somehow hopeful that on the first day of my thirtieth year on earth I’d magically have days that were productive in some way that could be recorded on a list or checked off in little boxes. (Oh naive Ryan, hoping beyond the evidence that things could change…) My days for reasons good, bad, or neutral are unpredictable. I can make even what I consider to be a manageable list first thing in the morning - sitting in my office with just the lamps on and not the overhead fluorescent light – but by the time the day starts in earnest there are seven other things that are now on the top of that list and I hit the ground running.

It’s because of the unpredictability of my days, and the urgent-taking-place-of-the-important that those words from Annie Dillard have haunted me the past few days. I keep thinking about the tone of her words. I can read into them hope – Look at the great days I am having and how they add up together to make my rich life! Or I can read into them something a bit more frightening: Look at the days I am having! Look at this ridiculous day and this stressful week! Add these all up and you call that a life?!? It’s made me think about how I spend my days, and what they all mean.

Let’s take last week as an example. I attended a few meetings assessing students’ progress toward special ed learning goals. I talked to parents upset about a bus driver. I read a sweet story to a few classes of preschoolers. I got worked over by a parent who was breaking our parent pick up area traffic regulations and she got me so turned around that by the end I told her we “had her back.” I was called a "fat retard" by an eleven year old. I “stole” a “frickin’ lunch recess” and “ruined" the "stinking life” of a young man who I care about more than he could possibly know. I talked some parents off the ledge and reminded them that the reason these bad choices of young ones frustrate us is that we love them so much and that in the end we can’t and aren’t going to give up on them. I had question-laden discussions about the best ways to get these kids in our care to become readers and writers and real learners. I facilitated a meeting of young politicians serving in our elementary school ASB and tallied their votes for our next spirit day. I talked with a colleague for whom I have great respect but who I don’t know very well yet. I learned the names – by heart, finally – of the last few of our 70 odd staff members. I told some stupid jokes on morning announcements. I made sure to add in Monday’s announcements the name of a child whose birthday we missed last week.

The hopeful part of those words from Annie Dillard tell me that yes, even though things may be unpredictable, if you add up these meetings and conversations and lessons they mean something. They add up to something good: caring about kids, giving support to teachers, trying to learn how to be a leader and do things that matter. Does it really matter that my Outlook calendar can be blank at the end of a day due to a lack of structure? Does it mean anything that I have a stack of mindless paperwork that I am behind on? Maybe not. Maybe things need to be more planned out, maybe more lasting things could take place if it was all laid out and then followed to a T, but I don’t think so.

I think the beauty and the hope for Mr. Henderson is the same beauty and hope I try to offer each day to kids who leave my office with a carbon copy of a discipline referral sealed carefully with a red sticker that says “Please Sign and Return” on the outside when I say to them: “It’s a fresh start tomorrow.” I have to believe that for them. I have to believe it for me. In this week leading into Easter, I have to believe that the sun is coming up tomorrow as a promise that things are new. That all is well. That the days I am filling up with stuff and words and activity will add up, bythegraceofGod, into a life that is worth something.

Amen? Amen.

P.S. Props to my wife Sarah who has agreed to enhance my posts with some of her pics and graphic work each week. Viva La Sunday Post!

Reading in Isaiah

2008-03-09T22:57:00.000-07:00

A little confession here...sometimes I tune out during sermons. The good news is I am an assistant principal who busts kids all of the time for being "off task" so I have some good coping skills. If I have lost a pastor somewhere a few PowerPoint slides ago, I grab the pew Bible or the hymnal and read a bit. If I grab the former, I usually drift toward the book of Isaiah. There's something about this book that's so full of HOPE. I love that in the Old Testament - the part of my Bible that's often like the closet in the house you forget about - there are all these hints about good things to come. I love the Jesus hidden in this book. It's beautiful like Revelation but without all of the confusing Left Behind stuff. It's no surprise that we'd find so much Jesus Hope in a book written by a prophet who's name means "The Lord saves." I love that Isaiah was written during a difficult time when the Assyrian empire was on the rise and the decline of Israel. It makes me feel a little better reading it when things are tough. During a recent sermon when I was distracted, I started flipping through Isaiah. I flipped through the familiar part where Isaiah responds to the seraphs and the voice of the Lord and says, "Here I am. Send me!"

I love that you can read Isaiah before Christmas and before Easter. Isaiah points to Jesus in each of them.
He points to Star of Bethlehem:

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;
on those living in teh land of the shadow of death a light has dawned...
For unto us a child is born,
to us a son is given..."
-Isaiah 9:2,6

In these days and weeks since Christmas, Jesus has confused and impressed the old men in the temple, he's built a table or two, he's learned to be a good Jewish boy. His cousin John has walked his locust-eating self all over foretelling the arrival of his cousin/Lord. Jesus is all grown up and has done his years of ministry and we find ourselves at this point just before Easter. We get to chapter 25, after pages and pages of prophecy of destruction, and find the chapter heading 'Praise to the Lord.' We breathe a sign of relief and sing along:

"O Lord, you are my God,
I will exalt you and praise your name,
for in your perfect faithfulness you have done marvelous things,
things planned long ago."
-Isaiah 25:1

And a few verses later:

In that day they will say,
"Surely this is our God;
we trusted in him, and he saved us.
This is the Lord, we trusted in him;
let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation."
-Isaiah 25:9

It's easy for us to read this knowing all we know. It's easy for us to picture singing these words because we know that "UP FROM THE GRAVE HE AROSE with a mighty triumph o'er his foes..."
I am trying to remember the JOY of Easter and not take it for granted. I kind of took Christmas for granted this year. Not the presents or the traditions or the songs, mind you, but the real meaning of Christmas. I don't want to do the same with Easter. I didn't give anything up for Lent, and I missed out on getting the mark of the cross with ash a few Wednesdays ago, but I am trying to prepare my heart for Easter. There's lots more I could say about Isaiah tonight, and way more I could say about the specific words that Isaiah uses to point to Jesus on the cross. Maybe that will come next week. But for now, in these two short weeks until Easter, I offer you these words as a challenge and some HOPE for you...some fodder for your thoughts and prayers in the coming days:
This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says:
In repentance and rest is your salvation,
in quietness and trust is your strength..."
-Isaiah 30:15

(That's a real pregnant elipses there, so if you're curious what comes next, read the rest of the verse.)

The Case for Drapes

2007-12-03T07:26:00.000-08:00

I had a friend in my high school creative writing class who thought every story should begin, "So there I was minding my own business when all of a sudden..." My teacher Mr. Mitsui never outright denounced this practice, so I am going to use it in just this one instance.

So there I was last night at 11:30 last night minding my own business typing away on a portfolio product for my Master's class when there was a forceful series of knocks at the front door. Zoe jumped out of her bed and started growling, I just about knocked my glass of water onto my new district-owned laptop and nearly had some other leakage as well. I glanced over to the door to see a very tall man wearing freaky goggles and looking surly. Last night was really stormy and the porch light was off, so this was all even freakier. As I walked toward the door I immediately went into panic mode.

Anyone who gets a knock on the door at 11:30 on a Sunday night would be somewhere on the continuum of startled to soil-your-pants scared. I was at the point of telling my spleen to stay inside my body, trying to consciously control all bodily functions. Remember that this house has a shady past, and that this is the stuff we were worried about happening after we moved in. At this point, it mattered not that there were neighbors on all sides some of whom had living room lights on, and I could just decide to NOT open the door then hunker down and call 9-1-1. If he tried anything stupid, he'd at least get caught. I thought of Sarah sleeping upstairs and remembered that she could sleep through a hurricane or a crane lifting our four-poster bed through the roof if the temperature was just right and she had the right "heaviness" of blankets. I knew I had to do something.

So I did what any rational human being would do, in his pajama pants in his living room listening to Amy Grant's Christmas album: I started yelling "You go away!!!" waving my flabby arms around wildly. Once I said it once I liked how forceful it sounded, so I said it again a bit more stocatto: "You. Go. AWAAAAAYYYY!" Zoe went wild and was ready to do some serious damage to this stranger. As I was turning from the door to find my cell phone, I saw the larger-than-life goggled man reach for something in his vest. I should have hit the deck at this point, but I looked back and also realized that the man had a badge. What he grabbed was a flash light but it was one of those huge use-me-as-an-asp Mag Lites. I now had Zoe under one arm, the land line in my pocket, and my cell phone in my hand, ready to call. I flipped on the porch light and looked at his badge. He said, "The police know I'm here."

This alarmed me a bit because it meant he was not the actually the police, despite the fact that he had a badge, a reflective vest and those goggles that had to be issued by some sort of official agency, most likely the Navy Seals. He held up a police-looking paper that had a copy of a woman's address that listed our address as her place of residence. I had stopped yelling by this point so I could hear him say through the glass, "Sir, it's all right. I don't mean no harm."

I kept Zoe and the Phones at the ready and opened the door just a crack. Stupid, I know. He said he was a bail-bondsman looking for (Insert '80s Stripper Sounding Name Here) who lives at this residence. Images of Dog the Bounty Hunter and his burly wife flashed in my mind.

"No she doesn't LIVE HERE," I said. The only people who LIVE HERE is me and my wife. (I was not worried at this point about proper grammar.)

"Sir, do you know (Insert Said Name Here Again)?" said Freaky Goggle Man. "Do you know her whereabouts?"

I started sizing this guy up. The door was open a bit and the only thing keeping him from coming in was my bare size 8 1/2 foot and what to him was probably pretty offensive tunes about something "really" being "like a picture print by Currier and Ives."

I looked more at his badge and his vest which said something like, "DON'T SHOOT ME!! I SHOULD HAVE TAKEN THAT LITTLE CAESAR'S DELIVERY JOB AFTER ALL!" in size 852 font writing on the front and back. I am still baffled by that tiny badge, but it was comforting in some strange Cowboy and Indian Play Pack sort of way.

The man kept saying, "Sorry for startling you, sir. Sorry about that."

My spleen still intact, and a glint of humor in his eyes, I opended the door a bit more and told him that no Starla/Ginger/Sheena/Swoozy/Kitty did not live here, but did look familiar from when we were putting offers on the place last spring and this summer. He asked if she had any aliases. I said I just knew her as the lady by the hammock smoking with the realtor.

He said he was relieved to hear that she didn't live here, because he thought it was so odd that "a junkie like her" would live in a house so "festooned for the holidays." At this point Goggle Man had completely earned my trust. He used a multisyllabic word that in an instant told me he was much smarter than your average pizza man and he had pretty much just complimented me and my wife on our recent holiday decorating, thankyouverymuch.

We had a nice conversation about the house, and just how much land we had, and what we were going to use the barn for (and what the former owners probably used it for, "Heh-heh.."). He apologized about 50 times for scaring me so badly, and at this point I could laugh about it. I wished him good luck in finding Stripper Named Junkie and he said good luck with my homework.

We are getting drapes, stat.

The Bedroom: Before and After

2007-11-13T07:44:00.000-08:00

Eatyourheartout, HGTV. Move over, Extreme Home MakeOver. Sarah has waved her magic wand and her pudgy little elf helper has done some of her bidding and we have transformed this:

into this:

You'll notice our design concept is conspicuously absent of the beer fridge next to the armoire. We also have done without the fancy ash tray on the dresser in the foreground, the adult paraphernalia above the TV, and the mysterious splattery goo on the walls.

Next stop: guest room.

A Nonproductive but Good Weekend

2007-10-14T19:48:00.000-07:00

We have so much to do around here. The line of blue painter's tape in the living room is absolutely killing my father-in-law Mel, the yard looks like the Wild Kingdom, the spare bedrooms are full to the gills of accessories and clothes yet to be unpacked or needing to be priced for another yard sale...and the days tick by with not much getting checked off either of our lists.

I am also in the middle of graduate school and have a stack of books to read between now and early December that is bigger than my head. None of that was touched this weekend save a couple chapters on Friday night after Sarah went to bed early since she was sick...

We didn't even get to the movies we rented...

So it was a weekend of random happenings and nothing really getting done, but somehow it was still good in the truest sense of the word.

Matt and Mandy had their baby (Mandy did most of the work) Leta early Saturday morning. She was six weeks early so she gets to be under a sweet blue light for a while. Mom, Dad and baby are all doing well considering the circumstances. I'm sure Mandy will have pics soon at her site on the sidebar.

Matt and Tiffany, bro-and-sister-in-law champs of the world backed their horse trailer up to the pergola we purchased for the wedding and brought it seven miles up the back way from Snohomish. The strange looks they received from people made it all worth it. One woman stopped eating her sandwich and stared.
Maybe she was getting hungry for a gyro...that's what they decided they looked like driving with a portable Parthenon on a horse trailer, the GyroMobile Then since the whole famdamily was here we went to a fave restaurant up the street. Long wait, but well worth it.

We're going to a new church that's two blocks from our house, and there are several younger couples there. Sarah mentioned at a gathering last week that we were still worried about safety here considering all the crazy things that took place by a whole gaggle of drugged characters. They came over tonight - we're basically strangers at this point - and prayed for us and our house. One more good reason to be a part of the Family of God. We are looking forward to getting to know these guys better in the coming weeks and months.

I leave you tonight with these words from the sermon today, that always seem to ring true. Read these words from John 16:33:
These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have trouble, but take courage; I have overcome the world.

Good night.

The House: Before

2007-09-16T09:05:00.000-07:00

It all started with a paper shredder. One day I was sitting on the floor in our living room at our cute (read: walls closing in on us) house in Lake Stevens getting ready to shred our junk mail. For the third time that week when I opened that cabinet, the bin full of mail and assorted household goods fell on top of me. I was frustrated so I went to get something to drink. I had to do a feat of MacGyver-like engineering to remove a glass from the stack of glasses in the tiny cupboard. We decided that day that we needed to move. We also decided to enter into the most dramatic real estate transaction in the history of Snohomish County. We went to see one house that was a great price and close by. Of course they had just accepted an offer. Then we went a few blocks down the street and found a seemingly perfect place whose owners were going through a bitter divorce and who were currently on opposite sides of a Costa Rican jungle completely off the grid. There were a couple other houses that caught our attention but in the end we had to fall in love with the one with the most DRAMA, most STRIFE, most HEARTACHE and in the end the most RELIEVED JOY.

