Apparently I don't enunciate

I get home late tonight & am unloading my lunch dishes to prepare to put them in the dishwasher.

"Oh, no", I lament, when finding a cling film wrapped lemon slice in the lunch bag, "I forgot to squeeze the lemon juice on the leftovers of Sharon's soup."

"Why is that such a big tragedy," my roommate Dan asks?

"Because," I reply, "the lemon juice really brings out the flavours in the dhal soup."

"Wow.... well, I won't tell Sharon you said that."

"Said what?"

"What you said about her soup."

Puzzled, I think for a minute & finally clue in.

"I said dhal soup. D-H-A-L. Not 'dull' soup."

Dan, "Oh, gotcha."

tears

Went to a memorial service today & it affected me deeply. Lots & lots of crying & I'm still weepy. Ended up starting to cry at a few places in the oscars tonight, so you know I'm an emotional wreck.

Want to write great & profound things tonight, but spirits are low & i don't have the energy... will try again tomorrow....

Blessings & Curses: Part 1

Part of the beauty & heartache, the blessing & curse, of being human is our limitations. We are fallible. There is no guarantee that anything we say or do is ever 100% true or 100% false.... we perhaps always live in the mixture of the in-betweens....

....have been pondering what I wrote last night. In the moment I was convinced of it.... & maybe still am. Maybe everything we speak is our truth (or carries the possibility of truth) of what we believe in that moment. Does that mean it is real truth, absolute truth? There are no guarantees....The Truth is a constant. There is one reality of what (or rather, who) is Truth... but for us, here in the temporal plane, here caught in time & space, it is 'our' truth that can shape us & guide us in the moments. We hope, we long to be true, to be part of what is real, but again, we are never sure that we line up always with what is true.....

...last night I wrote passionately (though rather disjointedly) in repentance of the ways I stifle people around me, the ways that my desire to protect can sometimes choke others, prevent them from growth, from taking on their own responsibilities & living out of their own core....

...today I've questioned a lot of that. Is that really me? Do I really do that? Why? Maybe I don't? Maybe I have good motives for everything I do? Maybe not?

.... there is such a fine line in knowing our motivation, our motives, for any action. How do we know when we act out of love, true, blazing, unconditional, unadulterated love & when we act out of self-love, some extension of trying to stroke our egos or to build up ourselves... How do we know when we are acting out of fear, trying to save our own skins or our own desires, or when our fear moves us to act on someone's behalf..... Last night in the midst of thinking about me trying to keep the cup of suffering from those around me, Sherry was reading about Job breaking the teeth of the wicked & rescuing the innocent from their jaws, about his battles for justice. Where is the line between keeping someone from the cross & their destiny through the path of suffering & the place of fighting for them, defending them, living up to our own destinies as deliverers....

& so yeah, I still believe my apologies & repentance from last night. There are definitely places & people that I've stifled, not out of bad motives, just out of forgetting to trust & being more concerned with safety than growth & freedom.... but last night there was likely a lot of places where I took the "I'm the devil" thing maybe a bit too far... I forgot the dichotomy, the living in constant tension - always balancing the opposites off...

I've concluded today that I will be both an incredible parent & a horrible parent & I will flip flop between the two in grand phlegmatic fashion.... one moment I'll smother my kids & they'll hate me, the next I'll be so free with them that they'll feel like the floor has dropped out from under them. Then in the next moment I'll be there to love them, to listen, to hear their hearts & they'll know that their dad loves them deeply & then in the next moments, I'll encourage them to reach for the stars & dream & watch them take risks & soar & go, 'that's my daughter, or 'that's my son' (& yeah, maybe I should start saving now so I can pay their therapy bills).....

...but in the end, I am just me. I have flashes of truth, abysses of error & most of my days spent somewhere in between...I live in moments of love so pure it makes you weep for the sheer beauty of it, in moments of pride, arrogance & avarice so vile that it twists your stomach in knots & again, most days I live somewhere in between....

....and so when I speak, I will speak often in blacks & whites, trying to make great summarization statements - "at the end of the day", I say & then launch into some tirade about what I think is true.... & then in the next moment I'll go, well, wait, maybe that's not the case....

...as a true perceiver, one who sees only in shades of greys (or, as I prefer to say it, in 'rainbows'), I should probably try less to sum up humanity, to try to explain things for all of us & instead just talk about my journey... speak 'my' truth.... if it resonates with someone & feels like their truth, or even better, if it sounds like The Truth, then, well that's great.... but I've really got to watch myself in trying to explain things.....

... I long for those I care about to see the truth of who they are (& yeah, this is sort of my wish for humanity).... being able to see people through the eyes of love changes forever how you perceive them.... & I listen to a humanity who seems so unable to truly see who they are & I keep trying to tell people, crying like a voice in the wilderness, but yeah, nobody really believes you 'cause you're talking about stuff they can't see.....

...and the reality is that I live with the same vision problems... I can't see me as others do, I can't see (though am starting to) the Kirk that is a beloved friend & son & brother.... (Again, this is much, much better than it's ever been, but still not where I want it to be.... though it feels like it's on the edge a lot of days - close & just waiting to get tipped over)....

...& yeah, I realize that again, the Truth is that we are loved. We are made in the image of God & chosen by Him. We are the bride of Christ, the one who captivates His heart with even one glance from our eyes.... but this truth means nothing until it gets inside us, until we own it - until the weight of it rests on our heart & sets us free to soar... this is the only place where it will matter, this is the rock on which Christ builds His church - the place where the Truth of heaven meets with the confession of human hearts.... Where 'our' truth starts to align with His Truth....

& so yeah, I am one voice of many... there are moments where I resonate with the sound of The Voice, there are moments where I sound like the accuser, there are moments where I sound like Job crying for a mediator, or where I join with the voices of others - the one, the thousands, the humanity of history - in groaning, longing for more, for deliverance, for love.... & yeah, as I prayed last night, I have to really start to 'own' my voice again.... to remember that I don't speak for others or speak for humanity... I speak for me.... I tell my story 'cause it's the story I am given... but yeah, if it happens to resonate with something more, then great....

.... I chose this title of 'Red Pill Manifesto' hoping to script some great book that would make a declaration of revolution - something calling us to, as in the movie the Matrix, to take the red pill & break free from illusions & realize who we truly are. I sort of tried to start the first chapter on the book & it all went in the crapper.... & I sort of realized that I can't write that story, that declaration. I can write my story... I can declare my own freedom, the freedom granted through love at the cross... I can speak of my own revolution to throw off the chains of self-hatred, of false-humility & of all that holds me back from being who I truly am....

...and so yeah, whatever... this all sort of went sideways of where it was intended to go.... & I'm not sure where it's going now.... other than that the inspiration has lifted & I'm back in my room without the weight of vision & image flooding my head... words dripping off my fingertips.... I could fight to try to get something back. I wonder if I did something wrong or took a wrong turn a few paragraphs back (shortly after the one voice & the part about joining the voice of the accuser). I wonder if I stopped believing in the words, or got hungry, or my mind wandered.... but the words are mist now.... & I am sort of hungry.... nachos & batman beyond here I come... (though I may be back).

Acting like the devil & other revelations

Was driving away from the community house tonight & listening to something on the radio (CKUA), some weird poem about time & memories that was at first really goofy & then really, really profound & beautiful... one of those poems that at first you're thinking what a joke it all is & then nearly in tears 'cause it's, well, it captures the heart of a moment & takes your breath away... and it was followed by an Eliza Gilkyson tune that I've heard a number of times, but suddenly in light of the poem it became so meaningful, so 'true' - all about time & how we're caught in it & how things change & slip away, & how much we try to grab ahold, how much we try to understand the moment, live so much with this 'furrowed brow' - all of humanity trying to figure out why we're here & what it's all about & yeah, somewhere in this I just realized afresh how that true revelation, those moments when we finally 'get it' do not come because we figured them out through our own merit, through our efforts of thinking. Instead it's these moments of where stuff that's been brewing on our heart & brain for days, weeks, months or sometimes years suddenly becomes blindingly clear..... & these clarity moments come when we are not expecting them....

...like just now, the word clarity strikes me. At work I have to come up with random passwords each month & somehow in this months & wove 'clarity' into one of the passwords because at the time, thats what I needed. My thoughts were a jumble of loose ends & rabbit trails & I couldn't find a way to unravel it all... so clarity is what I needed. Got some clarity on things earlier in the month & was grateful for that, but yeah, realizing that there is so much more clarity to come. It struck me in just this moment that I've been looking for 'changes' each month of this year, things to turn the titanic around, to reshape my life so it's very different in the end of 2007 than what it was when I began. In this moment I see that 'clarity' is what this month is about - and maybe it's just going to keep going.

& it feels good with the work/life confusion to realize again (as wise friends have mentioned to me), that the truth of what is 'next' will just dawn on me eventually....

....but yeah, other revelation: From listening to the song "hold fast hope" off a Thrice album that Nolan's lent me - realized again how much Jesus draws parallels between his life & Jonah's. Both end up fast asleep in a boat in the middle of this crazy storm. Both end up calming the sea. Both end up three days & three nights in the 'grave'. Both of their 'deaths' cause gentiles to praise & worship God. Both find 'resurrection' after three days.

You'd think out of all the people in the Bible that Jesus could compare himself to, Jonah wouldn't be one of them, but yet Jonah, in his running from God ends up becoming metaphor, becoming a picture of Christ in so many ways.... & this is just wild, that some how the stories of rebellion can still point to the only obedient one.... I think of Samson, too, who 'did more in his death than he did in his life' & how even in this, we find something that points to the cross, some strange parallel between Samson's last thrust of strength to topple the pillars and Jesus's triumphant cry of 'it is finished'.....

...and so it's wild to realize that our lives, in either running to or running from Him, all points to Him.....

.... and one last revelation - the big one for tonight, which is something I've somehow been pondering for unrelated reasons, but it just came together tonight... I,uh... we.... we were listening to a sermon my Martin Luther King, Jr. tonight. I've never really heard him speak before (other than the 'I have a dream' bit)... but it was rich. Didn't agree with everything, but most everything was fantastic & he was talking about Mark 10:35-45... it's where James & John come to Jesus & ask to be seated on his right & left in his coming kingdom.... and Jesus looks at them & goes, 'you don't know what you're asking. Can you drink of the cup I that I drink of & be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" & they reply "yes" to this.... & yeah, the thoughts of the cup (& a zillion other thoughts) have been stuck on my brain afterwards... Jesus looks at James & John & their bold reply & says, "Yes, you will indeed drink the cup I drink & be baptized with my baptism"....

the cup is the cup of suffering, the baptism, well, I maybe don't understand that yet... but it leaves me thinking. Out of the 12 disciples, it was James who tasted that cup first. He's the first of the 12 (not counting Judas) to taste death (Acts 12) & to experience the same sufferings that Jesus did. John is the last of the 12, alone on Patmos.... These two men bookend a trail of martyrdom amongst the original 12....

...Andy put a cup of wine in the middle of the room, to represent the cup of suffering & challenged us to take of it.... my first temptation: to rush over there & chug-a-lug it all down. Why? Not to quench some thirst or to satiate some longing for wine.... it's the symbolism. I've tasted, in limited senses, the cup of suffering & it's part of the life I've chosen. I've picked to embrace Philipians 3:10 - this prayer that I long to know Christ, the power of His resurrection & the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to his death.... I was counseled years ago to not pray that prayer by someone who prayed it & has reaped the sufferings (& some degree of wisdom). I was warned to not pray this 'cause of the 'cost'.... but yeah, maybe I have a silly heart like James & John & go, "meh, how bad can it be?"... & yeah, haven't regretted it. It means maybe a darker path at times, but it's a rich path & I wouldn't have it any other way....

But I find that, for as much as I value the lessons suffering brings, I tend to fear for those I care about & try to shield them from any form of suffering. Maybe some of this comes from a good heart, maybe it's all well intentioned, but yeah, I had it pointed out to me (in a sermon, so not directly to me) that Peter's advice to Jesus in Matthew 16/Mark 8 telling him, "Look, stop talking about this crucifixion stuff. You don't have to die. You'll be fine. " was actually the voice of Satan talking to Jesus (& the phrase 'get behind me satan is paralleled in Luke 4:8)....

... it's this thing of where a big part of Jesus's purpose here on earth was to die, to lay down his life as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.... Peter's call to turn from the cross was actually the voice of the enemy calling Jesus away from His true task.... and part of the revelation tonight for me was just how much I likely become the voice of satan some times to those around me by 'protecting' them from their crosses....

... there is a place of where we have to let go those we love. There is always the moment (or really a series of moments) where we release those we love to face suffering, to face the great dark & the worst suffering of all, facing these things alone.... We all must go through Gethsemane & find our friends sleeping in the moments when we sweat blood & tears... there is always the via dolorosa in our lives, the way of suffering, where we must march up the long road to gologtha, the place of death & be nailed to the cross, to face our myriad sufferings....

...I've walked these places many a time. In every moment I've looked beside me & somehow found Jesus waiting there with me - the one who faced these alone for me now refuses to let me be alone in these moments - He weaves himself in so he is closer than my skin, our breath, our tears combine & so it is hard to tell whether it's me weeping or His tears streaming down my face.... these have been the most intimate moments with God perhaps that I've had.... as we've shared the dark places.....

... and yeah, I have watched friends I love walk through these places. In some places I've somehow seen my powerlessness & had no choice but to step back & watch those I love most be stripped & hoisted high above to be objects of ridicule & scorn, bloodied trophies for a world that doesn't deserve to have people that good walk the soil of this planet. & I've stood there like the Marys... parent's heart breaking... or like Mary Magdelene, watching the embodiment of love be stolen from you by cruel hearts who never understood who they were really putting on that cross.....

...and yeah, it's this thing of where I am so comfortable in some ways with the cross for myself that it's 'easy' (ish) for me to face this, but so hard to watch others that I care about go through even the tiniest of sufferings.....

... and I mean, it's great that I want to help, want to be there, want to stay awake in Gethsemane, but yeah, in doing so, I rob friends of the intimacy of the shared space, the fellowship of sufferings, with Jesus... & yeah, in the end, I stand with the accuser to keep friends from their true places of growth....

