The Americans Are Coming

Sorry that we have not been able to connect since your return from paradise! I am looking forward to hear how it was for you.  I miss you deeply.  I figured that I would write a list of things down that have been on my mind to talk to you about.  Not that we have to cover them all but so they are in the air between us.
1) The Americans are Coming.  Folks attached to the Laity Foundation are coming today.  We meet with them for the next 5 days or so to talk to them about a collection of projects that we would like them to fund.  If they do in fact fund then we might stay another year at least.  One of the projects is a Church and Society project that looks at church in mission with the world. I am excited about this particularly because I am having time to thing and talk with Fraser about a broader vision of the church in the world beyond personal piety and individual salvation (Not, as Sienfield would say that there is anything wrong with that!).  I have been reading books economic justice, Coventry Cathedral and have been engaging with Brueggemann again. Fuel in a fire.
2) Chapelwood.  I will more than likely be in Houston July (want to catch a flight back with me?) to preach.  For whatever reason I need to stare this down.  The time to think about the project above has given space both for vision and for my fear.  There are so many reasons why I 'should not' be thinking about this job and you have heard the list (a few times!), but still it is there and I need to face it.  I told them that there is a possibility that I would stay here for at least an addition year.
3) My boys.  I took Miguel and Gabriel to a dance performance called "Swagger" - I was hoping for more hip-hop and M. Jackson (which there was) but there was also a lot of cultural pieces.  When the belly dancers came out Miguel woke from his trance and said "Woah!".  After the piece and in the silence that followed my boys enthusiastic applause Gabriel said in loud voice - "Can mommy do that when we get home?" Even the sober Brits laughed.
4) Friendships.  We have them - but have not connected in the ways we did in Lubbock.  What I am finding is that this is giving me more internal space for our family and for Michele.
5) Visitors.  In the next few months Michele's friend L. and her partner are coming, Betsy is coming and 2  guys from Mercy Street are coming through.  It will be good to have folks we know in the house.
6) I have talked to Dale Ryan and have begun to sketch out a book with him on the 12 steps spirtuality as emerging church that I want to call "Trust God, Clean House, Serve Others".  I have been working on the overview and structure and it seems to be coming together.  We will see...
7) My anxiety. It is still there and comes and goes but I am talking with it when it is here much more than attempting to resist it.  It also feels like a flu of sorts and I know now that it will pass. The gift is that it points me towards the absence of God and even there the possibility of God exists (or insists as Caputo would say!).
8) Having more sex with Michele than ever before (jk).... you still reading this???

That is all for now.  Love you my brother from another mother.

The Two Shades of Hope

Voy Vance is something else, another Irishman, go figure.

"Hope deals the hardest blow...yet I cannot help my self but hope."

Love you brother.

Start Close In.
Whyte is able to get at what Caputo describes as the "event" and I love it, thanks for sharing this poem - I have not heard it for a while and was able to hear it fresh again tonight.  There are tones in it that resonate so deeply, so profoundly, so purely.  Somehow it is deep confirmation of the path I am on and have been walking.  This third way, making our own way is unavoidable and I am so grateful to have found you and  Ted.

I have missed you deeply this week as well.  It does not take away the terror of the ride, but at times it sure is comforting to have your best mate strapped in next to you as the roller coaster plunges!  We have been playing card games at night and usually ending the night with a game or two of "sardines" - or as Gabriel likes to call it "skeletons and spies".  The boys are doing well - thriving really. It has been wonderful to see them grow and develop.  God has been so faithful to us. We have made friends with the folks across the street slowly, our boys have led the way.  And it is good to have people so close who will knock on our door and sit at our table.

I am headed to London tomorrow to visit a buddy that I worked in Mexico City with  - will be there for the day, eat dinner with my brother and take the train back.  It will be good to see Scott - he pastors the American church in Paris and is a great guy.  

There has been much on my mind concerning "the church" that I have been talking to Fraser about - things I want to bounce off of you.  I am so glad that I am here doing what I am doing, I cannot tell you what an absolute gift this is and I am so glad that amid the terror, fear and doubt that I came.  I have realized that the 'thorn' in my side is the anxiety that I seem powerless over still at times - but Seattle showed me the bottom of it and that I can live and be faithful in the darkness and wait till the light comes. I will and am learning how to live with it and befriend it - like Jacob I might walk with a limp, but I will walk damit.  Even darkness is light to you oh God the psalmist says. Even hell is not a god forsaken place Ray says.  I too know this because of our friendship.

Be well my friend, savor these days.

Lifening

Hey Buddy,
I hope you are well. Just wanted to let you know today how much I have missed you this week.

I am well, alive, grateful, and surrounded by love and good things in the midst of my own struggles to find the way through these days and the mess that my insides can sometimes be.

I cannot count the number of times this week that I have picked up my phone or started to hit the speed dial in the car to call your cell, and see what was on your mind, what is in your heart, or ask if you had time for coffee or a lunch.

I find myself wondering about the details of your day, and the thoughts and feelings you are experiencing, what games you are playing with the boys, and what has your and Michele's attention today.

This morning as I have thought this and typed this between patients, I have been listening to the "Sending + Blessing" service for Rob and Kristen Bell recorded at Mars Hill last Sunday. One of the elders read a poem called "Start Close In" by (surprise, surprise) David Whyte.

START CLOSE IN

Start close in,
don't take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step you don't want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way of starting
the conversation.

Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people's questions,
don't let them
smother something
simple.

To find
another's voice
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes a
private ear
listening
to another.

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don't follow
someone else's
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don't mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don't take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step you don't want to take.

