The Joy of Getting

Today I'm thinking about the joy of getting.

Which seems strange, since we usually think it's better to give than to receive. And often we think that enjoying getting makes us prone to greed, selfishness, a lust for more, and ultimately an unsatisfying emptiness that can come with a life lived for self-gratification.

In reaction, many people, especially in certain faith traditions have grown up to live lives defined by giving of ourselves to other people.

In my own life, I've begun to notice that I don't just prefer the joy of giving, I have a hard time getting from other people....maybe it's better to say I have a hard time "receiving" from others.

It violates my rigorous independence. It's fine for me to give, because it still allows me to keep on with my illusions of self-sufficiency. Rarely, is there joy for me in receiving, especially when it involves other people having to go out of their way for me.

Now I'm pretty sure that I'm not alone in this. And the problem is, I think, that in our attempts to avoid greed and selfishness, we've traded for a different kind of spiritual sickness, the kind that makes it hard to receive joyfully from other people.

And imagine the kind of problem this might be at Christmas time, a holiday whose primary spiritual significance is found in receiving the gift of God incarnate - of Jesus coming into our midst.

Sure, it's great to give gifts, but our culture has begun to depict gift giving as the primary ethos of "the holidays". I saw a store with the tagline "give better".  But even if we avoid the cultural norm of giving as an act of self-definition, we might still fall prey to the trap of only allowing ourselves to be joyful in the act of giving, and not also in receiving. And it may not be so important that we allow ourselves to be blessed by proverbial pair of socks from aunt Ethel, but what if we fail to allow ourselves to be joyful in the more important gifts of Christmas? What if our preoccupation with giving prevents us from first receiving God's gifts for us?

Our are hearts clinging to independence, perhaps even clinging to the role of giver (a position of power) at the expense of fully being joyful at this outlandish, extravagance? God has given himself to us. In our struggle to relate to truth on an intellectual level, God moves in among us and allows us to relate to truth in the form of another human. God limits him/herself and offers presence to humans in a way never before imagined.

So this Christmas I'm trying to cultivate a posture in my heart that is open to receiving. Open to the gifts of others (in that they are extensions of God's love for me), and open to this mind-blowing act of love in the incarnation. I fear I may not have been very open to accepting it in the past, and I wonder how my independence and self-sufficiency might have robbed me of the full experience of this gift. I'm going to try to en-joy getting and see what happens.

Dumb Requests

My kids ask for some pretty dumb things.

"I want to eat hot dogs every day and stay up all night without sleeping at all".

It's not because they're dumb - quite the contrary - they rather terrify me with their cleverness at a young age. They just allow their wishful thinking to dominate their requests in a way that places all other considerations as secondary.

They even ask for some things that would require a defiance of the laws of physics.

One of them: "I want you to make the sun go away!"
Me:  "I can give you sunglasses, or put up a shade, would you like that?"
One of them: "No, I want you to make the sun go away!"
Me: "I'm sorry, I can't do that. We'll just have to wait till it sets."
One of them: "Yes you can! Make it go away! You can!"

(Note how calm and patient I am in the dialogue - this clearly captures my typical response style and represents no scrubbing or embellishment on my part!)

Usually it's funny, but a little bothersome when I can't help them understand that what they want isn't possible and the resulting screaming that ensues (from them).

But it got me to thinking about my own requests, things I directly or indirectly ask God for.

I wonder if God thinks the things I ask for are dumb? Perhaps not, but I wouldn't be surprised if my requests and wishes are as unwise as the things my kids ask for. Maybe wishful thinking leads to some errors in my judgement, just like it does with my children.


In recent years, I've become more sophisticated, I've learned not to mention what I really want to God when I recognize how it might appear.

Funny that, as if I can really hide what's in my heart from God....but I try.

I try not to ask God to mistreat others in the same way they're mistreating me so that they can see the error of their ways.

I try not to ask God to intervene in the proceedings of the National Football League, specifically the outcomes of a particular team from Wisconsin and the cheating devils they play from other cities, who have clearly paid off every single referee in the league.

I try not to ask God to give me special treatment; to keep my kids from illnesses that other kids get, to save me from the tragedies of other people's lives, to spare me certain struggles....I try not to ask.

But deep in my heart the truth of the matter is that I want all of those things. Some of them I even expect and blame God for when they don't turn out. It really does no one any good for me to pretend. I'm not fooling God, the only one I'm fooling is myself, thinking that somehow I can pretend.

God knows my heart. God knows I want some terrible, impossible, and self-destructive things.

God knows I want the world to be unfair - but only in my favor, or the favor of those I care about. 

And this crap I try to hide, even from myself, that I'm not really a jerk like the rest of you, it does me no good, and probably ends up hurting others.

But the thing is, I kind of want my kids to keep asking, even if it is for dumb stuff.

I love that they feel secure enough in our relationship to tell me exactly what they want without fear of my answer.

I love to watch them learn to ask for better things.

So for now, my simple prayer is this:

God, help me to be honest with myself and You. 

I want some pretty bad things, and I'm tempted to just give up on asking You for things because some of the stuff I want is probably not good for me or other people. Help me to keep asking, to ask for better things, and to be transformed in the process of asking You and learning from your answers. Rescue me and others from my selfishness...or at least help me change, and help me to learn to love what's truly good, 

And if you wouldn't mind healing Aaron Rodgers' fractured clavicle, so that the team of green and gold would again take their divinely appointed place as league champions, that would be great!

(oops, sorry! Forget that last bit!)

Amen.

The Storms >CAN< Save Us

Usually we fear storms...not just the weather event kind of storms, but those painful, destructive, chaotic, overwhelming times in our lives when, as an old hymn writer put it, "sorrows like sea-billows roll".

A friend of mine reminded me the other day about a peculiar thing that happens in the story of Jonah: Jonah tries to run from God, but on his sea voyage is thrown overboard into the stormy sea so that other sailors won't drown too, and is swallowed by a great fish. In the belly of this fish (whale?) he calls out to God - but not for help! Instead he quotes Psalms of thanksgiving.

Now maybe I'm wrong, but this seems an unusual reaction for a human, in the face of grave danger, to be thankful. I remember as a kid someone tried to reconcile this for me by telling me Jonah thought the fish was going to save him from drowning....but I don't really buy this anymore....I think in the belly of a fish you pretty much assume you've found one path to death that just smells worse than drowning. Granted, it's probably true that Jonah is more of a parable than a historical account (like Job), where the truth of what it means is more the point, rather than the plausibility of the story details. Whether or not we accept the physics of being swallowed by a fish doesn't so much matter - the story is true in what it teaches us about life and God, and in this case storms and suffering.