This is us in front of said house the day before we signed papers. This is a little deposit of happiness before you come with us on our journey called The Farm House:

When the house you are looking at says "needs your cosmetic TLC to make her shine" it means things like this:

There may be a young woman living in an attic up a ladder that comes down from the ceiling like in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. There may be evidence of said young woman in a smattering of Lee Press-on Nails, fake flower petals, cigarette butts, and the faint smell of cheap parfum.

In addition to the house, there might be a 1930s era barn full of auto body painting materials, beer cans, jerry-rigged wiring, a possible prostitution ring, and multiple saggy twin beds (but a heck of a lot of charm nonetheless!)

This is want might constitute a "night stand" in the teenage son's bedroom. Yummy.

On the other side of the barn there might be a little treat waiting for you called a dilapitated charter bus (!) You might make the owner pay a couple grand to have people come move it (requiring a special permit from the city) and you might have neighbors gathered around like the end of an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. This move also might happen the day before you sign papers, despite being promised multiple times that it would be moved or sold much sooner.

The luxurious master suite complete with beer fride, deadbolt lock on the door, and adult fare. Sweet indeed.

What you might see when you step inside the "1,900 square foot barn with loft for shop/studio/rental." Don't you worry, Dad painted over the nude done in spray paint in the corner under the stairs just before the nieces and nephews came over. We still do have a rule, though, to not sound out any words painted up in the loft.

The owners of your potential house might have a perpetual garage sale/flea market/junk pile with signs for weeks leading up to closing. We also got to know a great junk removal person named Smitty who removed 14 dump truck loads from the house, barn, and property.

Bon appetit! We held onto a little bit of the strange gravy like substance in the pot on the stove just for company like you!

A few other things to look forward to if looking at a cosmetic fixer:

You might have your mom find a crack pipe in the kitchen cabinet (and Auntie Phyllis might come over and want to smell it because she's "never smelled a crack pipe before."

You may inherit two of the boldest cats known to man who jump through broken window panes in a single bound, jump onto your driver's seat while you are unloading the groceries. (Please let us know if you'd like a loving Kamikaze cat. We have two for the taking!

You may have neighbors come over and introduce themselves and bring you jam and plums. You may have strangers drive by and say "thank you, thank you" for buying the crack house on their block.

The owners who couldn't seem to move a single piece of furniture until 24 hours before they had to be out somehow had time to paint over half the graffiti in the barn, causing you to call your realtor and ask if you were losing your mind of if, indeed, the White Power propaganda was now a wall of solid aqua paint.

You may request a list of police activity on the address in June and get a letter in mid-September saying they were still processing the request. Maybe they are running out of toner? Going through ream after ream of Dunder Mifflin?

But in the end, despite your better judgment and through much prayer and tears you might know that this is your house, that it's worth the drama. Images of the charm and the during and after are coming soon, dear readers.

Red Light, Green Light

2007-08-14T07:34:00.000-07:00

If ever there was a day for trust, God, it’s now
The sun came up like it was supposed to
It was a bit brighter than usual and I noticed it a bit more in the huge dew drops on the overgrown grass
But we will need more than the sun from you today
We will need your heart that trusts despite the evidence
We will need your heart that has loved us, trusted us despite the evidence
We are worried, fretting, anxious, nervy
We need the Rock part of you, God
We need the shelter us under your wings part today, God
We need your Son, Jesus, the in-the-trench-with-us God

So we say that we need more than the sun coming up
As a sign
As a promise
As a reminder
We want more – we want green lights and assurance and steady hope
We want to be rewarded for the right decisions we have made
We want to know our next ninety-nine steps

But we know that you want more from us than noticing the sun
You want us constantly needing you
Always relying on you
Daily not just asking for things but giving you the glory you deserve

Open our eyes to what you have done and are doing
Give us hopeful hearts for what you will do
Give us hope at red lights and denial and questions

Give us hope… help us love… despite the evidence

Zoe the Salty Sea Dog

2007-08-07T22:32:00.000-07:00

Our girl Zoe who is afraid of hardwood floors and cardboard boxes in the path of her food bowl was a certified CHAMP at the beach. She was jumping and running on driftwood and loved being off her leash for long periods of time. Wonders never cease.

Camera at arm's length...ready...one, two, go!

2007-08-06T21:59:00.000-07:00

Sleeping peacefully on the AeroBed

2007-08-06T21:55:00.000-07:00

The view from our tent

2007-08-06T21:53:00.000-07:00

The obligatory artsy beach paraphernalia shot...

2007-08-06T21:49:00.000-07:00

Learning to speak Dog...

2007-08-06T21:47:00.000-07:00

Me and our girl Zoe

Kalaloch, baby!

2007-08-06T21:45:00.000-07:00

We spent a few nice days away last week on the Olympic Peninsula. Here's a pic of the Sturlaugson/Henderson/Douglas clan (minus my brother-in-law Steve) on the beach. Thanks to Uncle Al for the great shot!

RL FloMASTER Lawn & Garden Polymer Funnel Top Sprayer Owners' Manual

2007-06-02T15:21:00.000-07:00

Warning: This post is not for the kids. Okay, we're sorry, but isn't this just about the funniest thing you have ever seen? We dare you to try to read the Assembly Instructions with a straight face. My favorite line is item A-2. Nuff said.
** You may need to doubleclick to make the image larger in order to fully appreciate the humor of said FloMASTER.

Fort Casey Field Trip Part Two: Brought to you by the crisp, refreshing taste of Diet Pepsi

2007-05-24T07:51:00.002-07:00

Fort Casey Field Trip

2007-05-24T07:47:00.000-07:00

Frail, Fearfully and Wonderfully

2007-05-21T21:51:00.001-07:00

We are frail
We are fearfully and wonderfully made
Forged in the fires of human passion
Choking on the fumes of selfish rage
And with these our hells and our heavens
So few inches apart
We must be awfully small
And not as strong as we think we are
-Rich Mullins

These words are always comforting to me during times when I'm reminded that life sucks sometimes, that things don't always feel easier and better because I believe in Jesus. There are a large number of people around me who are hurting - hurting from cancer, hurting from the pain of betrayal, hurting from disappointment, hurting from grief. I wish that I was immune to all the pain, or that I was not the source of some of it, but that's not the case. I am feeling to some degree the pain of grieving parents, fearful patients, and disappointed partners. And I am feeling the pain that I have caused. It was just a few years ago that I really noticed the phrase in the Communion liturgy that talks about the sin of omission:

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.

Through the mirror that is my wife, I am learning more and more that it is easy for me to do things that are outward and visible and quickly noticed. It is harder for me to do things that take some time, that aren't seen or immediately commented on. I need to cultivate wisdom into my life, the kind of wisdom that does the right thing because it is the right thing. I am also realizing that it is way easier for me to focus on the past and the present without as much thought on the future. I am praying for discipline in the here and now that opens doors in the future.

I am praying tonight for HOPE. For hope that knows the evidence to the contrary and still hopes. I am praying for hope for sick people, hurting people, and for myself. I am praying that this time things will be different. That they will wake up with more grace tomorrow. That the doctors' news will be hopeful. That there will be conversations tinged with possibility. That if it isn't that they'll be surrounded and held. That I will have the courage, the follow-through, the strength to do the right thing now so that the future can be different and easier.

Amen? Amen.

Spring "Break"

2007-04-08T20:50:00.000-07:00

This is the last day of our spring break, and we have been busy little monkeys. Here's a bit of an update...

We started off the week celebrating a respite from work with dinner out and the fine company of Will Ferrell and Jon Heder in "Blades of Glory." Amazing piece of cinema, my friends.

Just prior to break our computer called it quits and went out with a bang - literally with sparks and smoke. It was a sight to behold. Thus I am typing this post from our fancy new Dell. We are enjoying the new Windows Vista perks, but the Mac commercials are right about it always wanting you to confirm each move. We'll have to see if there's a way around that.

We woke up last Monday to SNOW. In April. I know... We decided that our outdoor projects might be impossible - things like staining the deck, planting flowers, touching up the exterior paint - so we took off for the beach house for a couple days. Frequent readers already know how much I love that place. Lately that love has spread to the whole of South Whidbey. We have found multiple great thrift/consignment/antique stores around there, and love the bargains we can find. (Do I sound like Mandy yet?)

We came back and hit the ground running with Project 1: Painting the Bedroom.

In typical Ryan & Sarah fashion we had to tweak the paint color to get it right. The first one was called Granny Smith, and it literally glowed on the wall. Our trusty downtown Lake Stevens True Value took it back like a champ and gave us a gallon of something containing the word moss.

Project #2 is still a bit in process. Our little house has curb appeal even on a bad day because it's so unique, but we are trying to add to it. We had a sidewalk poured in the fall and included some flower beds out front. We finally got a chance to work on them this week, and the plants are all ready to go in - heather, boxwood, and white candytuft. We will post it in its final glory, but here you can enjoy the freshly stained deck, the obelisk that the camelia will grow around and our new weeping cherry tree.

We have much left to do, but feel really proud of what we've done and our calloused hands. This city boy is getting some dirt under his nails and just like my sister-in-law Tiff suspected, I kind of like it.

And at the end of the busy week we celebrated Easter, and were blessed to be able to be with both sets of parents. Celebrations like this are always more fun with kids around. These are the youngest of the kids, Luke and Gunnar respectively, at the family egg hunt.

Sad but true, we are back to it tomorrow - the daily grind of teaching. Next weekend is Marriage Encounter weekend so we'll have something exciting to post for sure, either lovey dovey stuff or major diatribes about conflict and struggle. Stay tuned...

Word of Hope Community Church, 2004-2006-...

2007-03-07T21:54:00.000-08:00

Can a church ever really close? We’ve all driven by church buidings that are now TaiKwonDo studios, restaurants, wedding halls, and even homes. You have to ask: What happened? When you see a building so clearly in design a church – steeple, tall ceilings, broad steps, beautiful windows, solid architecture being used for something else, you have to feel a little bit sad. You have to ask what about that group of people did not work. Did they have a one-man-show pastor who fell and brought the congregation with him? Did they have a rift over the color of the carpet or the singing of hymns vs. more contemporary songs? Did they just die off?

There’s a building in south Seattle – in a neighborhood called White Center that has three names on it: St. James Lutheran, El Mejor de Trijo (The Best of the Wheat – sorry if my Spanish is rusty), and Word of Hope Community Church. The last of those is now going to no longer have a physical presence. The signs we worked so hard to design and purchase will come down and go into a closet somewhere. The brick building just off Roxbury will still be a church. It will look like a church, it will have sounds coming from it during the week, and it will house some social service agencies, but church as we knew it there is no more.

The nature of a church plant is like anything entrepreneurial, they can flourish or be maintained for a while, or they can quietly slip away. Word of Hope is slipping away, but I want to refuse to believe that a church can ever really close. Many of the people I love so much were brought together under the banner of Church. There are people I haven’t sat in a Sunday morning worship service with for years who are still bound to me in a supernatural way. There are all sorts of musical attempts to describe this:

We are one in the bond of love
We are one in the bond of love
We have joined our spirits in the Spirit of God
We are one in the bond of love

Bind us together, Lord
Bind us together with cords that cannot be broken
There is only one God
There is only one King
There is only one Savior
That is why we sing…

This is holy ground
We’re standing on holy ground
For the Lord is present and where he is is holy

They’re all a bit cheesy, I admit, but there is truth in their words. I want to believe that the church we tried to build in White Center cannot die.

I joined together with some amazing people to help bring be a force for good in a tough community. We wanted to meet people’s needs physically, emotionally and spiritually. We wanted to “reach out with the wholeness and hope of Jesus Christ.” We had all each in our own way – possibly an easier road than those in our congregation – found Jesus to be relevant to our pain and in some way hope-giving.

I got to do this with people I respected at the beginning and came to love and respect even more in the process. We didn’t have a bunch of Kum Ba Yah circles or even a lot of time together just hanging out. We just did church together.

Owen and Janiess had been in the neighborhood for years and worked hard to make youth group work without a sponsoring church. They gave their lives – in the midst of Masters degrees, full time work, and having a teenager and her baby live with them – to youth for whom church was quite foreign. Pastor Sara felt the call of God to this specific neighborhood and moved in. She got a job in the school district and helped pave the way for us. She moved through the community and built relationships with the faith and nonprofit communities with grace and boldness.

We were supported by our sister Free Methodist churches in sacrificial ways, and we were welcomed into the neighborhood by churches who had been there for years. We could not have done any of it alone, and sitting in the service on Sunday, the last service together, it was so appropriate to know we were sending our people out into those churches as intentionally as possible.

I had always wanted to be able to live, work, and worship in the same community. This was the ideal that I learned about in college and saw lived out so faithfully by people I respected. Word of Hope will always be special to me because it was my first taste of that kind of organic life.

Jesus said that where two are three are gathered in his name, there the Spirit comes. As the congregation of Word of Hope – everyone who came to an outreach, came to a service, ate at a potluck, were curious about a flyer on their porch or in the mail – goes elsewhere, we can know that we are bound together not by what was real or what won’t be real anymore, but by what is Gloriously Real. Once upon a time, the Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. He moved into all neighborhoods – the neighborhood of the human heart, the neighborhood you’re sitting in right now, and yes, the neighborhood called White Center that is still held and sustained. The neighborhood God was working in before we came and will still work in.

This is the prayer I offered on Sunday after sharing some of the lessons I had learned during that unique and ultimately fleeting time. I share it with you as you are facing your own form of the future today:

Father God,

Thanks for being our teacher during these months and years of learning together about doing church together in White Center. We pray for you to be our teacher as we leave this specific classroom, this time in our learning.

