Enduring or Enjoying: watching for hummingbirds

And the humming-bird that hung

   Like a jewel up among

     The tilted honeysuckle horns

They mesmerized and swung

   In the palpitating air,

     Drowsed with odors strange and rare.

And, with whispered laughter,

   slipped away

     And let him hanging there.

          -James Whitcomb Riley, The South Wind and the Sun

by Gary

I’m sitting alone in my backyard watching for hummingbirds. I’m not randomly watching. I’ve put some energy into my backyard this year, which included investing in the livestock. My livestock is of the untamed variety: squirrels, birds, rabbits and such. I’ve placed bird feeders, a little suet feeder, a new bird bath, ears of corn and a hummingbird feeder all where I can see them from my chair in the family room. But my favorite place to watch is from a chair in the backyard, which is where I sit typing now.

It’s frustrating watching for hummingbirds. They’re fast and unpredictable. I’m sure they come and go without me noticing. In fact, I’ve only seen one this year. He was a perfect shade of blue. I’m sure there are more because the sweet liquid in the feeder is constantly in need of refiling. I’m obviously just missing the hummingbirds. So here I sit this morning. Watching. Waiting. Growing impatient and all the while missing the wonderful show the other birds are putting on at the bird bath while staring intently at the hummingbird feeder.

I’m becoming more afraid that our lives are like this. I’m afraid we endure each day for some far away joy and, in the enduring, we miss the joy of the day. We stare intently at some goal or dream or destination all the while suffering through our days and being good little people who keep our chins up. We trudge through our daily jobs and duties with that coming vacation in mind. We plow through our chores and labors just waiting the 3 or 4 day weekend that comes with a holiday. The todays are just endured.

And I’ll make another confession. Sometimes I endure playing with my kids because it’s the right thing to do. I know for me to be a good dad they need my time and my energy, which I always try to intentionally give. But I’m so afraid that I’m missing moments of delight by dutifully enduring this investment of time instead of changing my thinking to enjoying these opportunities of laughter and fun seen only in the sparkling eyes children. I’m also afraid I sometimes just endure my friends too, with all their problems and baggage; missing their joy and smiles.

And we’ve historically done this as Christians. We’ve seen Heaven as THE huge reward to the extent that we’ve failed to enjoy the journey through this life. But God is redeeming our time and joys here and now just as much as He is redeeming us for eternity’s joys.

Still no hummingbirds…

I think I need to change what I’m looking at. I’ll keep glancing back for the hummingbirds but the bird bath is closer and very richly active. I hope you’ll also find a way to enjoy this day instead of enduring it.

 

“Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds.

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”

-Jesus, the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 6, The Message translation

 

 

Post Script: If you care, and if you’re a friend on Facebook, you can see more backyard pics in our ‘Spear-World in the Spring & Summer’ photo album!

SMBC College Week 2009

“I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”       -C.S. Lewis from Till We Have Faces

SPRING MILL BIBLE CAMP – Mitchell, Indiana

College Week 2009

May 30 – June 5  (Saturday – Friday)

Theme:  Till We Have Faces…the case against God, and His patient answers.

This is a brand new week of camp so please read the info carefully and write to ask us any questions you might have. You can email me or write me on facebook. Leave me a comment here if you need my email address and I’ll write to you. You can also contact Curt Parsley or Matthew Canada through email, facebook or their blogs.

We’re really excited to be working hard on this week of camp. We hope you’re planning to come and that you’re planning to invite some of your other college friends.

We have a brochure and a poster ready for you to get. Some of you are on our mailing list so you’ll be getting registration and brochures mailed to you. Others of you aren’t on our list and we’d like to get you the info.

You can read some of the text here and also click the pictures to enlarge them (see the album at the bottom of this post). I think they’ll be big enough for you to read. I can also send you the brochures in jpeg format so you can view them as pictures. They’re saved at the right size for you to print on standard copy paper. Curt is working on converting the files to PDF format so you can download them. He’ll have that done next week and we’ll let you know how to download them.

For now, if you want the jpegs, email me and I’ll send them to you. If you print these, make sure to print them to the front and back of a page so you can fold it into a tri-fold brochure!