Some of you know that I help people whose lives have been devastated by car accidents, workplace injuries, and the like. My office is full of human tragedy and often folks come to me in the midst of the worst storms of their lives. Now that I have a few years behind me of doing this work, and I've learned to look at my own life differently, I've come to observe an interesting pattern...

....the storms can save us.

Even when we think they are bringing our destruction and we need to be rescued from them, it is often the storm that is rescuing us from something.

Like the three people I've seen in two years that had car accidents, which led to MRI's, which in turn led to the perfectly timed discovery of previously undiagnosed tumors that were removed and spared their lives for many years afterward.

Or the folks I've seen that tell me they never lived for anything important until they lost all of the unimportant things in an accident.

Or the second-career people who thought that being downsized was the end of the world, until they discovered their old job wasn't actually good for them or their family.

Or the competent professional who found that being vulnerable and relying on others for help after a family tragedy brought new friendships he could never have imagined.

Or the marriages that were never truly intimate until one partner had to learn to depend on the other because their body wouldn't permit radical independence anymore.

The storms can save us. They often do. We may not see what they are or what they have saved us from, but so long as we remain open to being changed and taught and transformed, the storms can take us from a hell we may not have imagined or seen.

So, perhaps Jonah gives thanks when he realizes that he cannot run from the presence of God. That even in the belly of a fish, he cannot flee. Perhaps he recognizes that the storm has saved him, and that's why he doesn't call out for help to be rescued. Maybe he sees that running from God can bring a life worse than death.

Now I appreciate the objections this will raise. I specifically am saying that storms "can" save us, because I don't want to ascribe all human suffering to being an intentional act of God to fix people. I think suffering is fundamentally a mystery, and I don't have the hubris to write a blog post that claims to resolve it. And I also realize that telling people in the midst of a storm that what they're going through could save them....isn't very helpful. Storms are painful and destructive, and our biology predisposes us to pursue perceived safety. But it does seem that at the right time we humans can look at our dark times in life and find something meaningful, helpful, and even life saving.

And maybe part of growing is learning to trust that not all storms are something to be saved from or avoided, but that storms can save us, even when we think running is the safest thing to do.

Do we ever learn?

A patient of mine was lamenting his tendency to go backwards in life - to do what he knows better than to do. We talked about the human frailty - our tendency to learn things, to make changes, but then to fall back on old habits, old ways, old thoughts and beliefs.

It is indeed part of our tragic nature - a flaw we all share - that we often know better than what we do. We learn, we change, but often only partially.

As we talked, I wondered aloud what our next reaction to this situation might be. I mean, obviously we experience frustration about "knowing better", but what comes after that....is it despair? Or, is there another reaction we can choose after we allow ourselves that moment of initial frustration about being fully human and not changing fully in the way we would wish? Despair is so tempting, so easy when we don't know what else to think or feel.

This morning I offer this: that after the frustration of chronic human failure to change, we can choose to react with hope.

Hope. Not blind optimism or trying to insert a positive thought we don't actually believe, but hope.

Hope that in spite of our failure to change fully, we have at least begun to change. We are capable of some change, of starting a process in which change is happening even if it is not complete. Hope that our incomplete changes are in and of themselves meaningful and good. I may not have stopped being selfish, but the times I choose not to be are good - good for me, for my family, for my patients, and maybe for the world. I want more of those good choices not to be selfish, and hope propels me forward to continue to work at choosing well. Despair blurs my judgement and tells me that failure to perform at the level I expect means I should give up. I causes me to lose sight of the good that has come from the changes I have made. We are works in progress, and to lapse or step backwards is not the same as to undo all of the progress we have made. In this case hope is not closing one's eyes to the truth to escape a bitter reality, but rather seeing things for how they really are, and being more engaged with life as a result.

There is another source of hope. A hope that our progress someday will reach completion, that this cosmic drama we live in is headed in a direction that eventually resolves with a full reconciliation and restoration of all creation. I grew up with the notion that all that had to happen was for me to a) believe the right things, and b) die and go to heaven where everything would be fixed up for me. Later in life I've come to realize that the work of refinement, redemption, and reconciliation are in progress now, here, on the earth, and that God seems to will that we partner with God in this work in the present, rather than waiting for a magic transformation to happen after we die. I'm not attacking the idea that a final perfection might take place, just the opposite, I think the work of change is completed in a mysterious way in the future. I think perhaps we do eventually "learn" fully, in some transition that takes place beyond our mortal bodies. But for now, we are to engage in starting the process. Showing patience with ourselves for not being at the end point, and choosing hope rather than despair for our "work in progress" that someday, through the mysterious work of the Divine will be completed.

For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.  1 Cor 13:12

No Audience

I'm rather relieved to discover that hardly anyone actually reads this blog.

I was talking to another blogger who has had remarkable success in developing a "following" in a short period of time - well deserved, but also fairly strategic in spreading the word about his writing.

I had strange sense that I did not want to be "on stage", at least, not yet. I worry about how an audience changes you. I remember Ravi Zacharias and Rob Bell both talking about how they refused to add a TV component to their teaching ministries because they recognized that the camera changes people.

Just being aware of the fact that others are watching (or reading what you write) changes you. It tunes you in, it shifts your attention to thinking about how they are perceiving you and what their reactions are. We may say (and really mean) that we don't care what others think, but humans are complicated messy creatures, and as soon as we're aware that others are noticing, it's hard to believe that it doesn't shape our behavior or our words somehow.

It just happened to me right now....who would want to read about post about the dangers of writing things to impress other people? "Better not publish this",  I thought, "just leave it in the drafts folder".

Now, some might say this isn't entirely negative, and having to revise and self-edit can be quite helpful. Indeed being entirely immersed in one's own world without the feedback of others is often quite unhealthy. But some good thinkers have wisely pointed out how dangerous an audience can be, how tempting it can be to entertain and move from authenticity to performance. How troubling a thought this is when we consider how many people now live their daily lives "performing" on platforms like facebook, twitter, and the like. Maybe it isn't so consequential to be selective in choosing which holiday photos you post on facebook, in a manner aimed at making others believe you live a perfect and happy existence. But maybe some of this performing ends up eroding the authentic intimacy of our lives when we spend more time being the person others expect us to be than the person we really are. And perhaps even more seriously for those who write or teach about spiritual truth, there is the risk that we will write to entertain more than we will be honest with the complex, vexing nature of truth-seeking. 

