Finding Beauty

I am eating lunch at the brew, noticing styles in clothing. There are at least five different fashion statements in this room: white trash wife beater tucked into shorts; conservative Mennonite with bonnet covering; fifty five year old wearing a flowery blouse and some added youthful flair of a ankle bracelet; ex-Amish trying to disguise himself as a normal Englishman; and a guy in a casual t-shirt and cargo shorts.

I myself am wearing a grey hat -'scene' is the style I'm told- a simple logo t-shirt, cargo shorts and sandals. I obviously selected my clothes for 'appeal' more than function -I am after all wearing a hat inside.

Last summer I wore the same pants (don't worry I washed them) for six weeks... no one noticed. Do people really care as much as we think they do? Is it really worth $150 a month for me to feel better about my image, so that people I don't even want to talk to will notice me more? For the record I don't spend $150 a month on clothing. I don't think I've spent $150 in the past year.

I'm not against 'dressing up' or wanting to have neat clothing, or even 'fashionable' clothing; but how much time do we really spend obsessing about our image externally as opposed to our internal image. I know very beautiful people who are royal... jerks...

Some of the most beautiful people I know aren't too fashionable. They put on things like compassion, patience, love, and usually common sense. They aren't too full of themselves that they have to avoid going out of the house without first taking a half hour to make themselves 'acceptable.'

Like I said, it's fine to care about what you wear, but care more about who you really are, not what other people see on the outside.

The Things You Don't Regret A Month From Now

Today started at 4am, then 4:07am At 4:14am I stopped hitting snooze. My body hated me for being awake. Murray, my little pug, didn't even want to get out of bed yet.

Why did I not get to bed earlier last night?

Oh yea, friendships. Leo came over and we chatted, shared struggles, had a drink, laughed together, talked about Jesus. Courtney joined us, then Jordan. After a while Arlen came from accross the street. We sat on the porch till midnight, talking about faith and spontanious human combustion.

At one point Leonard said, "I better get to bed or I'm going to regret this in the morning." My reply was, "Yes, but will you regret it a month from now."

Sometimes what hurts a bit now, becomes a thing of beauty with time.

Confessions of a Latte Club Card: It Is Not Just Time That Heals All Wounds

I'm sipping on my iced cappuccino waiting for a youtube video of Donald Miller to load. A couple just walked in the door. The girl looks normal enough, the guy has hair that resembles a matted rat with dreadlocks. A woman in her fifties, who is trying to dress like she is thirty two, keeps cupping her hand to the window pane in the door looking for someone. A man who I assume is her husband, whom I also assume she is looking for, comes up behind her and taps her on the shoulder. She just about head buts the door in surprise, then laughs as she realizes it was him. Some music resembling Aretha Franklin drones in the background. Just another day at the Electric Brew. If your ever in Downtown Goshen, Indiana I recommend their chai, but only if Michelle is working. She makes a good chai.

There is a ragged tan business card in my wallet with little holes punched all along the side. I am one little coffee cup punch away from a free mixed drink of some sort. I've been working on this card for a while.

I need to start taking notes on my card, just a line or two. Something to record what happened with that cup of coffee. I really wish I would have thought of this from the beginning. This card has seen a lot.

Last night my card was present for something beautiful. Three friends, laughing at Leonard's house while watching Sabrina. It may never happen again, I don't know; but it was beautiful. I'm not really going to describe why other than this: It represented healing in something previously broken.

It takes a lot of punched holes in a Latte Club Card to bring healing. Some require tears, others anger, others forgiveness, most of them confusion, all of them prayer.

No friendship broken, no marriage hurting, no wound is beyond healing. If we find the humility. Many passionately pray for physical healing, but lack the fervor in praying for broken hearts or arthritic compassion that have plagued them and others for years. In some sense, physical healing is easier. Physical healing brings wholeness without me needing to confront my selfishness, or admit that I was wrong. Physical healing is easy to talk about "God healed my arthritis!" but to say the same about relational healing, even my rejoicing points out that I was dysfunctional.

