Day Thirteen - Just Doing Work and Hanging Out

Today was my off day for running, I'll be back up to a full three miles tomorrow.

Worked on the game theory portion of my dissertation for thirty minutes today, and came up with some interesting ideas for the actual experiment portion of the project. I think I'm making progress slowly but surely.

I spent $12 today. I would have spent $3.50 but a friend wanted to have dinner at Al's, and I haven't seen him in a good while. My goal tomorrow is not to spend money on meals. I have plenty here to eat on and just need to get it prepared before I head to school.

Tonight at Wesley we talked about hypocrisy, and why we as Christians don't want to let down our armor and show who we really are. I think the truth is that we want to meet that ideal of being Christlike, but when we aren't, it's easier to hide that part of ourselves from others for fear of rejection. I also think that sometimes having an image of ourselves as better than we are is easier than the process of slowly getting where we want to be as believers. The real path we walk is a fine line between pushing ourselves to be better and being gracious to ourselves when we fall. I don't think God expects us to be absolutely perfect, but I do think we should make being Christ-like our full time goal without destroying ourselves when we fall short. If failure leads us to give up on working towards who we believe we can be, then we sell ourselves short. Our walk has to become one of both patience and determination, where we don't expect perfect results all at once, but maintain the hope that every day we wake up we can keep moving forward, enjoying the little successes we experience and learning from the failures we deal with without dwelling.We have to accept that failure is inevitable, but is not an excuse for abandoning our journey. Its a process, and there is no absolute shortcut to get where we want to go.

Be gracious to others as well as yourself while remembering that life is a marathon, not a sprint, and we never know who someone will be tomorrow for good or for ill. The person we judge today could be the most important person in our lives tomorrow. The things we struggle with today may seem like just another patch in the road in a week. If we define ourselves by a single action, by what has happened in the past, we limit who we can be tomorrow. We limit who we allow others to be tomorrow. We put boundaries on what is possible when we know absolutely nothing about the future and how things might change if we simply move forward with hope and humility.

Just a few thoughts, and with that, a good night to all.

Day 12 - Back in the 'Ham

I spent $4.80 today, and it felt good to get back to a normal life. Vegas was a lot of fun, but I felt pretty out of touch with reality the whole time I was there. There is something to be said for a simple night at the house eating food you prepared with your own hands. Exactly what I needed.

Sometimes when I'm by myself I think about what I might be missing out on, but that has been less and less the case recently. This is part of my whole adopting a more optimistic perspective on things experiment. When I'm by myself I can take some time to relax, charge the batteries, and get ready for what tomorrow will bring. That was tonight. Other nights I feel like I need to get more work done. Tomorrow, for instance, I need to get everything in the house reorganized after being gone for a week and coming home with a suitcase full of dirty clothes. I sound so old, but I really am just trying to get used to enjoying the little things in life instead of demanding more entertainment, more satisfaction, more everything.

I went running for about 25 minutes today. Not up to where I was before last week, but that's to be expected. I worked on getting materials ready for my graduate review, including an article I just found out got accepted for publication in a sociology journal. Didn't do much on the dissertation, so I need to kick that back up into high gear tomorrow afternoon.

Still getting back in the swing of things, but getting there.

Days Nine-Eleven - The long road home

This one will be short as well. We just got back from a two day drive back from Vegas and I am feeling really pooped.

All in all, I spent $107 the last three days, which is quite good considering one of those days was a full day in Vegas and another $26 was spent on a tank of gas in our trek back, so all in all I think I did ok. Things will be a good deal stricter over the next week, now that I'm off vacation.

No running til tomorrow. Walking Vegas was quite a workout and driving in a car for 30+ hours is not conducive to running, but we'll be back to a regular schedule this week in preparation for the 5k next Saturday.

Finally, I got all of the Weber book done, and i plan on working on graduate review stuff tomorrow as well as about 30 minutes of reading game theory literature for my dissertation.

Tomorrow will bring a more reflective journal entry I promise. I'm just too wiped from this trip to do anything productive tonight.