.... was listening to another radio program last night that talked about risk & how kids today live in such a 'safe' world that they have no idea of how to take responsibility & don't feel like adults 'cause they never get to risk.. So they join gangs, do drugs, have sex young, all kinds of things just to take on something where they can feel like they've faced a risk & were able to overcome their challenges. The guy on the radio talked about how that parents can 'protect' their kids right into all the wrong things 'cause we as humans are made to, long to, find our maturity in learning to stand on our own two feet, to live the life of risk - to face uncertainty & possible collapse & find that we are enough to handle the situation.....

...so yeah, not sure if this is making any sense - it was clearer to me in the moment than what I'm able to put down now. But yeah, to my friends who I have 'sheltered' far more than I should have, I apologize. I forget that sometimes love stands aside & lets you go through pain so that you can grow & find confidence in your own heart & own strength.... I'm sorry for the places where I didn't trust God's hand of leading in your lives & recognize the places where your suffering produces good fruit in you.... I see the richness borne of pain in your lives & it's this depth of heart that I love about you all. I just forget that to get there sometimes means going through the crucible.... forgive me for trying to pull you out when God's trying to put you in...

... I'm learning slowly....

At the end of the day....

Finished '24' season 5 tonight. Took a bit longer than expected. I figured I'd be home in time Sunday to put food in the oven, get toilet paper (found out the hard way that I was out - kleenex anyone?) & blaze through the last 4 episodes. But when I got home, my house was full & it took me much longer than I figured to get stuff done (& i was tired so fit in a nice 1 hour nap).

But yeah, no 24 on Sunday - instead cooking & resting & a lovely moroccan meal (cooked in the new tagine - in the oven this time with no cold water around) & great conversaton with a wonderful & dear friend. Got to talk science/engineering & tore the old dead-cell phone apart to show my friend the work I used to do. Realized that it's been a long time since I've done 'real' engineering (i.e. got my hands dirty) & designed circuit boards or programmed code. I miss that. There was some cool learning/challenging/creative moments in past work...

Monday night I got in 2 episodes. The roomies were both home wihich never happens, so we watched a movie together. Picked 'the War Tapes' a documentary from 3 National Guardsmen who wore/used cameras for their 16-18 month tour in Iraq. The movie's good. Gives you enough information that any bias could apply in the movie. Shows a lot of the good & the bad. Pretty upsetting & not so cheery movie though. Leaves me thinking that our planet is #$@#ed & I should move to the boonies & start stocking up canned goods & water... or maybe use my car less.... it's hard feeling powerless when you're watching the world you think you know crumble away & you see past the veneer that it's all about money & power... & those of us who know the real truth - that it's all about love - seem so unable to stem the tide... to plug the holes in the dam....

Felt pretty unhappy after this. Called a good friend to chat. We both likely needed to hear a friendly voice.... (or maybe just me more than she).

So tonight, the house is empty, all quiet, all to myself. Only sounds are random road & house noises & the occasional sound of falling Sigma 6 figures (man, I can not figure how to make those guys stay up - maybe it's the oversized weapons). And yeah, ate leftovers from Sunday night while watching the final 2 episodes of Season 5.

At the end of the 'day', at the end of the 24 episodes, it ends as it always does. Jack saves the day, but loses personally in the end... (though if he would've listened to me & took 10 minutes to upload stuff to YouTube, he might have saved himself some of the hassles) I remember resonating with Jack at the end of season 3, watching him weep & then brush the tears away to follow up on the next task, the next mission, the never ending battle of Jack Bauer...

& yeah, Jack looked happy (or as close as he gets) for a least a tiny bit at the end of the day.... sort of wish he could've stayed there.... that the day ended at 23 hours & 50 minutes & that 50th minute lasted for a long, long time..... I know, I know, we need to have season 6 & it's all exciting & stuff, but really, Jack's been through the wringer, we all need to cut him some slack & let someone else deal with the crises.....

I'm bummed. I want to say 'depressed' or 'lonely', but those words lose meaning for me 'cause I've used them too much. Maybe the better words to use are just to say that the 'void' is felt tonight... the empty places... the 'hollow way' that is in part my name & destiny... I've realized the redemptive power of my name - that I am here to walk in the hollow ways, to find people in the empty places & help them on their journey, to point to the light, the mountain tops, the next step, to keep them from staying forever in the hollow place & letting it consume them.... the only flip side of that is to live this you end up being in the hollow places a lot.... sometimes it's yourself that you have to coax out of the empty places & encourage to keep journeying....

.... Tonight I feel bulletproof, I feel unstoppable. I sense the reality that in Christ I cannot be halted or waylaid. I will continue to walk & journey through this life & pursue love & joy & truth & freedom & light & life no matter what.... but this reality can co-exist with the reality of the empty places... I feel alone-ish tonight. I haven't been around people so much the last few days. This has been good, but I over think friendships & contemplate whether it's worth it to pursue trying to grow friendships or just to hide out at home with the TV & g.i. joes & random hobbies & live my life maybe waiting for things to come to me. I will choose to pursue, but yeah, the whining is there. My body longs for sex. I haven't tasted that fruit per se, thought about it a lot, but haven't gotten to it yet. Doesn't stop the cravings. Been thinking about an ex-girlfriend again. I want to see her to apologize for not being better to her. But part of me has the darker urges & that's part of why I miss her... my body remembers hers.... I also remember that she really liked me &, well, that was just a nice feeling to have for the time that it lasted....

... & so at the end of the day, this is where I sit. I don't want to do a lot. I write 'cause, well, I can. I may paint. I may go to bed early. Sort of want & don't want either of those... but at the end of the day, I sit in the empty places trying to make the best out of it & hope tomorrow looks a bit brighter.....

I use the phrase 'at the end of the day' a lot lately. It's like saying 'in conclusion', or 'when it's all said & done'... Really it means that once all of our trying & thinking & processing & trying to make sense of it all, the reality we are faced with is...... and yeah, maybe I'm not qualified to make statements like 'at the end of the day....' 'cause I sort of don't know what the end of the day, the conclusion of the whole matter, holds.... other than what Solomon tells us, "hear the conclusion of the whole matter, fear God, keep his commands for this is the whole duty of man"... and then he launches into Song of Songs, the epic love poem of the bride & groom, the two beloveds, Jesus's romance of humanity....

At the end of the day, there is love... &, I hope, there is redemption. At the end of some days we are left in the sunshine with the girl, smiling & breathless. At the end of other days we are left in the darkness of our darkest dungeons. But in all of it we are given life, given a chance for another day, another kick at the can, another shot at seeing good & living well... As long as there is breath in our lungs there is hope. His mercies are new each morning. Hope rises like the dawn.... blazing like the morning star.... in Him we live & move & have our being... we give, we try, we fail, we hurt, we succeed, we laugh, we get through, we survive, we manage, we cope, we live, we dance, we celebrate, we find joy, we hug, we smile & see others smiles... at the end of the day we are human & we are gloriously loved... & this lights the lanterns on the path of at least this hollow way...

Muse-ic

Ended up in another rant today about the "Before the Music Dies" (B4MD) documentary. I seem to rant about this alot. Had a number of good running rants with Marty over lunch on Monday about the DVD. And had a good one today talking about how we're mortgaged the soul of our nation for the sake of quarterly earnings & shareholder profits...

...but yeah, suffice it to say that today was a day to thing about music, among other things.... thinking about the power of 'voice', of how you never know if one person could be the messenger for a generation, about how essential that could make one person's words or song... and yet, how God seems to layer His 'voice' & sends multiple prophets usually... though there is still this dynamic of where if one voice fails, God'll raise up another, but the message must still be told, sung, whispered, shouted...

...maybe one voice can't change a generation, but yet there are these songs that somehow become part of our collective conscious/unconscious in society & so maybe one song, one word, one voice can impact a culture for at least a moment of time in history...

... was hunting around on the net for where to pick up more Kathleen Edwards CD's. I've fallen in love (well, in a manner of speaking) with the album 'Failer' & was looking to hear more & found that Kathleen has another album out there. While following the links from her website to the 'Rounderstore.com' music website, I came across an artist listing for the Branford Marsalis quartet - another name from the B4MD video.

I've been quoting Branford a number of times already in a number of B4MD rants. One point he makes that echoes with me is that people usually won't 'get' the new music. We're all used to listening to what we like & so the truly new, truly innovative music is usually met with a certain level of apathy or disdain. The new stuff grows on us eventually & eventually we realize it's true greatness. Artist after artist has met with this, that their initial works are completely misunderstood & eventually people somehow 'get' it - likely at around the same time the artist is thinking about giving up 'cause no one understands.

But I think this is true of everything, not just music. Christianity is plagued with this, as is the rest of society. We usually crucify the 'new' stuff & then about 5 years later, for better or worse, totally embrace it. We're just about 10 years behind in our embracing of what the rest of society has already embraced.

Anyhow, I was mesmerized by the write ups on his disks & promptly ordered his "Braggtown" disk along with Kathleen's disks. But it was the write up on his record 'Eternal' that really caught my eye:

"Branford Marsalis knew that his quartet had achieved a new level of eloquence when two listeners told him on separate occasions that a ballad by the band had made them cry. "I had rarely heard that said about jazz before," says the acclaimed saxophonist, "and the comment made me realize that the quartet and I were achieving emotional development as musicians." The revelation led to Eternal, the September 2004 collection of original and classic ballads that realizes Branford's goal of "aiming for what Billie Holiday could do, which was to get to the emotions of each song." "

This has left me pondering for the rest of the day. I have to admit that I usually don't 'get' jazz. This, I know, automatically disqualifies me from being an audiophile... I feel bad about this. Lots of musical friends that I really admire love jazz, it's a part of their lives & they seem to 'get' it (if jazz can be 'gotten')... But yeah, so much of jazz is a mystery to me. I recently picked up a Stan Getz & a Chris Botti album on the recommendations of Jim Wilson. Both are fantastic albums, but they don't grip me, they haven't moved me... Maybe it's just that I haven't been paying attention. I listened to the Getz album while painting G.I. Joes & then later at work. Both cases may have left me distracted from treating it as more than background music (tonight while painting I was sort of only half way hearing all the screeching/ yelling/ screaming of Alexisonfire, so yeah, guess I can tune out anything while painting).

But, as Branford's note says, I don't think I've ever cried at jazz.... I've listened to some of the greats: John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis - all of them I enjoyed, but no tears....

...and this sort of says something (don't know what yet) 'cause i cry at everything....

... so wandered down to the Urban Sound Exchange & walked out of there with an Alexisonfire, Danko Jones & Branford Marsalis album (try to pin that to a demographic or marketing strategy!!) . They has a number of Branford's CDs. Looks like he's been around doing his thing for quite some time now (well, at least 15 years - that's the crazy thing about jazz - it's not like you get good artist recognition in the mainstream media ('cept for maybe Norah Jones- though I'm not sure if she counts, likely does, I just don't know)

Being there got me thinking about the progression of our music tastes over time. We seem to go through phases of what we love for music as we get older. It made me wonder if maybe all of us progress to loving jazz by the end of our lives.... made me wonder if maybe jazz is this elevated state of consciousness that we arrive at after years to wandering through the blues & rock & country & hiphop...

..got to thinking of my own musical journey & the soundtrack of my life and how much following the trail of CDs in my life would mirror the trail that my heart journey has brought me on... I thought about trying to chronicle that, but realized it would take days & would make my post painfully longer than the already painfully long length that they're usually at. But yeah, musically, my life has moved from the hymns to flirting with rock& roll & 'secular' music in my teens, to finally owning my first album, Rich Mullins, in my early 20's. Then it moved into various other Contemporary Christian Music, while mostly listening to Rich's stories. Then to indie Christian music, opened up by the world of the web & sites like Grassrootsmusic & PasteMusic which introduced me to rich lyricists like Bill Mallonee and Don & Lori Chaffer. And from there, the Christian artists introduced me to the 'spiritual' secular artists. U2, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Bruce Cockburn... and it's just kept going from there. This so mirrors the story of my life from being rooted in the church & the foundations of deep theology to seeing a world with temptations & brokeness & yet beauty & something good in it,too to moving into a life of Christian service & ministry & being 'in the church', to slowly more & more being expanded to see the greater world around & recognize that The Voice, the Living Word, speaks for all to hear & whispers through even the most broken & wretched vessels... (often more so in the 'pure' & polished ones)....

And I know that for most of my generation & the generations following that we can trace our growth as people by the changes in our music. But then again, I realized that this was likely true of my parent's generation & even while they didn't listen to the 'secular' music out there, Artists like the Beatles, Elvis, Johnny Cash, the music these people created impacted even the pseudo-sheltered world of my parents living in small town christendom.

And I wonder if maybe every human in every culture has a soundtrack to their lives. In tribal cultures, it is the songs that tell the stories of the tribe. History & knowledge are stored in music & rhyme. Children are sung to sleep by lullaby. Lovers sing to each other. Songs for drunken revelry abound. Nations have anthems, sports teams have songs. Warriors sing songs to prepare for battle or to sing of victory & mourn defeat... Asaph whispers some prophetic psalm asking "how can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?"... somehow music, songs, are woven into the fabric of our everyday & it is this music in some ways which charts, or at least bears witness to, the events of our lives....Sometimes shaping, sometime reflecting how we are being changed, or how we are growing to be fully oursleves....

... so bailed on the community house people tonight (sorry) & declined the lovely offer to go for chinese food. I'd sort of planned for a quiet night at home to be able to cook & watch 24 & maybe paint & write some.... Partly just wanted a quiet night, partly wanted to cook to have leftovers for the week ahead, partly just wanted the night at home just because.... but anyhow, started my evening my making spaghetti, sipping on a glass or red wine & letting the notes of Branford's "Requiem" spill over me. Trying to absorb the music rather than try to understand it...

...Jazz is this strange kind of music (& to all the true Jazz lovers out there, please forgive me as I try to describe what Jazz 'feels' like to me. I mean no disrespect, but am just fumbling towards understanding...) In so many other types of music, the song is the key thing. There are notes to be played that follow a progression, that communicate a thought or a range of emotion. All the instruments, no matter how layered & textured the music is, they all point to that one thing & sort of speak to that one voice, the one story, or parable, that the song is communicating....