And... I think it is even more dangerous when someone is in a formative period of their lives. I know that we're all on journeys, and our formation is ongoing, but I think there might be something to be said for certain highly formative periods, that need to occur without the temptation to become what you think will earn the praise of others, or even to develop an inner sense of pride in what you have said, or written, or done.

Jonathan Martin, a profound pentacostal thinker and teacher, writes in his book Prototype, that desert experiences, those times when we are away from the crowd and alone with God, are the most crucial and vital times of our lives. To be obscure in Martin's view, is a blessing, one to be savoured and sought after, rather than considered failure, a loss, or avoided.

So thanks for not reading. (ahhh! Blogger suicide) I'm not trying to discourage you if you want to read this, but I also need some space to just write and reflect. To be formed and have my mind transformed, without any interference from stupid thoughts like, "what will people think if I write that?".

Letting Go...a little

I've been writing very little lately, but my self-reflection has been going on nonetheless. I'm still early in my thinking about these topics, so I invite feedback and critique even more than normal. Hopefully this is clear enough to make sense to most folks....

I've been thinking about why certain things bother me as much as they do.

I've told myself time after time that professional success, wealth, productivity, and personal achievement are really not so important. But it's like a little part of me doesn't believe it. When these things are threatened or attacked, or even lost, it evokes emotional responses more strong than I would care to admit. I can rationalize with myself endlessly, but it seems in spite of "knowing better", I really am holding on. You only defend the things you covet, and this year in the midst of some life changes, I've come to realize that I have a pretty strong attachment to things I wish I didn't.

Why can't I let go?

Ernest Becker, an under-appreciated psychologist and thinker, poses a thoughtful approach.

Becker suggests that many of us use "life projects", things like careers, accumulation of assets, children, development of reputation, and building a legacy as ways of dealing with the inherent anxiety of death that is hardwired in each of us as humans. Okay, now before you all check out from this article and tell yourselves that you don't fear death, just slow down for a moment and consider that perhaps you feel reassured by your beliefs about the afterlife, but that you haven't entirely managed to escape the most profound existential reality facing all of humanity, which is, that we are aware of our own impending deaths. It might even be true to say that the innate biological drive towards self-preservation, automatically creates a dilemma us as humans who are aware that we are going to die someday. I'm not suggesting that we can't transcend this, just like we transcend our selfish tendencies at times, by experiencing God's love....but most of us would have to admit even with selfishness, we're a work in progress. Perhaps too often in Christian circles, we've been quick to treat our fear of death as an either/or, rather than a work in progress. But I digress...

Assuming that deep down, mostly unconsciously, that we do fear death, it seems there might be things we will do to alleviate that anxiety. While we might simply deny our inevitable fate, humans seem to gravitate towards more complicated forms of denial, things that allow us to rationalize and fool ourselves into thinking that we're not denying anything at all. Becker suggests that these life projects give us a sense of life being meaningful and reassure us that something might exist beyond our death, whether it be offspring, or something we invented or created, or an inheritance we pass along to our heirs, or even just that vague sense of having "made a difference in the world", all of which take the sting out of death.

So, while we might not specifically think about death or dying when these things are threatened, they play the function in our lives and in our psyche of protecting us against the subconscious fear of death, and hence become infinitely more important than we would otherwise expect.

As psychologists, we're always on the look-out for disproportionate responses - reactions that conjure up greater emotional intensity than we might otherwise expect. When I notice it in myself, when I see that my emotional response to things changing against my will is bigger than the scope of the change, I cannot help but wonder if something deeper is feeling threatened. Maybe its because these "life projects" of mine that are threatened are more precious to me than I recognized. Maybe my identity as a professional, as a dad, as a multidimensional success, even as blogger are tied up in protecting me from these haunting realities. Some day I will die. I may or may not have much influence on when it happens. Someday all things I have worked so hard it will lose most of their value. Someday everyone who ever knew me will also be dead. Will I then cease to exist on earth entirely? Will producing something of enduring value or notoriety protect me against this? Is that what why I strive so hard?

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that motivation is a complicated thing, and that reducing human behavior to any one motivating factor is attractive, but faulty. The truth is, it's unlikely that unconscious death anxiety is the sole motivational force, just as it is unlikely that I do everything because of conditioning, social forces, repressed sexual urges, or attachment styles. The field of psychology has tended to trip over itself and lose credibility because it is inclined to posit comprehensive theories that reduce motivation to vast oversimplifications. But understanding how something like death anxiety might contribute, in a helpful, if not profound source of insight into this dilemma of how we so often love and cling to things that we intellectually renounce.

Beyond insight, I think I can begin to let go,...a little, if I connect on a daily basis to the reality that Jesus rescues us from the fear of death. Not by giving us a promise of an afterlife to cling to as another form of denial, but by transforming the very nature of reality, and the very meaning of our existence. In this reality of "the kingdom of God", we begin to experience a transcendence that allows us to move beyond our innate clinging to things, to preserving our life and denying the upcoming death. Perhaps those mysterious word of Jesus apply here, that as I lose my life, I gain it.

Carefree Summer

Lately I've been frustrated by all the things on my growing to-do list.

It seems we have a variety of responses to having too much on our plates, but for right now I'm frustrated. I don't mind so much having ten thousand things to do in the winter....but summer...it just seems like a crappy time to be preoccupied with a to-do list that's too long to get done.

I was trying to put my finger on why it irritates me so much to be overly busy in the summer...part of it is the short period of time of great weather, part of it is the fact that I've had a few overly busy summers in a row, but part of it seems related to this idyllic notion of summer that I have.

Summer to me is supposed to be carefree.

It's supposed to be that time where responsibilities and work and all the demands just get set aside for playing. I think this is a pattern most of us develop when we're young - work hard during the school year, but cut loose during the summer. Wake up and find a new adventure each day. No plans, no places you have to be...

I miss that. I miss the memory I have of it anyway...I realize that part of the glory may just be nostalgia, and its perfection may be a function of remembering.

But it makes me wonder about the heaviness I feel in my not-so-carefree life these days. I feel careworn instead.

Maybe some of it is self-imposed. Maybe I feel the weight of responsibility when I buy into illusions of life that make things heavier than they need to be. Illusions of permanence. Illusions about myself and my false sense of omnipotence and importance.

Maybe having my butt kicked to the curb by life lately is actually a gift. Maybe losing some battles in life can remind us that what we've been working so hard for, is actually not so important.

When things started to come apart in my professional life a few months ago, I had the wisdom (occasionally) of stopping and listening. Trying to sense the Spirit's voice in the midst of my sadness and anger. All I could hear was "don't get lost in the details". I wasn't exactly sure of what that meant. It seemed to be a reminder that the details weren't so important...but I neglected the first part..."don't get lost".