Day Eight - Everything Costs a Lot

I spent $67 yesterday. I'm not completely happy with it, not even really a little, but this entire town conspires to take all your money. I didn't lose any money on gambling, even though we all played a dollar on one machine in each casino we visited. The big thing is that food and drinks are ridiculous here. $21 dollars for a buffet, $8 for a Wendy's value meal, and $16 for a hurricane. That adds up in a hurry. I don't think I'll be spending as much the next few days, but needless to say, I think a few nights in Vegas goes a long way.

I finished working on the Weber book yesterday and did my final note taking. Today or tomorrow I'll go back and try to come up with summaries for the first few chapters from my notes, but I've got to look over my presentation for this conference I'm presenting at.

No running here. It's actually kind of impossible. There's just no where on the strip to do it. I'm a little disappointed, because it just seems impossible to carry out everything I'm working on here without setbacks at every turn.

On the up side, I'm having a good time. There are people from all over the place here, and they are a lot of fun. I can't wait to meet some other sociology folks at the conference today, and then maybe we'll have some good people to hang out with tonight.

Peace and Love

Day 7 - From the Grand Canyon to Vegas

Before I say anything else, let me point out that the Grand Canyon is one of the most majestic, beautiful places on this planet. The End. I literally cannot describe the view from the southern rim, other than to say that beyond the first mile of space, it looks like someone took some red, yellow, and green paints and laid out the most incredible landscape they could. The human eye cannot perceive the distance that you can see from one end of the canyon to another. And I was lucky enough to hike upwards of four miles (I ran one of them) literally 10 feet from the edge. It was absolutely surreal.

I spent $8 to get in, and that was it for the day. I am now in Vegas, and am thus adjusting my financial expectations such that anything under $50 a night will be considered a win. I want to enjoy my vacation here without going completely nuts. I've committed to not gambling, so anything I spend here will be one pure entertainment without the delusion that I can win money from this place. I'm struggling to define being responsible in this place, so any comments on what I should expect of myself are very welcome.

Finally, I got some great work done on Max Weber's theory in the car this morning to the tune of two pages worth of summations on the values of different Protestant groups. I think this book may actually help my dissertation, but I won't bore people with the details here.

That's it tonight. I'm going to write something more in depth soon, but tonight is not the right night for it.

Day 6 - This Land is Beautiful

Alright, so it is borderline impossible to be in a bad mood in Arizona. There is no way to describe just how beautiful this state is, other than to say that the desert based lyrics and music of U2's "The Joshua Tree" comes closer to capturing the experience of being in this land than anything else I can think of. It is both so ascetically incredible and completely desolate.

I did about an hour of good work on my dissertation and theory writing this morning. I doubled my reading of Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism to both get my work for next week's class done and to inform my writing about my thesis topic. The more I do it, the more I am in love with the idea of getting a bit of the work I need to do over the long term done at a time. I feel no stress whatsoever, and that is a real accomplishment for me.

I ran three miles in Tucson. Once again, this place is gorgeous, and I loved breathing the light desert air and watching the changing scenery go by as I got my workout in for the day. The whole morning run got me energized and ready for the day.

I spent $19 today, of which $7 was spent on some groceries for the next couple of days. While I've been budgeting pretty well, I can't get under $10 on a day. It seems travelling makes it really hard to keep from spending money, but this will probably only get worse in Vegas. All I can say is please pray for me.

That's all I have for the night, and I'm going to go enjoy a good night's rest and get back to it in the morning.

Peace and Love.

Days Four and Five - Intermittent Communicae

So last night we stayed in a Motel 6, and they will leave the lights on for you. That's about all they will do, but still, it was a place to lay my head for the night. So, I didn't get to post an update yesterday.

I have to admit, Being on the road does test the being patient, seeing the positive, and staying kind thing to the max. I've managed not to snap at all, but instead of being joyful, I've been more emotionally flat, which may be good for a long trip, but not necessarily enjoyable for everyone else. I am happy with the extent to which I've been able to stay level headed though, so we'll see how the trend develops over the next few days.

Yesterday I went running for two miles, as noted in the day three entry, and I am planning to go running again when we get to Sedona tomorrow, although Tucson is so pretty I may make a running tour tomorrow morning before we leave.

I spent $16 yesterday between a 12 pack of dr pepper, transportation in Dallas, and get ripped off by some guy's street trick for $2.