C.S. Lewis said that no one can love in any form without being hurt. Because of death, because of selfishness, because of sin I will at some point be let down in some way by the ones I love. I know that someday if I marry, I or my spouse will day, causing pain, yet I invest in love.

Invest in Love today, even towards those who may now be your enemies, even though they may not respond to that love. Jesus said "as much as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone." Committed love may not always see the healing result, but without it there is no chance.

There is no greater representation of the heart of God than healed relationships. The more you experience them, the more you experience the heart of the Father.

Murray

I got a dog. He's a pug. The kind that is so horrendous that you can't help but find it adorable. One of the great oxymoron's of the universe. God has a sense of humor.

Murray's first day went well. He mostly sniffed around the house and gathered information regarding his new surroundings.

Pugs are co-dependent, they thrive on being around people. If I am in the living room, Murray is in the living room. This morning when I took a shower, he just sat there and stared at the shower curtain, I know because I checked.... several times. I felt bad so I sang him a song. Murray peed on the carpet, right in front of me, so I put him in the kitchen while I practiced guitar. When I went to check on him he went nuts because he had missed me so much. I'm beginning to feel suffocated, this dog is always there, watching me. Get a freakin life you mut!

I really do like the dog, and things are less lonely in the morning at my place. It's fun to watch him be a dog. I'm over dramatizing about my suffocation, though I strangely feel like this furry monstrosity is invading my personal space.

I need to be more like Murray, a little more... a lot more dependent on being around God all the freaking time. Shouldn't I go nuts with excitement when God comes around after being gone (or at least my feeling like he's been gone) for a while. I'm glad God doesn't feel suffocated by my presence.

I'm really not a huge fan of cute little stories that illustrate a cute little truth about a cute little God, I hope this isn't one of those.

Prayer for the day: Dad, make me like a little co-dependent butt ugly pug who stares at the shower curtain.

Taking Another Look at Taking Another Look at Community

When I last wrote about "Taking Another Look at Community," which was meant to be an inward reflection on some personal visions, I was surprised to get more feedback than I expected. So I think I'll write a little more about the subject... as if I'm some expert.

Community can obviously be taken in many different forms, you have Hutterites, Bruderhof, the late great Amana Colonies, New Monasticism, the Franciscan Fraternity of Little Brothers, Reba Place Church in Chicago has an apartment complex, the infamous Shane Claiborne lives in a derelict neighborhood with other believers at the Potter Street Community. Communal living exists in as many ways as the imagination can create it. For my purposes I'm going to define it as: Maintaining some sort of geographical proximity that makes possible a sharing of time, resources, and burdens on an even hourly basis.

Community is counter cultural, it is often perceived as cultish and strange. North American culture is quite individualistic and paranoid of anything that resembles communism or socialism in any way, keep your hands off what is mine and I'll keep my hands off of what is yours seems to be the name of the game. Community says, you have need, and I have, let me give to you. Community is voluntary interdependence made possible only by Jesus creating a servants heart in his followers.

Community maximizes the greatest aspect of our existence and faith. Relationship. In Community I share life, both normal and significant, with believers who I am committed to and who are committed to me, to a greater degree. This level of commitment that sets aside significant time and personal preference to grow together is also counter cultural (at least in my experience), creating a safety much like healthy family relationships or marriages, where the deep commitment allows for greater vulnerability.

Community consolidates resources in order to direct more time and energy towards the greatest commandment "Love the lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself." It is quite frankly, cheaper to live together. Less time has to be directed toward a 'career,' there are greater margins in our life to direct towards kingdom building relationships. This too is counter cultural to the rat race of Western Society.