Jazz does not feel like this, or at least not the instrumental jazz that I often hear & heard tonight. Jazz somehow pulls together a collective of masters, experts at their own instrument & puts them together in this loose structure called a 'band' & the instruments/players then dynamically collaborate with each other. If there are notes to follow, some overarching direction that they are taking, it's imperceptible - the music seems to wander like my train of thought, it moves in & out, sometimes loud, sometimes soft, sometimes one instrument emerges, to become the lead or the solo, but other moments it's a cacophony of noise, instruments playing on top of each other, sometimes all in different timing & melody... It is this odd, odd place, where somehow the musicians seem to be solely individuals playing, but yet somehow they are one & singing one song, though the song breaks, defies, the rules of what a song should be. Any stories told here, must be felt, as your heart is caught by one instrument, lifted to blazing heights by one solo string of notes & then abandoned to come crashing down onto the next stream of sounds...

Sometimes I think that the solos in jazz are just people showing off who can move their fingers the fastest... like some strange competition to determine who can shove as many notes as possible into a minute of time... Tonight though, the flurry of notes sounded more like ecstatic utterances, like babbling in tongues, the person somehow caught by God & unstoppably declaring mysteries & revelations that only the heart can hear....

Maybe it is hard to cry at jazz because it is such happy music... or well, happy is the wrong term. In jazz it feels more like the musician is caught up... captured & captivated by the complete giving of themselves to the music & the moment. For the collaboration to be great, you must give yourself to the moment, listen to the other players around you & let their song inspire yours & you build off of each other until the point of where you are racing to keep up with the pace of what you are creating/what is creating you... the music comes faster than you can get the notes out & it is a struggle to keep up... This is a 'holy' (or perhaps rather 'wholly') place of where you must be fully present, fully surrendered & there is perhaps no sadness in that. Sadness may come from the exhaustion at the end of the night, but in the moment, there is only the song, only the music, only the next notes - the player becomes the instrument & breath from somewhere beyond begins to blow on the player, coaxing & caressing them to bend & move & sing to a tune greater than themselves...

...this results in an 'excellence' in jazz - a place of where people become disciples of the creative process & have to dedicate themselves to being the best they can be & this shines in the music of the great jazz masters...

At the end of the day, I was left to wonder if all we'll sing in heaven is Jazz.... Jazz is the melody sung by the slaves as they gained their freedom & in heaven there will not be a one of us who will not sing the song of the redeemed. All of us have been slaves here on planet & none of us enters heaven out of our own merit. We call come as slaves liberated by the true emancipator. In heaven, we trade in faith & hope for certainty & seeing & we hang on to love... Maybe we trade in our blues for joy, the anger of our punk for peace, maybe in seeing we are left with only music with no rules, music where we all get to play our part & while somehow it sounds like we're singing different songs we all sing that one song of the slaves that are freed, celebrating the beloved who has set them free...

..or as Brandford says, maybe the music of heaven is something we've never heard yet. & we may not even like it at first, but I'm sure we'll get used to it.....

Voices

Tomorrow AM is first time back at converge/epic since David's messenger/message thing....

...pray that we don't go silent....

Maybe my dad is right after all...

.... well, he often is - right that is. He's always telling me I need to go to bed earlier & need more sleep. Last night I went to bed well sometime before 11PM instead of the normal midnight, 1 or later AM... & yeah, woke up feeling good about me & about life & work actually went well & I'm still in a good mood (though starting to feel tired, now).... but yeah, may have to try to make a lifestyle change.

This would not be easy. I've an evening person in a generation of evening people (well, at least most of my friends are night owls, too). Hanging out with people means being up late - though then there's always my staying up later processing life after I get home. But yeah, maybe more sleep should actually solve half of my emotional struggles (but where would be the fun in that ?! - just kidding)....

...anyhow, we'll see how that goes. Tonight it's now 10:30 & have a friend wanting me to go for wings... so yeah, not a great start...

Hour 16

EEP!!! Apparently I may have misjudged President Logan.....

... will have to keep watching to find out.... though not tonight... another 3 episode run tonight... I've likely had enough adrenaline for one night....

Ugh....

Too many nights
of not enough sleep
have finally caught up with me

Chose to bail on the community house people half way through the evening. Found myself exhausted & coughing & fighting a cold... just generally feeling crappy. So took the 'better part of valor' & retreated.... tired of being a zombie & 'stealing my paycheck' at work, too.

Got a bit more sleep last night & feeling psuedo-decent this morning. Looking forward to a less-planned weekend with hopefully time to catch up on some sleep (if I'm smart enough to do so).

Heart full of surrender: P.S.

Forgot to mention in the post, that I had the urge tonight to go back to that same spot & try hitting that approach/left hand turn lane again at about the same speed (when no traffic was around of course). Wanted to hit that thing over & over again until I conquered it & conquered fears with it...

...this is maybe part of the change in me... making mistakes & learning how to overcome the 'failures', inadequecies, challenges, etc....

Pillow Talk

This maybe doesn't fit well with the seriousness of my mood right now (see the post below).... but had a thought while staring at my computer screen last night that one of the many things I look forward to having when I'm with someone/married is pillow talk. This place of being able to end (& maybe start) your day next to someone you love, to share your heart of hearts & summarize/bookend your day sharing the final or opening thoughts of the day with someone who your story matters to & whose story matters to you.....

...had a thought that maybe this is why i delay going to bed for so long. I'm looking for those moments for the last thoughts of the day to filter through... Once i hit the pillow, I drift into the subconscious quickly.... Sort of psuedo realized that maybe I should turn these things to prayer & let God be my 'pillow talk' buddy instead of just filtering through my own thoughts while staring blankly at the comptuer screen while playing solitaire or reversi....

...anyhow, hope you all, single or couples, have a fantastic Valentine's day. I'm really, really happy about Valentine's day tomorrow. I'm sort of psuedo-celebrating not being interested in any one, in not having any 'potentials' on the radar & being free to just be single & sort of throw away the longings for finding someone... I have seldom lived in this place & I'm trying to prolong it for a while... I have lived most of my life single, but have had a tendency to go from crush to crush.... holding on to the ideas of 'potential' women like they were some security blanket.... some faint hope that I won't die alone 'cause this or that person is out there & maybe they'll like me... Right now I'm just trying to concentrate on liking myself without crutches...

But yeah, this somehow makes me really happy about Valentine's day 'cause I see it as a celebration of love &, man, if there's anything that should be celebrated it's love... Love's the greatest gift we give & receive.... & receive in the giving/give in the receiving, whatever...

It's just nice to be free to celebrate this with the rest of humanity instead of doing the "woe is me, poor single me" stuff that I may have done in the past....

Heart full of surrender

I left work today contemplating whether I should sell my car & get a new one. The mileage is getting up there, maybe it's time to trade things in. This got me thinking about finances & longer term stuff. What if I quit my job? Maybe I could become a radio engineer for CKUA? How much do they make? I wouldn't know how to do the work, but I'm sure I could learn....

...then got thinking about the icy roads, about car accidents, about death, trying to protect people in my car from pending accidents, me dying, etc....

Merged onto John Laurier on the way to pick up Jason to go for supper. Roads looked clear, I got cocky. Was driving along just fine & then went to turn into the left hand turn lane to turn onto Charleswood.... There's a car at the bottom of the hill &, as I press on the brakes, I find it's all ice & no traction beneath me..

They say in accidents that everything goes in slow motion. Not so sure this is true. Everything seems to happen in real time, it's just that your brain is running so fast processing options that you're not able to give solutions/action to the rest of your body to react fast enough & everything feels like you're moving through molasses....

... so I start to skid. My brain starts sending images of crashing into the back of the car at the bottom of the hill. I panic, suddenly forget all the good winter driving skills. The car skids to the left, I compensate to the right & worry about turning into traffic coming behind me. Then I turn left & the car keeps pulling for theh meridian. I wonder if it'll stop me - maybe that's the solution. Portions of a radio conversation from days ago flood my head. Someone's calling about a car jumping the meridian on John Laurier & crashing into oncoming traffic. Fatalities... I press the brake harder, trying to stop & the skid pulls me all the way around.....

...and in that moment, I gave up. I stopped fighting, stopped trying to come up with the solution to the problem. I surrendered to defeat, expecting to hear the crunching shattering breaking sounds of car on car. I expected to be spun around, thrown into traffic, the car (& maybe me) mangled beyond recognition... for the moment that it was in it was an oddly peaceful place.....

...but no crunching came. Somehow the car spun 180 & stopped - neatly in the left turn lane facing back up the hill towards traffic.... somehow in the middle of a rush hour commute, I hit a pocket, a window of time & space where it was 'OK' to go spinning in a 180 on a busy road....

...it took me a few minutes to collect my thoughts, to calm down & go to work of solving how to get turned around. People saw my predicament & were nice enough to stop to let me turn around (again, a small miracle for Calgary drivers). & I managed to drive off unscathed.... though shaken to the core....

I started beating myself up after this. What was I thinking? Why did I lose my brain? I know how to drive in winter - stay off the brake, try to steer out of the skid? What kind of 'man' are you that you couldn't handle this?

Most of all, I hated the heart full of surrender. I don't like the ways that I give up, where I throw in the towel easy. Where was that fight that I talk about/long for? Where was the lion's heart to never give up? Why is it that I'm willing to let go, say goodbye, end life? Where's my tenacity? Why didn't I keep fighting to the bitter end?

I sat there going, "wow, I got lucky"... & kind of felt the unexpected voice correct that to say that, "No... you were preserved....protected"... Felt the sense that this was again something to say that I'm in His hand - despite the ways that I forget this & feel that I'm on my own here on planet earth....

... There are places where the heart full of surrender is the right thing.... moments where your fight for control is the last thing you need. If the surrender hadn't come, would things have worked out with the car, or would I have made it all worse? If I hadn't surrendered & stayed calm, would it have worked out? Who knows. The hard part is knowing when to surrender & when to fight.... it's hard to know in the moment. It's hard to know even in retrospect....

... I did a lot of 'penance' driving after that - driving real slow & cautious, taking back roads - trying to remove myself from being a menace to society.... Jason missed my not-so-subtle hints of wanting to vent; "Pay attention to me, I could've died!!".... probably just as well. I'm not always a fan of my drama queen persona either....

Still shaken... muscles are tense. Will try a hot bath to see if it calms my nerves...

Tracing the threads of Kingship

Decemberish 2003: It is the year after my sabbath year. I've started work at GD. Started going to Epic/Converge. I've been through my first two 24-7 prayer rooms. The first brought life & new friendships & excitement & hope & shared dreams & a sense of wonder that anything could happen. The second, I allowed my pride & false identity to burn me out. God spoke to me of rest, I didn't listen & lost.... lost hope, lost dreams, lost passion, lost the sense that people were there for me/with me & I felt pretty desolate after that.

In December, on some chilly winter night, was at the Sunridge spectrum with a number of friends to watch "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King". About half way through the movie, Elrond comes to Aragorn to present him with Anduril, Flame of the West, re-forged from the shards of Narsil, his father (or forefather)'s sword... & in that moment, Elrond says to Aragorn: "Leave the ranger behind, become who you were born to be".....

...and this one line strikes me with the impact of a freight train & I realize, or feel, that it's a message from my Father to me to call me away from my ranger lifestyle - being on my own, trying to serve others, look out for others, fight for others, but all on a very limited, hit & run, very alone basis - and move into walking out my calling as a priest-King, as one of the sons of God.... This calling would mean walking in community, exercising authority, believing that I have this authority, walking as a king instead of someone hidden always in the periphery.....

...and so this excites me. I am commissioned. I have a new calling, new perspective. I go out the next day to a local sword shop & buy 'Narsil' - they haven't released Andurils yet for mass public distribution, so this is the closest i can get in that moment to having the sword that helps seal this message of kingship.... & I show off the sword a lot to people, tell them about what I 'heard' & about how this is going to change me, etc......

March 25, 2005: It's the day before my birthday. I am awakened by a dream that feels significant. In the dream, I am walking around what feels like the park at the entrance to Bowness by the John Hextall bridge (forget the name - there's a swimming pool there). I pass by the bridge to go down to the footpath that runs under the road. While walking under this road, I'm 'assaulted' by some black haired kid/ageless being wearing a white robe (now that I think about it, he looks kind of like the Jesus figure in the movie 'The Messenger' (which was a very faith affirming movie for me, unlike for most people) 'cept much happier). & this kid - he looks like he's 10-12, but I get this sense that he's somehow old & young & just without age - is full of joy & life & he has some plastic tube lightsaber type thing & suddenly I have one & the kid/ageless being basically 'sword fights' with me using these plastic tubes all the way under the bridge & up to the surface again (where the scene seems to shift to what feels like some of the concrete plant pots beside the Kensington Safeway. And I'm partially annoyed by this kid 'cause he won't leave me alone & I have to work really hard at the sword fighting to keep up with his play & 'defend' myself, but it's hard to be mad at the kid when it's obvious how much he's enjoying himself. Anyhow, we get to the top & I sit there resting trying to catch my breath & the kid/ageless being, now perched on top of one of the concrete things, asks me (hrm, forget this part exactly, but I think this is right), "Does your sword have a name?" & I pause for a while thinking & then say, "I have a sword at home named Narsil"....another long pause.... "it's the sword of the king".... and at this point in the dream, I burst into tears, big huge sobs wracking my body, my emotions torn between a release & the shame of how I felt that I haven't grown into kingship over the last number of years.