We hope you’ll print a few of these to share with friends. And print some posters to hang up at your dorm, your college, and your church! (please note the posters have info tabs at the bottom that should have a cut between them so people can rip them off to take the info with them!) We also hope you’ll open up an email and send this info to all the college age people you know that you would like to see come to camp for college week. You can send them the link to this blog post if they want to read more.

I’ll be posting some of the text from the brochure for you to read here next. Our theme is taken from the C.S. Lewis book Till We Have Faces, which deals with the doubts and questions we all have about God. You might borrow or buy a copy to read. It will be worth the time and money, I promise. Here is some text from our brochure:

A New Week of Camp … A New Adventure

If you grew up going to a Bible camp, then you know what an impact a camp can have on your life. We’ve been listening to college aged people talk a lot about how they miss the days of being a camper with strong friendships, spiritual focus and a sense of belonging. Its made us think that we as a camp need to do a better job meeting the needs of your age group. We don’t see many college-aged weeks offered at camps, where you can come experience camp without the pressure of being on staff. We wanted to rise to the challenge of creating a college week to meet those needs and also to offer a challenging time of sharing, listening, and growing. With the decision made to craft a college week, we are faced with how to make the week relevant enough to your life that you’d want to come.

We talked about the pressures of life and college-life with many people. We read books. We prayed. We listened again. And we heard most college kids saying that God is so hard to figure out that sometimes it seems like He’s playing hard-to-get. We listened to them talk about pain and confusion, broken families and doubting their faith, their dreams versus God’s dream. How can we defend the existence of God with the world in such a mess? How can we trust Him and His purposes and plans when He’s often so confusing?

These are the questions we heard over and over again; sometimes in those exact words but more often hidden between other words and within other doubts. And these questions are the ones we want to take head-on. God is willing to listen and He has answers.

So, come and bring your baggage: pain, hurt, disappointments, questions and doubts. You can also bring your joys, triumphs and blessings. Just come be real for a week. Join us. You’ll be glad you did.

Please mark your calendars and start to send in your registrations. We scheduled it for the very first week of June in hopes that you could get that week free to be there. So remember to ask off work if you have your summer job already!

And this new college week will only be successful with your help. We need you to pass the word around among your friends. We need you to pass on the info and then encourage people to come. We’re praying really hard for this to be a week to bless your lives so please join us in prayer. And send some emails out to friends right now while it’s on your mind, please!!

Click these links to see the brochures and the poster! And drop me a line if you want to read the book. I can send it to you in pdf format!

Brochure Back         Brochure Front         College Week Poster 2009

We’ll see you at camp!

Heaven: Kingdom or Republic?

“When you look at organized religion of whatever sort – whether it’s Christianity in all its variants, or whether it’s Islam or some forms of extreme Hinduism – wherever you see organized religion and priesthoods and power, you see cruelty and tyranny and repression. It’s almost a universal law.” -Philip Pullman

by Gary

I just finished reading the Philip Pullman trilogy called ‘His Dark Materials’. It included the books The Golden Compass  (titled Nothern Lights originally in the UK), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. You may remember all the uproar a couple of years ago when The Golden Compass came out as a movie. I’d heard of the books but never read them so the movie sparked my interest.  I did enjoy reading the books, somewhat from having my curiosity satisfied at exploring these controversial pieces of literature and partly from finding that Pullman is a good author.

Here’s the review that I wrote of the trilogy for my Facebook Visual Bookshelf:

A series worth reading if only to see what the hoopla is about. The characters are creative and clever but the message whispered behind the words is just a repackaging of pantheistic and anti-theistic sentiments.  Mr. Pullman is obviously living in response to past hurts inflicted by Christians or the church, which many can empathize with and understand so I don’t fault him for that. But it left the book with the feeling of being reactive instead of proactive in any way and therefore weakened his underlying intentions of disparaging theism from an intellectual standpoint.

Instead, to me, the series served as a sad but appropriate and needed reminder that many of we Christians have been much less than accurate representatives of the loving, redeeming God that we claim to follow.

