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emotion

Get up. Move. Perspective.

The Solution: Simply move?

Hanging on the wall in my office, there is a picture of a tree that changes color and definition to reflect the four seasons. As you walk by the angle of the print causes the tree to shift from a winter scene of bare branches and snow, through sprouting spring foliage, the full greening of summer and then the autumn leaves of fall. From my desk seat, it always looks like autumn.


I like seeing the different images of the picture. The variety, changing colors and images offers a nice change from what is often the static unchanging art of an office space. There are times when I will just move to a different place in my office to see and enjoy the picture differently. It isn’t that I don’t like seeing the fall tree, I do. I like seeing the other images, too.


Here’s my thought: My living is often the same way. It is easy to settle into the same routine, the same patterns of moving through life and soon – everything seems to look stagnant. In the same way I have to get up and move to a different place in my office to see the variety of the tree picture, I can move to a different place in my living to see life with new colors.


“The business of life glowed more brightly than the drab hues of work...”

From a simple move, like visiting a different coffee shop, to a more dramatic change, like ending or starting a new relationship, we can experience the very different seasons of our living. I’m not advocating change for change sake, but I am encouraging myself to remember that sometimes I need to move a little and change my perspective in order to appreciate the rich variety of life.


I sat in a meeting yesterday with a successful local entrepreneur – a very rich man. He was clearly tired, almost exhausted throughout the meeting. After we had finished our business discussions, the conversation shifted as he explained his fatigue. He had spent the previous evening volunteering at a local homeless shelter. As he begin to tell the tale of his time helping others that night his energy lifted, his spirit soared and the conversation moved me to a different place. The business of life glowed more brightly than the drab hues of work...the previous conversation about his business.


Get up. Move. See. Enjoy.

Accidental Saints - Meet Nadia Bolz-Weber @Sarcasticluther

It is fairly clear to everyone that the Christian Church (as it has existed for decades) in this country MUST do something different. The flight from the traditional church to the land of SBNR (Spiritual but not religious) is leaving church pews and congregational funds depleted – and the local church's future doubtful.  I’ve been watching from the side lines, listening and waiting to see what kind of creature the evolution of the Church will become. I found an interesting creature today…I thought I’d share her with you…

“When Christians really critique me for using salty language, I literally don’t give a shit.”
— Nadia Bolz-Weber


As reported by The Atlantic, “This is what it’s like to talk to Nadia Bolz-Weber, the tattooed Lutheran pastor, former addict, and head of a Denver church that’s 250 members strong. She’s frank and charming, and yes, she tends to cuss—colorful words pepper her new book, Accidental Saints. But she also doesn’t put a lot of stock in her own schtick.”

Bolz-Weber brings a refreshing and candid – albeit somewhat shocking – perspective to church leadership. There is certainly vivid life in her message and perhaps a hint of a reframed theological perspective that will feed the metamorphosis of the church. For example, in contrast to the expected stand of many religious folk that we all stand in judgement by a higher, pure version of ourselves, Nadia proclaims, ““Sometimes I can be an asshole, but it’s almost as though I can hear Jesus saying”—here, Bolz-Weber cleared her throat a little and moved her voice one half-step lower, perhaps trying to imitate bro-Jesus—“‘uh, that’s okay, it’s not that I, like, love you and claim you despite that. I love you and claim you because of that.’” 

Wrap your mind around that one…


I’ll leave you to the full article in Atlantic to discover and ‘dissect’ this new 2.0 version of pastor, and suggest you follow my lead and pre-order her new book, Accidental Saints.

This Just In - Goldfish Syndrome?! #MondayBlogs

 Goldfish Syndrome??


According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the average attention span of a human being has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2015. This is one second less than the attention span of a goldfish.

Wait? What was that?

 

Maybe - Don't Interrupt Those Interruptions

Feeling Ceaselessly Interrupted?

“Interruptions Are the Best!”
— Said No One...Ever


30 years ago…The morning sun shone through the stained glass of my church office windows. I settled into my chair preparing to type up my sermon when the door buzzer sounded –

Inner voice - “No! Not again!”

Yesterday’s attempt to find some time to write had been interrupted repeatedly and with the weekend looming, I was feeling the real pressure of being unprepared for Sunday. The person at the door turned out to be Edith. I need to tell you about Edith, and I need to tell you what happened that morning.