Thanks for giving us the stamina to do, to try. Thank you for creativity, for perseverance, for bringing every event and service together.

Thanks for teaching us through others and through one another. Thanks for what we have learned from your Word, through times of prayer, and through painful times of wondering how and if.

Thanks for lessons that had to be taught. At times we had road blocks in our hearts and minds of what you could do, and today we are mindful of all that you did. You knit together hearts, you planted seeds, you met so many on their path toward wholeness.

We are humbled at all there is left to learn. We don’t know how long we have to learn more, but we pray for open hearts and minds to learn each and every thing you want to teach.

Thanks for being a teacher we can trust. Thanks for knowing more and seeing more. Thank you for being who you are – a faithful God who wants the best for us. As we are scattered throughout the region, as we find new ways to invest, new places to learn and grow give us a sense of what’s possible.

Weave the story of your faithfulness at WHCC into our story.
Weave these people, these moments, these lessons into the story of our lives.

Amen.

Ash Wednesday Service Make-Up

2007-02-25T20:07:00.000-08:00

I didn’t make it to an Ash Wednesday service this week. This is one of the first times in a few years that I’ve missed having the cross marked in ash on my forehead. I remember walking around my Christian college campus and seeing people with the faint mark on their forehead and wondering what people would think about it all, driving by. Would they think we were some sort of strange, bubbled-in cult? I showed up to student teaching my final year there with the ashes fully intact and people kept trying to get me to wipe my forehead, as if I didn’t know it was there.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust… This is what I was expecting when I grabbed my Book of Common Prayer and found the Ash Wednesday service liturgy. I expected it to be words of preparation, with dark, moody overtones. I found it to be really comforting. I always find it a miracle that here are these words – some from long ago traditions of the church, some straight Scripture – that have been spoken by so many all over the world and yet they are fresh with each reading, and they always seem to be written just for me, just for today.

Pastor David talked about Jesus being tempted by the devil and how his first line of attack was saying, "IF you are the son of God…" He went right for his identity. This was lesson number one tonight; comfort number one: Almighty and Everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made… We start out affirming the best things: You have power. You are before all and will be after all. You made me. You love me. I’m already feeling like way more than ash. I guess the idea is that we are made from ash, we’ll return to ash, but what glorious ash we are through Christ!

The liturgy suggests some readings, and I'll try to share how I unpacked them with you. Do yourself a favor and actually take time to read the portions I provide.
Old Testament, Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Isaiah 58:1-12
Psalm 103
Epistle: 2 Corinthians 5:21b-6:10
Gospel: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

We are ash with hope

Return to the Lord your God for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love… Joel 2:13

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter – when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not turn away your own flesh and blood? THEN YOUR LIGHT WILL BREAK FORTH LIKE THE DAWN, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help and he will say, “Here am I.” –Isaiah 58:6-9

Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits – (“Preach, Preacher!”) who forgives all your sins, and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Here is where the road divides...

2007-02-05T19:47:00.000-08:00

My good friends Ryan and Jen are leaving in less than forty-eight hours for Malawi. They are packing up their life in the Northwest – well, what of it can fit in suitcases and a few boxes – and moving indefinitely to Central Africa.

They are doing it. They are doing what lots of people would like to do, or think they couldn’t do, or would never want to do. They are doing what other people do, those missionary types. Their leaving has become very real to me in the past couple weeks since they got the go-ahead to purchase their tickets.

We said our goodbyes last night, and all these memories with them came flooding to me, and in typical fashion, I cried.

I cried because I thought about Ryan and I working summer after summer at Warm Beach, chatting late into the night. I cried because no one shares my love for Tostitos queso-in-a-jar like him. I cried because like few other friends he has become like part of my family. My brothers and my folks would both unabashedly claim Ryan as kin.

I cried because I won’t hear anyone call me "Winkie" in quite the same way. I cried when I thought about all the tears we had cried together: over girls, in frustration over our coursework, when he called to tell me his dad Ron had passed away – too soon, I still think.

I cried because I remember that warm day in June a few years back when Ryan took Jen as his wife and we all stood up there and sang “Great is Thy Faithfulness” at the top of our lungs. And how great it was to see two of my good friends join together. It was so natural, and I still rejoice at how God brought together two people with such complementary personalities and such similar passions. I cried because since 1993 I have had someone a phone call away, or in the lower bunk, or down the road who truly knows and gets me.

And then I cried a little later because I was deeply grateful to not be alone at such a moment. I had this beautifully understanding, and just beautiful, wife with me. She knew I would cry, and asked in vain for me to not. She was there to grab my arm as we walked from the restaurant, someone to keep me grounded and to know me well.

I’ve pulled myself together now, and I want to send Ryan & Jen, and their little ones Curtis and Kara, off with some words of blessing:

May God weave your time in Africa – however long it is – beautifully into your story. May God honor your surrender, your courage, your boldness, and your fear-twinged joy.

May God protect your family – from overwork, from illness, from exhaustion, from opposition and misunderstandings.

May God stand in the gap in your relationships. May family feel close, though far. May friends be dependable; new and old. May the hundreds of people who pray for you have you brought to mind throughout the day, the night and over the years.

May God nurture your children in times when they feel different, afraid, or lonely. May he bring friends to their doorstep, and them to the doorsteps of strangers.

May our Provider God meet all your needs.

May God use you to bring healing, to join into all that the Spirit is bringing life to in Malawi. May you step into opportunities to bless and teach and bring tangible taste-it, hold-its-hand, rest-in-its-arms, start-to-dance-and-sing HOPE to people around you.

Go empowered. Go sent. Go held. And by all means GO. God has called you, you have said yes, and it’s your time.

Amen? Amen.

a few of my favorite things...

2007-01-22T18:26:00.000-08:00

My brother Eric says my posts are too long to read in a single sitting, so I am selling out and posting some lighter fare tonight. Here are a few things I've wanted to mention to my readers, my own personal brown paper packages, tied up with strings:

If you haven't seen...
Second Chance - out on video -- yes, it's a movie starring Michael W. Smith. Try to banish the thoughts of him playing the white baby grand on the beach in "Place in this World" and imagine him as a pastor at a megachurch who starts a relationship with the sister church across the tracks. It's a good story. The characters are a little flat, as well as the depiction of the respective churches, but if you like The Gospel you'll like it.
Brothers & Sisters - Sundays at 10 on ABC. By the way, isn't ABC putting out some quality television lately? For a while there it seemed like my remote could have been permanently on NBC, but no more. What's not to love about a dysfunctional family with Sally Field, Calista Flockhart, and old West Wing fave Rob Lowe? This is a great show with drama, good tunes, and great characters.
Grey's Anatomy -- Thursdays at 9 on ABC -- need I say more? If you're not watching this show, what are you doing with your life? Watch it for the soundtrack alone. After me blathering on and on about how every song in every episode is amazing, Sarah finally broke down and got me the season one soundtrack for my stocking.

If you haven't read...
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson. This one's still in hardback, but put a copy on reserve at the library and get to reading it. It is making the fifties come alive in a really funny way like Wonder Years did for me for the sixties. Bryson is someone I'd aspire to write like -- not only in how he captures the moment, but also the eye he has in the moment in general. You get smarter about random stuff with each chapter. You also realize childhood is childhood regardless of the decade.
My friend's blogs on the sidebar. There's lots of action. Ryan & Jen are heading to Malawi in a few weeks for the remainder of their adult lives. Mandy is in the middle of a kitchen remodel in the midst of her domestic renaissance that still surprises me considering she used to eat cereal and crackers alternately for meals. Katie's back in Bangkok after time in Seattle over Christmas. Dan posted a few weeks ago an amazing story about some bad quiche and its aftermath. Let me know if you think there are others I need to link to. Silent readers, who are you? Can we partake of your thinking?

If you haven't listened to...
The Wailin' Jennys - 40 Days - if you like thought-provoking lyrics, something a little ways from the mainstream, and most of all amazing vocals, check out these ladies. This is the first song on the album, and though it's nothing earthshattering in its lyrics, I love its message. This is the one I can't play at work during the day or I'll start to involuntarily sing along.

This is the sound of one voice
One spirit, one voice
The sound of one who makes a choice
This is the sound of one voice

This is the sound of voices two
The sound of me singing with you
Helping each other to make it through
This is the sound of voices two

This is the sound of voices three
Singing together in harmony
Surrendering to the mystery
This is the sound of voices three

This is the sound of all of us
Singing with love and the will to trust
Leave the rest behind it will turn to dust
This is the sound of all of us

This is the sound of one voice

Love & Thunder, a recent album (well, 2003) by Andrew Peterson - okay, get over yourself and put up with his semi-nasal voice...listen beyond it into the lyrics and the instrumentation. This is quite possibly my fave of Andrew's albums. If you miss Rich Mullins, take a listen. If you are a new parent, check out Family Man. This is the song that I'm singing in my head for Matt & Mishawn who are expecting their second child -- maybe a boy, maybe named partially after yours truly -- and who are shopping for a minivan. That's true grown-upness, folks.

If you haven't partaken of...
Trader Joe's dried, slightly salted Granny Smith apple slices. Sarah and I are on post-holiday detox (not the kind that involves chili oil and diarrhea) and these things are my current snack of choice. If you don't have TJ's near you, my sincere apologies. Consider moving to the West Coast.

Something made in a crockpot lately. We are loving our crock pot and using it very regularly. It was a very 1982 moment, but we cut up the veggies last night, made up the broth, and put the roast in this morning before we headed out to work. We came home to a delicious meal with admittedly too-done veggies. Still, give it a shot.

* * * * *

If you haven't commented lately or ever, break your silence. I need at least two comments for each post for me to feel like this thing's worth it, so you all huddle together and figure out who is going to, okay? Thanks in advance.

Ryan (the Reader?)

2007-01-10T18:38:00.000-08:00

It’s pretty lame to read a book about reading. And even lamer if the book is called something indulgent like How Reading Changed My Life. That said, I had heard enough from and of Anna Quindlen that I needed to have one of her books on my shelf. I just finished this brief book last night, and although there was nothing earth-shattering, it helped me think about my own life as a reader.
Like a preview for a movie that tells you the whole story, the best part of this book had been widely quoted in my nerdy circle of literacy coaches last year:

In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own. I learned who I was and who I wanted to be, what I might aspire to, and what I might dare to dream about my world and myself… There was waking, and there was sleeping. And then there were books, a kind of parallel universe in which I might be a newcomer but was never really a stranger. My real, true world. My perfect island.

I don’t want to idealize myself as a reader, because I admit I am a pretty lazy one. I go in fits and starts, through long droughts and then into these beautiful oases of chapter upon chapter, volume upon lovely volume.

I don’t honestly remember reading much as a kid. I remember that I didn’t really catch onto it until about third grade, which is good because statistically if I hadn’t caught on then, I would still be behind. I remember writing a lot, book after book for my teachers and for the school library which had a special section for young authors. I do remember visiting the library and Mrs. Neu letting me check out a book on a different state in the Union every week. I remember being around lots of books, and checking out books from the public library with furor, but not so much reading them. Aside from Shel Silverstein and hits from a local author named Jasper Thompkins, I remember little. (And here I am a reading teacher.)

My parents are great, but I don’t have lots of memories of snuggling up with them with a book. I do remember so clearly this one random night when we were all home and my brother had brought home his reading book, this big thick anthology that he used in class. I was so jealous of that book, and I remember us sitting around and someone was reading this story out loud that was about a king and a queen. It was the best thing ever, and so fleeting. We must have read, though, because for as long as I can remember I have known in my heart the words of Where the Wild Things Are. And we would call Mom The Poky Little Puppy when she was running late and we were all waiting for her in the car, so we must have read that one.

In school I remember really being turned on to reading by Mr. Braaten who was very old school, but his class was in a portable AND he passed out Snickers bars – whole ones – if you trick-or-treated to his house AND he read out loud one of the best series ever: The Great Brain. It was about naughty kids in boarding school in the late 1800s from what I can remember. But the way he read each word painted such a world in my head that I forgot all about the stress of being the fat kid who sat in the back who really, really didn’t want to be called on during math.

I don’t think I was too turned on to reading by Mr. B, though, because the next six years were a period I’ll call School Guilt. This is the part of my life when I was required to read books for my English teachers and despised 65% of it. But there was that small part of me that felt cool and smart reading The Red Badge of Courage, The Scarlet Letter, The Crucible, poetry from a beautiful paperback anthology in middle school, The Grapes of Wrath, Bless the Beasts and the Children, The Catcher in the Rye, and A Separate Peace. I remember reading many of these on the futon in my bedroom in high school, all sprawled out with my Tron pillow and a class of ice water. The world of these characters was so foreign from my world of youth-group, middle child compliance and as much as I was judging them in my adolescent religious fervor, I loved the sense of the other that they provided.

Part of School Guilt is the feeling of failing at reading. I could not get through Mrs. Dalloway, or Babbitt or (it gives me chills just to mention it) Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. I could not complete Mrs. Altman’s summer reading lists for AP classes because I worked at a camp all summer long with one blessed hour a day to myself. I used it writing letters or doing laundry, not reading All the King’s Men. I still feel embarassed for that, and for beginning fall semester each year with a zero in her tidy gradebook.

So what do I do? I go to school to study how to be a teacher and choose a major called “Language Arts” which is an English degree without having to take Practical Criticism. They start you out light with three survey classes in a row, at 8 AM every day of the week. College was like one long internship in social interactions and student leadership for me, and I read maybe half of what I was required to read. One of my favorite profs had the right idea. At the end of each quarter (and you knew this at the beginning) you had to sign a piece of paper saying that you had done ALL required reading for the course, or you didn't sign. I thrived on that accountability and read every single word of text required, something I’m still proud of six years later.

I did “have to” read some great books in college, including The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, a novel or two by Barbara Kingsolver, The Jesus I Never Knew, Bird by Bird (the most welcome required reading ever in the history of coursework) and of course The Bible. No, really. And being required to read It when you feel like you should anyway, being a Christian and all, is a nice excuse. Deified homework worked for me. But I never did finish a single Dostoevsky novel, so we’ll call this period Undergrad Guilt.