I know a lot of Christians were worried about the talk of killing God in the book but this was the very reason I wanted to read it. I wanted to hear what Pullman had to say with my own ears. And I came away with the feeling that he truly was out to stick it to Christianity in general and to Catholicism specifically. Through his characters, Pullman speaks against monasticism, church hierarchy, discipleship and discipline. Let me pause here and say that those things (and the church at large) do need railed against many times. We, as followers of Jesus, have often failed historically to show the mercy, grace and love of God. We’ve many times failed to act graciously and we have forced our will on others. I have to own up to those facts and move on to live with grace and love.

With those thoughts in my mind, I want to discuss just one point. You can read the books and write your own review if you want to discuss things more fully! Haha!

That one thing is this: that Pullman sets up an overarching juxtaposition of the Kingdom of Heaven versus the Republic of Heaven. He paints the church as a Kingdom ruled by force with an iron hand and little room for tolerance, love and grace. Hmmm… I think he may have us there. Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those Christians who think that ‘church’ is a bad thing and that we should speak hatefully of all churches. But we do need to face the fact that a generic glance at the history of Christianity makes the church look very forceful. Add to this the fact that individual Christians can be found everywhere that treat non-believers with contempt and its no surprise that Pullman has such a low view of Christianity.

So Pullman espouses the Republic of Heaven, where people must choose love and kindness and goodness. This point of the Republic of Heaven is really brought home at the end of the third book, the end of the trilogy. But the ironic thing to me is that Pullman’s description of creating Heaven where ever we are (and not just waiting patiently for Heaven in the future) is exactly what I think God asks of us; to be involved in social justice, feeding the hungry, loving the hurt and lifting the fallen. I think Jesus says that the Kingdom of God has begun and will continue into eternity. And that means that we’re to act as citizens of Heaven here and now and not just later.

How have we historically done so poorly that someone is able to make such valid points against Christianity with the very themes and ideas that should have been ruling our lives, attitudes, words and behaviors in the first place?

Philip Pullman

It makes me sad and determined. And I’m hopeful that all this means I have no where to go but up with many people who despise Christianity. God never asked us to force people to choose or obey Him, in the same way that He never forced any of us to choose Him. And God didn’t write me off all those years that I didn’t choose Him; He was patient. Why would I ever write anyone off and out-of-friendship with me just because they’ve chosen not to believe? And if they’ve chosen not to believe in God, then its unfair to expect them to behave according to what I believe. Here again, why would this then grant me the right to speak or act unkindly or unlovingly toward them or about them?

I’m not saying that I don’t believe strongly and unswervingly in theism, in Jesus as God’s son and Jehovah God. I believe all of those things naturally, transcendentally and theologically. And I believe I’m supposed to help reveal those things to other people in a way that begs them to believe in God also. But its not through force. Never through force; not the force of my opinion, judgements, disdain or self-righteousness. Its through choice; my choice of patience and love and hopefully their choice to ask me more about what makes me so gracious in my lifting the fallen and healing the hurt. And when they ask, I’ll say Jesus.

The Kingdom of Heaven is a Kingdom with God as King. But it’s a Kingdom where the subjects of the King have been asked to invite people in, not force people in and not to hate those who choose not to come in.

I started reading this trilogy to see why people were so mad at Philip Pullman and I ended up feeling a very urgent need to apologize to Mr. Pullman.

Destination: Back and Beyond

 ”The brush beyond the big hump has been calling me for a long time and maybe I better answer while I’m able.”-Richard Proenneke, in the Spring of ‘67

by Gary

On Sunday nights our youth group has Upper Room. Its a time where we have discussion group; sometimes all together and sometimes split into smaller groups. We talk about life and God and how the two are intertwined beyond separating whether we acknowledge it or not. Its a time I enjoy. I like to hear what the teens are thinking and how they’re reacting to stresses, pressures, new ideas and guidance.

This week’s subject was about taking a long view of life. That’s a fancy way of saying don’t get bogged down in the present circumstances but rather see life with a more holistic view. A long view will help overcome short term failures and also put triumphs and blessings in perspective. A long view tells us everything will be ok, everything begins and everything ends. A long view gives encouragement by asking us to look at something bigger than ourselves.

We’ve watched a documentary together the past few weeks called ‘Alone in the Wilderness.’ Matt Sowders loaned it to me. It’s about Richard Proenneke, who at age 51 moved into the Alaskan wilderness to carve a life out for himself  in the mountains. His original intention was to stay about 12-18 months. He stayed for 31 years, alone in the wilderness. He wanted to get away from the stress of daily living and he had to take a long view of life to plan for survival on his own.