Him: I bet I can tell you where you got your shoes.

Me: You're on, but I'm sure I am not gong to win anyway.

Him: Well, you got one on your right foot, and the other on your left.

Me: Here's your two dollars. (And that was neither funny or impressive)

Today I spent $12 on a Subway sandwich meal and helping to replace my headphones (a travelling mate accidentally broke them in the door two nights ago, and graciously offered to help me replace them). We are eating out tonight, and I've set a budget of $15 for the meal.

I've also done darn good with working on the dissertation stuff. I've managed to read and organize notes the last couple of days on a theory book while on the road, and I like having small chunks to bite off instead of dealing with a lot at once. Hopefully this will continue when I am not on the road for eight hours a day.

I'm practicing patience and delayed reactivity right now. I think it's really helpful to do what is necessary to navigate the situation at hand without reacting inappropriately or counter-productively. Today for instance, I can't count the number of times someone cut me off in traffic. Normally, I yell and get angry for at least five minutes about this kind of thing, but it doesn't change anything about the situation. The important thing is to make sure that I get out of the way safely and effectively, then go on about my day without turning someone else's road rage into my attitude issue. I think the phrase is "Let him have his wreck somewhere else." So, I guess I'm learning today not to internalize things that are completely external to my control. I think when I waste my efforts dealing with things I have no role in determining, life becomes more stressful and I am less able to do the things that have been put in front of me to impact.

Peace and Love.

Day Three - Go West!

We drove eight hours yesterday from Birmingham to Shreveport and made it into a Super 8 motel at about 1:30 this morning. Lots of good conversation and laughs to be had, and I think the trip is off to a good start.

This will be short because we are pressed for time.

Yesterday I spend $26.50 at a gas station to go ahead and fill up my car since gas should be more expensive when I get back. Also spent $12.50 on a bottle of whiskey from the abc for Vegas. Not really planning on drinking very much, but it'll end up being cheaper to have a drink at the hotel to cap off the evening than to go out for one.

I read a theory book for at least thirty minutes yesterday in the car, and the day before I did some summarizing and reviewing of game theory articles for my dissertation.

This morning I finally returned to running, and did a solid two miles in just under twenty minutes. FYI, it's really flat and bland near the Super 8 in Shreveport.

We're about to head out so I'll cut this short. Thanks for tagging along!

Day Two - And you thought I forgot.

So day two is in the books. I'm leaving for Vegas tomorrow so The next week of posts may be more sporadic but no less comprehensive.

Financially I made a bit of a splurge and spent $25 on a garment bag and duffle bag for the trip to make sure there would be enough room in the car for everyone's stuff. Also, I spend $5 on fod for the day, but ate breakfast here and made a lunch to save money (by made lunch I mean packed a lean cuisine, which was surprisingly not awful).

I still haven't recovered enough to run, so I'm going to try and run in the morning before we head out tomorrow afternoon. It sounds like I'm slacking, but honestly the sudden fever Tuesday night wiped out all my reserves. I even packed running clothes for the trip, and plan on making one good run near the grand canyon. And yes, pictures will be involved.

I didn't really encounter any situations I could approach negatively, but I did have some opportunities to practice patience in my interactions with others, and I think I did pretty well. I didn't try to maneuver or manipulate anyone into getting my own way, at least not that I was aware of, and there are at least a couple of times I could probably have done so. I'm thinking tonight about the idea of putting others first vs. being a doormat.

I have been accused of being a doormat a lot in my lifetime, but I've always wondered how that was different from just being nice to others. I've realized recently that being a doormat and being kind are actually mutually exclusive. Demanding your own way and letting people walk all over you, on the other hand, involve similar emotions. In both cases you are angry that someone might get their way instead of you, but in the former, you are proactively a jerk about it, while with the latter, you're just quietly pissed and resentful about it, which is no less being a jerk because you are not being honest with people. Instead, you hold resentment towards someone but try to pretend you are a bigger person. That is not true.

When we put others ahead of ourselves, it should be because doing so gives us pleasure, or I daresay, some sense of joy. It is difficult at times, but I think that it is better to step away from a situation than to let someone walk all over you and then be upset about it. When I am at my "doormat best", neither the people around me or myself are actually very happy for very long. It creates tension in relationships and sooner or later than turns ugly.