It's easy for us to "get lost"; to be emotionally and mentally far away from our true identity, the true sources of our value, the truly important and meaningful things in life.

In my desire to have a care-free summer, I've been hoping for a removal of difficult and pressing things. It's the typical North American mindset - that happiness is the absence of suffering or strain. But the truth is that to be carefree is not to have the demands of my life disappear, but rather, it requires me to re-orient my relationship to those demands, seeing them for what they really are, and not taking them at face value or getting sucked into their traps.

To be carefree (not careless) is perhaps ultimately about "not getting lost in the details", about re-aligning our perspective to the bigger realities of life. That we are valued because God has infused us with value as his creation, his children, his friends. That most of life is fleeting and temporary and that all that really matters is to love God and love the things God loves. That the world is ultimately a safe place, not a place where everything works out how we want it, or place that's free from suffering, but a place but a place where God will not be thwarted in his work of redeeming all of creation.

My carefree, or at least not careworn summer is available if I choose it. If I choose to believe and act as if I believe certain things about the world. If I refuse to get lost in the details.

Postscript:  ....and my anger about the people who did this to me? Well, I think I can avoid becoming bitter if I recognize that the things they've taken are not of ultimate importance, and that they can never take away the things that really matter in life.

Norman Wirzba Extended Interview

As part of my ongoing thinking about our relationships to food, I've been including the great thinking about this topic from Norman Wirzba.

I found a great clip here of him summarizing the body of work he's done in the theology of food.

Norman Wirzba Extended Interview

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
 

Members? or Consumers?

A few weeks ago I blogged about the journey I'm beginning in being attentive to food. I've started paying more deliberate attention to my relationship to food, where it comes from, how my food choices impact others, and where food fits in my life.

It's been enlightening to read Norman Wirzba's book:
Food and Faith; A Theology of Eating

Wirzba suggests that we require a fundamental reorientation of our relationships with the rest of the world. Rather than being consumers, we need to become aware of ourselves as members of a created order.

It seems that our primary way of relating to many things in life is now as consumers. In her thoughtful work Monoculture, F.S. Michaels suggests that the dominance of the economic worldview, has shaped us into people who relate and interact primarily in terms of consumption. For more on this see my most recent post "One Story".

But what could be problematic about interacting with food this way? Shouldn't we view food as a consumable? Isn't food just a fuel source to allow us, the pinnacle of evolved beings, the opportunity to live our lives according to our own consciences?

The problem according to Wirzba, is that relating to food solely as consumers, removes us from the complex web of interdependence we have with the rest of nature. Putting it bluntly, Wirzba reminds us that our eating requires the death of other organisms. We count on the death and birth cycles of life for our survival. We may have removed ourselves from our food so far that we only experience it coming from boxes. But this only perpetuates an illusion, an illusion that our eating has no impact. The illusion that we humans are independent and self-sufficient.

The reality is that we are members of a complex system of elements, of an ecology. Our ignorance or denial of this membership leads us to make many reckless and destructive choices. Our wealth insulates us from some of the consequences, for now.

But as Wirzba, and Wendell Berry, and many other important voices are reminding us, we live these detached lives, these lives which deny our interconnectedness with the rest of creation, not only at the peril of others who are more vulnerable in the world, but also at our own peril. Whenever we pretend to be self-sufficient and independent, we live an incomplete, false existence, one which stumbles into the realm of idolatry and ultimately self-destruction.

The word "whole" shares it's common Latin root with the word "holy". So when we relate to food as consumers only, and not as members of the created order, our lives become fragmented, detached, or "unholy". Whether you identify with the religious language of "holiness", or you prefer the popular culture's term of "holistic health", either way we must recognize the need to see ourselves as interconnected parts, rather than self-reliant individuals....members, not just consumers.

The value of a little liturgy

I didn't set out to be liturgical.

I had some exposure to liturgical worship growing up, but it never really resonated with me outside of brief stint I had with some lovely Lutherans in Ohio.

But the other day I realized I have somewhat stumbled upon it again in my own life.

Each night when I put my girls to bed, we sing the old spiritual, "His eye is on the sparrow".

And in a sense, after 5 years, it's become a small liturgical element in my life. A rhythym that draws my attention back to this important reality. The words (by Civilla Martin) are as follows:

Why should I feel discouraged?
Why should the shadows come?
Why should my heart feel lonely, and long for heaven and home?
When Jesus is my portion, a constant friend is He
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.

I sing because I'm happy.
I sing because I'm free.
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

I've sung this song literally over a thousand times now - which probably means I've sung it more than any other song, even more than the Christmas carols or Happy Birthday.

I've sung it at some pretty hard times. I remember trying to sing it all the way through, just a couple of hours after my mother-in-law had died. I remember trying to sing it when my dad seemed on death's doorstep.  I remember singing it on nights when my failures as a parent were very evident to me.  I remember singing it to kids with high fevers that just wouldn't seem to go away.

And recently, in the midst of a bitter disappointment in my life, I sang it as per my nightly routine to my oldest daughter, who has now heard it over a thousand times. It's the kind of perspective I seem to need on a daily basis. I need the structure of an accidental liturgy to remind me that Jesus is present with us in the midst of our suffering, our failures, our losses, our disappointments, or our fears. He is not a distant God who is angry, or punitive, or far away from our circumstances. He is our "constant friend", and what I need are practices, or liturgies that remind of His constancy, constantly, or else I'm prone to lose track of this truth that changes everything.

One Story

I talk a lot with people about their stories. Personal narratives are crucial to the work I do in helping people find healing and redemption in their lives.

But we also have bigger, societal stories that we connect to, that we use to think about our lives, our world, our choices, our actions.

F.S. Michaels, in her brilliant book "Monoculture", describes how societies often have a story that dominates, and that this story changes over broad historical periods. She makes an awfully good case for the idea that the dominant story of our time and place is the economic story. It's a story about the world that filters how we think and relate to everything, through the role of consumers.

We relate to everything and everyone, primarily through a relationship of consumption.

Whereas education used to be about broadening minds, developing knowledge, creating beauty and ideas, it has now been reduced to an economic good or product to be consumed. We actively promote it as an investment for people to use on their path of career building (which of course, is also now purposed as accumulating things of value to be consumed, whether it be wealth or personal fulfillment)

Michaels compellingly points out how this is also true in areas of our life such as religious life - we treat church as an experience to be consumed, and even God as a product to be used and manipulated to our own ends.