Dick Proenneke made his original visit to the Twin Lakes area of Alaska at the invitation of a friend. They stayed in a remote cabin for a couple of weeks. Dick returned not long after to spend some months alone in the cabin making plans for his own, new cabin. His third return was to be the year-long stay where he would build his cabin and enjoy the seasons. He experimented with gardening and hunted/fished to feed himself. Dick also received occasional supplies from a bush pilot named called Babe.

After that year, Proenneke returned to his normal life for a short time but went back to his cabin to stay until he was 82, with only brief visits back to family. At one point in the book he tells of driving his camper north towards Alaska with a sign on the back that said ‘Destination: Back and Beyond.’ 

Yes, obviously, I bought the book about him too: One Man’s Wilderness.  Its written by his close friend, Sam Keith, who used Proenneke’s journals to craft the book. Dick Proenneke is worth learning about. And if any of the above facts are slightly off, forgive me. I’ll know soon and adjust them as I read further in the book.

Here are two stanzas of a poem in the foreward of the book. It was apparantly important to Proenneke and gives insight into his feelings.

I’m scared of it all, God’s truth! so I am;
It’s too big and brutal for me.
My nerve’s on the raw and I don’t give a damn
For all the “hoorah” that I see.
I’m pinned between subway and overhead train,
Where automobillies swoop down:
Oh, I want to go back to the timber again –
I’m scared of the terrible town.

I watch the wan faces that flash in the street;
All kinds and all classes I see.
Yet never a one in the million I meet,
Has the smile of a comrade for me.
Just jaded and panting like dogs in a pack;
Just tensed and intent on the goal:
O God! but I’m lonesome — I wish I was back,
Up there in the land of the Pole.

-Robert Service, I’m Scared of It All

While I’m not a advocate of a permanent monastic or secluded lifestyle, I can understand it’s allure and appeal. But I think God calls us to stay involved in the lives of others on a broader scale through service, example, and close relationships. However, like Dick Proenneke, I see around me many people unwilling to get close to people for fear of being hurt and I see many people who make themselves unapproachable by surrounding themselves with stress and drama. I also understand that many people have been so deeply hurt in the past that it’s a difficult thing to be close to others.

But taking a longer view of life is key to overcoming our hurts, stresses, failures and our pasts. The key to helping others do the same is to show them how to lift their eyes, for even when its impossible for us to move our feet, its not impossible for us to change what our eyes are fixed on. Its not impossible to look to the hills even when we’re in the valleys. We have to remember to look up and beyond.

I think this is what Dick Proenneke was doing when he looked to the mountains and felt their call. You really should click a couple of the links and read about him. Watch the documentary also. Its truly amazing.

And remember to lift your eyes to the hills this week. That’s where your help will come from.

I lift up my eyes to the hills-
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot slip-
he who watches over you will not slumber;
indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

The LORD watches over you-
the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.

The LORD will keep you from all harm-
he will watch over your life;
the LORD will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.

Psalm 121

 

 

 

 

 

 

Higher Ground

“We are always in the forge, or on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.” -Henry Ward Beecher

by Gary

In the spirit of true blogging on this glorious Thursday, I just want to take the time to mention two things that are on my mind today. One is from youth group last night and a follow up on my Father Damien post. The second is a reflection from my thinking as I prepared the worship for our church family this Sunday.

From youth group…we finished up our discussion on Father Damien and Martyrs of Charity last night. See the other post to get caught up on this. I ordered a movie through Netflix called ‘Molokai: the Story of Father Damien.’ It’s obviously not a documentary but it seems to be well researched and based on an accurate history of his life and the events on Molokai.

In one scene of the film, the character of Father Damien is speaking to a group of lepers who have come for worship. Father Damien explains to them that he doesn’t have their disease and that he can only know their pain in his heart. But Father Damien goes on to say that all men are much the same because we’ve all known loneliness. And then he speaks of Jesus and how the life and the Cross of Christ is a participation in the agony that we all experience in life. Father Damien then says this about Jesus:

“In this life on earth he healed the blind, he healed the lepers; not to tell us that men would not be blind or that men would not be lepers but to tell us in his eyes the blind people could see, the lepers were clean. And he loved them as he loves all mankind.”