The clouds part a little in this part of the story, for the period called Post-College Indulgence. This is the part where despite being a new teacher and having plenty of stress it was gloriously Okay for me to read whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. This reading took place mainly in two venues: at Starbucks on a Sunday afternoon, and in bed just before falling asleep. The latter was really the only consistent thing as I moved from house to house, roommate to roommate. There would be a little light by my bed and I would read. Sometimes I would have two or three books going at a time, and that was a wonderful feeling. I would eventually finish them, but if not, no big deal.

The other consistent reading I have done since elementary school was daily or weekly partaking of The Seattle Times. Part of it is that the paper was around our house always, since our garage served as a delivery hub for paper boys in the area. (Ah, the days of being a paper boy…that’s a post in the making, for sure.) I loved reading the paper. It made me feel so grown up, so clued into the heartbeat of Seattle, this city I have always loved. There’s nothing like those inches of Sunday paper, full of ads and obituaries and letters and Op-Ed pieces that make me feel like a Real American Citizen when I read them.

I now find myself in a period called Rediscovering the Page. Like I mentioned in my last post, I want to get back to reading and writing more. The wedding is done with all of its joy and drama, we are settled somewhat into our life here, my job is challenging by not stressful, and so it’s good for me to sit down from time to time with a book. I know that it’s a good way for me to relax, to use my brain in ways that are not always utilitarian, and to have some time alone. And as I do so, I find that Kafka was right, that “a book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.” Reading this simple book about reading, all seventy pages of it, has helped to melt some of what’s been frozen inside during these too many months of reading little or not at all. The glorious catharsis (see, I was an English major…) we get from being alive through books is mine again. And for that I am grateful.

The Pursuit

2007-01-03T19:17:00.001-08:00

My first lesson of 2007 is from a Will Smith movie. Now I assure you that my first lessons from past years were not from Independence Day or Men in Black, but Will has done it this time. I’m a sucker for a movie with some good schmaltzy narration, especially when it’s from a character in the movie dubbed over a good montage. The lesson? These inaliable rights that we learned about in Mr. Alder’s class in grade five doesn’t ensure happiness, but the pursuit of happiness. Now I could get into all kinds of discussion about happiness and if that’s what we’re heading for. But I’m caught up in the idea of the pursuit.

Maybe all we can be guaranteed in this life is the pursuit of things. I’ve always loved the idea of the pursuit, of the journey as being the real thing. My friend Erin shared this with me years ago, from novelist Louis L’Amour:

The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. Travel too fast and you miss all you are traveling for.

This idea is especially important for those of us trying to follow Christ. Just listen to the metaphor there: following Christ. We are moving forward, being led in any way we can understand by our Creator.

Surrendering to the cliché idea of a year in review and some resolutions, I offer the following:

2006 was a year of pursuit. I pursued a relationship with Sarah, then a marriage with Sarah. I pursued a job closer to our new home. I pursued a healthier lifestyle. I pursued the things of God, not as faithfully as I could have, but have done so nonetheless. I have pursued (although it sometimes feels more like maintained) my roles as a husband, son, brother, friend, colleague, uncle, neighbor, host, writer, teacher, host, follower of Christ, and citizen. I pursued accountability, but after it pursued me through the wise voices of my wife, my brothers, my Bible Study boys, my mentor Doug. I pursued credibility in my new job, and have been accepted so graciously at my school in my Dwight Schrute role as “assistant to the principal.”

I remember when we had these semi-lame New Year’s Eve parties at the church I grew up at and we would sing the one real New Year’s hymn in the brown Free Methodist hymnal:
Another year is dawning! Dear Master, let it be, In working or in waiting, Another year with Thee.
This is a simple hope: another year with God. That takes some work, some “openness on the Godward side” to use Phillip’s phrase. If I believe one thing about God, it’s that he’s not going anywhere. So maybe the simple plea could be:
Help me see you this year. He me listen to you through the people and culture around me, through the words of your faithful, through pockets of silence. Help me to hear Your voice speaking through my fear and my particularity, through my work and inadequacy. Help me to be with You, as your beloved. Help me believe that You do call me beloved, that with all your creation, You look on me and call me good.

Beyond that simple prayer, I am striving toward some newer and deeper things in this new year:
I will strive toward being more of a reader and writer in my daily life than I have made time for this past year. In many ways, I am all talk in this area. I enjoy these two activities perhaps more than any other, but they often come last. On the hopper for this winter and spring: How Reading Changed my Life by Anna Quidlen, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson, The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning (visual edition), and a few others that are sitting in the green basket by my bedside.
I will pursue this idea of being a married man. I will work hard to become a good (read: reliable, following-through, trustworthy) husband as we become a deeper and deeper WE this year.
I will pursue making some friendships that don’t involve an hour’s drive on I-5.
I will pursue becoming a better and more adventurous cook. To actually make some of the great recipes I read every month.
I will work toward getting more experience and education in my career, and hopefully take some steps toward that door-opening Masters degree I keep talking about, and its dreaded precursor: the Graduate Record Exam.
I will try to flesh out my role as a creator by using my imagination to be crafty with Sarah and to have our albeit tiny home be a good place for people to gather, relax, eat and actually talk. Doing these things together makes me so downright happy. We are both pretty creative, and merging our ideas and doing it together is both fun and relaxing.
I will continue to strive toward living a healthier lifestyle in how I eat, and (dare I write it?) maybe even in engaging in some form of physical activity beyond helping to monitor recess. I want to continue to lose weight, and to keep off what I have lost.
I will pursue the idea of stewardship, being a wise man (because I have been quite foolish in the past) with finances. I am also pursuing another source of income beyond my teaching contract to help eradicate debt incurred in the past. If you are a praying person, consider that your invitation.
With my Bible Study boys I will pursue deeper accountability (beyond prayer requests and updates) and deeper study of the Bible (beyond reading a chapter and having some banter.) We are working to convince our wives that we are more than a “Supper Club” while knowing that our flexibility is part of our longevity, almost six years together in various combinations.
With Sarah I will try to figure out what ministry might look like in our church or community, while still holding onto that beautifully Okay sabbatical called The First Year of Marriage. We have both been heavily involved in church in the past, and we are enjoying this time of being able to attend church without responsibilities for a little while, to miss a Sunday here and there.
After reading Marley and Me by John Grogan for an embarrassing two-and-a-half months I am going to try to be a better dog owner. Hearing stories from many others about their pooches, I don’t want to take for granted how loyal, well-trained, and low-maintenance our Jack Russell is. Even if Zoe is hyper and has intense periods of shedding, she is a good dog and I am now her Daddy. I want to take that role more seriously and more joyfully. If you have ever had a dog friend, you should read Grogan’s book. He manages to make a horrific Lab endearing.

* * *
And yes, dear reader, hopefully there will be some blogging with more regularity. I won’t make any promises, but I will tell you I get enough flack from my mother, from Mandy, from the wife, and from many others of you, that the message is sinking in that I need to post more. I know myself well enough to know that I will only be blogging if I am getting some fodder through my reading and through writing in my own journal. So bug me about that instead of posting, and the posting will follow.

Reading in Acts

2006-10-25T22:32:00.000-07:00

These men did not make “acts of faith,” they believed; they did not “say their prayers,” they really prayed. …If they were uncomplicated and naïve by modern standards, we ruefully have to admit that they were open on the God-ward side in a way that is almost unknown today.
-J.B. Phillips, in the introduction to his translation of Acts, The Early Church in Action

Our pastor has been preaching on the book of Acts, a book I really like, but in which I haven’t spent a ton of time. After spending so much of my albeit small time reading lately in Psalms and Paul’s letters, it is refreshing to get into the post-Jesus action. And to find that the action is not so post-Jesus after all.

We walk through Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (singing the names in our heads like we learned in the basement of the church on any given Sunday morning). We know Jesus the baby. Jesus the man. Jesus healing. Jesus crucified, dead, resurrected, lifted high. We know sandaled, alive, mysterious Jesus. But we have to face that he was gone. He left the disciples for the right hand of God in some short paragraph back in Luke; two verses really. Then he shows up “over a period of forty days and spoke about the Kingdom of God” (Acts 1:4).

I’ve just spent the better part of this maple macchiato, which by the way I recommend, intrigued by this time between Jesus dying and rising and coming back and heading back to heaven. Two of the Gospel books don’t even make a mention of Jesus returning to heaven, but Acts tells us he was taken up before their very eyes and a cloud hid him from their sight.

I think I’d be among those who were standing looking at the sky waiting for Jesus to come back. I’d be talking to the people at each elbow, but I’d want to SEE him again. It would feel like the last day of camp or the last song at the concert or the goodbye to a loved one, and I would know that Jesus-who-rose-from-the-dead could be Jesus-who-came-back. But I’d want to SEE him again. I’d want to know RIGHT NOW when he was coming back, and if, and how, and what to do in the mean time. I’d be there, crying my eyes out, half aware of those around me and half not caring.

I would need these mysterious two men in white to stand beside me and say, “Why are you here, looking in the sky? The very same Jesus who just left you will come back to these skies in the same way he left.” I love that they are beside those in the crowd. Not hovering above, wings all extended.

* * *

Should we doubt that the promises of God would be fulfilled? We take the long view and find that Abraham does become a father with many sons (go ahead, sing the song). Sure enough Jesus came from the line of David the adulterer/man after God’s own heart. The promised baby comes and becomes the man Jesus. Jesus rises again. And Jesus, before he leaves promises this mysterious Spirit. This is not some vague spirit of goodness, this is the Holy, Set-Apart Spirit of God. This Spirit is mysterious in the how and when but never in the Who. This is the Spirit Jesus left behind. The Spirit sent by God to guide this small but growing band of followers.

* * *

The Spirit leads these ordinary people who believed what they had seen and heard, and those who believed the words of those first eyewitnesses. They are formed into a community that since I was a child sounded so right:
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. –Acts 2:42-47

Many things in this vision of community are in my experience: potlucks, hospitality, generosity given and received, Sundays and Wednesdays at the church. But something about this community was fruitful, and not self-serving. It was more than the brand of fellowship we have now, which is basically “hanging out with other people who I like and feel comfortable with, and who also believe in Jesus.” This community was growing daily.

Maybe the secret was in the things not in my experience, the part I almost substituted with ellipses: selling their possessions, enjoying the favor of all the people, everyone filled with awe, wonders and signs being done in their midst. This is the harder part. I’m by no means a radical guy, and although I’ve been sincerely blessed by people praying over me in ways that seemed too knowing to be anything but Spirit, and I’ve gotten lost a bit while singing and praying, I am still quite suspicious of things in the category of signs and wonders.

* * *

In the verses right after the vision of community above, we read the story of Peter and John healing the crippled beggar. Not some unknown beggar, but the guy you see at the coffee shop in the corner, rocking back and forth, every time you go in. The man in the wheelchair holding “Home-less VET – anything heLps” that you see at the freeway on ramp every day on the way home. They heal him with these words: “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, get up and walk.”

So tonight in the rain, I see myself again in this story, now as the man healed by these ordinary people empowered by the Spirit. And more than that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. This man whose True Hollywood Story wasn’t even produced yet. The man whose impact was just beginning to be felt.

So many generations later, in a completely different world, Peter’s words to the rulers of the day tell my story: “It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed.”

Thirty reasons to love my wife

2006-10-23T14:35:00.000-07:00

Today’s is Sarah’s birthday. I won’t say how old she is, but I will say that the number of reasons to love her is not arbitrary. We have known each other for just over a year, and now we have a couple months of marriage under our proverbial belt. As time goes on, I find more and more reasons to love her. Here are a few, randomly selected for your reading pleasure.