From everything I've read and thought about, and what aspects of community I have experienced, I've learned this: Community is probably a lot more difficult than I realize. It was hard living with family, I get tired of most people after a weeks time. I'm selfish, community will expose that. On the flip side, I believe that we can learn to live counter culturally in community, and that even though it is strange it can bring a new beauty to the darkness that surrounds it. Jesus was weird, he said strange things, things that made it difficult for people to follow him, yet the drunks, tax collectors, and prostitutes flocked to him like piranhas to a piece of bloody meat.

I realize that most of my thoughts are from visions in my mind, not necessarily realities and experiences. I hope that changes soon.

Taking Another Look at Community

I'm talking with someone about living in community again. Dreaming, hoping, but with a sense of reservation. I'm trying to protect myself.

I feel like I'm trying to ask a girl out for the third time. I almost expect the rejection.

I don't claim to know a lot about community, except for the fact that it's hard to make a cultural shift like that happen. There aren't that many people around me who want to make a shift like that, and if they do they have other obstacles like a house payment or such that keeps them from realizing that shift that this point in their life.

I press on with reserved ecstasy.

Even if this time doesn't work out community still remains as the filter for most of my thoughts and conversations about the Kingdom of God.

I'm longing to start the day with believers, to have genuine relationships with unbelievers, to endure the hardships of life, to find the beauty of it, and to share it with a close circle in deep communion as we follow King Jesus.

I'm a pervert, so I need accountability... real accountability.

I'm arrogant, so I need humbling relationships.

I'm selfish, so I need to continually serve.

I'm prone to wander, so I need spurring on... and not just once or twice a week while I politely present prayer requests about enduring a toe fungus problem (though that may be too vulnerable).

I'm scared of moving beyond my home to the dying world beyond, so I need others to be scared with me.

I don't want to 'catch a trend', I was thinking about community a couple years before Claiborne wrote his book. I just want deep, vibrant, committed, communal, relationships in contrast to the actual trend of relationships that emphasize self-serving, emotional reservation, maintaining individuality, and committing while things go well. I don't want a hokey religion, or structured traditions, I want life bringing relationships that offer hope and beauty, to an ugly dying world, through the messiah.

Why does what is healthy have to be so counter cultural.

I'm back... is anyone there?

I suppose I'm not even sure how many people followed my blog before, I only knew of a couple, but I spose they've all moved on to greener pastures in my absence. Cha, I act like I have some sort of a following here. Anywho, whether you checked this baby out before, or you stumbled upon it, I'm back... I hope.

It's hard for me to write when I'm emotionally dysfunctional, or at least more dysfunctional than usual. I was on the road for Rosedale Bible College for a few months, travelling all over the place. I think I put about 15,000+ miles on since I went home to Oregon for Christmas back in December. Host families' living rooms & rooms of 20 somethings off at college are not good environments to write in. I need either something familiar, or exotic and extraordinary. 

For my triumphant return I would like to humble myself by talking about a topic I know very little about. Gardening. Courtney and I planted a garden, we're sort of flying blind. I think we both expect that sometime next week our weed free garden will produce perfect plants, including some we didn't even expect. I'm enjoying the utopian delusion for now.

Whether or not our wildest gardening dreams come to pass, I already consider this garden a success. It has produced relationships that have enriched my life and hopefully spreads the kingdom of God.  Forgive me for throwing out aspects of my dating relationship all over the web, but a couple of weeks ago Courtney and I were having a little misunderstanding. She went to work on the garden a bit while I stayed on my porch and thought about life. While she was there, the neighbor brought by some chicken wire for us to put around our garden to fend off the millions of illegitimate children of bugs bunny. He invited the two of us over that night to sit around the fire and catch some fish out of the millrace. 

After settling our little dispute we took them up on the offer. There was a small crowd gathered when we arrived. There was Steve, an electrician in his fifties with a deep love of good southern moonshine, his daughter Carrie and her boyfriend Aaron, the neighbor Jeremy and his wife Nicole, and their daughter Stevie (yes their daughter Stevie). For the last few years they have spend their weekends with each other, laughing, drinking cheap beer, fishing, swapping stories, and enjoying more community than many Christians have.