The cross of Christ to me is what makes Christianity most believable and the miracles of Jesus whisper of His welcoming acceptance of us whatever state we find ourselves in. It’s true, God desires changes in us to take on His nature of love and duty of service, but He accepts us where we are. I like this quote because I need to be reminded that life here will never be without pain but it can be less lonely: by God’s accepting us and by us accepting one another.

The second thing on my mind today is from an old hymn that I ran across while thinking about worship. You may know it. It’s called ‘Higher Ground.’ Our church family this week is focusing on Hebrews 11where the text talks about all the people who have gone before us in faith. It’s a beautiful reminder of people passing this way before, which gives us all hope to ‘go well’ as we pass this way also. Our faith is strengthened by past faiths. Some people call this passage the Saints’ Hall of Fame because it names so many people.

I found many recordings of the hymn online but I chose this choral arrangement of it for you to listen to. I think it catches the depth of the song better than newer versions of it.  Listen to all of it; it gets better as it goes. If you want a more contemporary version, you can google it easily. In the third verse of ‘Higher Ground’, it says this:

For faith has caught the joyful sound,
The song of saints on higher ground.

Johnson Oatman

I think that’s a beautiful word picture that Johnson Oatman painted in 1898, when he wrote this hymn. I’ll leave it to you for your mind to wander through all the people that have shown you how to live in faith and have now gone to join the great crowd that watches for us and waits for us.

I think the higher ground I’m trying to reach this week is a place that let’s me love people like Jesus loved people and to appreciate all the people in my past that have shown me how to love well in faith and duty.

Consistency Is the Problem and the Answer

“No virtue can be great if it is not constant.”-Alfonso Milagro

by Gary

It was an awesome team. Frozone, Shaggy from Scooby Doo, Teddy Roosevelt, and Happy Feet the Penguin were all being led to victory by my lovely wife. She and I were on the team too; she as a player/manager. We all performed nearly flawlessly under her direction as she balanced and swayed, directing the movements. No it wasn’t a dream. No it wasn’t a vision. No it wasn’t an hallucination.

It was the Wii. It was our Mii characters. It was awesome.

Michelle and Kortni Playing Wii Sports Bowling

Wii games are the best of all worlds: my favorite characters from literature, film, history and cartoons each created by me as a Mii and all aligning themselves consistently with my commands within the games I choose.

If only life were so aligned. If only people could be who they were created to be. If only I, you, me, we could be as consistent.

I’m constantly amazed by how many teens sit across from me and tell me that they hate their parents. You know what the number one reason is that a teen hates a parent? It’s because they say the parent behaves one way in public where people are watching but another way entirely when at home behind closed doors. Consistency is everything to teens.

Inconsistency produces one of the most dangerous results possible; it produces a person that is not believable. And a person that isn’t believable is worse than a person who is blatantly hurtful because being  unbelievable is to be dishonest.

To be blatantly hurtful or evil is at least truthful and honest. To be inconsistent, one person in public and another in private, is to be a living lie. From what I can see, nothing does more damage than inconsistency. This is not only true in parenting; it’s true in spirituality.

BA and Collin playing Wii Sports Boxing

If you claim a belief in God, to a non-believer who’s watching, you cast God in your light much more than He casts you in His light. This is something I’ve been self-aware of recently. People watching me aren’t trying to see me through the eyes of God. They’re trying to see God through the haze of my actions, attitudes and words. They might be trying to decide if God could be real based on me. If I follow this God who I claim is pure love and selfless in His sacrifice, but then they see me acting selfishly, self-righteously or in self-promotion, then why should they believe my claims about God.

Just as teens complain of inconsistent parents, the number one complaint I hear about God is that Christians often act so inconsistently that God must not be making much of a difference or that God can’t exist if His followers can’t even show who He is. I’m afraid nothing makes God look any worse than inconsistent Christians do. I can do a fair job answering questions about a world full of evil, death, disease and poverty but I stumble when trying to explain why so few Christians consistently look like their Leader. I have trouble trying to figure it out about myself on some days.