1. This morning she stopped at the Tom Thumb “for a coffee” and came out with a vanilla Frappucino, an OJ, and a bottle of Diet Pepsi. She loves a good cold beverage.
2. She is one popular woman. When we are in groups of people, doesn’t really matter where, a little huddle of hugging, chattering women and children forms. This especially happens at church.
3. Sarah is an amazing photographer. She puts kids and teenagers at ease and catches these perfect shots where the lighting and their smile and the background all work. If I was at home right now, rather than sneaking this writing into my work day, I would include some of her work.
4. She loves Tyra. Some people are Oprah people, but she is a lover of all things Tyra: her deeply relevant talk show (Woman Faces her Fear of Styrofoam, today at 4) and more importantly America’s Next Top Model. She insists she watches it for the photo shoots, but I’m not convinced.
5. She is very easy to please. Get her in a pair of pajama pants, turn up the heat, turn on some sort of reality TV and she’s like a cat in a window.
6. Because of her I have learned to do many new things, including washing a dog. By the way, we have the calmest dog to bathe that you can imagine. Zoe is usually a ball of nervous, shaky energy, but put her in the tub and she stands perfectly still as you wash her. Good training, Mommy.
7. Sarah is secretly a very good writer. She only writes for me, but what she writes is thought-out and beautiful. If she’d ever let me, I’d share it with you.
8. She loves her six nieces and nephews, and plans these events called Auntiepalooza that involve cooking and crafting and sleepovers. This has spawned the popular spin-off Cousinpalooza.
9. She doesn’t take any of my Dad’s crap. They dish it back and forth like old pros. The amazing thing, though, is that she is that disarming with strangers. She jumps right in and engages with anyone…just like Dad.
10. She could put together a beautiful room or house with things she found solely at Goodwill and yard sales. In general, she has an eye for putting unlikely things together in a way that really works.
11. She does an amazing rendition of “Sweet Little Jesus Boy” that you have to hear to believe. Close your eyes and it’s Etta or Marion belting it out.
12. She is patient with me trying to learn how to harmonize. The other day I sounded like some sort of dying cat, and although she called me out on it, she still is patient and rewards my efforts when I can pull out a complementary note.
13. She’s such a good neighbor that she has kids who used to live in the neighborhood drop by to visit her.
14. Sarah takes two showers a day, and comes out of the second one like a new woman. She takes such hot showers that when she’s done I can’t even wash a dish. It’s so steamy in there that I walk by and my pores open up.
15. She loves the new station Movin’ 92.5 which specializes in mid-’90’s to now dance-friendly music. She wants to turn it on whenever we’re in the car and rocks the Outback like a champ. (And when she gets out, I promptly turn it back to NPR.)
16. Sarah has a lot of will power, except when it comes to candy corn. Also, she can hear or smell it on my breath when I don’t have so much willpower myself. She’ll make an excellent mother.
17. My wife is a phenomenal teacher. And I would say that even if she wasn’t my wife. She is creative, intentional, and works hard to help each child succeed. She “brings herself to work” in the best ways, and her kids and colleagues benefit from it.
18. She is my biggest fan. She always believes I can pull it off, and always pushes me to invest my time in things I love and am good at. She wants me to write a book and I know that when I try she will be there cheering me on.
19. She is really honest. This is a blessing and a curse, but she has helped me change so much for the better in my life because of it. And it’s only been a year.
20. Sarah hasn’t lost the ability to be silly. Case in point: the other morning she was lying in bed calling out some sort of ancient chant to our dog Zoe which Zoe would then repeat spot-on. And this seemed oddly normal.
21. She communicates very well about what she needs. She teaches me a lot by doing that: just laying it out there and letting the person respond.
22. She puts up with my recent fascination with the white terry cloth robe that Aunt Penny bought me for the wedding. She plays along and calls me RobeMan, knowing that everyone has had a neighbor who wore a robe out to get the paper or let the dog out.
23. She is the youngest, most fun-loving thirty-year-old you ever met. She will change people’s concept of thirty all year long, and then change their concept of 31 and 32, and probably 67.
24. Sarah is very observant. She notices everything I do. I mean everything. It’s endearing that she’s such a student of my nervous ticks like the rub my nose/push my glasses up one, and also a bit annoying, but she’s so darn cute you can’t get too frustrated.
25. She’s a strong woman. I don’t mean that in the vague sense. I mean she’s strong. She can lift and do things a lot of women can’t. The burly Icelandic blood is running thick in her veins.
26. She has an amazing voice. She could harmonize with a pregnant mule, and with flair. I love singing next to her in church, in the car, on the couch, in the kitchen…
27. She plays this game to see how quickly she can get ready in the morning. When I slept through the alarm before an early morning meeting I thought she’d miss it. Ten minutes later she is at the door of the gym looking hotter than ever, not looking at all flustered.
28. She is a sucker for infomercial products like the Miracle Blade, the Pasta Express (okay, that one was a gift), and this makeup called Bare Minerals, which she watches the commercial for often, in addition to the DVD that came with it.
29. My wife is a big dreamer, and she challenges me in that every day. She has a sense of what’s possible, and works hard toward those things.
30. Just over a year ago, she risked to get to know this stranger in Seattle named Ryan Henderson and despite the distance and the drama she jumped in and “let herself fall” in love with me.
Happy birthday, boo!

Part One: The Ceremony

2006-09-14T18:11:00.000-07:00

Perfect. This is the word we are using repeatedly to describe our wedding on Saturday. It was truly perfect. We felt so surrounded by our friends and family, and we literally were. More on that later. Be warned that this post is like me trying to write about the world's fair or WTO riots: so much to cover. Bear with me through the play by play.

We woke early Saturday to dark skies and pouring rain. The forecasts all said that it would blow off by noon, just in time for the reception, but it would mean crazy scrambling to get things set up for our quite outdoor reception and pictures at the church instead of the river. Sarah was up ridiculously early to get her hair done. The boys and I slept in just a bit and stopped at Starbucks on the way down.

The church looked amazing when we arrived: programs and pictures all layed out in the lobby, gigantic arrangements of white roses, faintly green hydrangeas, callow lilies, spider mums...smaller arrangements seemingly floating on shepherds hooks with a single candle ready to be lit. They led the way to the platform with columns made by my father-in-law Mel which were surrounded by almost 300 candles in various shapes and sizes of glass holders and vases. Our goal was to pull off an intimate (400+) evening (11 am) ceremony. And we did. The weather helped darken the covered windows and aside from a spot on us and the cross over the musicians, candlelight was it.

The stage was set. I was half amped up on caffiene and half on the verge of tears. I wanted to get rid of some of those tears before the day started so I wouldn't be a blubbering idiot. Sarah and I saw each other for the first time around 8:30 when we were turned back to back in the sanctuary for the reveal. She looked amazing. She was the most blinged-out bride ever, from the intricate beading on the top of her dress to her vintage earrings and tiara and she was just glowing. Remarkable, too, for how exhausted we both were. I guess we were graced with just enough sleep and rest to make it through.

We went through the traditional pictures: groom and attendants, bride and attendants, families, groom with the girls, bride with the guys, the awkward ones where it was just me getting my picture taken up front... and then people started to arrive and we were whisked off to our separate rooms. I had one of my bawling fits around this time with Kellie, the precious friend who introduced us just over a year ago. I just kept saying "Thank you" and I meant it so deeply. She will forever be a part of our story and our lives.

Just around 11 the wedding coordinator came down and grabbed the guys. We walked through the basement and saw a zoofull of kids in the Sunday School rooms. We walked up the stairs and my brother said "It's all perfect." There's something about your older brother saying something that makes you feel a little better. People were laughing out loud at the powerpoint that we'd created which told our story through text messages and the song from the end of Ocean's Eleven fit so well. That ended and we walked in. I was completely overwhelmed by seeing so many people I loved, people that have loved both of us for so long, all in one room. I stood up front and couldn't stop smiling. The girls came down as Rick continued to sing our fave "God Bless the Broken Road."

Then came the bellringers to announce the bride's arrival. Her nieces and nephews on one aisle and my little friends on the other. She walked down to an amazing song - and we need to give props to my brother's friend Kaytee for the tip. And I lost it again. She was so beautiful, and the whole place was so perfect, and the music was haunting, and I got to shake her dad's hand, take hers and walk up to the platform.

Our pastor David had always wanted to have a couple face out and have the pastors turn their back to the audience. We were fair game to do it and are SO glad we did. We got to look out and see everyone who was there and we were both giving little shout outs with our eyes as we discovered new faces.

I won't walk you through every aspect of the service, but I will say that we were blown away by how emotional it all was. How beautiful. How intimate. Images that
especially stick with us were...
*being prayed for after communion by people who'd had a spiritual impact on us, and it turning into this huddle of prayer and crying (this, for the record, is when Sarah first truly lost it)
*worshiping with everyone there - everyone singing at the top of their lungs to "Light of the World (Here I Am to Worship)" and "How Deep the Father's Love for Us" - my brother and our worship leader Steve sounded amazing
*Eric singing "Center" during Communion, especially the line "You hold everything together..." and the chorus "O Christ be the center of our lives / Be the place with fix our eyes..."

We walked out the Doxology sung a capella by the congregation and waited a bit for Cousin Max to bring the bus around. He pulled up just in time and the wedding party and family boarded to head to the reception. I have no idea what we talked about on the way there but we got there and were greeted with such an amazing afternoon, which you will hear about in my next post.

There is so much more I could say, but I just had to get this out there for a little perspective from the groom. Our prayer had been that we would remember the day, experience the day, have images that stuck with us. And we were graced with just that. Thanks for indulging me by reading this.

For a few early pics and another perspective on the day, check out Mandy's blog A Latte Day on the sidebar.

Blessings (from sometime back in April)

2006-08-21T20:15:00.000-07:00

Grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is gift. –Brennan Manning

Gratitude: more aware of what you have than what you don’t. Relishing in the comfort of the common: a clean bed, a warm shirt, a good night’s sleep. – Max Lucado

A grateful heart prepares the way for you, my God. –Waterdeep (and a Psalm)

When all is said and done, we’ll only have two things left to say: ‘Forgive me” and ‘Thank you.’ - Rich Mullins

Well, I’ve got friends here to love me / And I’ve got all this mercy beating in my blood / I’ve got friends here to love me / And that’s something good, that’s something good.. - Bebo Norman

Maybe to have done well in this life would be to look back and see that you are becoming increasingly aware of all that is given to you. All that you did not deserve, did not ask for, did not expect. To see more of it, and to be increasingly thankful. I woke up this morning having slept well in a warm bed. I had a day off work so was not in a rush. I had the luxury of a load of laundry, some channel surfing, a glass of pulpy OJ, and some text messaging with a woman who I love. I just moved, and half of my stuff is in storage, but what I have in my bedroom that is a microcosm of my former home makes me feel at home. A very worn copy of Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies, a well loved DVD of SNL Best of Will Ferrell, a few candles for good measure, and all my old journals.

I have a car that runs great, and they’re putting in a CD player tomorrow so I can more easily enjoy my recent faves of Watermark’s newest, Jadon Lavik, and the favorite sing along: Bart Mullard’s hymn CD. The yellow Baby on Board sign, in case you are wondering, is from my sarcastic girlfriend, who cautioned against buying a Daddy Car like a Subaru Outback wagon. I am spending a lot of time on the road these days in a forty mile each way commute to what is becoming a whole other life in another county, another area code.

I have this family that loves me. A brother near, and a brother farther. Both of them would take a bullet for me. They have married beautiful women who I respect and appreciate. They are serving God in ways that matter and are important people in the lives of their friends. Best of all, they make me cooler with every interaction. I owe all style sensibilities to them…almost all of my movie quotes…my penchant for a well-timed curse word. Their love for me despite my obsessive compulsive nature and my complete bewilderment at the film The Big Lebowski is a gift. They have loaned me clothes, books, CDs, time, money, and even friends.

To top it off, I have an amazing group of friends. I got this card the other week that said it wished me “friends as dependable as gravity.” Check. Scattered throughout the US and increasingly around the world are these people who teach me so much by their example, their intentionality, and their clear love for me.

I have parents who have let me move into their home for the first time since I was eighteen. Yes, the sitcom is in production. They are alive, and together, each small miracles in their own way. They are intentional, and fun, and quirky. They are proud of me and tell me that. They would do anything for me, and have done so much for me, including letting me become a well-adjusted professional adult.

The grandparents have been gone for a long time, but I have older people in my life who have been there for me and my family. I have two women who I know pray for me every day, one when she looks at a picture of me in the seventh grade that’s been on her bathroom mirror since that time, and one who holds in her hand a rock that says my first name.

And then there are all these blessings I can’t see, that can’t be put in a box. Moments like playing hookie from work last Wednesday at the beach house, all of Sarah’s nieces and nephews running around…the sun going down, the tide coming in, and all was right with the world.

Maybe I’m not saying anything new here, but this is what most readily comes out when I sit down to write: I am grateful, and I am most grateful that I have Someone to whom I can say Thanks. This beautiful Source. I have had twenty-eight years of a good life. Not perfect, not always easy, but good. I was created and I am being sustained by a loving Father. I am being healed every day, held every day, and renewed every day.

Wisdom

2006-08-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

Many people think that what’s written in the Bible has mostly to do with getting people into heaven – getting right with God, saving their eternal souls. It does have to do with that, of course, but not mostly. It is equally concerned with living on this earth – living well, living in robust sanity. In our Scriptures, heaven is not the primary concern, to which earth is a tag-along after-thought. “On earth as it is in heaven” is Jesus’ prayer. “Wisdom” is the biblical term for this on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven everyday living. Wisdom is the art of living skillfully in whatever actual conditions we find ourselves. It has virtually nothing to do with information as such, with knowledge as such….Wisdom has to do with becoming skillful in honoring our parents and raising our children, handling our money and conducting our sexual lives, going to work and exercising our leadership, using words and treating friends kindly, eating and drinking healthy, cultivating emotions within ourselves and attitudes toward others that make for peace. Threaded through all these is the insistence that the way we think of and respond to God is the most practical thing we do. In matters of everyday practicality, nothing, absolutely nothing, takes precedence over God…
-Eugene Peterson, from his introduction to the book of Proverbs in The Message

It’s always a grace when I take time to sit a bit; always a receiving of grace. I’m out on the back deck under the canvas gazebo. I have a tall glass of ice water with lemon and three books: The Message, Poetry 180, and Life Path. Zoe Dog is out here next to me and she is attentive to any sound, including the crows and the kids riding by on their bikes. There’s a light breeze and lots of little birds off in the distance. It’s good to take time to notice these things from time to time. I’m doing this at Sarah’s urging. It’s good to take a bit of Sabbath, something so important to me yet so out of my vocabulary lately. So I started with The Message and I decided that maybe I’ve been stuck in the Psalms for too long. This is a busy time, a transitional time, and I think I need some wisdom.

Did you read how Eugene Peterson introduces the book of Proverbs? It’s him at his best: insisting that the Bible is all about real people in real circumstances. It’s the same line of thinking as Leap Over a Wall and from what I’ve read so far Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. I always want to be a person who admits, realizes, and communicates that God, the Gospel, the Kingdom is relevant. It’s a word that’s overused like intentional, community, and grace, but it’s really where the hope is. If we can’t say that Jesus and his message can pertain to a given situation, then there is no hope for change, transformation or joy. I want to search out God’s relevance in this time, in these circumstances. And I want to find Jesus there as my teacher, and my comfort, and my change-agent.

I’ve not been cultivating all of this lately. My Bible – the one I regularly read – is in a box in my office. Sad statement that it moved from the back of the Subaru to there without my really noticing. I’ve read lots of Wangerin lately, but I should be more hungry for Scripture, things straight from the source. My journal is like an accessory in my orange school bag. It’s been used maybe a dozen times this summer. But this is the grace part I started with: when I make a bit of time, it is always good for my soul. Even if it’s for ten minutes. Knock and the door will be opened. Seek and you will find. God meet me here in a comforting way, through what I can see and hear and smell around me, through words written by other people striving to understand his relevance, through my slowed heart rate and the pushing aside forjustamoment of all that needs to be done today, this week, and before the wedding.