We haven't talked about anything serious, but after showing up two weeks in a row, I feel like I'm one of the gang. Courtney and I were out working on the garden yesterday. Steve came up and started chatting with us, he let me use his shovel, gave me some gardening tips, we talked about his apple trees. After a bit, Nicole and Stevie came over and started chatting as well, they gave us some tomato plant starts and some cups to transplant them in. They have accepted us. 

The first thing Steve said to us (after having a few Milwaukee's Bests) was "Make yourself at home, if someone ever needs to sleep something off underneath the apple tree, it wouldn't be the first time, and no one will ask any questions." Sure it wasn't exactly a Christian greeting of hospitality, but I liked it. If you need to puke in my yard, it's ok I still accept you. 

We'll see how things go in the future, I hope and pray for opportunities to love them like Christ loved them, and hopefully I'll have opportunity to share the message of the good news that the maker of the universe loves us all immensely, even if we're sleeping something off under an apple tree.

Who says life has to be an organized narrative.

While God has everything figured out. Our side of the sky does not seem so organized. Any framework on our part that claims "God is working exactly in this way in my life" is largely a guess.

I had breakfast with a friend this morning at a French restaurant. We talked about being who we really are in front of everyone and experiencing freedom in Jesus. It made me want a glass of chilled Zinfandel to complement my "au du ja jambon" -I'm sure I butchered that French which is supposed to mean ham cheese sandwhich thingy.

It's hard talking to people about a Bible College. Sometimes it makes me feel like I'm selling Jesus or something, then I remember it's a non-profit deal and the professors there make about as much as an overtime worker at McDonalds... then I don't feel bad anymore.

God made creation beautiful. The beach here in Sarasota is wonderful. I'm sure before we paved it all over it was a lot prettier. It also had a lot more mosquitos. I still wonder why God created those little buggers. I was enjoying the sand and surf while reading Surprised By Hope by N.T. Wright and thinking about what the recreation would look like in Florida; three twenty something guys nearby were trying to impress their bikini-clad neighbors on the beach with loud obnoxious stories about all that "crazy shit" that they were doing last night. I hope the re-creation includes silence.

I promise I'm not shouvanistic but I heard that women aren't going to be in heaven (and apparently neither will these guys) because in Revelation John says that there was a half hour of silence in heaven.... don't make a big deal out of it, just laugh, it's funny. Don't worry Courtney, I like it when you talk.

I have to go back to Ohio tomorrow. I will probably spend the afternoon with Matt, Chris, Dan, Rachel, Libby, and some random person who decided to show up. I like those guys. Random theology, spirituality, polotics, and personal issues are constantly mingled with sci-fi and various eras of history.

I bought a record player a couple of weeks back. It is sitting in the trailer in Ohio. If I could completely alter my situation right now I would be sitting on a beach with Courtney listening to Bob Dylan The Freewheelin on that record player and drinking a White Russian.... extra milk.

The band Mute Math describes my life well. "You are reaching, something that is beating, I can't believe I never noticed my heart before... till I noticed you did." Jesus noticed my heart and loved it, and still does.

Wow. My life is pretty good. Even if I'm not sure how it all fits together.

4 Minutes

What can I do with 4 minutes. Well, pretty much everything that I neglect to do on a regular basis that I absolutely love doing. Four minutes to listen to a good song. Four minutes to play my guitar. Four minutes to read at least a small piece of creative writing. 

This is obviously my first update I've done in a long time. It is unfortunate, I love to paint with words, yet I never seem to find the time. 

I'm sure I do the same with the kingdom of God. How much time would it really take for me to meaningfully love someone? Four minutes could get the job done. I don't think I'll ever 'find' the time to do all the things I love, but I know I can make the time. Make the time to laugh, love, read, write, and play guitar, maybe write my lovely girlfriend a letter.

Find the time to take in life as God meant it to be taken in. He made it for you and I to enjoy, so lets fulfill some of his purposes.

Whoops, I'm a minute over.