Clothing, time, food, families, friendships, leisure, sport, volunteering, art... all of it... is being subtly transformed into products and services that we relate to as consumers, as part of this dominant economic story. Listen to the pundits who advise about "building your personal brand", and you'll see the most obvious expression of this. Look at Facebook and see how people are defining themselves in terms of a set of consumptive practices - assets, experiences, brand preferences, etc. and establishing status by associating with certain consumptive lifestyles.

Of great concern to me is that way we (I) have begun to treat each other from a consumption point of view. None of us would want to admit that we are shaped by this mindset in our friendships and relationships, but I'm afraid that few of us are likely exempt. It takes unusual honesty to admit that at times we view our spouses in terms of what they can do for us: make us happy, take care of us, compensate for other relationship disappointments in life, build our egos, meet our physical needs, meet our wants, upgrade our status, take away certain negative feelings, etc.  All of these, subtly become characteristics of a product we want to consume rather than a living, breathing, broken person who is with us in life.

And while it is probably fine for us to wish and hope that our partners will do some of these things at times, it is deeply flawed when we construe our partners primarily in terms of their success or failure to perform as products, and perform in the way we expect.

So even our personal stories become shaped by this economic story. It's as if the larger dominant societal story of consumerism, becomes the template in which all other stories are told. When it comes to each other as people, we're rarely so crass as to admit our commodification of other humans. We dress it up with words like "love"...which seems like a sacred term, but often what we mean by "love" is a personal experience of gratification, rather than persistent dedication to caring for the other. (Watch an episode of The Voice and notice how people use the word "love" - it almost always refers to the individuals own sense of enjoyment or how they are made to feel by the other)

But as Michaels points out, the issue is not about relinquishing consumption entirely, but becoming aware of how our minds are immersed in this story, and engaging in practices that reflect other stories, non-economic ones. She doesn't say it, but I think the logical extension is that the story of love, of sacrifice for another, is a story we must practice on a daily basis to escape the economic story becoming dominant in our lives.

Mom.

At the risk of paying myself a backhanded compliment....

It occurs to me that a significant amount of what is good in me comes from my mother.

We both will cry at a stranger's funeral because we feel the pain of others in deep and personal way.

We both make food into art for our children because...well...it's an odd sort of way we express love by making food into faces and other amusing shapes.

We both can take a bit to warm up to people, but if you're looking for a loyal friend, we're pretty good at it.

We both are pretty good at taking care of people, of listening, and making them feel valued.

We both find ourselves leaning heavily on the lyrics of old hymns and songs when times are tough...even if we can only remember half of the words, and are making up the rest.

We both are an endless source of made-up songs for our kids, recognizing that music communicates and relates to people on a different level. (Yesterday I heard my daughters singing a song about a broken puzzle box that I made up and thought they were mostly ignoring)

As I look at my own children growing up I see them taking on my own good and bad qualities. I notice my flaws and brokenness turning up in them, and I experience the terrifying reality of being responsible for the physical, emotional, and spiritual formation of two humans, not to mention two humans I love.

And I realize that my mom must have had her own moments of wishing I wouldn't be so much like her...but on mother's day we celebrate the good, the beautiful ways in which we have become like our moms. So for all the blessings - the things I learned from you mom about faith, love, compassion, persistence, sacrifice, empathy, and trusting God - thanks.

Thanks is not enough, but it's a start. But beyond gratitude I can tell you mom that the good things you have taught and lived in your life, they live on - in me - and hopefully my girls.

Despair is a Choice

Despair is a choice.

It doesn't feel like it in the moment. When you feel like you've be stepped on, crushed, beaten down, or that "last straw" has been snapped, it's the most easy and natural thing to give in to despair.

It presents itself so logically, "why bother trying if all life ends up bringing you is pain and disappointment".

It feels so real and absolute. The emotion is often accompanied by a profound heaviness, sometimes in the form of body sensations that mimic the real experience of being crushed.

But like all of our feelings we have have a choice. We may not choose our initial reactions, but we can learn to choose how we react to our reactions - that is, how we continue to think, and feel, and behave in response to those initial reactions.

To despair is to take on a myopic view of the world. It's as if an electromagnet has been switched on and attracted all the past and present disappointments and failures and darkness in the world. And with all the reminders of those disappointments and failures comes a clear message "don't fight anymore...don't try anymore....it's not worth it... things never turn out right".

To be hopeful in the midst of despair seems unnatural. It is an act of faith. Faith in the sense of believing an unseen reality - of believing that our despair is not how things really are in the world. In a sense it requires us to think and behave as if there were still reason to be hopeful....and letting the feeling change later on.

It's come to me today that hope is something we must practice, more than it is a passing sense of optimism, or something that transpires after a moment of insight. To be hopeful requires a regular work-out of emotional and spiritual muscles that refuse to get stuck in the limited perspective that despair traps us in. It requires us to keep our minds dwelling in the broadest, truest realities of the universe. The realities that affirm that all things are being recreated, redeemed, made new, and restored. That God will not be thwarted in his love and reconciliation. We can see evidence of these realities if we are persistent in choosing to focus our attention on them, and not choose to allow despair to take up residence in our minds.

For me, today is a hard day to practice this. I must make regular, conscious decisions to fight despair and choose hope instead.

Merton on Suffering

Sometimes blogging feels more like bringing wisdom written long-ago to the attention of others, rather than coming up with anything new.

I had been kicking around some ideas for a post on the avoidance of suffering and the pain it causes when I came across this from Thomas Merton. He just captures it perfectly:

  "Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture."

~Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain, p. 91

Tortured by little and trivial things...how convicting.

Fear of being hurt...I realize this truth from time to time, and then I lose it again.

When I was sitting at my father's bedside in ICU and expecting him to die soon, a friend reminded me by text (see, even texting can be redeemed) not to run from my suffering, but to gently sit with it. Not to allow my fear of being hurt to chase me away, but to allow my mind and heart to be fully present in that dark moment. It was great advice. I wish I could remember to do it in the daily moments and not just the big, scary times of life. 

Mindlessness as a form of Privilege

In turning my attention to things in my daily life, I have become aware of this truth:

That being mindlessness (being inattentive) can be a form of privilege.

I've known this is true in certain areas of my life for some time, but I never realized how deeply it runs.

I've learned that not thinking about sexual orientation, ethnic status, gender, socioeconomic status, is a privilege that comes with being a middle-class straight white man, in a culture where these things are dominant. I've learned that being able to "forget" how these things deeply impact a person's daily experience is a privilege, and one that adversely effects others around me.