I’ve been trying to be wise lately in some ways. I have lost a noticeable amount of weight, and I can shop at some stores I previously couldn’t. I bought a shirt the other day that had a size conspicuously absent of two big XXs on the tag This, too, the good work of my fiancée prompting me, encouraging me and being healthier with me. It feels good to have less mass, and to notice less and less the changes in eating habits as they become regular. If you are afraid to start being healthier, be encouraged that it is worth it.

We are trying to be wise in our planning for the wedding and our life afterward. We are getting as organized as we can, delegating as we can, not leaving things until the last minute if we can avoid it. Sarah’s classroom is set up, my office will be set up as soon as I have some furniture. The honeymoon is all lined up, and we are reminding each other often of our need to be protective of our time in the next several months lest we get too sucked into ministry or social obligations. We have been together just less than a year, and we still have lots of getting to know you to do. We will most likely “date” more in our first year of marriage than we have since our engagement. We look forward to a bit simpler life with both of us working ten minutes from home (and five minutes from each other), me not having to go home to wherever it is I am staying that night, being able to have some evenings where nothing is planned or “has” to be done, where no one is coming over and we don’t have to be anywhere. I am saying goodbye to running out the door just after the kids to make the hour and a half drive to see her; goodbye to living out of my car; goodbye to Aerobeds and hundreds of dollars in gas each month; goodbye to trying to live a Seattle life and a Lake Stevens life. The two will somehow mesh into one, with still lots of time on the interstate, but a less harried pace.

I have never prayed for God to make me wise, but it’s a good thought to pray for God to cultivate wisdom in my heart and actions. Not just smarts or cunning or strategy, but wisdom which sees the biggest picture and sees things with a Kingdom reality. I am going to put The Message in my bag now, along with my journal, and will try to spend some time with it over the next few days.

For those of you who check this often and find nothing, thanks for stopping back by. I’m making no promises, but hope to be posting more often after the wedding, and maybe even in the days heading into it.

In whatever actual conditions you find yourself, find hope in the reality and relevance of God being with you. Of God having a voice to speak to you. Ask, seek, and knock and you will receive, find and walk through an open door. Amen? Amen.

Midnight Ramblin'

2006-07-24T01:04:00.000-07:00

I heard once that if you want to get to know someone, take a look at their bookshelf. Not a bad idea. If you were to look at my earthly possessions that were just moved for (let's do the math here...) conservative estimate of twenty-fifth time in my twenty-eight years, it would not take you long to discover that I am quite a sentimental person. I have all my journals starting from when I was fifteen, a shoebox and several albums of photos, programs and ticket stubs from any event I've ever been to, and a manilla envelope for each of my several bigger investments of time in Uganda, Thailand, at camp, at SPU, etc. etc. I have always thought that part of being sentimental is not just looking back and thinking, "Oh, what a great time that was..." but as a tool for gratitude. Isn't that the whole story of the people of God - bad things happening when they weren't looking back at God's faithfulness? Don't we read again and again to tie these good things on the doorposts of our homes, and to remember God's faithfulness to our forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Anyway, I am just coming inside from looking through box one of three boxes that contain my "memories." I started with a bunch of old letters and cards that friends sent me while I was working at summer camp. I remembered how those letters were like gold to me during that time, and laughed at the ones from after freshman year of college. We thought we were so adult then, but maybe not because somehow we had time to write multiple page letters to one another every couple of weeks. Then again this was before email had hit its prime, back when we checked it on little terminals with black screens and green pixely letters. I am pretty much overcome after this time looking through cards and letters. I am trying to downsize all of it into one smallish box, Lord willing. It's a healthy thing to fill up the recycle bin and to get a little goosebumpy at how amazingly you have been provided for. I have "so great a cloud of witnesses" -- some near, some far; some still close friends, some friends of the road; some with many years more wisdom than I, some a few steps behind me. I am deeply grateful right now for all of them, for all of these people who have shaped me into who I am. For all of them who put up with me when I was super-annoyingly-eager socially. For people who took a chance on me to put me into leadership. To everyone who listened to my struggles, and celebrated milestones, and affirmed what needed affirmation... you have changed the course of my life multiple times.

Faithful God, thank you for these friends and family members and co-workers, and co-laborers who are tangible gifts to me... "for water that tastes like people sometimes..." You are so tangibly providing for us each day through one another. Praise be to our connecting God, our sustaining God, our affirming God, our burden-bearing God who gives us courage to be burden sharers. My heart is full, and I go to sleep in surprisingly deep peace...

Beasts of the Field

2006-07-16T16:36:00.000-07:00

This is always a dangerous prospect. I am running on another less than satisfying night of sleep, the coffee has not found its way too far into my system, and I am at Starbucks by myself. I have my Bible here, and my journal, and my grande light room Americano. And I have not done this in quite some time. So there is much that I could write about, and I am not necessarily “centered” yet at 9 am.

One of my standard prayers is that God would not simply give me things – and now – but that he would help me to cultivate what I want. If I am feeling worried, I pray for God to help me cultivate deeper trust in him. I pray that he would help me to hear the words he would speak over me about who I am most deeply, so that that could matter more than what other people think. I pray to remember all of the times he has been a faithful Provider. I know from being a teacher that if you do something for a student, they don’t necessarily learn from it. But if you practice with them, if you help them to take responsibility for it over time, things are more likely to stick.

So I sit here with a bit of guilt that this does not happen more regularly, a bit of joy that it is happening right now, and a bit of doubt that that it will become more regular in the next two months. September is a promised land for me right now: we will be married and living in the same place, the back of my car will no longer be my mobile closet, we will be working ten minutes from home and five minutes from each other... It reminds me of Lamentations, “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope…”

So what can I say as the coffee starts to enliven my bloodshot eyes?

I can say that we drove around Whidbey Island yesterday in the shiny red Model T and found new parks, some amazing houses, new little pockets of neighborhood. We played games and sang on the ferry ride and on the way home. I had this thought several times yesterday that none of this would be quite as fun without someone to share it with, and I was deeply grateful.

I can say that RSVPs are rolling in for the wedding, and that makes it even more real to both of us. We have done a lot of planning and prep, and we are farming out more and more to willing delegates. The list is still long, but this day for which both of us have waited a long time is coming soon. Something like 59 days from now. (Deep breaths, Sarah…)

I can say that I am so blessed to be marrying into a family that has a beach house (see pic above). Not just any beach house, but a showcase of their creativity with a gorgeous view and a big comfy chair and all the comforts of home. We sneak over there from time to time with friends and with the fam and enjoy great meals, gorgeous sunsets, and sticky s’mores.

I can say that it is a very strange thought as you are getting to know friends and family members of your future spouse, and they yours, that these people will be in our lives for the long haul. It puts on some weird pressure, as well as some excitement and intentionality. My prayer is that God would bridge the gap between expectation and reality, the gap of distance, and the gaps in communication.

I can say that it is good to be stretched to do new things. The perfectionist part of me would rather not do things that I don’t feel on my game with, but I am learning from Sarah and her family (and my friends Andy and Jen) to just do it. You learn how to do something by trying it out and finding what works. Some of the newness is not too complicated, but it is still new for this guy who no one would consider handy. I was a condo man for a reason, and I am learning the pleasures of deck staining, kitchen cabinet caulking/sanding/painting/sanding/painting, and other home improvement projects. And I have to admit it’s even a little bit fun.

I can say that the Lake Stevens/Snohomish area is starting to feel more and more like home. I ask less now how to get places. I know that the 76 station gives free car washes, that one store’s sushi is better than another, that the barista at Starbucks is getting married the same day we are, and to not go into the Post Office on your lunch break. I also learned that although the cute, brick City Hall used to be the Post Office and it has a ton of blue drop boxes outside, it is indeed not the Post Office.

I can say that God is faithful that even when we don’t cultivate quiet, when we don’t make time for things that are good and important because of the many tasks around us, he can still bless us with good things. Like these words from the Psalms that I found in a pocket of time a couple weeks ago:

These all look to you to give them their food at the proper time.
When you give it to them, they gather it up;
When you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things.
When you hide your face, they are terrified;
When you take away their breath,
They die and return to the dust.
When you send your Spirit, they are created and you renew the face of the earth.
-Psalm 104:28-30

The Psalmist is talking about all of the beasts of the field that God created, but I think the message is relevant to us. Look what it says about these animals: they are dependent. They do not create their own food source, they do not choose the time of their feeding. They are created beings, relying on their Creator. When they are provided for, they gather it up like Manna and are satisfied. They are looking outward for their provision, not only to what they can do, but to what an Other can provide. And I love how it comes to the most basic level: that should God take away our breath, we are done. But – glorious however – when God sends his Spirit, this promised Spirit that Jesus leaves behind when he ascends, there is a re-creation and somehow the face of the earth is renewed.

This is his word for his creation: the waters, the winds, the birds of the air, the trees, the moon and sun, the lions and goats. How much more for us souled creatures! I didn’t know I had a sermon in me today, but maybe you needed these words as much as I did: you are being provided for, you can be renewed, your very breath is a provision.

Amen? Amen.

Oh yeah...

2006-07-01T02:32:00.000-07:00
and I got a job today!

We took these today, all by ourselves...

2006-07-01T01:07:00.000-07:00

Obvious stuff I’ve yet to blog about…

2006-06-28T10:43:00.000-07:00
This is most definitely a transitional time. My friend Josh would remind me of a verse in Deuteronomy and tell me that in the midst of changes “I cannot, I must not, and I will not forget what the Lord has done in my life.” I am trying.

I am now a nomadic person. My Subaru wagon has these plastic bins in back with anything I’ll need for the summer: assorted polos, sandals, a couple pairs of shoes I want to wear as little as possible, a couple of books I hope to actually read, and assorted wedding things. I am housesitting as I can this summer, and this first gig is in a huge house out of town with a big hairy slow-moving dog. I am not what anyone would call “an animal person” and this morning I was convinced I had killed the pastor’s dog. Casey was extra jumpy this morning, and I hadn’t been around yesterday, so I decided to throw the ball to him. I threw the ball I saw out on the back porch, which happened to be a softball. He ran after that thing with the might of Aslan and proceeded to get it lodged in his mouth. His jaw was extended like those Oral-B commercials where the top and bottom rows of teeth form a 180 degree angle. I was convinced the Winnebago would roll in tomorrow to find a drooly mess of softball-stuffed canine. After a bit of trying to help him get it out, I realized this was a really fun game for him. He started to drop it and before I could grab it, she would snatch it up. Finally I played dirty and put him on his chain and when she dropped it I kicked the ball off the porch. She looked at me like I was a fifth grader beating a Kindergartner at tetherball.

There are many beautiful things about being in education, but one of the best is getting several glorious paid weeks of summer vacation. This year that thought has helped even more as I continue the job hunt in my new home base an hour north of Seattle. I have exhausted all of my resources, strategies, connections and I have no job yet. If you are a praying person or a sender-of-good-thoughts, I have a very important interview tomorrow or Friday for one of the first positions I could actually apply for as an out-of-district applicant. I won’t bore you with the details but I am trying to get a position that lends itself to leadership and serving beyond the classroom. I am in this weird place where I have tasted impact beyond one group of kids, but I don’t yet have my credentials to serve as a principal, and there are few options in this area similar to what I have done for the past year working as an instructional coach. (I think I just bored you with the details.) That to say, I am realizing more and more what I have given up by leaving my position in my old building and district. Someone said that me moving up here was “a leap of faith” and I had to admit to myself that I hadn’t seen it that way at all. I had thought that the leap would be buoyed by my glowing references, my thorough and eloquent paperwork, my tight resume, and by chances to talk to principals about what I have been doing and what I am looking for. I have definitely not surrendered this fully yet, haven’t yet leaned into it, but I am adjusting to the fact that I might have to start out in a district in a less-than-ideal situation in order to establish myself.

It feels like a whole new level of engagement with Sarah now that we are both done with school. People seem to be divided on the subject. Either their engagement was some sort of wonderland of planning and time together or it was the hardest few months of their life. For me it feels like a sort of purgatory - with craft projects. I love me some creativity, especially when it involves paper products and a good pen, but there is much to be done and it still feels like no matter what we work on there is so much more to be done, so many different things. We are now seeing wedding planning as our full time job until September 9th, combined with getting the cute-but-tiny house ready for both of us to live in. Sometimes “old world charm” and “tidy cottage” translates “one closet in the whole house.”

I think every day it settles in to both of us a little more that we are getting married. Some days it feels like we’ve been together forever, and then Sarah will remind me in semi-jest that she hasn’t even been with me in the summer yet. Although I will say that it’s been summer now for at least a week and she’s yet to see me in a tank top streaked with BBQ sauce. And I’ve yet to lash out in a heat-induced rage.

I was telling my sister-in-law Katie about this time, and saying that sometimes it feels more like something that is happening to us than something we have chosen. I keep being haunted by this book that a friend told me about whose subtitle was “What if marriage was designed to make us holy more than to make us happy?” If that’s the case, it’s definitely working. Because of the love and support of this good woman, I have faced deep, dark stuff, stopped habits both destructive and annoying, I am eating healthier, using profanity just a little bit less, and getting better about sometimes shutting up and listening…

That’s going to be it for today, but I have to tell you, dear reader, about this find of a book. First of all, if you are going to buy it I would recommend that you come to Seattle, drive up I-5 to LaConnor and stop into The Next Chapter bookstore across from a great breakfast spot. Find a tall, skinny book called Awed to Heaven, Rooted to Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann. You’ll be smitten in an instant. It’s a collection of written prayers that Brueggemann offered in his seminary courses over the years. Read this one and you’ll see why this book has been so good to be with during these transitional times.