So what should happen when dealing with my wants/needs and those of others. I think the "you can't be all things to all people" maxim is actually pretty true. To be able to serve others, I have to know when I can commit to the needs of others and seize the moment and know when I'm just giving in to someone else's whimsy. There is a difference between willingly giving yourself to another/others and just capitulating to demands to keep the peace. To paraphrase the late and brilliant Thomas Merton, acts of love done simply to keep the loyalty of others are not love, but selfishness. That is a haunting revelation but also a helpful one. It is not just what we do, but the attitude driving it that determines how well we deal with others. I'm not saying that waiting until you are a saint to be unselfish is a good idea, but I am suggesting that understanding that there may be no visible reward for good deeds is important.

So what have I learned today? As always, I am learning that this spiritual journey is also a practical one, and that it is not clearcut. I know where I want my heart and hands to be, but I'm working on getting there and learning to enjoy the journey there.

Peace and God Bless.

Day One - I got the Fever. Literally

So Lent has not gotten off to the most fantastic start. Last night I took a fever about the same time I went to bed and I'm still trying to break it, so there is that.

At least for today my financial goals were pretty easy to meet. Considering I never went outside I never got to spend any money. Fortunately I stocked up on groceries this weekend so cheerios have been my best friend today.

My running schedule is supposed to consist of Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays, so we shall see how I feel tomorrow and hopefully I'll get to stick to my regular schedule. The last few times I'm stuck 3 miles in under 30 minutes, so hopefully this bug I caught won't put me back too much.

As for my dissertation, I regret that I didn't do a stinking thing today. In hindsight I probably could have read in bed for a while, but when you have the shakes and spend half the day wondering how all that mucus managed to come from your nose, working is probably the least of your concerns.

I did have a chance to reflect on how I am handling some uncertainty regarding this Las Vegas trip. The plans keep changing as we keep finding out that there are some things we simply didn't plan very well for. However, I'm considering this an opportunity to realize that there are times when being cooperative is all you can really do. I think this trip is going to be interesting especially since there will be three of us in one car for a grand total of 70 hours there and back. I'm thinking this is a good chance to work on a)not sweating the small stuff, and b)taking a deep breathe before reacting to people. 3 full days is a lot of time in a small hunk of metal together, and in similar situations past I've been known to be an irritable guy. I'm not saying that things won't get on my nerves, but I'm going to do my best to be aware of how I react to cabin fever and be cool.

Tonight I apologize for the brevity of this update. Hopefully I'll be back at full speed in the morning with much more interesting insights to share and a day that does not involve me staying in bed coughing up a continent.

Fear/Hope

Appropriately, I was reading a piece by the classic social theorist Max Weber on politics when I came across a gem on an insight. In the middle of the lecture, Weber pointed out that people are motivated to act by either fear or hope. Fear of the consequences of disobedience, or hope in the possibilities of tomorrow. Weber was of course talking about politics, the state, and the ability to control people's behaviors, but I think the emotions of hope and fear are influential in any context.

As I've been thinking and preparing for the next forty days, I think it is important to meditate on the idea of fear and hope as powerful forces in daily life. I've been experiencing a little of both, though I think eagerness and anxiety would be the particular flavors I would pick to describe my own mix of emotions. I'm eager to find out what I'm really made of when I try to live every day as the kind of person I admire, but I am also anxious that if I fail, I will be deeply disappointed in myself and move towards cynical apathy. I am tempted to think that simply focusing on the hope of success and fulfillment is the one side of things I should focus on, but it seems that would be the same thing as putting blinders on and pretending some experiences aren't happening.

Perhaps fear should be the constant companion of hope, but not the debilitating kind. Being afraid to try something because you might fail can only lead to a metric ton of missed opportunities. Fear that you might miss out on life, that you will never know if you could be more, seems like a good companion for hope. I'd like to think that syncing the two towards a common goal of becoming a better person and genuinely engaging with the struggles of others can be a powerful weapon. I need to hope that what I do matters, that I can be about something greater than myself and my immediate concerns. With that comes a fear that this has no chance of coming true, but perhaps the more useful fear is that if I sit on my ass and accept that things never change, I will guarantee that they will never change.