~ David Whyte ~


You, Michele, and your boys are in my heart (and my families' hearts) and our prayers.

I pray you are carried today.



This is Lifening, Track 8, on Fallen Empires.

Waking up... again.

Hey bro,

Yesterday morning at Starbucks was a good one. You were missed deeply and spoken of with affection.

I was talking with our friend at Starbucks (code for the third member of the band) and he was telling me some things that happened over the Holidays. He was discussing some concerns about raising his kids and his staying caught up at his workplace and how he was wanting more from his marriage and some of the things he was afraid of. I sat there thinking of a feeling and a question. I listened to him, and to the song that was playing through the speakers overhead.  When I asked him how all of these things made him feel, he said, "Lonely and alone." We talked for quite a while and I channeled you and Yoda as best I could. I saw JCJ at Sunday School and I could tell just from his face that something had changed for the better for him, a peace.

So I looked up the song that had been playing at Starbucks (I love the Shazam app) and here it is.

And then...

Yesterday with Holly and the boys, and neighbors and Sam Cribbs and Lego, and Mario and football games on TV and in the back yard, and disagreements and hurt feelings and winners and losers and growing up and asking forgiveness and forgiving and great big group hugs was really good. 

Today, I am grateful. And ok with just being here, now. It is an amazing thing, when it happens, a real gift. I hope you receive something today that you call a gift.

Things of note:

1. Amy is seeing Yoda, today. (Yes!)

2. Saturday we leave for a week in Hawaii. We are taking the boys out of school again this year. I am glad we are. 

3.My friend Smooth, got a job! 

He will be teaching at a med school and he seamed soo happy when I spoke with him over the Holidays.

4.My friend Matt Yoder, a buddy of mine at Butler, who works at a school for troubled teens in the Dominican Republic called me yesterday and asked me to be in his wedding! He has been through a bunch and I am beyond happy for his news.

Finally, for whatever reason... this is what I listened to in the car this morning... Best with headphones for language and for effect.

There's so much to tell you, so little time.
I've come a long way since the whatever,
shit, I still see a word, think of you.
There is so much that I can't do, yeah.
You will be young forever.
There's so much that I can't do.
There is so much that I can't do.

Fallen Empires

Hey bro,
Thanks for the poetry. For some reason, poetry seems easier for me to "get" when it has music in the background. However, I could follow your thoughts on Whyte's poem much more clearly than I could see it from the verse. As far as the hidden, the visible, and the gift, I have experienced the same in our friendship, as you have. The gift is both the the things hidden in you that become visible to me, and the things hidden in me that become visible by hanging with you. I am grateful that all the hidden things become visible and I find myself missing that part of daily friendship with you. While I have been able to follow the pattern of this with some other friendships, there is no substitute for the power our friendship (has) had to bring the hidden things to the surface.

The new Snow Patrol album, Fallen Empires, is released here on the 10th. It has been available in the UK for a month or so. They are on Letterman next Monday and Ellen next week, and it sounds like they will announce a North American tour, as well. I posted a song already but this new one is pretty cool, too.

"If our hearts are never broken,
well there's no joy in the mending.
There's so much this hurt can teach us, both."

New Year. Same me (and that is just fine too)

To be human

is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others…
— David Whyte

I came across this Whyte poem this week and it struck a chord.  This is one of the great paradox's in our humanity - to carry what is hidden as a gift to others.  What is hidden in my life causes me great anguish and is a confluence of shadows, passion, joy, darkness and despair.  The way that I carry it inside myself seems anything but a gift, and truth be told I feel most days are a juggle.  I have come to realize in my relationship with you that the only way to carry these things are to love them, to befriend them, to make peace in all of my resistance to them. Maybe that is the gift to others - but it is a gift that I have no claim over.  You constantly remind me of the gift that this life is and the vapor that it is wrapped in.  Don't ever stop doing this.  I think our friendship has become the place where I trust the visibility of those things hidden that I carry.  I am awake - and there are the bits that constantly seem just out of reach - maybe that is the longing that I can't grasp and will always be so.  

New Year, Same me. (and that is just fine)

Hey Bro,
I find myself back at the office today, even though it is a national holiday, and I am certainly in a familiar place. I feel this recognizable tension that I am almost aware of the beauty, significance and fragility of life... and yet it is also out of my reach and it is too slippery to take hold of. It is one of those days where I would be calling your office, your cell, and your house after texting you to see if you were available for lunch. Somehow life came to me through those lunches when I was out looking for it the most. So anyway today I sat at Taco Villa by myself, though not alone, and processed until my brother Mike called and we talked for fifteen minutes...so it was good.

Anyway, there is just this strangeness, or a temptation to think that I am almost awake, or almost there... I think you are familiar with the experience. It may be the almost or the out of reach part that is the crux. Maybe as long as I am looking for more than what I have I won't be fully in what I have. Anyway, on one side of that is a realization that life is good, and beautiful, and oh so fragile (and fleeting). Vacation was good. Time with family, immediate and extended, was good, and at times challenging for me. The challenge was far more with the immediate (read Boys) than extended. I pray you are awake and alive as the year begins.

I found an interesting little talk between David Bazan and David Dark. I found it interesting that Bazan says that he immediately realized after completing Curse Your Branches that he was yelling at an institution and not at the reality that is YHWH, or the creator. I think my intuition was correct that he hadn't given up on God, just the God he had believed in, and didn't know how to find a God that didn't fit that mold. My favorite lines are when he says, "yeah I agree with you (about me being a bastard), can we still hang out." and then his confession about almost believing Jesus.

http://www.qideas.org/video/unsettled-questions.aspx