I know that God is good. I know that very often I am not good and that I can’t be perfect. But I also know that God deserves to be represented in a fair light. He deserves my best response to His love; a response that shows consistently who He is, in my words, attitudes and actions. I know that people will see God through me before they come to see Him for themselves. I know I need to take that more seriously.

And don’t accuse me of saying that you have to be perfect. Don’t tell me people should look to God and not at you. Don’t tell me your bad attitude is ‘just who you are’ and that you can’t change it. Don’t tell me I sound spiritually legalistic and that I don’t understand grace. Those are excuses to let yourself off the hook on being a more consistent picture of God. I often do the same.

Jake and Gary playing Wii Carnival

It’s not easy; I understand that. And I understand and believe that grace will cover your inconsistencies. But I also believe that God’s grace is not cheap grace and that I, you, me, we need to live out our lives as a consistent picture of His grace with consistently gracious mouths, touches, minds and hearts that make God believable.

I can name people who I think are doing this already. I hope more of us will be inspired to be real…soon. If you’re a fellow Christian, please accept this toe-stomping as I intended it: to include me and you both and to be a challenge. If you’re not a believer in God, please accept my apologies for all the times that we, who claim to be followers of Jesus, have made Him to look like someone not worth following.

Frozone and Shaggy, Teddy and Happy Feet, Michelle and I, look the same everyday on the Wii. I want to look the same everyday in real life too.

You yourselves are a case study of what He (God) does. At one time you all had your backs turned to God, thinking rebellious thoughts of him, giving him trouble every chance you got. But now, by giving himself completely at the Cross, actually dying for you, Christ brought you over to God’s side and put your lives together, whole and holy in his presence. You don’t walk away from a gift like that! You stay grounded and steady in that bond of trust, constantly tuned in to the Message, careful not to be distracted or diverted. There is no other Message-just this one.

-from Paul the Apostle, in his letter to the Colossians,

the first chapter, verses 21-23, in The Message translation

Ralph Stanley for President!

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.” -Alan Alda

by Gary

If  you drive across the parking lot next to our Family Life Center, you’ll come to 9th street on the east side of the lot. Here 9th Street looks like a small alley but if you drive north, it’ll turn into a much more respectable road. From here, 9th street takes you north across Main Street and up past the the school’s administration building on the right and a little further up is the junior high school on the left. You finally come to the intersection with Hancock Avenue, which with a left turn will take you to the high school.

I drive this road a lot; many times each week to pick teens up from the high school for lunch. For over 8 years now, I’ve driven this same route and I almost always reverse the route to come back to the office. On the reverse trip, you drive south down 9th street, back past the junior high, back past the administration building and towards Main Street. But one block before Main Street sits an old, beat-up, faded-red pickup truck. It’s probably a late 70s model.

I’ve never seen this truck move. I’ve never even seen anything that would make me think this truck can move. It’s in the exact same spot every day and has been for the past 8 years as far as I can tell. But the most interesting thing about this truck is a bumper sticker, which looks to have been unceremoniously stuck just above the back window instead of on the bumper. The sticker reads, “Ralph Stanley for President.”

I really had no idea who Ralph Stanley was so I always assumed he was some third party candidate from the 1976 election. (this election year was chosen based on the age of the truck) I really wasn’t into politics then being that I was in Kindergarten that year. So for the past several years, I lived on this assumption of Ralph Stanley’s identity. Many times it crossed my mind to look him up online to verify my assumption, but I never took the time. But I did enjoy seeing that truck.

It turns out that Ralph Stanley is considered to be the Father of Bluegrass. All this time I thought he was a politician and it turns out he’s something much more important and respectable. (and I’m fighting hard to leave out the jokes about whether we’d be better off right now with him as President!) Curt Parsley brought his name up one day when we were talking about music this past fall. After pretending I wasn’t confused, I set about to un-confuse myself about Ralph Stanley. You can read about him by clicking here.

I bought some of his music from iTunes and love it! I’m starting to enjoy bluegrass. I’ve always loved folklore and much of bluegrass music is folklore set in songs. You should try some and see if it scratches the itch in your soul to hear some songs about life and ’home.’ It also turns out that Ralph Stanley is playing in Bloomington tonight. Curt got tickets for us so we’re taking our lovely brides, Beth and Michelle, out for the show. To be honest, I think they are humoring Curt and me but they might not admit that. I’ll let you know how the concert was.