Jan 27th, 2007 at the community house: I'm sitting in a room full of people. The 9 from the [um] (Urban Monastery - 10 if I count me), Paul & Corey & kids, Phil & Steph, and I'm overwhelmed by a bunch of kingship imagery. I'm suddenly seeing, no, rather, feeling the spheres of influence carried by each of the people in the room & sensing that I am in a room with mighty queens & kings, rulers over art, business, peoples, nations, etc. etc.... In the middle of all of this, my heart starts pounding like it's going to jump out of it's chest & I feel we're to pray for Andy & crown him 'Arthur' - a leader among equals, a king among queens & kings & this imagery is confirmed by RJ who has the same thoughts/visions. In the middle of this, my kingship thoughts come up & thoughts of 'adoption' & I tell the group that I need their 'adoption' of me 'cause without it, I may not enter into the full release of my kingship/authority (again, I've been feeling that the ranger/king - alone/community contrast is there & I've felt in the past that part of what's standing in the way of my 'release' is maybe my lack of community)

& yeah, now I'm just not sure. I am sorting through the 'authority' stuff. The imagery/lessons are coming up over & over again in both my life & the lives of my friends. I see us stepping into this place of recognizing truly who we are & living out of that & recognizing that we are sons & daughters of God, joint heirs with Christ & that somehow (& yeah, I know this sounds like i'm on crack), the wealth of who Jesus is at our command... we have no idea who we really are & the true extent of the authority we walk in as priest-queens/kings....

& yeah, so that's what I'm trying to sort out lately. Even more than figuring out what I'm doing with my life, I'm trying to sort out the deeper questions - who am I? Do I live out of the core of who I am? Do I believe that there is greatness, goodness, love, strength, authority, wisdom, courage, nobility, etc. at the core of who I am? Do I believe truly that Christ indwells me, that He in me is the hope of glory & that His life flows through me & floods every cell & vein & synapse.... ?

I think perhaps the answers to this will ripple through the rest of my life & as each of us steps from behind our shadows, our own masks that hide our true 'glory', we will see our lives & the world around us transformed.... but part of this will not happen if we refuse to shine, refuse to be seen, refuse to believe the truth of who we are....

...and yeah, guess that's the hard part. Not so sure than any of us really 'sees' each other (& especially not ourselves) as we really are. The lies are always easier to believe than the truth it seems.....

...but the tectonic plates in me are shifting, the continents of my heart are moving, rumbling, some parts being crushed & burned in molten fire, other parts being reborn in flame & light... new things are coming....

space

Just wanted to say I'm doing well & happy (or as close as I get :) ) & very thankful for good friends & chances to grow.

Things I learn from TV: Leadership in '24'

Have started blazing through 24 season 5 this week. It's been sitting on my shelf since early Dec. I pick up the season set DVD's right away when they're released & then wait for a space in my life to open up where I don't have a lot of other activities on the go & so can power-watch through the show. Once started, you get caught up quickly in the excitement & keep wanting to find out what happens next in each episode.

It's likely a good thing that I'm watching these shows on my own in the privacy of my living room in an empty house. I a lot of my 24 viewing time swearing & shouting advice at the TV. That & i'm all kneeling on the floor, perched in tension, or waving my hands around, pulling at my hair, other random signs of tension... Yeah, it would be a pretty sad sight to see if someone suddenly walked in on me. Mostly it's just that I get pretty wound up in the story & it's a tad tense at times... which makes me a tad tense. I think I've got some sore muscles from the stress...

Today I power watched through 3 episodes in a row & made it to the 1/2 way point of the series. I should likely try to limit my 24 exposure to a couple of shows per day. Three episodes in a row may be a bit much for the heart to handle... I was all sweaty feet & beating heart & one big stress ball by the end of it (& yeah, swearing a lot). David came home near the start of episode 12 (the 3rd episode I'd seen today) & so I had to tone it down a bit, but there was still a lot of cursing going on at the end, just quieter.....

... I'm finding that the show, both in this season & in past seasons, is really contrasting the decision making abilities of the various 'good guys' in the show. So much of the theme of 24 seems to be wrapped around making choices and then accepting/dealing with the repercussions of those choices (which was also one of the main themes from Babylon 5, another show I tended to power-watch). The very normal people in the show begin to take on heroic proportions as they are confronted with really hard decisions & they choose to risk, make decisions & then work through the consequences of those decisions. The, for lack of a better term, weasel people in the show are people who are supposed to be the 'good guys', but they're more worried about saving face, image, vying for power.

This contrast is seen starkly between the old president from seasons 1-3 & the new president in seasons 4&5. The old president was faced with numerous hard choices & he tried to stick to his integrity & walk those choices through. Sometimes he made the 'wrong' choices, chose to listen to those around him & try to cover things up. This always cost him & in the end, he accepted that cost, embraced the consequences & worked through those consequences to move back into a place of integrity & being true to his values. The new president on the other hand, can't make a decision to save his life (one of the main reasons for my swearing lately). He constantly looks to his advisors to tell him what to do & then blames them when something goes wrong. (which reminds me of some managers I've worked for... I'm sure you could teach a whole slew of business classes analyzing the different management styles shown by people in 24.)

In more recent years, God's been moving me from servanthood into sonship and I find the messages of these TV shows constantly resonating with me. I seem to have struggled in my past with decision making. I'm a 'perceiver' as part of my personality type. This means I seldom see things as black & white. Most times it's seeing all sides of an argument, all possibilities of a decision. This has had a tendency to paralyze me as there are no 'right' decisions, only a range of decisions some with possibly more favorable outcomes than others. As part of my INFP personality, I naturally run away from conflict & so this is often another factor that challenges my decision making processes. In the past, I've received various wounds in my decision making ability from conflicts from parents & other respected people. I spent a lot of my early 20's trying to make good life choices & found myself told often that I was making the wrong choices & being 'irresponsible' 'cause I wanted to do ministry stuff (help the poor, counsel people, etc.) more than the white picket fence stuff (career, house, etc.). Some of the wounding in decision making comes from this expectation that I will always pick the wrong thing. Some of this was reinforced as a teen working with my dad & being sent somewhere to find something or do something & I never seemed to get it right. Often times I'd start looking for something, realize I wasn't finding it, then start to look frantically & try everything to find what I was looking for, expecting my dad's yell at any time... and eventually I'd reach a point where I'd just give up & wait for my dad to come find me, yell at me & pull out in a few seconds the thing I found so hard to find.

I've noticed in the past, that there are the occasional days at work where I have hard choices to make & I sort of sit there, waiting for my boss to come yell at me & make my decisions for me.....

...and this extends to God stuff, too. I think so often, I've left my life up to looking for 'God's will' instead of making choices of my own 'cause I was afraid that I'd always pick the wrong choice. Prayer became begging for signs, for Gideon's fleece, for some clear cut demonstration that I was to take one path or another. Often I got frustrated with God 'cause the signs didn't come, or weren't clear enough. Or other times, I thought I was reading the signs right & it seemed to turn out all wrong & so I'd go off blaming God that He's led me down the wrong path....

... but yeah, that has been changing over the last number of years. I still pray for direction, but I sort of don't expect much. The prayers become more conversation than begging, more talking stuff through with a good friend than requesting direction.... Other times it's the prayer of "God, this is what I'm doing... if you don't want me to go down this road, you'll have to intervene & help put me on a different path".

I am starting to loose my fear of failure, my fear of mistakes. I'm starting to realize that every choice made has consequences, both good & bad. Choosing one thing means saying no to everything else & so you, as a being caught in time & space, begin to make decisions based on what you want, or think you want, or what you think is right for this moment in time.... This will result in a whole chain of events that you will have to walk through because of the choices you've made. One choice always leads to another series of choices. Every choice holds consequences of how it will shape the next moments, the ongoing path of your life. Running & hiding from the consequences will do you no good. The only way to get through life is to choose again & again & again....

.... there's a scene in a Joan of Arcadia episode (& I may have commented on this earlier, I'm starting to feel senile with my blog 'cause so much of what I'm writing now seems like re-runs of past posts) where God is talking to Joan & reveals to her that He is always about "what are you going to do now?". The show paints a picture that God doesn't tie us to our past like it's some great anchor, instead He asks us over & over again, "So what are you going to do now?" & we have to live in the eternal now making choice after choice....

Watching 24 makes me think through this process in my life. Makes me ask the question again of "what am I going to do now?". I've spent the last number of months in a process of trying to decide what to do with my life. I've made some choices & changes, but there's still much more to go. I'm trying to figure out how to take the plunge from the engineering world into... into, well I don't know what.... the 'life of faith' is the only clear(ish) words I can use to describe it.... it's leaving to live in the places of my passions, to live in the great black unknown mystery of whatever is next in my life...

...and I haven't taken the plunge - yet. I haven't just leapt off the platform into the air hoping that God'll catch me. Some days this choice ('cause choosing not to do something is still a choice) curses me & the voices tell me that I'm acting like the new president on 24, waiting for someone to tell me what to do... Other days, the other voices, reinforced by kind words from good friends, remind me that the engineering world will wash away like the tears of longing I've cried at work & life will melt into the new choices... the next things...

And yeah, in this moment, I believe in who I am growing to be. I am starting to become a man who makes choices, takes ownership of things, both with work & (far more importantly) all of the decisions/people/things that fits into my sphere of influence. The twin responsibilities of choice & consequence are things that I carry with me now & I start to see that maybe I'm not so bad at choices as I maybe think..... Not always that good, but definitely getting there....

This transition is so much a part of the maturing process (& hence is something I maybe should've figured out a long time ago, but hey, I'm starting to get it now, so it's all good).... Without taking ownership of our own choices & life & the consequences of that, we never fully step into our own or into the fullness of being who we are meant to be. We are not made to live in someone's shadow (other than perhaps that of Jesus, but even there He calls us to be a mature bride, a full partner in our adventure with Him). We are made to shine, our light is not to be hidden under a basket &, like with 24, the heroes are separated from the weasels in their commitment to take responsibility, take ownership, of their choices.

Galatians chapter 3& 4 (& really the whole book) in the Bible talks about this transition from servants to sons/daughters. There is a transition in authority that comes with this. Servants are only living in authority when they are doing exactly what their master tells them to do & they have no authority other than the word that is given them by their masters. Sons & Daughters on the other hand carry the weight of the family authority. They are part of the bloodline & speak for the 'house', for the tribe, the line, the name.... ultimately for their Father...

Again, contrasting the two presidents in '24'; the first president actually acts like he's the president. The second president seems to be president only in name. So, too we, who live as sons & daughters of the most high, we carry the full weight of authority of being heirs with Jesus, but so often I think we don't really believe that, or know what that means.... Taking responsibility for our lives & our choices is, I believe, a huge step towards this. It's learning to exercise 'rule', acting as a king/queen, over the 'sphere of influence' that is currently in your life. As you become more & more comfortable in 'ruling' over what's currently in your 'sphere', it seems that the sphere always expands to open a wider sphere of influence. (this is discussed well in Bob Sorge's book on Envy).

The apostle Paul, writer of a lot of the new testament, keeps throwing in these random comments that he figures should mean something to us & it's great.... I'm always going, 'whoa, could you explain that to me in a bit more detail 'cause I have no idea what you're talking about?" In 1 Corinthians 6:3 he throws out this random statement: "Don't you know that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life? " & yeah, I have no idea what this means, but it says to me that God is working on training his sons & daughters & teaching them to lead. To 'rule' - which to Him means to be the servant of all, to show strength through caring for the weakest & standing up for the oppressed & needy.... (again, characteristics seen in the 1st president in '24' & not so much in the 2nd one).

Lucky

Spent the evening chatting with another friend & she mentioned something to the effect that most women she knew, especially Christian women, were waiting for some guy to save them.....

....and I sat & pondered this & thought through the wealth of fantastic gal friends & acquaintances that I have been fortunate enough to get to know over the years & a smile/smirk started forming on my face.... this from the realization that, well, I don't really know very women who are waiting for a guy to save them.....

... my gal friends, past & present, for the most part want to find love, they want to be swept off their feet & romanced & to have a man fight for them & sacrifice for them & all of that, but this is an entirely different thing from being 'rescued' or 'saved' by a guy....

... nearly all of my gal friends are vibrant women, women filled with passion & life & heart. They have a richness of being & live to pursue the passions of their heart. The women I'm lucky enough to be friends with are women who know themselves (or are at least learning who they are) & they refuse to be boxed, chained, or be told what to do.... The idea of a guy 'saving' them would be met with at least confusion & at most utter disdain.... on the occasional times where I've been foolish enough to try to 'rescue' my gal friends from whatever perceived 'danger' they were in, my efforts have been met with either a kind rebuke to complete hostility &, while I may look all hurt & winge-y at the time, I wouldn't want it any other way.

There is an aspect of where as humans we all need a 'rescue'. We all need to be loved. We all need to be freed from our self-destructive tendancies. We all need to be reminded of hope.... but ultimately we find these things in Christ & the places where we find them in others are really only shadows of His greater rescue....

....but yeah, I'm thankful for the reality that my gal friends are strong women, that they are not fragile flowers waiting for some man to come riding to their rescue... my gal friends are beautiful, feminine women, but yeah, the majority of them are warriors in their own right & not people to be trifled with.....

...so yeah, walked away from the evening feeling very lucky for the richness of my friendships & for the gift of having a life full of friendships with gutsy women (including my mom)... & so thank you, as me & as a man, to my brave & courageous female friends who continue to battle to find their path, to discover who they are, to life & love to the fullest & who live to liberate others... you all have set a good example for me & for many others. Keep living the flame of your life & let no one, no man, steal that passion, that fire, from you..... blessings & peace.

Wouldn't want to cause diversity, now would we?

Was chatting with a friend today & they were mentioning some conflict they were having with others & how they were kind of being silent about the whole thing & hoping it would go away. My friend explained the rationale behind this as being that they "didn't want to cause diversity"....

...what my friend meant to say was that they didn't want to cause 'division' over differing strongly held opinions, but what came out of her mouth was so much more interesting & so telling....

... the richness of humanity & the richness of the church is our diversity, all of us are unique, none of us will every be duplicated, not now, not ever... the random collection of cells & tissues, thoughts & ideas, emotions & personality, soul & spirit that make up each of us are put together in such a way that, while each of us shares a lot of similarities with the rest of the human race, each of us is so extremely different, that we can well use the phrase "the universe next door" to describe those around us. Each one of us is this vast, unreachable expanse of mystery.....