Edith, a 60 something year old woman, was a regular to the church for worship on Sunday morning. She was perpetually down on her luck and yet dedicated to Sunday attendance and a life of independence. She lived two blocks from the church in a low income housing complex. With only sporadic employment, she had very little to her name. She lived in a meager apartment, wore overly worn clothing and squeaked by from payday to payday.

On a few occasions, Edith had allowed the church to assist her with groceries and rent, but mostly her stoic and determined mindset made her powerfully independent. Each time I spoke with Edith, I was mindful that she likely warred with some internal mental health issues – but all in all – she was a gentle spirit, if consistently odd.


Today, Edith eagerly wanted to tell me something. Her enthusiasm barely allowed her to wait for me to serve her a mug of coffee. Once she took the coffee and sat down, she started talking.


What she told me was…


She had recently gotten a second part-time job had gotten paid the day before. After she had paid her bills and bought groceries for this week, she had some money left over. Then she leaned over and spoke as if telling me a secret.

“There was this bedside stand down at the drug store that I’ve had my eye on for some time. Something I could place by my bed, for glasses, and my bible and stuff. You know. Well I went right down there and bought that stand, yes I did. And I took it back to my room and put it together. Sat it right by the bed. Then I had a troubling thought. Something didn’t seem right.”


“What was that,” I asked.


“It took me a minute, but I figured it out. You remember that sermon you preached last year about tithing and bringing the first fruits of the harvest to God?”


I didn’t. “Go on,” I said.


“Well I have something for the church,” she exclaimed!


With that, she bounded from my office outside and in a blink was standing in front of me holding her prize. That stand, the bed side table wasn’t an actual piece of furniture at all. It was one of those cardboard storage boxes, the kind that you fold tab A into slot B to make a flimsy two drawer chest. There she stood, beaming and childlike insisting I take the chest.


“I want the church to have this,” she employed. "I’m sure you can use it somewhere. Can’t you?” she asked.

I stood there speechless. Part of me wanted to explain to her that her application of my sermon wasn’t needed in this situation. Still, part of me knew no amount of theology or biblical talk would help her right now. What she needed most, as one of the hardest things I’ve done.


I took the cardboard chest from her, feeling all the while like I was receiving the Eucharist from the very table of Christ, and said, “Thank you. I’m sure we can.”

She burst into tears of joy, hugged and thanked me.

I learned some things that day.


1. Most of the time, the interruptions people bring into our lives ARE the work of our lives.
2. Gratitude is a powerful thing…for the grateful and for those around them.
3. Always consider the person behind the action – not just the action
4. Big lessons often come from messy places


I’ll be headed down to that church in August for a centennial celebration of the church, 30 years after receiving Edith’s donation. I will be surprised if the office bathroom still houses a simple cardboard chest that I left there all these years ago.  I know it still rests in my heart and for that day, Edith's interruption will be very present.

Change vs Metamorphosis

We often find, in the most common of things, the familiar moments, our greatest experience of revelation.

The quiet of a morning coffee while listening to the birds wake.
The pauses between conversations between lovers
  Sunsets
                    Sunrises
           Beach strolls
                               Woodland walks
  Floating in a pond
                                               Porch sitting
     Surf wading...


Yet, we seek, nay demand change, movement in and around us as incessantly as the manic hummingbird, flitting from blossom to bloom sipping the momentary fuel needed for continued frenzy. We flip from screen to screen, between search and video, then off to tap texts and slide photos, with the occasional glance up to orient ourselves and then we are off again. We look to move and shake from job to job or better still - career to career - thinly skimming the darker pools below our wake, surface dwelling, unwilling to sink, float down to those deep abysses... relationships, partnerships, compromises, sacrifices, commitments...scary places. Long term, staying places. 

Metamorphosis, the transforming change that our very spirit seeks comes after the stillness, the cocooning of what we are and then...well then...the miracle happens. We become more. Different. Progressed.

It seems we are determined to churn, we...us people...us communities...us nations...to churn and flit about. As if our churning and yearning for change for change sake will somehow quench our thirst for becoming more, for growing. It can't. 