My intent is not to draw attention away from the injustice of all this, but I'm starting to realize that my inattentiveness starts to pop up in a whole range of contexts where I have the privilege to not have to pay attention or care.

I can ignore the ramifications of my food choices, because of where I live, my wealth, my mobility, and my unfettered access to any kind of food, from any place, whenever, and however I want it. I don't know when certain foods are "in season" because I've never had to think about it - it still just shows up in my grocery store.

Even more problematically, I can ignore how my choices degrade local and far-away ecosystems because my privileges allow me to live in an insulated world, encapsulated from the consequences of my actions. Others do not have this privilege. Others will go hungry, live in war zones, suffer damaged ecosystems, and not be able to do anything about it, while I continue to ignore it and live however I choose.

In the process of becoming a mindful person, a mindful, attentive follower of Jesus, I am learning that the privilege I have had to ignore these issues is vastly destructive in its impact on others.

Recently I bought the cheapest relish on a store shelf, later reading that it came from India. I have no issues with India making relish and exporting it, but it's hard to believe that saving 20 cents over the national brand that was manufactured in the US, didn't come with more than 20 cents of consequences for other people. Not to mention the fact that relish could be made in my own backyard, with no burning of fossil fuels involved, for probably the same price.

But it's been my privilege to ignore these issues. I didn't need to care about where the relish came from, because I wasn't the one facing the consequences burning diesel fuel to ship a jar of relish 7000 miles.

But Jesus teaches us a different way. We learn that all of us are connected - like brothers and sisters connected, and that my deep bonds with the rest of humanity and creation mean that their suffering is my suffering. I may not have been aware of it, but now I am, and I have choices to make in how I respond to it.

Probably going to start with making my own relish.

Doing Something

It might seem that one who writes a blog would love to just kick ideas around and write about them.

The truth is however, there's a big part of me that's sick of just contemplating and talking and writing. We contain this radical message of transformation and redemption but often we mull it over for so long that it loses its power and becomes, well, just another interesting set of ideas.

So my family and some friends of ours are doing something.

We want to stay on this journey of thinking differently about food and our relationship to creation, and following Jesus in community, but we also want to express this with our lives.

You can read about it here: wortley-food.blogspot.ca

We're just getting started, but it's a start.

It may not seem revolutionary to grow a bunch of tomatoes on your front lawn and let people help themselves. But it is an expression of an inner revolution that's occurred in our lives. A change in our hearts that recognizes that the life of Jesus must be lived in the neighborhood, and not kept in religious gatherings.

Objects Are Closer Than They Appear

Our brains are capable of amazing things.

Next time you're driving think about this:

On the passenger side of the vehicle there is a mirror, and on it is written a warning "Objects may be closer than they appear".

Now if I was making a safety manual for a product, I would hesitate a little before designing a product where this warning was something consumers would count on to avoid from driving two- tonne pieces of steel into each other. But strangely, it works. It works the vast majority of the time, and works often enough that the insurance industry trusts it.

It's astounding because it points to a phenomenal achievement of the human brain - the ability of our frontal lobe to impose a reality that contradicts what our eyes are telling us. We look in that mirror and see cars at a certain distance. But our brain (without having to read that instruction printed on the mirror every time) tells us not to trust what we see, but instead act on an unseen reality that is more true and reliable.

Does anyone else find this exciting? Does anyone else realize that to drive, is, to exercise faith.
Even the most hardened skeptic among us; those who hold firmly to "I'll believe it when I see it", step into the realm of faith when they look in a mirror and act in a manner that defies what their eyes perceive.

Humans are, by virtue of having a well-developed frontal lobe of their brain (among other things), highly capable of this sort of activity - this mode of living that chooses the reality it will act in congruence with. We are not slaves to our senses, thoughts, reactions, or, even our conditioning.

Sometimes we divide ourselves into categories such as "religious" or "non-religious",  or "spiritual" but "not-religious". But every time we choose to act in a manner that reflects a reality we believe in, especially when it defies our senses, we are in essence acting in faith.

As people we act in faith more often than we likely recognize. The question probably isn't, "are you religious?", but "what sort of things do you have faith in?".

Finding ourselves in Easter - Part 4

As part of our ongoing series on finding ourselves in the story of Easter, we continue to contemplate how various participants in the story might have seen it, and how their perspective can help us more clearly see.

In part 1, we thought about the perspective of the Roman soldiers - Jesus as irrelevant
In part 2, we thought about the perspective of Mary, Jesus's mother - Jesus as something we have been entrusted with, and the terror and grief of losing Him.
In part 3, we thought about the perspective of Pontias Pilate, the Roman governor, who wrestled with ambivalence about a potentially dangerous Jesus, who could bring changes he deeply feared.

In this final Easter post, we consider the perspective of Peter, the disciple, and the only person who is with Jesus throughout this story.

Finding ourselves in Easter - Part 3

As part of our ongoing series on finding ourselves in the story of Easter, we continue to contemplate how various participants in the story might have seen it, and how their perspective can help us more clearly see.

In part 1, we thought about the perspective of the Roman soldiers - Jesus as irrelevant
In part 2, we thought about the perspective of Mary, Jesus's mother - Jesus as something we have been entrusted with, and the terror and grief of losing Him.

In this post we consider the perspective of Pontias Pilate, the Roman governor. He had an ambivalence toward Jesus. On one hand he was interested, perhaps even curious about this unusual Jewish prophet who made such claims and did such unusual things. Jesus was unlike the other trouble makers of the time, he had an usual quality about Him that Pilate couldn’t quite put a finger on…..but at the same time this Jesus was a threat. Pilate had a little section of the Roman Empire to keep in order, and to open himself to really listening to Jesus would risk all kinds of trouble in his personal and professional life. It was just easier to get rid of him.

Finding Ourselves in Easter - Part 2

As part of an ongoing series of posts, we're thinking about how we fit in the story of Easter. In Part 1, I described how we might find ourselves in the experiences of the Roman soldiers - finding Jesus to be largely irrelevant to our lives.

In this post we contemplate Mary, the mother of Jesus, and how we can identify with her experience of that event.  

Finding ourselves in Easter - Part 1

As Easter approaches I find myself again contemplating how I fit into this story, and how this story fits into my own life.

The next few posts will involve an attempt to take the perspective of those in the story, and contemplate what we might learn from them.

Why does faith involve acting like a jerk?

I needed a little gentleness this morning. I mean in my own heart, towards others. I was experiencing a "bad church experience" hangover.

Maybe you've had them. They're those times when you go to a church and get so angry you don't want to go back.