...and this is our richness. Because of our differences, we can learn from each other. We don't have to fit everything into our one finite lifespan, we can learn so much from listening to others, from hearing of their experiences & using that as a bridge or stepping stool to reach to even greater heights (or decide to repeat the same lessons as others, just 'cause we want to).... in our uniqueness we get to be who we are instead of trying to be everyone else....

... but this is so stifled in society & especially the church. We are told to conform, to think the same, act the same. We worry a lot about being 'right' & compare our degree of 'rightness' with those around us, always trying to show that we are more 'right' than another... and all the while we become more & more alone & often lose more & more of who we are in our uniqueness, all for the sake of avoiding 'division' --- which again, is perhaps just avoiding 'diversity'....

... we need to embrace our diversity, we need to listen to each other, even when (& sometimes especially when) it's not what we want to hear or it's something different than what we're used to...

Joni

Have been enjoying the gift of slowly experiencing Joni Mitchell's music... Her lyrics are a rich tapestry & I'm stunned by the depth of her storytelling.... & yeah, I could gush for a while, but all my spewing won't do her work justice, so here's some samples, just to show you what I mean:

The Magdeline Laundries - by Joni Mitchell

"I was an unmarried girl / I'd just turned twenty-seven / When they sent me to the sisters / For the way men looked at me / Branded as a jezebel / I knew I was not bound for Heaven / I'd be cast in shame / Into the Magdalene laundries

Most girls come here pregnant / Some by their own fathers / Bridget got that belly / By her parish priest / We're trying to get things white as snow / All of us woe-begotten-daughters / In the steaming stains / Of the Magdalene laundries

Prostitutes and destitutes / And temptresses like me / Fallen women / Sentenced into / dreamless drudgery / Why do they call this heartless place / Our Lady of Charity? / Oh charity!

These bloodless brides of Jesus / If they had just once glimpsed their groom / Then they'd know and they'd drop the stones / Concealed behind their rosaries / They wilt the grass they walk upon / They leech the light out of a room / They'd like to drive us down the drain / At the Magdalene laundries

Peg O'Connell died today / She was a cheeky girl / A flirt / They just stuffed her in a hole! / Surely to God you'd think at least some bells should ring! / One day I'm going to die here too / And they'll plant me in the dirt / Like some lame bulb / That never blooms / come any spring / Not any spring / No, not any spring / Not any spring"

Don Juan's Reckless Daughter - by Joni Mitchell

"I'm Don Juan's reckless daughter / I came out two days on your tail / Those two bald-headed days in November / Before the first snowflakes sail / Out on the vast and subtle plains of mystery / A split tongue spirit talks / Noble as a nickel chief / Striking up an old juke box / And he says: / "Snakes along the railroad tracks" / He says, "Eagles in jet trails" / He says, "Coils around feathers and talons on scales / Gravel under the belly plates" / He says, "Wind in the Wings" / He says, "Big bird dragging its tail in the dust / Snake kite flying on a string"

I come from open prairie / Given some wisdom and a lot of jive / Last night the ghosts of my old ideas / Reran on channel five / And it howled so spooky for its eagle soul / I nearly broke down and cried / But the split tongue spirit laughed at me / He says, "Your serpent cannot be denied" / Our serpents love the whisky bars / They love the romance of the crime / But didn't I see a neon sign / Fester on your hotel blind / And a country road come off the wall / And swoop down at the crowd at the bar / And put me at the top of your danger list / Just for being so much like you are

You're a coward against the altitude / You're a coward against the flesh / Coward caught between yes and no / Reckless this time on the line for yes, yes, yes! / Reckless brazen in the play / Of your changing traffic lights / Coward slinking down the hall / To another restless night / As we center behind the eight ball / As we rock between the sheets / As we siphon the colored language / Off the farms and the streets / Here in Good-Old-God-Save-America / the home of the brave and the free / We are all hopelessly oppressed cowards / Of some duality / Of restless multiplicity / (Oh say can you see)

Restless for streets and honky tonks / Restless for home and routine / Restless for country safety and her / Restless for the likes of reckless me / Restless sweeps like fire and rain / Over virgin wilderness / It prowls like hookers and thieves / Through bolt locked tenements / Behind my bolt locked door / The eagle and the serpent are at war in me / The serpent fighting for blind desire / The eagle for clarity / What strange prizes these battles bring / These hectic joys these weary blues / Puffed up and strutting when I think I win / Down and shaken when I think I lose

There are rivets up here in this eagle / There are box cars down there on your snake / And we are twins of spirit / No matter which route home we take / Or what we forsake / We're going to come up to the eyes of clarity / And we'll go down to the beads of guile / There is danger and education / In living out such a reckless life style / I touched you on the central plains / It was plane to train my twin / It was just plane shadow to train shadow

But to me it was skin to skin / The spirit talks in spectrums / He talks to mother earth to father sky / Self indulgence to self denial / Man to woman / Scales to feathers / You and I

Eagles in the sky / You and I / Snakes in the grass / You and I / Crawl and fly / You and I"

There is a house in New Orleans....

It seems like the lyrics of Amazing Grace can be sung to nearly any other song on the planet.... well, this is likely a bit of hyperbole, but I do remember back in the day going to Hope Mission in Edmonton with the church group I was part of & singing Amazing Grace to both "the Lion Sleeps tonight" & to the theme song from Gilligan's Island. (the former was met with silence by the assembled homeless people/worshippers, the later was met by comments of protest saying that the poor guy who wrote Amazing Grace was spinning in his grave).

This morning on the snowy, backlogged drive into work, I caught a rendition of Amazing Grace by the Blind Boys of Alabama singing the lyrics to the melody of "The House of the Rising Sun".... It took me a while to recognize the tune & when I did, the voice of the protesting homeless guy sounded for a little bit in my head... but I got over it. Oddly enough it was a really beautiful rendition of the song & oddly, powerfully redemptive...

The 'musical quote' (I love this concept - we 'quote' in writing all the time, never realized that you can do that in music as well) from 'The House of the Rising Sun' has been appearing in another tune that's been nibbling at my brain lately.

"The Saints are Coming" - U2/Green Day ( by Richard Jobson & Stuart Adamson)

There is a house in New Orleans, They call The Rising Sun.

It's been the ruin of many a poor boy, and God, I know I'm one of them.

I cried to my daddy on the telephone, how long now?

Until the clouds unroll and you come down, the line went.

But the shadows still remain since your descent, your descent.

The saints are coming, the saints are coming.

I say no matter how I try, I realize that there's no reply.

The saints are coming, the saints are coming.

I say no matter how I try, I realize that there's no reply.

A drowning sorrow floods the deepest grief, how long now?

Until the weather change condemns belief, how long now?

When the night watchman lets in the thief, Whats wrong now?

The saints are coming, the saints are coming

I say no matter how I try, I realize that there's no reply

The saints are coming, the saints are coming

I say no matter how I try, I realize there's no reply

I say no matter how I try, I realize there's no reply

I say no matter how I try, I realize there's no reply

Back in my days at the Gathering, I got caught up in the hype that God was leaving messages for us in the world around us & would look at everything as being somehow this secret hint from God about something he was up to. I'm not saying that I don't still kind of do that now, I'm just more cynical with it... Part of me totally believes that God whispers to us through art (& everything else) around us... but the other part of me knows that I have an overactive imagination & so I don't trust myself so much anymore with the 'insights' that I think I get.... (it's no wonder I fear becoming crazy when I sit there waiting for God to talk to me about what He's doing on the planet... though you've gotta wonder how often the prophets of old thought they were going bonkers... not saying that I'm a prophet, I'm just saying that to open yourself up to the possibility of the divine voice speaking into your live means that you open yourself up to walking the fine line between sanity & the funny farm).....

... keeping this in mind, I've been captured again & again by this song. Before Christmas it was on near constant repeat on the internal tuneage in my head... Over & over again - the saints are coming, the saints are coming... I ended up giving the single for the tune to a couple of people for Christmas hoping to catch their heart/spirit impression of the tune. Haven't heard anything from either of them, so i assume it doesn't really register with them as anything of significance & so maybe I'm just over-reacting.....

... the video for the song throws an entirely different slant on the song, too. Proceeds from the song go to support relief for Hurricane Katrina victims (hence the New Orleans connection) and the video shows 'news footage' of the hurricane Katrina victims crying out for help & then the headlines read that the military is called back from Iraq to help the hurricane victims & you see these lovely doctored/computer generated images of apache helicopters & bombers/cargo planes flying in & dropping off supplies (it almost looks believable 'cept for the occasional magic hovering plane)... & yeah, not sure what to think with the statements that are being made. I'm torn with the war in Iraq. Some days I think parts of the war is good, some times I think it's a really bad decision. Maybe most days I think it's both....

...but I have to admit that some of the imagery in the video sends shivers up my spine....

...maybe it's just that I sense the 'groan' through this song.... Romans chapter 8 in the Bible talks about how all of creation 'groans' in birth pangs, waiting for the new, the 'condemning of belief' (in that once we see what we hope for, we don't have to believe/hope for it any more 'cause it's there in front of us).... For years & years, maybe my whole life, I've felt this groaning - longing for the better country, for the city made without hands.....

....and yet we live in the place of groaning, the place of continually asking 'how long now?', in the land of a million little disappointments & little deaths... life ain't easy.... for me in general day was good - lots of lessons of being 'late' & learning that it doesn't really matter - that God has me (trapped/caught) in His timing & my moments are ordered by His hand.... so it was a good day to live in grace, to live in learning to rest.... but yeah, the people around me go through their tiny victories & disappointments... & yeah, I feel the groans....

....maybe it is only those who have been to the house of the rising sun who experience the riches of amazing grace.... maybe we only really understand grace, are amazed by it, after we have let the groans make a shipwreck of our lives... where the ache in our soul, the void deep within each of us has tried every other door, every other pleasure/pain in the hopes of finding something that makes us feel alive, maybe after we've failed at everything we finally fall on the cornerstone in brokenness & this is the place where grace really happens...

...maybe I don't really know....

Wind & Eden

Have been contemplating goodbyes today. There seem to be a myriad of goodbyes in our lives. Big ones, little ones. Some for short times, some for forever.

I'm not very good at any of them. I cling when i should release, I stick my heels in when the goodbyes must be said, I hide from goodbyes & try to pretend they're not coming (when my friend Rachel left to move to Vancouver, I sort of tried to put off that goodbye 'cause yeah, didn't want to think about it... I'm trying to pretend that May won't come this year & my friend Sharon won't head off on her next adventure). I keep a very small collection of people close to me. They're a rag-tag bunch - all the best of the best of course - but they're an eclectic mix & i miss them when they're not around... Maybe it's just that there's not a huge number of them & so their presence is missed more when they go away... or maybe I'd feel this way even if I had a zillion friends. I guess you miss them 'cause they matter to you & if they didn't matter so much they wouldn't be good friends....

... but have been thinking about my 'good bye' processes today. Back when I was at the Gathering, I was pretty sure that I had some 'abandonment issues'.... it was sort of popular (or so it felt) to have some kind of issue or something in your past that could be cast out through prayer or whatever & so i think I probably took on this idea/identity hoping that I could find some 'root cause' for why I get clingy in relationships & why I sort of expect everyone to leave me eventually & why I fear this... I prayed about this a lot, but never really got any clear answer. Only imagery I got was something from childhood where there was a blizzard & my parents were away & i had to stay at my Granny's place for a while - I may have mentioned this here somewhere in the past - but yeah, that still didn't seem like enough to really cause some life-long neurosis....

So I've been contemplating this again. Thinking about how I miss 'reading' people's 'stories' when they're not around. I miss seeing the drama of what goes on in their lives. I miss most of all watching the Master Artist at work as God sculpts & changes their lives before my eyes... He is brilliant in how He sculpts us in the tiniest of ways in the smallest of moments... this blows me away... & yeah, I have to admit I'm sort of addicted to seeing this process in friends lives. It's not like I really get to see it that much, I'm not around people that often. But I love every chance i get to see the 'work in progress' artistry that is shaped in those that I value... & miss it when it's not there. It's sort of like trying to watch '24' (have finally started season 5 & am loving it) where you skip every two or three episodes... you kind of can get the general understanding of the story from the recaps at the start of each episode, but you miss the details, the fine points of the story.... it's like with my friend the Angel.... we both get busy & don't e-mail for months & then it's huge long e-mails to try to catch up... & we likely have face time once every 3-6 months... and in between those times you go through relative times of missing each other... some moments are pretty bearable. The people only enter your thoughts once in a while. Other times, everything reminds you of them & you ache to find out even the smallest bit of news about what's been happening in their lives...

So today on the drive down to JLYS, I'm thinking about all of this & thinking about how much I'm going to love heaven 'cause there, it's going to be one big long story-telling time.... We'll all get to sit around one big campfire & listen to everyone tell the details, every escapade, every adventure, every sculpting moment of their days & every part of the tale will show that Jesus was there the whole was, loving, supporting, freeing, growing us... & it will all be beautiful & it will all fit into the one big story of the Great Romancer winning the heart of His bride....

...and yeah, in thinking about this is struck me that maybe I'm not as neurotic as I think. (well, maybe a little)... Maybe I'm not afraid of abandonment - maybe I just realize that eventually all relationships end... we live in transition, we move around as the spirit leads & so we can't hang on to people 'cause God keeps shuffling them around the planet.... no matter how close the relationships get, there is always the day when you are parted by death.... every relationship on this world, on this side of heaven, ends.... and so my 'fear' is not being paranoid, it's recognizing the reality of it all...

...and I realized again, that, for whatever reason, I remember Eden well... my heart knows what that felt like - it's not something I've experienced; it's just a memory that is there just beyond my grasp. Goodbye was not a word that was made to exist in Eden. It's a word that was invented the day we bit the fruit..... and so it's no wonder I suck at goodbyes... We as humans weren't made with that as part of our make-up... we've had to learn to manage with it while having hearts that don't understand the concept of 'good bye'....