Hope for joy, fear apathy. Perhaps that's the best way to begin living intentionally every day.

The Plan.

So Lent starts in two days, and I'm starting to realize just how disciplined I am going to have to be over the next month or so to meet the goals I set a few days ago. On one hand, I am excited about Lent because I deeply believe in the value of everything I have laid out to accomplish. These goals essentially represent five principles I want to work on.

1 - Productivity
2 - Care for Self
3 - Responsible stewardship
4 - Intentional Joy
5 - Care for others

These ideas sound great, right? They sound like things that anyone would benefit from. However, I am also going to be brutally honest about my feelings on what is about to happen. It scares the shit out of me. I have never done anything that requires this level of commitment before in my life. As I said last post, I've mostly been able to make it by on pure wit and improvisation, so this whole living every day with an intention to be the absolute best I can is pretty horrifying. Exhilarating, but also absolutely horrifying. I keep asking myself about what happens when I lose interest, get bored, or just get frustrated. I don't think I can do Lent by myself. I've tried going it alone before, and even when it works, it sucks. So I want have decided to put some measures in place to make this process more transparent. It's going to make things hard in the sense that I can't cheat and skip a day of work on this project, but i think I will be happy with it in the end.

I want you, the Internet community, to help me out by keeping up with my progress. I have committed to post a new blog every day to keep a public record of how things are going with my Lenten commitments. Every day starting Wednesday, you can expect to see the following-

1) A basic record of what I spent money during the day. I am not going to provide a line by line report on the Internet, but I will keep such records myself everyday, and give you the overview. Feel free to comment on the wisdom of some of my purchasing choices or make suggestions. The intent here is that if I know people are watching what I spend, I will be less likely to make poor financial decisions.

2) I will keep a record of my running schedule and results. This will be somewhat difficult since i don't have a fancy dancy device to keep track of this kind of stuff, but at the very least I will tell you how many minutes I ran, about how far I ran (in laps around a location if I can't estimate the actual mileage)

3) I will post what part of my dissertation I worked on, and in the case that I absolutely have nothing to do on the dissertation itself, I will report what I did instead.

4) I will write a brief reflection on how I experienced the day, including insights and how I tried to approach the day as a whole. I will not keep records of specific conversations between others and myself, because I feel that while I am making my journey public, I have a responsibility to those in my social sphere to guard their privacy.

OK, so that's the plan in short. I do hope that a few people at the very least will take part in this process with me. I forewarn anyone who wants to keep up with me that for the week of spring break, I will be on a road trip to a sociology conference in Vegas. I am not sure how I am going to make daily updates during this time, but at the least I will keep a good record of every day's work and find a way to post it regularly during that time.

Well, here we go. I hope something good comes of this.

Lenten Commitments

I didn't really make any noticeable New Years resolutions in January. it's not that there aren't things I need to work on, I just wasn't focused on any of them. I've been thinking a lot this year though about focus. It has never been a strong suit of mine no matter what I do. Frankly, I've just always been good enough or lucky enough to get by, but that isn't satisfying anymore. I want to excel. I want to see just how good I can be at a few things and latch onto doing my absolute best at them. my friend Chris (and a few others) pointed out that I go through stretches of interest in things then just move on, which isn't a bad thing, but it does keep me from being really awesome at something. I want to make my mark, like a friend of mine from high school, Nathan.

Nathan is into turtles. Really, really into turtles. Since middle school, virtually all of his working effort has gone into getting where he is today, finishing graduate studies as a marine biologist to become the turtle expert. I heard an interview of him with NPR today, and I thought about how incredible it is that Nathan took a dream, as simple as it was, and has turned it into a way to make his mark in the world. It got me motivated, just a little bit. So I decided that starting in Lent, I'm going to pick five things and spend the rest of the year committing to them. The forty days is a test run, and I hope my friends will keep me encouraged and accountable to hold to them.