All of this (my assumptions being wrong about Ralph Stanley) has caused me to make some assumptions on my assumptions. Maybe I’m assuming where I shouldn’t be assuming. There’s a possibility that I could be missing opportunities to help, love, guide, bless or gather friends and strangers based on my assumptions. Further, I think the most dangerous assumptions I’ve made may not be the ones where I’ve thought and then acted. I think the most dangerous assumptions may come when I look at someone or some situation and say, ‘eh.’ I don’t think any further. I just stop. I assume there’s nothing more than meets the eye, or nothing deeper to ponder and therefore stop thinking on it. How many things have I missed by not looking a little more deeply?

I’m getting the feeling that some things I’ve just assumed really need some new thought put into them. There are some people and problems that may need my time. That old red pickup truck may have been sitting there the past decade just to catch my attention: to wake me up from my stupor of assuming and to encourage me to re-engage my mind on some things, on some people, on some pain, on some ways to bless. Time to look around. You too, look around.

Maybe I’ll see you, maybe you’ll see me…maybe for the first time.

And remember, Ralph Stanley for President!

One Clip at a Time

“Those who can sit in silence with their fellowman, not knowing what to say but knowing that they should be there, can bring new life in a dying heart. Those who are not afraid to hold a hand in gratitude, to shed tears in grief and to let a sigh of distress arise straight from the heart can break through paralyzing boundaries and witness the birth of a new fellowship, the fellowship of the broken.” -Henri Nouwen

by Gary

I love documentaries. They are the reason I have a Netflix account. Michelle and I watch alot of them. They let you see into lives, situations and the minds of the subjects and the producers. I watch them for fun and learning but I also watch them to grow. Documentaries pull on your heart, intellect, soul and imagination. You should make an effort to watch some. Netflix has thousands of them on every subject you can think of.

One of the documentaries I’m watching this week is titled ‘Paper Clips’ and it’s about middle school students in the small town of Whitwell, TN. Several years ago the school’s administrators decided they needed to introduce a project that would teach about divesity, which was an especially important and challenging task since Whitwell’s demographic is extremely homogenous. The Holocaust was chosen as the subject in which the students could learn about the struggles of Jewish people and their culture.

During discussion time in a class one day, the teacher was telling how over 6 million Jews had been murdered at the hands of Hitler. A student raised a hand and said she had no idea how big 6 million was because she’d never seen 6  million of anything. The teacher agreed that hardly anyone would have actually laid eyes on 6 million of anything either. It was decided that a collection would be started of some small item. They hoped to collect 6 million but what it could be took some research.

The movie says a student found that the paper clip had been invented in Norway, but this is probably a myth. You can read more about it here on Wikipedia although you may not trust Wikipedia. Ha! But we know for sure that Norwegians wore them on the collars of their shirts during WW2 to show their opposition to the Nazis. So it was decided to collect 6 million paper clips. I won’t share all the details here. You’ll need to watch the film. But when the media picked up the story, people from all over the world sent paper clips to this collection. Paper clips even came in from survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants.

I want to share what just one woman said in the movie. Her name was Sheila Levine and she sent 14 paper clips for the collection, one paper clip for each member of her family who died in concentration camps. She lost 4 grandparents, 1 brother, 7 aunts and uncles, and 2 cousins. She speaks in the movie about how people mostly see the large number but forget that the true tragedy was each individual life that was lost. Sheila says so many people, like herself, were left with no families and would forever be without families. She says, “All I ever wanted was people. I wanted them and I never had them.”

That statement to me was like a blow to the gut. I’d never thought of the Holocaust as such individual pain.

But now all of this has me thinking about the pain all around me; the pain of loneliness and abandonment that I too often see as so large a problem that I miss the individuals. I fight against it in my life by investing myself in humanity but now I’m wondering if we aren’t all attacking it on too large a basis, which is making us less effective. Maybe we should all look intently at the individuals in our lives and pick one to be a person to them. The only defense against loneliness is people. The only offense against loneliness is people. We are the presence of God on earth in a very real, tangible sense.