...and yeah, oddly enough, this realization is really freeing. It speaks to me that I'm not so screwed up as I thought & it again helps me hold on less tightly to the people around me... the stuff I admire about my friends is that they are children of the wind - they are moved by the spirit as He wills them, and like Philip you see them one moment baptizing someone & then suddenly whisked away miles away... it's just a reality that I have to learn to live with..... watching God move people around as He wills.... & yeah, that's sort of exciting & I like that idea.... I sort of always feel like the person being left & not so wind-blown, which sometimes is not so much fun, but yeah, guess that's OK, too... can always look forward to the eventual reunion & swapping stories whenever they happen (had a friend who I haven't heard from in 8 years e-mail me after finding my blog, so you never know when you get the chance to catch up with old & dear friends)

Anyhow, so yeah, feel kind of less clingy & more free with that all.... always nice to have thoughts that you're not crazy anyhow....

Songs that make me cry lately

An old Hasidic rabbi, Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev in the Ukraine, used to say that he discovered the meaning of love from a drunken peasant. The rabbi was visiting the owner of a tavern in the Polish countryside. As he walked in, he saw two peasants at a table. Both were gloriously in their cups. Arms around each other, they were protesting how much each loved the other. Suddenly Ivan said to Peter, "Peter, tell me what hurts me." Bleary eyed, Peter looked at Ivan. "How do I know what hurts you?" Ivan's answer was swift: "If you don't know what hurts me, how can you say you love me?"

- from Brennan Manning's "Reflections for Ragamuffins, March 7 passage

I've always liked this story. It rings true. There are so many levels of friendship/intimacy/love. Every human is like an onion - which is always a stinky metaphor (get it? stinky...er, yeah..uhm) - nobody likes being called an onion, but it's one of the few things with layers... maybe roses have layers, too, but once you pull away all the petals, there's really nothing there - mind you this is true of onions, too....

...anyhow, the whole point is that when we first meet someone, all they see is (unless we're having a really odd day) the surface streets - we talk about the weather, sports scores, other totally benign topics... as we move from strangers to acquaintances to friends to best-buddies, we reveal more & more of who we are at our very core, we become, in some ways, more & more naked with the people we're close to (which may fit with the onion/rose metaphor)... we grow into having less & less secrets, barriers, blocks in place to protect the core of who we are from the prying eyes of those around us. & yeah, it's a bit of a cold world & so all the security measures of protecting our hearts are maybe necessary in lots of ways....

.... I think the story about the two peasants sort of highlights something. Often we think that we hide the very best for only those who we are closest with, that single gem that really captures the true beauty, the true essence of who we are.... but maybe this is not so true. I find that maybe in my life & in others, there is a tendency to be in such a rush to grow into true friendship/relationship that we maybe give away the core of us too quickly into the hands of those that maybe don't care as much as we figure... I've got lots of gal friends & have watched them give their hearts away to twit guys & it's admirable of the gals that they believe & trust in people & the possibility of love. & hence this is maybe one of the reasons I'm so hard on guys is 'cause I've watched too many dumbbells just not treat these friend's heart with the reverence they deserved.... (though I suppose I've probably done my share of not being as careful with hearts as I should)... I've been lucky in some ways... the gals I've fallen for have been semi-gentle, or maybe it's just that my core is either stronger than I figure, or it's been beaten up enough times that I don't notice another bump....

...anyhow, coming back off that rabbit trail, (Neil Young's "Only Love can break your heart" is playing in the background). There is a reality that perhaps the last things we show to those around us are the weak places, the things that hurt us.... We are slow to share our fears, our sins, our weaknesses. We desperately want to be loved & we fear that if others see the weak/twisted places that that'll prevent people from loving us. Mostly we're afraid that we're unlovable & we try to hide this fear from everyone else (who are also dealing with the same fear). We keep our armour up to protect ourselves & it's very few people to whom we share the chinks in our armour, the weak places where we are vulnerable. We don't really share the things that hurt us, except with those we trust will not exploit those weaknesses, & this is maybe one of the many reasons why, when a relationship breaks down, there is so much pain involved.... suddenly the person that you felt most safe with, that you've given the keys to your castle, now can use all of those secrets to hurt you...

But yeah, the above has sort of nothing to do with the rest of this post. There have been a number of times listening to tunes at work where specific songs have reduced me to sobs.... and I sort of wanted to capture them here in a 'these are the songs that make me cry' post. Mostly for my own benefit, something to maybe help me chart patterns in my own life. Sometimes we are most blind to our own hearts & so this is my way of exploring a bit more of me.... It's funny with some of the tunes. They'll reduce me to a total mess one day & then I'll hear them later & they won't affect me... so yeah, not sure what all's going on.

Anyhow. Tunes that have been making me cry lately:

1) Joni Mitchell's "Come in from the Cold" - lyrics are captured a number of posts below (back in Dec I think, maybe Nov). The song is a lament/breath of hope (seeing as how Joni's music & emotions are never fully one thing). It whispers to me of generations upon generations of men & women who have been longing to find Eden again, to move back to that place of relationship & we all end up have to walk through the games & unknowns & challenges of overcoming the death of relationship & communication that the original sin brought... it makes me weep & long for my own relationships (or longing for one), but also very much for the planet....

2) Skillet's "Better than Drugs" - see a few posts below for explanation

3) Jewel Kilcher - "Hands"

"If I could tell the world just one thing / It would be that we're all OK / And not to worry 'cause worry is wasteful / And useless in times like these / I won't be made useless / I won't be idle with despair / I will gather myself around my faith / For light does the darkness most fear

My hands are small, I know / But they're not yours, they are my own / But they're not yours, they are my own / And I am never broken

Poverty stole your golden shoes / It didn't steal your laughter / And heartache came to visit me / But I knew it wasn't ever after / We'll fight, not out of spite / For someone must stand up for what's right / 'Cause where there's a man who has no voice / There ours shall go singing

My hands are small, I know / But they're not yours, they are my own / But they're not yours, they are my own / And I am never broken

In the end only kindness matters / I will get down on my knees, and I will pray / We are never broken / We are God's eyes / God's hands / God's mind / God's heart / We are God's hands"

If I'm hoping to be thought a connoisseur of great music, maybe admitting that I really enjoy Jewel's music is shooting myself in the foot, but yeah, I like it & at the end of the day my only claim to audio snobbery will be that I like what I like. Jewel's spirituality interests me & I'm never quite sure where she's coming from. She's a searching heart & someone who is actually honest (as much as any of us are I suppose)...

But I love the imagery in this song... the idea of each of our fragile feeble little hands, hands without that much strength to really change things in this cold world, but they're our hands, my hands - hands that cannot be owned or bought by anyone & we have the freedom to give love with these hands & yeah, I love the picture that we as humanity cannot be broken. The hands of individuals are greater than governments & any policy they can provide.... we look so often to the government to fix the social injustices around us, when the reality is that what is needed is our hands, our little unbroken hands, to simply love & give & serve - to extend even a cup of cold water.... it's the touch of love & relationship that really changes things in this world....

And I love the picture of singing for those without a voice. This spot, more than anything else in the song, reduces me to weeping. David Ruis has a similar idea in his Cry Mercy CD, but it's one that sticks with me. This is the true heart of intercession & is at the heart of every justice/mercy ministry. Those that have give to those who don't. We stand in the gap for people who are unable to defend & protect themselves & we advocate for them. We bang on the doors of heaven or city hall, we plead with God & man to set at liberty strangers that we choose to see as brother, sister, mother, father, friend... this is ultimately what Jesus did - gave us his life when we were squandering ours on self-destruction...

4) Skillet: "Looking for Angels" by John L. Cooper

"Going through this life looking for angels / People passing by looking for angels

Walk this world alone / Try to stay on my feet / Sometimes crawl, fall, / but I stand up / cause I'm afraid to sleep / Open my eyes to a new day, / with all new problems and all new pain / All the faces are filled with so much anger / Losing our dignity and hope from fear of danger / After all the wars, / after settling the scores, / at the break of dawn we will be deaf to the answers

There's so much bigotry, misunderstanding and fear / With eyes squinted and fists clinched we reach out for what is dear / We want it we want / We want a reason to live

We're on a pilgrimage / A crusade for hope / Cause in our hearts and minds and souls we know

We need it we need / We need more than this

[Chorus:] Going through this life looking for angels / People passing by looking for angels / Walking down the streets looking for angels / Everyone I meet looking for angels

So many nations with so many hungry people / So many homeless scrounging around for dirty needles / On the rise, teen suicide, when we will realize / we've been desensitized by the lies of the world / We're oppressed and impressed by the greedy / Whose hands squeeze the life out of the needy / When will we learn that wars, threats, and regrets are the cause and effect of living in fear

Who can help protect the innocence of our children / Stolen on the internet with images they can't forget / We want it we want / We want a reason to live / We represent a generation that wants to turn back a nation / To let love be our light and salvation / We need it we need / We need more than this

I became a savior to some kids I'll never meet / Sent a check in the mail to buy them something to eat / What will you do to make a difference, to make a change? / What will you do to help someone along the way? / Just a touch, a smile as you turn the other cheek / Pray for your enemies, humble yourself, love's staring back at me / In the midst of the most painful faces / Angels show up in the strangest of places / (Angels show up in the strangest of places)"

Again, this song highlights why I like Mr. Cooper's music & why I'll listen to Skillet when I'm avoiding most Contemporary Christian Music like the plague. Here's a guy who full on believes that his calling in life is to play rock & roll as a tool to reach kids who are hurting & tell them that there's hope... This dude figures he can change the world & while the bitter & jaded part of me wants to scoff at this, the rest of me prays to God that he's right & that he'll get his wish & bring a host of souls into light before his days ebb into the great black....

So much of this song opens me up again to the heartbeat of the world, to the brokenness that surrounds us. The part about "teen suicide" has been where the tears start to really flow & they don't stop. The part about representing a generation to turn a nation to light makes my blood burn with a fire of longing... (Neil Young's "Rocking in the Free World" is playing in the background now - another song that paints for me the bleakness of life around us & paints the desperate call to do something, to help prevent those 'thousand points of light' from going out & being extinguished & lost to the great dark & coming night)...

5) Calexico's "All Systems Red" by Joey Burns, John Convertino & JD Foster

"Felt a tremor stir beneath my breath / That forecasts storms on the gallup poll / Woke up from the nightmare news / Hoping to read a sign in the morning air

Nothing changes here and nothing improves / All say my friends who just want out / And leave these troubles behind / Scatter like paper in the eye of the storm / Documented with a silenced note / That's only heard from far, far away

More cards in play, following suit / Everywhere you look, you only see red / Wonder when to call off the race / Watching a horse running down its last legs / Just when you think it couldn't get much worse / Watch the numbers rise on the death toll / And the chimes of freedom flash and fade / Only heard from far, far away

I hear you can't trust in your own / Now the grey is broken in the early morn / And the words forming barely have a voice / It's just your heart that's breaking without choice

Everything you've learned is distorted in your head / Bouncing off the walls, unraveling the thread / Staying up with the blue screen glow / Forgetting everything you ever dreamed years ago

When the dread is flowing down my veins / I want to tear it all down and build it up again / Hear your heart that's breaking without choice / I want to hear those chimes ring again / Ring again"

Out of the collection of artists I've picked up after watching the "Before the Music Dies" Documentary, I'm really enjoying Calexico. I was expecting to love Doyle Bramhall's & Erykah Badu's music a lot more & sort of picked up Calexico's album as a, "well, might as well get this one, too". But I'm really, really enjoying the tunes these guys & gals are putting out.

I can't claim to understand this song. The lyrics are a bit beyond me... But listening to it makes me think of the US & just yeah... there is such an urgency & desperation in this song... the tears start flowing at around the "I hear you can't trust in your own" stage. It again paints a picture of the coming black & just the way we are driving our society to destruction. Living to appease the media, living in a world full of lies & lies about what our governments & individuals are really doing. We've built our houses on sand & the waves are starting to lick at the foundations & yeah, we long for things like freedom & hope & liberty, ideals which have become slogans for politicians, but have lost their true meaning... & yeah, I find my "heart breaking without choice" as I listen to this song...

6) David Gray tunes:

Please Forgive Me by David Gray

"Please forgive me / If I act alittle strange / For I know not what I do. / Feels like lightning running through my veins / Everytime I look at you / Everytime I look at you

Help me out here / All my words are falling short / And theres so much I want to say / Want to tell you just how good it feels / When you look at me that way / When you look at me that way

Throw a stone and watch the ripples flow / Moving out across the bay / Like a stone I fall into your eyes / Deep into some mystery / Deep into that mystery

I got half a mind to scream out loud / I got half a mind to die / So I wont ever have to lose you girl / Wont ever have to say goodbye / I wont ever have to lie / Wont ever have to say goodbye

Please forgive me / If I act alittle strange / For I know not what I do / Its like my head is filled with lightning girl / Everytime I look at you"

Babylon by David Gray

"Friday night / I'm going nowhere / All the lights are changing green to red / Turning over TV stations / Situations running through my head / Well looking back through time / You know it's clear that I've been blind / I've been a fool / To ever open up my heart / To all that jealousy, / that bitterness, / that ridicule

Saturday I'm running wild / And all the lights are changing red to green / Moving through the crowd I'm pushing / Chemicals all rushing through my bloodstream / Only wish that you were here / You know I'm seeing it so clear / I've been afraid / To tell you how I really feel / Admit to some of those bad mistakes I've made

If you want it / Come and get it / Crying out loud / The love that I was / Giving you was / Never in doubt / Let go your heart / Let go your head / And feel it now / Babylon, Babylon

Sunday all the lights of London Shining , / Sky is fading red to blue / I'm kicking through the / Autumn leaves / And wondering where it is you might be going to / Turning back for home / You know I'm feeling so alone / I can't believe / Climbing on the stair / I turn around to see you smiling there / In front of me

If you want it / Come and get it / Crying out loud / The love that I was / Giving you was / Never in doubt / Let go your heart / Let go your head / And feel it now / Babylon, Babylon"

David Gray wasn't on the Before the Music Dies video, but they talked about him somewhat. Dave Matthews spoke of begging David to sign with ATO records (Dave Matthew's indie music label) & so yeah, if Dave Matthews is begging a musician to join something, the dude must be good (that & Cheri had David Gray listed in her Myspace account & her tastes in music weigh about as much in my mind as Mr. Matthew's tastes )

These songs maybe haven't totally made me cry, but they entered my thoughts in a specific way. I woke up about a week ago with the "Please Forgive me" playing in my head (I seem to wake up each morning with my internal 'iPod' (there's got to be a metaphor in there somewhere) playing some tune - it seems psuedo random, but sometimes fits well with the day). It's a very pretty song & seemed to fit well with my thoughts for the day. While mulling this over, I chose to listen to the "White Ladder" album at work & it was then that the lyrics to "Babylon" started to seep in.