You are the God who makes extravagant promises.
We relish your great promises
of fidelity
and presence
and solidarity,
and we exude in them.
Only to find out, always too late,
that your promise always comes
in the midst of a hard, deep call to obedience.
You are the God who calls people like us,
and the long list of mothers and fathers before us,
who trusted the promise enough to keep the call.
So we give you thanks that you are a calling God,
who calls always to dangerous new places.
We pray enough of your grace and mercy among us
that we may be among those
who believe your promises enough
to respond to your call.
We pray in the one who embodied your promise
and enacted your call, even Jesus. Amen.

-In anticipation of reading Jeremiah 1-2 / 2000

What a Friend

2006-05-15T08:21:00.000-07:00
You have to love a week like these past few. They have been full of the stuff of life: stress, worry, excitement, gratitude, uncertainty…generally feeling overwhelmed at all the choices to make, all the things to do (and now) and always feeling like wherever I am at, whatever I am doing, I should be somewhere else, doing something else. Then comes a day like today. It was Mother’s Day and I was sitting next to Mom at church, where she and Dad came to visit. We sang some really seventies-sounding songs, one of which was very awkward to sing. And then we sang an old fave:
What a friend we have in Jesus
All our sins and griefs to bear
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer
O what peace we often forfeit
O what needless pain we bear
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer

It helped. I never want to be one of those people who judges church primarily by what I get out of it. But singing that song was a simple reminder (after a week of nudges in that direction) that this is not all on Ryan, and not all on Ryan & Sarah. Me finding a job that is a good fit is not something of my fabrication. Deciding where we will live in the short and longterm is important, but maybe not Epic. We have time to work on the wedding, and we have a school year to finish first.

And it’s easy sometimes for even a glass-half-full guy like me to forget the JOY in all of it. And today I have to think that some of that joy comes in giving stuff up. To sound real televangelist, “to give it all to Jesus.” I think that’s really what I needed to hear today, and what I need to do: give all of this worry, all of this pain, all of this joy and gratitude to Jesus. He’s there in the midst of all of it. He sees me struggling to hold onto it all. He sees my lists in my bag, my clipboard at work, my hyperorganized files of Wedding and Finances and Effective Teaching Products…he knows my stressed-out internal monologue.

What a friend we have in Jesus is what we were singing. He’s good to us. He’s for us. Writing it I keep thinking that the name Jesus sounds strangely foreign to my tongue. I know I have sung it a lot lately, but I have not written it or said it very often lately. I think I feel kind of apologetic do to so. Like in some messed up way I hear it with a TBN kind of tone, like there’s this twangy sweaty preacher pronouncing Jesus' name “Cheesusss.” In my journal I use the word Lord and God and Father and I know that the triune nature of God means that communicating with one in a sense hits all the others. But I need to remember that the comfort that I needed in recent months has come in praying and singing and saying in my head “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” That sums it all up so beautifully: who I think Jesus is, who I think is on his team, what I need from him, who I am.

...But I was saying how beautiful today was. The folks met today: there was an initinal meeting of the parents and it was remarkably comfortable. Leonard & Joyce and Mel & Diane sat at a table eating within earshot, and it all seemed to go well. The day was so relaxing, out in the country at Matt & Tiff’s house where our wedding reception may be. We ate, played bocci ball (maybe my new fave sport, just after kickball and bowling), ate some more, played with the kids. My head got a little bit of color in the sun. I felt just perfectly fine with being where I was and with whom I was spending my day. There was no where else I needed or wanted to be, nothing else I felt like I should be doing. And for that I am deeply grateful.

The challenge comes in the morning when I am back down to life in Seattle and work and stress and being an hour away from this amazing woman I am marrying. Can I hold onto that feeling of all being Okay? Can I count it a privilege to give all of the unknown, all that concerns me to Jesus? Can I avoid forfeiting my peace and bearing needless pains? Life, some have suggested, is more about questions than answers. These are the kinds of questions I want to be asking tomorrow. I want to live out an answer that Jesus is relevant. That Jesus can be trusted with it all. Amen? Amen.

Life: Such as it is

2006-04-26T07:35:00.000-07:00
Sarah wondered out loud to our friend Mandy if maybe she was not my Muse, because since we started dating my blogging life has basically disappeared. Not so. The blogging life has suffered because in the early stages I didn't want to post all about our relationship because you probably, dear reader, would have vomited at all the sugary lovey goodness I was spouting. The blogging life has also suffered due to lack of time and internet at home.

But I did miss some opportunities to let you in on what an amazing journey this has been. Falling in love with a stranger, watching your life priorities shift before your very eyes, feeling that in a very real sense, over time, "home" is not a condo or a neighborhood, a routine or one community of people. Home is not even Interstate 5 in a Subaru Outback or a cute little house in Lake Stevens. In a very real sense, Home is where she is, where we are together. Home is the Lake Stevens Target where we always seem to end up, it's dinner in the Food Court at Haggen, it's Tuesdays watching American Idol. It's going to Starbucks before church and the salad bar at Alfy's afterward. It's watching HGTV and talking about the ideal house. All of this regular life stuff.

I want you all to know that this love is a real one, one that is eyes-wide-open. Sarah has been the most tangible form of grace in my life, and she continues to be. I hope that you have all felt this coming true in your life: that sometimes the comfort of God comes from a person who has arms who can hug you, lips that can reassuring kiss your forehead. I hope that at some point in your life you can hear another say "I love you" and you know that they love you in the most aware way possible. They know it all, and yet...love. It's a miracle, really.

So we are planning a wedding, and after being at and in so many now at the ripe old age of twenty-eight sometimes the stakes feel high. We want it to be unique, to honor people in our lives, to be interactive, to reflect who we are. It is a fun process, but just a LOT. I am total write it down Planner Boy. I have a Word document all categorized out with bullet points and italics and names in parentheses. Sarah has this cool sketch book that I categorized out for her with color coded dividers. We are talking and planning all the time about it. And it's fun. In the end it will all come together, and I am so excited for that day, not just for what it symbolizes, but also for this fun event in which our world fully collide - family, family friends, important older people, tons of kids, a hearty delegation of fun friends, and that fun smattering of people that we have both known for so long, though we hadn't yet met each other. And can I just say that I am reminded yet again of God's faithfulness in all this?

I think it's God's track record in my life that helps me have courage and hope about all the changes to come, as well as all the changes already. By next fall I will be living an hour from most of my family and friends, working at a new job, worshiping and serving at a new church, navigating and creating new friendships, as well as, yeah, being a husband. Dude. But I feel strangely Okay with all of it. It's kind of exciting, and God has given me just enough hootzpah to move into it boldly. To all of you who have been neglected by Friend Ryan in these past few months, know that things will slow down and you will be treated to a meal and rich conversation in a little cottage by the lake. To all of you dear readers who have checked the blog again and again to no avail, posting will one day resume.

Until then, Godspeed, and I will try to carve out some pockets of time, like this one all hyped up on an Americano in the half-hour before the kids come to take the big state test.

Bling Bling She Got the Ring

2006-04-17T12:03:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers, I offer a simple, joyful excuse for my lack of blogging these past few months. It has been a pathetic excuse for a blog, I realize. Thanks for stopping by... I may just return yet... Ryan

- - - - - -
From an email sent today to pretty much the Western Hemisphere:

Friends near and far,

In case you haven't guessed from this sparkling new email address, we're getting married! If you can sense the excitement in my voice, imagine hearing that same eager voice waking you up early on a Friday morning.

Picture it: you're laying in bed enjoying your slumber when your phone rings. Your boyfriend Ryan usually does the traditional wake up call from his home an hour away at 6:30 am so you are confused and just a bit grumpy. He asks if you want to have breakfast and when he honks his car horn you know he's outside in your driveway. He says that you have five minutes to be dressed warm and outside. You try to prolong the sleep for justaminutelonger and he comes to the door to get you. You put on the warmest layers you have handy and head outside.

I know, I know...being rudely awoken early on a Friday of all days...is not exactly the stuff of romantic comedies. But I had to surprise her. We drove to the dock on Lake Stevens, just a couple blocks from her house, where I had breakfast waiting. IT WAS COLD, and by "it" I mean the weather and the food. And it was windy. The candles would not stay lit, despite what Sarah may so kindly tell you. And neither of us was very hungry. But the idea of breakfast was a wonderfully romantic one, so when Ryan Henderson read to her from his journal and then got down on one knee to ask if Sarah Sturlaugson would be his wife, she said Yes. There were no tears on either face, which is strange since Ryan usually cries at, say, EVERYthing that is remotely sappy or spiritual or sentimental and Sarah sometimes plays along. There was some laughter, and some hugging, and some quick packing up to get back into a warm car and back to an even warmer house.

I am a man truly blessed... I am so excited for you all to get to know this beautiful, talented, witty, confident woman who has become so important to me over the past several months. I LOVE this woman, and we look forward to a Really Good Life together...of which all of you have and will play a part.

To avoid the obvious questions: We are planning a late summer, early fall wedding. We haven't chosen colors. And we will be settling in the Lake Stevens area.

Love from Seattle,
Ryan and Sarah (doesn't that just roll off the tongue?)

P.S. We would have sent some pictures from the actual event, but they are a little shall we say raw from the early morning wake up and the layers to protect against the cold and hair flying in the freezing wind. We thought we'd spare you. :) This pic is from a recent trip to see friends in Richland.

The Prayer Rug

2006-01-31T16:35:00.000-08:00
The first thing I do when I pull the car into the carport at the luxurious condo is grab my mail. The other day I grabbed the mail and sifted through it: loan refinancing, homeowner's insurance, useless communication from the teacher's union, and then this:

Dear Jesus,
We pray that you will bless someone in this home spiritually, physically & financially. And please dear Lord, bless the one who's hands open this letter. Make good changes in this one's life and give them the desires of their heart. We prayover and bless this letter in your holy name. Amen

Now this could be a column about the incorrect use of who's rather than whose, or about how the crazy red underlining (Wow, is that from a real Sharpie?) under pretty much every word, but no, because we have yet to open the envelope.

I am thinking at this point that it is a plea for financial assistance, and thought it kind of nice, if weird, that I was just prayed for on a size nine envelope with a plastic window with my address showing through.

But then I opened up the veritable smorgasbord of strange theological junk mail. First is a very dense letter in caps and red print and underline and fake handwriting. Some highlights:

Dear...Someone Connected with This Address,
People just like you are writing to this 55-year-old church, telling us all types of blessings since this church started praying with them. They are receiving divine help in the form of answered prayer. As you will read in the enclosed brochure, a Sister Garcia used the same type of Bible faith prayer rug that we are sending to you, with this letter, and was blessed with almost $50,000! God's HOLY BLESSING POWER is in this enclosed ANOINTED prayer rug we are loaning you to use!!

You can't make this stuff up. More instructions:
When you use this Faith Church Prayer Rug, go into a room where you can be alone (just God and you). Turn off the TV and radio and try to be by yourself when you kneel on this Holy Ghost, Bible Prayer Rug, or spread it over your knees. We want this Church Ministry, Prayer Rug to be touching both of your knees as you pray for the needs you are facing right now. It is going to be like...

What? What is is going to be like?
It is going to be like you are kneeling before God All Mighty at the altar inside a great church of blessings. If you need more joy, health, peace, money, a new car, a new house, healing, or whatever, we as a very old (55 years) church want to know about it.

It goes on to tell me about the CRUCIAL next 24 hours, and what I will do with the Faith, church, ministy, prayer, Bible (some more adjectives please???) prayer rug.
I have to let this Very Old church speak for itself again:
These next 24 hours are crucial to you. Timing is important to God. Slide the prayer rug in your Bible or under your bed, for tonight. Then in the morning it is a must that you get this unusual blessing Church Prayer Rug out of this house, and back to us. You must get this back to us so taht we can rush it on to another family that's in need of blessing. Do this without fail. Please do not break this flow of power between us.

What can I say? Wow. Stellar.

For a further level of disturbance, read the text at the bottom of the picture. It's like a freaky Magic Eye Jesus, my brother said. I looked really hard and just saw dolphins.

As George Dubya will say tonight, "God Bless America."

Yet...

2006-01-20T08:35:00.000-08:00

It is good to wait in silence for Yahweh to save.
-Lamentations 3:26
I had a friend once who broke up with her boyfriend and joked about reading only Lamentations in the month or so afterward. She was lamenting being vulnerable, lamenting being invested, lamenting wasting her time with this jerk. I don’t know, though, how she could stay bitter long into chapter three. The verse above comes after one of my favorite passages in Scripture, one that’s so key to my life that it’s framed on the wall by my closet. You have to love anything that starts out, “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:” Do you see that beautiful colon? Do you hear the beauty in the small word yet? The version on my wall says “it is good wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”

Waiting quietly I can handle. Quiet is relative. But silently? It is so clear. Silence is the absence of what I do best: talking. Verbally processing. Output. Silence seems so passive. In real life, I can handle quiet, but straight-up silence is hard. When people I love are silent, it is nearly impossible for me to not construe it as being full of negativity. When people I think may be critical of me are not quick with words, I assume they think I am a fraud.

But there it is in Lamentations, this call to be silent. Or quiet. Or, as another version says, to “wait patiently.” Waiting patiently I can do. Maybe then I can do a little something: read a book, make a snack, doctor up my coffee, take out the recycling. ‘Cause, yeah, I’m waiting patiently. I’m not clamoring for this to happen, I have some other things I can take care of, I say as if I am on call waiting with Jesus listening to some sort of divine Muzak stream from the speaker phone in the other room.

Peterson says it this way:
God proves to be good to the man who passionately waits,
to the woman who diligently seeks.
It’s a good thing to quietly hope, quietly hope for help from God.

I can do a few things passionately: talk, read, clean, write, cook, teach, drive, sing, eat. But to maintain passion while waiting? What would that look like? I am certainly not cut out for such a task. I guess it is an exercise in hope, in expectation, in really wanting something. Maybe it’s all connected to realizing just how bleak things are. The Scriptures are full of reality, and what makes it all relevant is these flesh-and-blood, workaday people saying yet in the midst of this I say God is relevant. I say God is worthy of praise. So it is in Lamentations.