We need the rebirth that comes from the sedentary stillness of time moving around us, of the processing of knowledge into understanding, of the merger of people in meaningful connection.  

So, dear reader, what do you think? What means of metamorphosis have you found?

On fathering... #MondayBlogs

I am more aware of my short comings than successes, failures than achievements, limitations than abilities. Still, I have no doubt in my heart driven desire to help and encourage, no question about my clear and present purpose to hold steady the ground for and believe in those who are my children. For it all, we are in this together and I will never falter in my commitment to you no matter how many times we may stumble. Of this, above all else, I am most certain. It is not to my credit, but rather because I am compelled by what another has done for me.

Stumbling Block or Stepping Stone

The Anonymous People - A Movie That Is Changing Our World

For too long now stigmas, misunderstandings and overall social environment have kept one fact secret. Over 23 million Americans are living in long-term recovery from addiction to alcohol and other drugs.. Why do we hide?

“...over 23 million Americans living in long-term recovery from addiction to alcohol and other drugs.”
— The Anonymous People

I ask you to take about 2 hours of your life and watch the movie, The Anonymous People. It's available on Netflix, Amazon Prime and iTunes. If you're in the Triad of North Carolina, you can join a group of us as we watch and chat together. Attendees will be supporters of recovery as well as people in recovery. 

Details in this photo.


Consider You Awesome

Stop with me, just a moment. We are awesome and amazing creatures living in an infinitely wonder filled world and we need to remember it. Observe that our lives are unbelievably amazing. Consider for now that the finite details of each muscle, skin cell, bone. Nerve and sinew working together to open and close our hand contains an amazing microcosm of miracles packed one upon another. The waves of environmental chemistry and pulsating, sporadic and rhythmical fluctuations of thermal connections of this typical, coming and going of sun, moon, tides and seasons world mark our time. Yet, if we stop and consider it all – even just the part that we call natural – how wondrous and amazing is our life?

Consider it for a moment…with me…deal?

Writing Epitaphs

“At the end of the fight
Is a tomb stone white
With the name of the late deceased
And an epitaph drear
A fool lies here
Who tried to hustle the east.”
— Rudyard Kipling

 

Do you ever give thought to the epitaph you want on your tomb stone? Or, do you ever wonder what your surviving relatives (always thought that was a strange connotation. Like they survived your dying?) would inscribe about you?

Apparently the possibilities are wide open. 

Here lies the body
of Jonathan Blake
Stepped on the gas
Instead of the brake.
Memory of an accident in a Uniontown, Pennsylvania cemetery 

Here lays Butch,
We planted him raw.
He was quick on the trigger,
But slow on the draw.
In a Silver City, Nevada, cemetery 

I was somebody.
Who, is no business
Of yours.
Someone determined to be anonymous in Stowe, Vermont

And my favorite,

"I told you I was sick!"
In a Georgia cemetery

On a more serious note, I think I know what mine may turn out to be, if I live that long. 

My wife and granddaughter (then 5 years old) talk about me a good bit. In a loving effort to help our granddaughter understand the people in her world, her grandmother will often explain other people’s behavior. I’m no exception. One evening, in anticipation of the coming morning – my granddaughter asked, “Will granddaddy Kim be here in the morning?” My wife explained, “No. He’ll leave early for work, before you are awake. He goes to work every day to make money so we can have food, a house and other nice things.”

That next morning early, I walked into the bedroom after my shower, to find them both snuggled into our bed, resting in the darkness. I dressed for work quietly, in the dark, and heard them talking.

Granddaughter: There’s granddaddy Kim… in the dark.
Grandmother: Yes. He knew we would be resting and didn't want to bother us. He’s thoughtful like that. He’ll go down and feed the dogs and let them out, too. So they can run up and join us for a snuggle. Isn’t it nice of him to do that for us?

So, as I’m thinking about how my life is impacting others, I’m hearing my wife tell my grandchild that I am a thoughtful, considerate provider. I've worked hard to be a lot of things: an excellent salesperson, a reliable employee, successful in business, an able public speaker.... But here I am, looking from the point of view of my family and I find that I am seen in a different light.

Provider. Considerate. Thoughtful. 

Honestly, that is an epitaph, be it written on the stone above my grave or on the folds of the hearts of those who remember me, that suits me just fine.