A while back I posted about watching the movie Babel & yeah, the thoughts around that have really bothered me. I've been afraid of my lack of communication abilities lately. And somewhere in there, this David Gray song speaks to me of just the truth that is seen in an open heart... & this gives me hope that maybe I'm not as sucky a communicator as I figure... or at least that Babylon can get torn down by hearts that choose to live in love & truth.... slowly peeling layer after layer off that onion or watching the rose blossom wider & wider....

Messenger & Message: Unleashing the Voice

Went to church today, tired & wiped out from the long day yesterday & the later night of staying up late to process thoughts & feelings & to move from realizing that I wasn't all lonely & depressed & something was wrong me, but I was just tired.... had a harder time connecting with church/the order of service today. Likely it was the tiredness, maybe it was more... spent some time trying to sing, listening to comments on the sound quality of the band. We'd mixed in with another church today so there were a lot of 'strangers' around & it felt less homey & more like we were trying to show this other church that we were still a viable, vibrant spiritual entity instead of a collection of friends who somehow refuse to stop hanging out with each other... and who are somehow drawn by this experiment of finding community & living out love to the world around us.....

... I spent time reading in the end of Leviticus, wanting to find something about ritual, but instead hearing about blessings & curses, about the land keeping sabbath, about eating from the 'old stock' before you needed the new crops... cried at a David Crowder lyric of 'Majesty. Finally' - the "Finally" word made my heart ache in the middle of my tiredness, somehow hoping for the day when everything will be 'finally', where God will make things 'right' in His own sense & will wrap up history as we know it... mostly it was a longing for journey's end - or more for things to make sense... maybe it was just that this week was a helpful clarity week & I had my own 'finally' on some things I've been carrying & wrestling in my heart for a while & it's been nice to let my thoughts/heart rest & be at peace with life & who I am.... so for me, maybe I was carrying around my own sigh of 'finally' & the tears were just resonance to that....

We were asked to pray about something(?). The person at the front spoke something about seeing the spirit move & about how we needed iron to sharpen iron & stuff & then said we should pray into that & honestly, I thought I was listening to what he was saying, but didn't have a clue to what he was talking about. I thought about yelling to him to clarify, but hesitated 'cause it 'wasn't polite'... & then I found the others around me didn't know what we were doing either & so called out to the next guy who stepped up to the microphone who tried to explain it, but sounded like he maybe didn't know either.... so we prayed for the people around us....

... then had a sermon from Luke 11 about the neighbor who keeps banging on the door late at night, asking for bread & that the person who is in bed will get up & serve this neighbor, not out of love, but just 'cause he's being put out by the persistent neighbor who won't leave him alone. This somehow comes in the middle of a talk on prayer by Jesus & I sort of don't understand what part of God's heart this is suppossed to show. The speaker talked about how this shows that we need to be persistent & bold in our praying. I ended up half listening to it all & reading/skimming through most of Colossians. The phrase "Christ in you, the hope of glory" has been weighing with me as I think thoughts of our authority as individuals & Christians... I keep mulling over the idea that it is living with the reality of Jesus living His life in & through us that truly radicalizes our life... That it is less about trying to contort ourselves to be Christlike & instead realizing that Christ indwells & the Wellspring of all power & authority somehow takes up residence inside each of us & is just waiting to be unleashed.... Reading Colossians with this mindset seems to completely change the focus/meaning of the rest of the words in this letter of Paul...

and so at the end of the message, after I've closed my Bible at the end of Colossians, I hear this voice in the background proclaim "I am a visitor here & I have a message for the church from God".....

... and there is always the dual reaction when I hear this. Part of me wants to believe, wants to hope that God has brought some mystic prophet into our midst to explain everything, to make it make sense & give this great clarity for life. But the other part is skeptical. I've heard lots of people claiming to be God's voice & they've been speaking for their own benefit, trying to feel important, to feel heard. I've maybe done it once or twice, but sure hope it's been a minimum of times... Most times when God speaks He doesn't need to tell you it's Him speaking, you kind of already know 'cause of the way He talks to you & the way that it strikes to the very core of you....

...so this young guy steps to the front... white shirt, black puffy parka/jacket with a light brown fur rimmed hood, tight grey touque pulled just over his eyes, camouflage baggy pants, earphones hanging around his neck. He looked like some white rapper with angular European features. He spoke with an accent that I pegged as East European, but others said was French. He paced back & forth, part caged animal, part master showman. His diction & voice rose & fell as he made each point, emphasis in all the right places better than most of the televangelists I've heard....

...but the young guy spoke with power & conviction. He called the church to 'wake up'... he spoke of how he's part of a church that's been rejected by most in the city. He lives in the places where the homeless live, where prostitutes come to rest, where people are killed & burned alive. He talked of how he's asked God's heart for the city & 'seen' the streets of Calgary filled with blood. He spoke of how the place of the church is with the poor & needy & cried out to us to believe, to believe that God could heal, that God could set the prostitutes free who walked just outside our front door. He asked if we believed these things or just talked about it. He spoke of seeing hundreds of people healed, of seeing devils cast out in Jesus name. He talked of how he was once one enslaved, but is now free, a sinner saved by grace like all of us. He spoke the message to the church of Laodicea & talked about how the world needed the church while the church spent time in bed asking not to be woken or disturbed... He spoke of how the fear of the Lord is missing in the church. Spoke of how everything comes down to love, but that there is still this thing of the 'fear of the Lord that brings wisdom' that is needed in the church today...

In the end one of the gals asked to pray for him & so we gathered to pray over him & bless him & surround him with love. I prayed for a greater release of authority & power, prayed that this guy would be surrounded with community, prayed thanks for God sending a messenger & that the message would seep into each of us....

... and yeah, as the praying started to close, the young man, named David, headed off to go help load up speakers for street church.... and then the discussions began.

Most of us checked in with each other & asked what we thought. Most of us were trying to weigh it all out through discernment, to see if there was something 'wrong' with his words or whether this was a message to be received or not. Across the board everyone said there was no 'check', there was nothing that raised red flags that this guy was full of it... As I described to a friend, the guy may have been crazy, but he was at least Biblically crazy - nothing he said sounded anything different than anything written in the Bible...

The gal who asked to pray for him wanted to show David that he was loved & was likely 'preaching to the choir' & so he didn't need to be on the defensive...

..and then in the middle of our conversation, another guy walked up to talk with us, the same one who spoke of the outpouring of the spirit & iron sharpening iron & said some things like (& take this with a grain of salt, I'm a bit of a reactive person, so maybe I'm misquoting/misunderstanding) : "I didn't think we should be saying things like this guy is the 'messenger of God'....that stuff can go to someone's head. I mean, I think this message was from God, but maybe that's the only message from God he'll get & so he shouldn't be thinking that everything he says is from God." "I'd like him to come back & all - he sure can't expect to do that any time again, but it'd be good if he came again."

...and yeah, I nearly started swearing at him... they maybe caught it in the way my voice went up a number of notches as I strained to hold back the curse words... "With the whole messenger of God thing, maybe the problem is that we need to realize that all of us are God's messengers. We come here & sit in our (insert strained out curse words here) chairs & just listen & don't say anything & maybe if we all got up like that & really said what was going on, then we wouldn't need to worry about elevating someone to "messenger of God" status" - and yeah, that's a total misquote of what I said, but it's the best I can do... I remember the nearly swearing before chairs/pews, but yeah, the rest of that is what I was trying to get at..... maybe the actual quote held no weight 'cause it seemed to fall on deaf ears....

All morning I'd been weighing out a friend's dream & the interpretation of it & it seemed to align so much with the events of the day & the response of the people.... For some, David's words lit a fire in them & awakened boldness, repentance, longing, hope, love - the church as in the heartbeat of God dwelling in the hearts of men & women - was moved; we cried, we ached for this dream of living as the true church - full of love, full of power & miracles to bless the world, to help the poor, to free captives, to make blind eyes see & the lame walk.... the child within us that remembers the sunday school stories of walking on water, commanding storms to be stilled, healing lepers with a touch, this child awakened & remembered the truth of who we all were & are &, most of all, the truth of who He, Jesus, is....

....but at the same time, the 'crab bucket' effect happened... we were called to be silenced, to not hope, to not reach, to not proclaim that we'd heard God's message 'cause it didn't fit in the patterns of the church order, or didn't come from 'leadership'.... we didn't want to honor the messenger 'cause maybe we'd find this messenger was flesh & blood & fallible like all the rest of us....

and yeah, Colossian talks of this:

"Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him,having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority; and in Him )you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead......

....If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, "Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!" (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)--in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence. " (Colossians 2: 6-23 (skip a few in the middle)

The whole of chapter 2 (& the whole 4 chapter letter) is great & powerful. Read the whole thing. I

Rich Mullins' said this in his introduction to "The Color Green" on the "Pursuit of a Legacy" video:

"It started out with this guy who was yelling at this kid for running in the "house of God" , 'cause he was running through a church building. And I, uhm, thought that was funny because I think the Bible is fairly explicit about that 'earth is God's footstool and heaven is my throne, what kind of house can you build for me?" I think it's pretty explicit that the body of Christ is also the house of God, that we are the temple, that it has to do with people and not with buildings. I've often thought, you know, people worry with the catholic thing of revering Mary, uh, and I've often thought that maybe it's not that they revere Mary too much, maybe it's that all of us revere each other too little."

I don't know where the church lost it. Somewhere in the past we read words about all of us being 'kings & priests', about all of us having access to God, about being able to knock on his door at midnight or call him like we'd call up a friend. We used to believe that God would pick fishermen, tax collectors, zealots, prostitutes, murderers & would somehow redeem them & put His words in their hearts & the average, ordinary, everyday men & women could speak the truth & shake the foundations of the systems around us built on lies & the oppression of the poor & needy...

...but somewhere we traded this in for clergy & laity, for the concepts of an informed elite & a dumbed down & dumb (silent) majority of listeners who would look to the clergy as the 'messengers of God' & who would forget that they are all the living word, that the message of the risen Christ blazes inside their chests & waits to be unleashed in love & power on the world around....

... this past week I spent time at the community house for an encouragement night where we were to speak 'nice' things about each other. As I thought about the people around me, the common factor of what I really loved about each of them came down to two things 'heart' (as in the expression of their emotions/passion/dreams & drive) & 'voice' (as in the expression of their words, the expression of their core being as they live out who they really are)... and really the two are maybe the same... again, it's Mary & Martha... Mary being the heart stuff, the inward things, & Martha being the voice, the outward expression of an internal heart reality...

...and yeah, in this place I 'reverenced' each of the people in my own way (to relative levels of freakiness). In my heart of hearts, I sat there in awe of what each of them spoke... and again, these are very normal people, very real people, but.... wow... they are great people... people who have been 'seized by the power of a great affection'... people who live in love & who walk in the tension of being finite humans inhabited by an infinite God.... fragile frames of dust with an ever expanding heart & voice that is filled continually by the wellspring of the divine until they nearly explode.....

... and so as I look at this, I wonder why our voices seem so silent in the organized structure of church.... there must be an unleashing of each of us. We bear the shekinah flame, the cloven tongues of fire, the glory of God, the risen Christ dwelling in each of us... This heart, this voice, cannot be bound, or chained.... His heart's been loving, His voice has been speaking, since before time began....

...and as we join as friends we hear the edges of this heart/voice. We still feel awkward when anyone points out that we sound like Jesus.... and at 'church' (as in the official sunday thing), we sit quietly in the background waiting for permission to speak....

..this has got to change... in me & in all of us. In my grumpier days (a year or so ago) I thought that maybe the solution for my frustration with the church/life was that I just needed to yell at people more often.... maybe that's not quite so far off.... maybe it's not the yelling at people as much as it's just making my voice heard... God spoke through Balaam's donkey/ass... being the messenger isn't a great honor, God can speak through any ass & does all the time... but it's the message that has to be heard (though there is a great reality that the heart of the messenger is hard to separate from the message - Mary & Martha live as perpetual sisters in our minds eye, the tree & fruit go together)...

...and so maybe the first miracle coming is that the mute will speak... that the voice of the church (all of us too quiet, too polite 'laity') will be heard, that we'll start to live as Kings/Queens & priests.... & so God, loosen our tongues, unlock the words you long to say through us - spoken or through our actions.... unleash the voice....

Martha & Mary: Disclaimer

Some follow up thoughts to last night, late night post that may not have come through entirely:

- the exact Martha comment was worded as: "Stop being a Martha" & it came from a good friend calling me to leave the serving & come enjoy fellowship... it wasn't meant (nor taken) in a mean spirited way, it just got me thinking is all. I've wrestled a lot with the tensions inside me of the two (seemingly) opposite sides. As an engineer most people assume I'm a thinker & a do-er/Martha. For years, I wished that people would see the reality that really I'm a feeler & long desperately to be like Mary, a worshiper... and so I used to cringe every time I was called 'Martha'... in more recent years, I've fought the battle between 'doing' & 'being' & tried to shift my life entirely from living out of what I do & trying to move into the reality of who I am... i.e. changing from where my work, my service, the stuff done external to me defined me instead of letting the core stuff of personality & heart & passion define who I am...

Last night, the call to come away from the doing & join in fellowship with friends was met by me with the addict response of "OK, but just let me do this one more thing first"...and that one more thing becomes another & soon you're no where near following what you think you 'want' to follow & are instead chasing the rabbit trail of the tyranny of the urgent.... finding that there's alwasy one more thing to do until you find you've missed the whole point & missed out on what matters most - love, relationship, friends....