Jerusalem has been destroyed. The book starts out with these words:
Jerusalem, once so crowded, lies deserted and lonely.
This city that was known all over the world is now like a widow.
We hear fifty verses of pain and struggle and complaining (gates have fallen, no more glory, treasures stolen, useless leaders) and then we are hit with our little word yet.

The waiting patiently, quietly, passionately comes in this realization that the wait is worth it because God will come. God will save. God will be present. I want to be a person who sees God’s power not only in his coming, but also in his promise to come, his promise to be present in the waiting room of our lives.

The longer I live, the more I realize my need to be saved. It’s a loaded word, I realize: saved. It admits that we need help, that we don’t have it all together. That there is something that we lack, a need we cannot fill on our own. But I want to say clearly to Jesus that I do need to be saved. I need his intervention. I need his transformation. I need his promises to be true.

I need to learn to wait patiently for God to save. And I need to be like the woman that Peterson mentions, diligently seeking. I don’t want to lie around to wait for God to come. I want to go to where he will come and wait for him there. I want to expect him to come. Let me echo the words of the prophet-author of Lamentations: I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion. Therefore I will wait for him.”

God will come. God will provide. The little, hopeful word yet will become the Word made flesh and blood, the real God in the midst of our real life.

Reading the Psalms

2005-12-28T14:41:00.000-08:00
There are so many words that have come alive to me in the past few days, but I will start with these:
Yet the secret of daily life is this: There are no leftovers! There is nothing – no thing, no person, no experience, no thought, no joy or pain – that cannot be harvested and used for nourishment on our journey to God.
-Macrina Wiederkehr, A Tree Full of Angels
I have been living in the Psalms this week. My brother told me that in the midst of some pain and some struggle, his prayer was that words of Scripture that didn’t matter to me before would come alive. I started in the Psalms and will be there for a while.

The Psalms are great because they are a mirror of our daily life – full of praise and thanksgiving and struggle and sin and pain. Reading the Psalms are like reading a good novel, in that you are not the same person each time you come to read them, and they speak to you differently at different times. Sometimes I have read the Psalms and been provided with a vocabulary for praising God. Other times they have provided me with language for coming humbly to God, or coming boldly to say, Where are you in the midst of this?

I have been looking for the “right” way to read the Psalms in the midst of some deep pain and struggle lately, and can’t decide if I should be reading as the wicked person or as the one who is coming before God humbly or the one who is praising God. I think I am coming to think that it is not either/or. Less of life is either/or the older I get and the more I learn of God’s involvement in our lives.

Here’s what I have noticed in reading the Psalms this week:

God will fight for us. God will “contend with” our enemies. I'm not militaristic, but I want to serve a God that is powerful and will use his power to fight for good.

I am constantly asking Who are my enemies? I am not David hiding in a cave from real enemies, but whose are the voices of opposition? What would it mean for God to deliver me from the hands of my enemies? I think I know it would be a new feeling.

The Psalms call us to admit the exact nature of our struggle, the content and context of our sin and our pain. The Psalms are all about Reality. We get to listen in to the praise and the questions, but also the dark reality of human circumstances. The Sons of Korah and David and Asaph are giving us permission to bring the reality of what is in our hearts and heads straight to God in song and prayer. God can handle it. He's big enough.

Reading the Psalms is a humbling experience because we come to God saying we hurt, we do wrong, we deserve consequences that are deep and permanent.

I have been asking myself What is God saying about me? About who I am? That is most deeply who I am, because God is my Creator.

The Psalms were written before Jesus walked on the earth, but in them we see Christ. Seeing Jesus in them is how we can have hope – “Be merciful to me, O God…” can be our prayer because a way of mercy was provided through Jesus. I am reminded this week of that simple prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner…” It is the simplest prayer that says the most. It says who God is, how we can come to him, who we really are, and what our most basic need is.

We are reminded that God can be trusted – God is described as a Rock, a Provider, a Fortress, Protector, Keeper, Preserver, Help...

Reading the Psalms gives us a posture – postures, rather – for coming to God. We do so in praise, in thanksgiving, in need of help, desperately seeking to be heard, needing forgiveness. In our very act of coming, though, we are humbling ourselves. We are saying that God is worthy of our attention, of our time, that in some way he can be trusted. It is us lifting God high and bowing down low, of saying more of You and less of me.

Reading the Psalms, and trying to pray through them and “live” them has reminded me that God is close, that he is accessible and interested and invested in us and our lives. God is close, and he will come – he will come to save, to deliver, to redeem, help and guide.

And perhaps most hopefully, reading through these Psalms these days has reminded me that God is present in the past, the present, and the future. He has brought us to where we are. He is sustaining us. I’m reminded of those words from Christy Nockels, “You’ve got all things connected / All things suspended / Nothing is forgotten / For your love is perfect / You are our healer / And you know what’s broken / And nothing is a mystery to you…”
Reading the Psalms gives me hope for this afternoon, for this week, for the next year, and for the rest of my life BECAUSE they deal in reality, BECAUSE we can see Christ in them, and BECAUSE they point to a faithful and powerful God. They are a voice that says all is gloriously Okay because God is faithful. No matter what happens, I am being held.

I am on Psalm 50 and 51 right now and am going to linger there for a bit, but I encourage you to join me there, whoever you are Mystery Reader. You will find comfort in these words, and challenge, and some serious ramifications for your life. And most of all, I trust that you will find HOPE, hope that is beyond what we can deserve, beyond what is rational. HOPE that sees all of reality and says YES, but there in the midst: God. Transformation. Healing.

Tell me the story...

2005-12-11T23:46:00.000-08:00

Were you ever in a church Christmas program? One with tragic costumes and the same songs every year? I was Joseph in the Rainier Avenue Free Methodist Church production at least three years opposite a red-headed Mary. I went to one such event this weekend. Sarah's niece Gracie and nephew Colten were in it. Gracie was a little black cat (a very important Nativity character, thank you very much.) Colten was a very noble shepherd. He held a staff and others did not. There was the predictable stray farm animal (toddler in a furry costume) and the parents and grandparents leaning forward while their kids sang, each of them mouthing the words to the songs, Away in a Manger and Silent Night, enunciating to help the children remember their lines.

A lot has changed, though, since I wore my plaid polyester pants and a white turtleneck to play an angel with tinsel halo. The Sunday School teacher was in the front, back to the audience, leading the kids in their songs. But these guys were professionals, I guess, because gone were the words written in Magic Marker on posterboard. And when they wanted us to sing along the words appeared on the PowerPoint behind the Manger scene. The real hit, though, was the camel, which consisted of a head on a stick and two little bodies whose heads made the humps. At one point I looked over and the camel only had one hump. (A humpectomy?) His back half had left to do a reading at the podium up by the donkeys with ears sticking straight up.

The part I liked best, though, was being reminded of this hymn that we used to sing in the Sunday evening "Vespers" service in the basement at church. It's by Fanny Crosby, one of my favorite hymn writers. I hadn't thought of it as a Christmas song, but it is. I guess it's like all truly good songs: it's a Christmas song, an Easter song, and an Every Other Day of the Year song.

Tell me the story of Jesus,
Write on my heart every word.
Tell me the story most precious,
Sweetest that ever was heard.
Tell how the angels in chorus,
Sang as they welcomed His birth.
“Glory to God in the highest!
Peace and good tidings to earth.”

Tell me the story of Jesus,
Write on my heart every word.
Tell me the story most precious,
Sweetest that ever was heard.

Fasting alone in the desert,
Tell of the days that are past.
How for our sins He was tempted,
Yet was triumphant at last.
Tell of the years of His labor,
Tell of the sorrow He bore.
He was despised and afflicted,
Homeless, rejected and poor.

Tell of the cross where they nailed Him,
Writhing in anguish and pain.
Tell of the grave where they laid Him,
Tell how He liveth again.
Love in that story so tender,
Clearer than ever I see.
Stay, let me weep while you whisper,
Love paid the ransom for me.
Read those last two lines again. Aren't they haunting? Stay, let me weep while you whisper, "Love paid the ransom for me." May that be what we whisper -- in times of struggle and times of joy, in our times of thriving, and at our end. "Love paid the ransom for me."

Some words from Paris...

2005-12-06T16:46:00.000-08:00

You thought I was in France, didn't you? Gotcha... I wanted to share with you these words from my college friend Dan Randall. He is this crazy globetrotting man who has lived all over the world and altered his life in significant ways to respond to some of the injustices in the world. He writes these epic emails updates and posts on his site from time to time. He is currently taking a break from studies at Duke to serve in youth ministry at the American Church in Paris. Read these beautiful thoughts on place, an excerpt from his latest email. They remind me of those words from Jim Eliot: "Wherever you go, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God." Happy reading...
On Thursday, I walked along the Seine River in the chilly sun with the Eiffel Tower in view on my way to the Metro. “Just another day in Paris,” I thought. That thought triggered the following inner dialogue. “Wait, I live and work in Paris—I should enjoy this.” “Why? What makes Paris different that I should enjoy this any ‘more’ or any ‘less’ than another place? Is it because Paris is out of the ordinary for most of my friends—for me? The people here don’t think it odd that I live and work in Paris…” While pondering that another thought came in, “I hope I don’t get up in the morning because I’m in Paris. I hope I would wake up here the way I would anywhere else.” And that’s when I realized I do wake up like I do in almost every other place. I pull the pillow over my head hoping for another few minutes for my body to rest, knowing that my exhaustion comes from my head spinning about the things to do, people to meet, and a program to develop. I shower, get dressed, make some coffee, open the refrigerator and hear my stomach tell me to make a mental note to find some friends for the Brita filter, juice and jam because they look lonely on the shelves.…well, we all have our routines. (Of course, hearing the church’s 3,328 pipe organ playing at 7.30am is a bit out of the ordinary, and then walking down the street to visit a church built 600 years ago to house what the king thought was the crown of thorns and a bit of the actual cross cannot happen just anywhere, but still...)

I remember a conversation I had a few years ago with a kindergarten teacher after a friend had told her some of the story of my journey. “Wow, you get to go to all those places. I wish I could, but I’m stuck here.” I replied, “Wow, You get to work with and love 30 four- and five-year-olds everyday—that’s cool.” I remember thinking, “It’s not as much about ‘what’ we do or ‘where’ we do, as it is about ‘how’ we do whatever it is we do—as it is about us living obediently.”
While Paris seems an exotic city to some, in reality it is a place—like other places. People here put their trousers on one leg at a time. They honk their horns in traffic. They smile at a child’s laughter one minute and shush it the next. They go to the store and buy groceries. Some walk down the street and try to buy love. Some think they have it together, some know they don’t, while others pretend they do only fooling themselves. They yearn for beauty and yearn for an ease from their workload. Most students, even if they secretly like school, will tell you they don’t and that they live for the weekend. While sidewalk cafes, espresso bars, newsagents, and produce stands seemingly make up half the shops, the people assimilate these into their every day routines, which is why they don’t understand the tourists who snap picture after picture while walking down the street. People here seem as self-absorbed as people in most other places. People here need to know God’s love just as much as every person in every place.

Sometimes our places seem so ordinary, though, that we forget to see the extraordinary around us. Extraordinary and exotic always happens ‘out there somewhere’ and never ‘here in our midst.’ In our everyday, we struggle to see the extraordinary, if we even look for it at all, for in our everyday place and everyday routine we develop expectations according to what we know and what we have seen...

Promise

2005-12-05T16:55:00.000-08:00
All rants completely forgotten now, I am feeling the Christmas juju in my bones. I am listening to Christmas tunes nonstop. I have a ridiculous Christmas greeting on my voicemail. My ringtone is a great song from Love Actually. I have received my first two Christmas cards (and my first five or six end of the year financial appeal letters from favorite nonprofit organizations.) I have sung some carols, hung the garland, made the Christmas cards, and bought the baking supplies. Life is good.

We're really doing it up for Advent at Word of Hope Community Church. It has been so fun to decorate our brick beauty of a church building with a tree, poinsettias, a beautiful-if-retro felt mural that gets added to each week, and candles with our words of focus for each Sunday of Advent: Hope, Promise, Faith, Love and Joy. The sermon on Sunday was about the promises that are part of Christmas, and specifically the promise that was realized when Simeon held Jesus in the temple. My very first post here at human merely being, a year ago now, was a few stories about the life of Jesus retold with some artistic license. Since many of you were not readers then, I thought I'd post them again right about...here. And the Simeon one is below.

Simeon and Jesus from Luke 2:21-35

This city has become for me a waiting room. I am here, senses heightened in search of a baby (complete with soft heavenglow?) the sound of an infant (a coo, a burp, a surprising squeal?). I have been visited by these messenger angels, come to me with words of ultimate hope. Mine is a waiting for the One – a baby – who will end the Waiting of my people. I won’t give up here until I’ve seen him, this one who will be “Israel’s strength and consolation.” I’m shuffling around here like a nervous mother.

And now – just now – I hear, I feel, I practically taste this prompting of the Spirit. Go to the temple courts. And there he was – Jesus, Messiah, Lord, and most today: the Christ. With his mother and father, his prophet-cousin still clinging to his mother in the bustle of this place. This waiting room. I can wait no longer. Without a word, I go to Mary and grab hold of these pounds of promise, these inches of requited longing. And in a time like this who could not sing?

I held the baby closer and sang out this vertical song for horizontal consideration:
Lord in charge of all, you have kept your promise.
Now let me die in your Shalom.
I have seen with my own eyes and felt the weight of Salvation.
It’s our redemption made plain, to bring joy to Israel and a new light to all the world.

Wide-eyed, Joseph and Mary listen to all I’m saying about their diapered and dependent son. And I gave them a blessing and turned to Mary:
“This child’s work will be to raise up and bring down many in Israel. He will be received with joy and grossly misunderstood. The pain he bears will be like a sword pierced through your side. Through his painful rejection, thought, people will be brought to honesty and revealed for their true selves."