For me it was the self-righteous attitudes of some, but not all, of the presenters. I realize I'm a self-righteous jerk on a regular basis, but I get tired of being with other people's self-righteousness.

Maybe I have an unrealistic expectation that others will have grown further than me and be able to help me or inspire me, rather than demonstrate the same ugliness I hate about myself. Maybe it's because I'm trying to find the person of Jesus lived out in other people, and when they fail, I'm disappointed.

It got me thinking, "why do so many of us who claim to follow Jesus, have such a proclivity towards being self-righteous?"

Would you drink poison?

At the end of the James Bond film Quantum of Solace there's a great scene with profound implications.

(no need for a spoiler alert - you all know how every Bond film ends)

Bond is in the desert with the key villain of the film, and before leaving him there, he gives the villain a quart of motor oil and says something like "I guarantee that you'll be drinking this within an hour".
In the final scene Bond's boss "M" tells him that the body was found with oil in its stomach.

It's gruesome yes, but it captures a reality I see on a daily basis.

MLK on Maladjustment

A profound excerpt from a speech Martin Luther King gave in 1961. It's not quite the same as hearing him speak it, but still powerful.... I fear that I have become "well adjusted" to the "economic conditions" he mentions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word; it is the word "maladjusted". Certainly, we all want to avoid the maladjusted life.

But I say to you, my friends, there are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all people of good-will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize...

I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination.

I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry.

I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few.

I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self-defeating effects of physical violence.

But in a day when guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can win a war. It is no longer the choice between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence.
 

Camels and Needles

My wife and I have been trying to be more generous in the last few years. It’s hard to criticize that, especially since our generousity has at times required sacrifice. We’ve tried to be more free towards others with our financial resources, our time, our energy...and I can’t deny that it feels good.

But generosity has a dark side.

The dark side of it is based on a lie, and that lie is that anything belongs to me to begin with.

Paying attention to Food

How often do we pay attention to what is in our mouths as we're eating it?

How often do we pay attention to where our food came from? (I don't mean which store, I mean where it actually came from - which field or barn, how far did it travel, what conditions was it grown in)

A couple weeks ago I was in Florida and experienced a moment of confusion. I was in a large grocery store and noticed that orange juice was exactly the same price there as it was at home in London, Ontario. At first it seemed wrong that I should pay such a high price for a local product, but then I started to wonder if the local price was more reasonable, and my home price was being somehow subsidized....was I not paying for the thousands of miles of transportation (not mention the environmental costs) of having Florida orange juice in wintery London?

Truth must shape us

I was flipping radio stations the other day and heard this from a contemporary American philosopher/poet:

"They say what don’t kill me, can make me stronger 
 So two drinks a night should help me live longer"
 (Ludacris, "Rest of My Life")

Ludacris, is of course referring to a statement by the German philosopher/poet Freidrich Nietzsche, who did say: 

"That which does not kill us, makes us stronger".

I snickered a little. Leave it to a popular musician to completely miss the point and make it into a song lyric. Probably thinks he's a real clever lyricist for slipping a line like this in.

Lately I've been trying to be less critical in everyday life. Not by just restricting my behavior, but by finding myself in the behaviors I'm quick to criticize. 

The truth is that I interact with a lot of truth and wisdom in a similar way to Ludacris.

I think about the way many of us approach religious texts like the Bible. Ludacris takes a passage from Nietzsche and misapplies it, in this case making it a universal truth, without hesitation that logic might dictate some limits to the ways in which an idea is true. It is obviously not true that anything that doesn't kill us automatically makes us stronger. Chemotherapy is tailored to kill certain cells but not all cells....it may cause a cancer to remit, and even temporarily stall death, but it doesn't "make us stronger". 

Nietzsche was referring to adverse life circumstances, not providing a prescription to take small doses of poison as a method of building physical health. (Interestingly, it seems small daily consumption of alcohol may have some scientific support for having health benefits, but I'm pretty sure this isn't what Ludacris is referring to).

In a conversation the other day someone quoted me Psalms 37:4 "Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart". She used it to justify her belief that God should give her whatever she wanted. I gently suggested that maybe she was too broadly applying an isolated text, and that it was both clear and good that we don't get whatever we want in life. I've desired some rather terrible things after being cut-off by another vehicle in traffic, or after my beloved Green Bay Packers have take a bad call from a referee. When I simmer down I realize the desires of my heart often involve things that in retrospect aren't good for me, and I'm glad that God so often saves me from my self and my desires.

But the reality is that we all do this on a regular basis. Like Ludacris with Nietzsche, and my friend with this scripture, we approach wisdom (philosophical, Biblical or otherwise) like a product to be consumed, and consumed in a way that satisfies us. It is our posture as consumers of truth that leads us to ignore the complexity of a truth and apply it ways that render it untrue.

The truth is, Ludacris, if you're drinking two drinks a night, it probably is to avoid some real difficulty in your life, and avoidance doesn't make us stronger, it makes us far weaker.

The truth is, friend who quoted me scripture, that if you read this Psalm in light of the other Psalms and the rest of the Bible, that God is deeply concerned with the desires of our hearts because they are so often destructive and to us and to others. The Bible is filled with a story in which humanity's desire to be its own gods, is rescued and helped to reshape its hearts desires to what is true, and good, and beautiful.

Whenever we approach truth and wisdom from the position of a consumer, we run the risk of shaping it into something that satisfies us or works for us. But ultimately it should be the other way around. Truth should shape us. It should confront us, challenge us, not give us what we want, but call into question the very legitimacy of our desires.

Delighting in the Shame of Others

Here’s a pretty bizarre story that comes right after the story of the flood. It has a despicable place in history as a long held justification for slavery. Pseudo-scholars took this passage as a prescription for history, saying that Africans were descendants of Ham, and that the enslavement of the black races was merely a fulfillment of what Genesis had predicted.

Yikes. I don’t think I need to go into the details debunking this. But rethinking this passage has value for us today….a lesson often missed in the past.

What's with the Blog Title?

So my imaginary audience is asking: "What's with the title, 'one lost sock' ?"

Putting away clean clothes a while ago (thanks luv), I found myself thinking about lost socks. We've all wondered where they go...their seeming disappearance is one of those mysteries of modern life.

But for a moment I found myself thinking of how I feel like the one sock, missing it's other half.

I love my wife. We're partners in many things. We work well together (most of the time) and I experience deep gratitude for the ways in which she is strong when and where I am weak, and how well she compliments me in life. I've even become aware of how other people relate to us a couple, as something more than the sum of our parts.