.... seeing this again, it makes me wonder why I'm so slow to respond to the call to relationship over the call to do & it makes me ask the questions of where I'm at in moving my life from servanthood to sonship/kingship. A servant lives always in the 'doing'. A servant who loves his/her master lives for that next task, that next assignment. Many times we in the church refer to God as Lord, master. We approach Him as servants & I lived for years wanting to just find God's 'will' so I could know what he wanted me to do in any given moment. In more recent years, I've seen God moving me to sonship - there is a transition point in our faith where we move from being servants to being sons/daughters (see Galatians 3), where we move from being servants to brides (see Hosea 2: 16), where we move from servants to friends (John 15:15), where we move from servants to Kings/Queens.... in this new role, new relationship, we approach God with boldness, we come as His beloved, welcome into his heart & presence. We recognize His headship & that He has given us His authority & we walk in the power & anointing of that... He teaches us to rule, lives through our hearts & shows us that the thoughts, feelings, drives, passions that we have are often birthed from Him & we need to learn to trust our hearts, our voices & we end up living like Him, speaking like Him, walking like Him, all while retaining the unique expression of 'us'...

But yet I am so slow to move from this place of seeing myself as 'servant of all' to being 'king', though in truth, the only true kings are those who make themselves servant of all....

... so yeah... basically just trying to say that a lone comment from a good friend can bring up a lot of stuff. Maybe that's neurotic, but hey, it's my neurosis :)

In the greater light of day, I feel that perhaps each of our lives must embrace both Mary & Martha, both being & doing... The Bible itself shows this 'tension' as Paul speaks of grace alone & James says "if you can't show me your works, I don't believe you have faith"... In the language of love, passion/care/tenderness for someone will always produce actions, and loving actions pretty much always lead your heart to love. How can you truly seperate heart from deeds? A good tree produces good fruit, a bad tree bad fruit.... there is a very fine, if not entirely imagined, line between what we do & where our heart is... (this being said of course knowing that I, like others around me, have a 'fearful' (for lack of a better word - timid perhaps) heart & it takes us a long time of heart stuff before it sometimes translates into action - the action comes, it's just sometimes delayed).

But yeah, anyhow, now I'm rambling.... & yeah, not to say that I didn't have a good time last night. I was just a tad overwhelmed by evening's end & needed to write to process through some of my thoughts....

Thanks to all who came out & enjoyed the food.... it was a pleasure to have you as guests & friends & look forward to the next time (though I'm trying to scheme about how to make it slightly less labour intensive next time :) )

Martha & Mary

Cooking for me is another of those creative outlets. It's perhaps more constrained than painting & writing. In writing especially, I continue to 'prose hack' things - keep spilling out words until it says something relevant (hopefully). With cooking you can't quite do this. There is a certain element where if you deviate too far from the recipe things don't turn out. It's not as restrictive as baking, but not as free form as prose...

I love to cook, but don't do it enough. For myself, most of my eating comes down to survival. Keeping something in the tummy to fill the hole & keep the engine going. Occasionally I cook for myself & then usually cook in big enough portions that I can coast on leftovers for a while. I like to cook for others, but this likewise doesn't happen much 'cause I turn cooking for others into a big production, which I can only do once in a while. (the only exception to this is maybe with my friend Sharon - we get together for meals often enough that I'm a bit more casual in cooking for her - though it was her I was cooking the Moroccan food for when I broke the pot & was all disappointed with breaking the pot & that supper didn't turn out as planned..)

Today I set out to cook for the community house. When I first told everyone that I was wanting to join up with their 'merry band' (robin hood allusion there in case you missed it), I mentioned that I'd like to cook them an east Indian feast. & today was the day.

On the menu tonight:

Appetizers
Samosas (meat & vegetarian - bought - no way i had time to fiddle with making samosas)

Main Course:
Spinach Dhal (Lentil stew/soup)
Chicken Tikka Masala (Butter Chicken)
Beef Kofta Curry (spiced meatballs in a tomato based sauce)
Chickpea Curry
Coconut Rice
Naan bread (again bought)

Beverages
Mango punch, red & white wines

Desert:
Rhubarb/Saskatoon crisp, Rhubarb/Raspberry crisp, & ice cream

So yeah, coming into days like today I sort of think it's a great idea to go to all these great lengths to cook stuff & then at the end of the day (or actually more in the middle of it) I go, what am I thinking?

But yeah, this whole thing was one big ritual for me... it was oddly spiritual in it's own sense. It's this odd place where you get it stuck in your head that this act of service is an expression of love for people & so everything done takes on this element of ceremony. In some ways you feel like this priest offering incense through every action... every stir of pot, adding of spices, mixing ingredients, measuring, cutting, all of it is somehow more than the action - each thing is somehow done for someone else, an expression of value, tenderness, kindness, love.... everything expressing that someone ( or in this case a lot of someones) was worth going to this trouble for....

& the day took on an even greater ritual/spiritual flavour from being able to listen to a number of new CD's as the day went along.

And so the process went something like this:
- Friday night made the marinade for the chicken tikka while on the phone with my brother
- this morning in between watching cartoons, but the chicken in the oven to cook
- Cleaned up the kitchen area & recycling pile to the sounds of Doyle Bramhall II's "JellyCream" wailing 70's guitars & apparently one of Eric Clapton's favorite albums
- sweeping/mopping the kitchen, dining room & foyer and mixing juice to the sounds of Calexico's "Feast of Wine", a mix of hispanic sounds & strings & includes the very lovely jazz piece that starts the "Before the Music Dies" Video....
- made the two crisps & the beef kofta while listening to Niyaz's eastern flavoured sounds and the more western, but equally exotic sounds of Erykah Badu's "mama's gun"
- began preparing the Spinach Dhal & cooking the actual chicken Tikka masala to the interesting & ecclectic sounds of Chad VanGaalen's "Skelliconnection" & the haunting melodies & storytelling of Joni Mitchell's "Turbulent Indigo"....

Part way through Joni's album people started arriving early & I started to stress a bit about it all. Part of the cooking experience, as ritual, is about me doing it alone. Part of it is warped pride stuff to try to challenge myself with a big job & try to make sure it all falls into place. For a bit there I wasn't sure if the food would be done soon enough for everyone & then wasn't sure if the food would get cold before the last few people arrived... but all in all it worked fine (cooked the chickpea stuff & the coconut rice in the time between first arrivals & last arrivals).

All in all the meal was a raging success. Pretty much everyone had to lie down for a while after eating too much, so this is a good sign....

Funny observations for me: Got called a martha tonight.... everyone was seated, or arriving & I was still bustling around trying to get the last few items in place & make sure everyone had everything before I felt comfortable in resting myself. People were well into their meals before I got my food, then pretty much finished by the time I started eating. Part of it was me introducing RJ's boy Connor to my G.I. joes & sort of sharing those brief moments of limited attention span with someone who appreciates the random toy collection...

But yeah, the martha comment: I fall into this role of uber-host whenever I have people over. It is so much about making sure that everything is just 'so' for them. I go to great lengths to try to ensure that everything is provided at the table for them, try to honor the guests & treat them like royalty (which in some ways they are, but that's for another blog entry). But in all of the flurry of activity, I likely end up withholding one thing my guests value highly - me & my presence....

Tonight, after everyone was gone & I stared at the collection of leftovers & dirty dishes (everyone offered to help clean, but I shooed them away, partly to be nice, partly 'cause I needed to figure out how to store the leftovers & how I was going to distribute/use the leftovers, partly 'cause the cleaning up process is as much part of the ritual as is the preparing - though not nearly as much fun), I felt twinges of sadness, loneliness, something. Ended up processing a lot of thoughts on Martha & Mary. These two sisters are foils for so many comparisons. When I gradauted from engineering, we heard some smug poem about how Mary's are the artists, religious, social people & their lives are great, but they couldn't survive without the Martha's, the engineers, doing all the practical stuff for them. We compare these two sisters everywhere. Martha is the one who served. Mary is the one who sat at Jesus's feet & listened to His stories. (see the end of Luke chapter 10) When Martha complains that Mary isn't helping, Jesus tells Martha that Mary's chosen the better part.... and so for centuries now we compare these two sisters with ourselves, trying to distinguish between the acts of service & the acts of reverence & worship.... We place Mary's on pedestals & Martha's get shunned like the ugly step-sister.... though secretly most people in the church curse Mary & wish that God liked Martha's better 'cause we're all better at the doing than the listening....

And so often we miss the points of it all. Jesus is the one who knows our hearts, knows the intents... He is the one who has given us love languages, these different means by which we show our affection. For some acts of service (doing nice things for others) is the greatest & clearest way that they give/receive love. For others (like me) it's time - large quantities of time spent...

In trying to summon the energy to clean tonight, thought about how Martha's life must be a lonely one at times. She blazes away in the kitchen day after day, trying to feed those she loves. It's what she does, it's her heart... but are these things really noticed? Do those around her see what each sandwich, each bowl of soup, each crust of bread has really cost her? Do they see that every bite has been laboured over with love & her heart will leap at the sound of her guest's compliments on her wonderful cooking & her heart will be crushed if they, for whatever reason, don't like the food....

..at the end of the day, the question is, do our works really validate us? Tonight there were 11 or so people at table with me. Pick any 11 people on the planet & see if they agree on anything. Thankfully for me, I figure all 11/11 liked the food & so I think I was lucky, but really, what are the odds of that. If my worth rests in whether everyone likes what I cook or not, well, then my worth is in this fragile place.... Maybe this is what Jesus was really talking about when He told Martha that Mary had chosen what is better. "Come away", Jesus may have been saying to Martha, "sit with me a while & let me remind you that you are loved not because of what you do, but because of who you are."

& yeah, kind of worked myself into a funk with these thoughts..... Andrea, as she was leaving, commented, "Well, Kirk, you've really outdone yourself". To which I replied with the super intelligent response of "Yep"... see, I didn't realize at the time this was intended as a compliment that I should say 'thanks' to. Instead I responded a tad more selfishly, Andrea being one of those close friends that I'm more honest with. My "Yep" was my way of venting out that "Yep, today was a really long day of working & I've probably worked over the top for this & am now really spent".....

.... so in the middle of self-recrimination & apparent loneliness, feeling like I'd abandoned friendships & the truly rich part of the evening (conversations with friends) for the quick fix drug of hoping to gain acceptance & value in other's praises & being the attention whore of asking "did you like it?", "It wasn't too spicy was it?", "Are you sure it was good?", "Do you want some more?".... in the middle of this, I sighed & chose to again begin the ritual, to take the better part of valour, let the dishwasher run a load, leave the rest of the mess for morning & just get the food into containers & into the fridge.... start the slow cleanup process & put on some music to accompany the process.

I put in Joni's album again since our conversation was interrupted last time.... My friend Andrea introduced me to Joni. The more I listen to Joni, the more I understand why Andrea loves her music & feels a kinship with this fellow woman, musician, artist, liver of life & student of love... Joni speaks in stories both with word & note, so much of the weight of the song rests in both the spoken word & the whole sound/tone of it all...

...and somewhere in the ritual things started to make sense again... I wasn't really so lonely, just tired. The excitement of the challenge of accomplishing a big feast, of whether or not the dishes would turn out or be on time or whether I'd manage my schedule right, etc. all of this brought a certain level of stress/anticipation/excitement & the time after the meal is the lull, the wash, the empty place where whatever internal chemicals were released to push you to acheive are now dying down & all that's left is the aftermath in your soul & body of having acheived.... Sometime there is an energy in this 'wash' cycle... a place where you feel like you've accomplished things, a place where, like Jesus in John 4: 32-34, you feel energized from it all; full with the reality of grace that has gone out. Other times, like for me tonight, you just feel spent... like virtue has gone from you, like you've poured your heart & soul into something & now it's just done & tomorrow you may feel proud about it, but today you just feel glad to have gotten through it...

... I remember somewhere there is a picture, a painting, that I've seen of Mary washing Jesus's feet with tears & perfume (see John chapter 12) & it has Martha standing behind her sister, holding a tray of food & absolutely beaming.... the painter tries to convey that Martha learned her lessons from Luke 10 & John 11 (watching her brother raised from the dead). She learned that love is not about competition, that love is not about what you get in return, but that love is in the giving.... and this giving is in whatever unique way that you pour out your heart in adoration for the beloved... For Mary, her worship was perfume & tears, time & a listening heart. For Mary you see her devotion to Jesus in the time spent with him, the ways she talks to him, the way she aches for his presence, longs to hear His voice one more time.... and most of these are done in silence, hidden things that no one sees other than Jesus (& occasionally by a sister that wishes she wouldn't be so lazy)... there is one grand gesture of the perfume & tears, but this is again, just one more expression of love that is perhaps a summary of all the other moments of love. For Martha, her worship is food brought to Jesus, making sure his time at table is rich & full & wonderful & filled with delicious food & a relaxed atmosphere that sets everyone at ease & gives Jesus the freedom to speak the brilliant things He does while He's sharing meals with people....

Love is like incense... the priests of old would start the censers (shallow brass bowls to hold coals/embers & incense in) burning & the smoke of incense would rise to the heavens, but they never really new whether or not God actually received that. Did the beloved smell their offerings? Did He care? Could he even smell things? None of these were ever proven. With love, does the beloved really realize what is given to them, what is poured out in each moment, each action, each word, each touch, each gift.... I've got to admit I'm dense when people try to show me love. I'm so oblivious, or really twisted up in side, that I usually make it really hard on the people who try to love me (or at least that's what I think some days)... but in the end, it is the action of love that is what matters.... Love only exists in being given/shown to someone. When we love hoping to receive, it kind of dampens the full effect of the giving & cheapens what we're trying to do. Not that pretty much everything we do as humans isn't somehow motivated a bit by self-love, or at least it's really hard to distinguish some days between loving others in hopes that this will make us feel good about ourselves or we'll be loved back and between loving simply because you so long to show love to the beloved... but yeah, there is a richness in giving simply for loves sake....

...anyhow, this has been disjointed & I'm not sure where I wanted this to go (or if it went anywhere), but I'd better fall asleep here soon... still have things to clean tomorrow :)