I know all of you invest in people that you can name individually and I do too. But what if our thinking shifted just a little to be much more intentional towards a special few people who really need invested in? I’m not sure what would happen or if things would even look that much different for you. But I have a sneaking suspicion that they will. You should watch this movie and see if it inspires you too.

At the very least, these thoughts make me want to be here for my wife, kids, friends and family in every way I can even if it requires great personal sacrifice. What price is too high to pay to give someone the gift of your presence? And the only prerequisite to giving the gift of presence is that you’re alive to give it. And if you’re reading this, you’re alive so get to it!

Anyone else have thoughts about all this?

Hey, How About This One…

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge — myth is more potent than history — dreams are more powerful than facts — hope always triumphs over experience — laughter is the cure for grief — love is stronger than death.” -Robert Fulghum

“The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can’t fake it … try to fake three laughs in an hour-ha ha ha ha ha-they’ll take you away, man. You can’t.” -Lenny Bruce

“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.” -Victor Borge

by Gary   (photos by Meghan Hill)

The setting is our family mini van.

The location is Hwy 37 north, somewhere between Mitchell and Bedford, on the way to Nanny’s house for Sunday lunch.

The plot is Collin, our 6 year old son, entertaining us with his own brand of humor, or lack thereof.

The script went as follows…

Collin:    Why did the chicken cross the road?

Me:             I don’t know. Why?

Collin:     To go swim in the pond. (Collin laughs at his joke)

Me:            (I laugh at Collin laughing at himself)

Collin:     Hey, how about this one…  Why did the dump truck put dirt on the duck?

Me:             I don’t know. Why?

Collin:     Because the dump truck wanted to get the duck dirty. (Collin laughs at his joke again)

Me:            (I laugh at Collin and the thought of a dead duck under two tons of dirt.)

Collin:     Hey, how about this one…

And on and on he goes.

At this point, Elsa, our three year old daughter, is laughing so hard she can hardly breathe. The problem is that these aren’t really jokes in the standard sense but that doesn’t bother Elsa because she has no idea what a joke is anyway. She’s just laughing because Collin and I are laughing.

Michelle is laughing at Elsa. And I’m grinning and chuckling; shaking my head at the thought of a chicken swimming.

Collin really doesn’t understand humor yet but he’s convinced he does. He’s so convinced that he keeps right on telling jokes that aren’t really jokes. But then again, I’m not sure what they are. They’re hard to categorize.  If the definition of a joke is that what you say makes people laugh, then maybe Collin is telling jokes.

I don’t have any huge points to draw from all this, you’ll have to draw your own today. But it does make me feel reflective. I just enjoy enjoying my joke-telling son, my jump-on-the-laughter-wagon daughter and my easily amused wife. What a life! It really makes me wonder what else I might be overlooking or disregarding in my life just because I can’t find a good category to put it in. It makes me want to laugh more freely for no good reason.

I shall desire and I shall find
The best of my desires;
The autumn road, the mellow wind
That soothes the darkening shires.
And laughter, and inn-fires.
(Rupert Brooke)

From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There’s nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.
(Hilaire Belloc)

Giving Up Soul Care for Lent?

by Gary

I don’t know if any of you read Christianity Today online. If any of you do, you may have seen this article already. If not, it’s worth reading and thinking about. Thanks to my lovely wife, Michelle, for bringing this article to my attention. I think she may actually be the brains behind this operation!!

Jon Micah Richardson and I just had a conversation the other day about how it seems so many Christians measure themselves by the latest fad and the latest books and the latest ways to live radically. Curt Parsley and I have talked about this many times too. It seems we have trouble doing what the huge, unnamed masses do in the new testament, which is be converted to Jesus and then live it out right there on their piece of ground that they already lived on; doing it as it comes to them by the personal indwelling of the Spirit and strength of God.

Instead we’re tempted to evaluate ourselves by the latest book or the most recent spiritual writer or leader. We’re always looking for some new sign by which to measure our spiritual growth, to the point that we end up looking much more at ourselves than at God.

This article addresses all this in an insightful way and with an evocative challenge. Give it a read. (and yes, I see the irony of asking you to read something about living more simply.)

‘God Only’ – Giving Up Soul Care for Lent (click to go to article)