But I've also learned that it is dangerous and unfair to expect her to "complete" me as a human being. Putting her in a position that demands she, as another broken human being, should meet my deepest spiritual and emotional yearnings is highly problematic for both of us.

To recognize that there are limits to my intimacy with her, limits to how she can help my brokenness, and limits to what I can do for her, is both a disheartening and liberating place to arrive at. She is my helper in life, and I am hers. We are not each others' saviors, and we do not ultimately complete each other. We journey together to find our ultimate completeness in the Divine.

She is not my "missing sock". It turns out she is also a lost sock, and we're in this laundry basket together. We all are. (some of my friends would say I'm missing more than a sock, read other entries and judge for yourself)

Yes I know, it's kind of a bizarre metaphor, and probably not the best one (so cheesy in fact that I'll have to make sure any serious writers don't see this). But I make no claims at literary, philosophical, or theological brilliance. It just kind of resonated with me - the sock thing that is. I'm also aware of its limits as a metaphor, so I probably won't write about it again, although that sense of being "lost" is probably a theme that will creep up.

At times I feel the weight of existential loneliness. I voluntarily enter into the suffering of other people on a daily basis, and suffering very often makes us feel alone. Many days, I do not sense God in the midst of this loneliness. I've learned not to give up when my human faculties fail to perceive the reality of God. And although I feel that profound angst when my thoughts and feelings fail, I am learning to stop and look, and listen, and reflect. I am learning that the other sock may not be so far away, and that there are likely reflections hidden in plain sight, if only I learn to perceive them.

So, essentially, I'm one lost sock learning to see, to hear, to perceive, to experience God in the ordinary. I don't expect to be reunited with the other sock any time soon. It is enough for me to find reflections of its presence in the daily, ordinary, mundane things of life. My separation from the other sock is a teacher. In being a lost sock, I'm learning to recognize things about God, things I might not have learned if I weren't struggling to find it. 

My blog is a sort of virtual laundry hamper. (not toilet, so don't dump on me) Other lost socks are welcome, especially if you're looking. Hopefully the discussion will help us all find God a little more clearly in the ordinary things of life.

Failed Political Discourse

I'm getting tired of hearing that the Republicans lost the election because they failed to appreciate the changing demographics of America. Strategists keep spouting the opinion that the Republican party must re-tailor its message to appeal more broadly, and judging by their attempt to use Sen. Rubio as their poster-boy last night, this is the direction they're headed.

But this is all at the heart of what has gone wrong with political discourse in the US and Canada.

It hinges on the assumption that parties should design a platform that will strategically appeal to the self-interest of enough individuals, so that the party will be successful in accumulating power to pursue it's own self-interests. We have lost an understanding that our politics must chiefly be about the common good.

It takes a village to raise a marriage

I had a weird reaction the other day when I took my girls to Disney on Ice. 

Maybe it was the euphoria of thousands of children giving me some kind of energy.

Maybe it was the joy of my own daughters being thrilled by something.

Maybe it was just that old Disney magic.

Nope. I think I figured it out. 

It happened during a scene from Beauty and the Beast. The skating figures were re-enacting the part where various characters from the castle (a clock, a candlestick, a tea cup, a tea pot - all of which are given human qualities and talk) are interacting with Belle and the Beast. What got me was the way these characters were going back and forth between the two young lovers helping them negotiate their way through a typical relational issue. Of course, as is true of so many fairy tales, the issue centers around a simple misunderstanding. But it struck me, that so much of what confounds us in marriages starts with simple misunderstandings and the hurt feelings that follow. 

Wisely, the characters around Belle and the Beast attempt to help them see the misunderstanding that has taken place, and encourage openness to reconsidering how things "really are". 

My emotional reaction to all of this was the beauty of having good friends surrounding a relationship and helping it along the way. When the Beast (fitting character eh?) is full of bluster and blow, his friends remind him of things that soften and open him to re-engaging his beloved.

I know divorce is complicated. I know the studies, and the host of explanations for our escalating divorce rates...most of which have good merit and explanatory power. I witness the ugliness of it in my day job. 

But this  I wonder;  what would our marriages (or our relationships in general for that matter) look like if all of us were surrounded by friends who helped us see, helped talk us down when we needed it? 

How much quicker would I be to break through the insularity of my own assumptions if I had friends intimately involved in my life, helping me to see that things are different than I believe them to be?

How much less time would I have wasted in my marriage being distant or angry, if a kind friend would remind me that my wife is not out to get me when she overfills the garbage bin (again). This doesn't have to be some kind of weird cult-like utopian society. A few months ago a friend of mine made an honest confession to me about his marriage, and it caused me to see how I too make a similar error. He didn't have to be a marriage counselor, just close enough to me, that authenticity could shed some light on my own life.

Beauty and the Beast reminds me of the importance of life together. That marriages might have a better chance in a marriage-hostile culture if we all lived in authentic community with each other. We might come to regard the "Beasts" in our lives differently if a nurturing community was along side of us reflecting on how our assumptions about each other fail us, and cause us to miss the beauty that lives in all of us.

A really nice piece by Ronnie Dunn that's worth a listen even if you have some irrational hatred of country music. I think it speaks for itself. Try feeling self-righteous after reading/listening to it. :)

Reluctant To Write

Why start a blog?

One friend made fun of me. "It's not 1998", he said, insinuating that I was 14 years behind and that the world had moved on.

Another was glad that I'd finally stuck my oar in the water. He thought I might have something worth writing about, and this might be a good first step.

I write with reluctance.

For one thing, I sort of hate drawing any attention to myself, so maybe I'll just keep this a secret.

When I sit down to write a cavalcade of thoughts comes rushing in...."why would anyone read this", "why would I think anyone would want to read this",... "writing is such a public committment to ideas...do you really believe anything so consistently or strongly that you want others to read it?",... "you don't believe what you're writing",.... "what will people think if you write that?".....and on and on it goes.

And yet, for years, I've felt compelled to write, but avoided it as often as I can.

I used to have fantasies of being a published author. A lot of the people I admire have written really interesting books. And I know that the written word has played a critical role in my own life and growth. Books, articles, blogs, they've been a catalyst for this transformation that has taken place in my life over the past few years.

Maybe there's a part of me that wants to tap into that. A hope that written words, that honest reflection and thinking could be useful in someone else's journey.

At the very least, it seems helpful to me. The act of writing seems to force me to be clear, to shake the cobwebs off my thoughts, so to speak.

So, I'll try it. The writing isn't the hardest part yet. The real risk comes with telling people about it.