1) I will work on my dissertation topic every day, for at least thirty minutes, and for at least an hour once a week. I have an idea, but I need to hone it and develop some serious goals to get it started. I'm looking at social perceptions of self and other, specifically how we compare our own needs and value to that of others, and how this effects either healthy or destructive social behaviors. I need to make this idea clear and start becoming an expert on everything there is to know about the subject. Then I need to start working on making a real contribution that can help people. I think it's a good subject, I've always been interested in how we perceive ourselves and how it either helps or hurts ourselves and our communities/relationships. But I need to work on it hard and joyfully.

2) I will run three times a week. This has nothing to do with the task itself. The point is not to become an awesome runner or super fit. The point is to commit to doing something for the sake of self-improvement long term, and hold myself accountable to sticking to it even when I don't feel like it. The big reason I picked running in particular is because my Sunday School class are really into it, so I think I have a good support group built in to hold me to it.

3) I will spend less to entertain myself, and do more to find enjoyment in things that are free. This one is really hard for me. I love being lazy, and am easily distracted by anything. I also hate being bored, and usually fix that with blind, dumb, American entertainment. which usually costs money. Part of this I think involves doing things with people other than going out places. It's all well and good, but sometimes it just feels like I'm spending money to go out and see people. More hanging out, less buying stuff to do it.

4) I am going to practice positivity. This one sounds cliche, but I am well practiced in negativity, and it has never helped me. I can be really cynical in the name of healthy skepticism, but I have yet to encounter a situation where it has made my life better or been a benefit to the people around me. This one is going to be hard, because my main defense for doing something I don't feel like doing is to naysay it, but I've noticed that people who find the best in situations tend to get the best out of themselves and others.

5) I am going to love people actively. I do this sometimes, but a most of the time I just say whatever sounds clever without thinking about how it affects people. What I think is funny sarcasm is actually damaging to others and my relationship with them. This one is going to be really hard I think, but I am going to make the best effort I can to practice the art of encouraging others whenever I have the opportunity.

So that's it. I feel like these are all a tall order and just filling them could take up every waking hour of every day, but starting next Wednesday, this is my plan. To really specify them down, here are my simple goals.

1) Work on my academic career outside of what is required for the immediate future thirty minutes a day or more.

2) Run for thirty minutes three times a week

3) Spend less money this month on myself than I did last month

4) Find at least one positive thing in every situation I encounter, especially if I find something negative to say.

5) Be kind and encouraging to each person I talk to every day.

The Creative (or Process, Not Production)

I was thinking about the Creation story today.

I think this particular text has been the bugger-bear of countless people who liked the idea of God but had trouble resolving this with reality. Likewise, it has been a major rallying point for fundamentalist Christians with nothing better to do than get angry at the big bad culture. If you are at all interested in the Evolution vs. Creation "debate" (I use this this term very loosely) then this will not be the blog post for you.(If you are interested in this, Francis Collins is doing some very creative work on the subject: http://www.biologos.org/)

What I am interested in is what the Creation story has to offer us regardless of personal preference in religious conviction. What can it teach us about the way we go about the business of living and dying?

Before looking at the story itself, I want to look at the definition of the word Creation. According to the freeonlinedictionary.com, four definitions of creation are

1. the act or process of creating
2. the fact of being created or produced
3. something that has been brought into existence or created, esp. a product of human intelligence or imagination

4. the whole universe, including the world and all the things in it

Two words stand out to me here, conveniently printed in bold as if I planned on discussing them. I found it interesting that creation can be thought of both as a process (something we are engaged in doing) and as a product(an object that has already been made). It is present and past. So, if we want to talk about a Creation Story, it might be useful to think of it as still going on.

On to the story. I'm just going to summarize what happened on each of the first seven "days"

Day One: God spoke and created the Heavens and the Earth, Darkness and Light, Morning and Night

Day Two: God created Water and the Sky

Day Three: God created Land and Seas, Vegetation

Day Four: God created the Sun and the Moon

Day Five: God created Fish and Birds (also sea monsters apparently)

Day Six: God created Land Animals, Humankind (in God's own image, so the story goes)

Day Seven: God rested

There are so many things I could discuss about this story (such as the impressive ability of even ancient people to understand that there is a progression from the advent of the universe to the formation of the earth to the rise of life, but once again, not my topic). What I want to discuss, however, is something I only recently noticed; Creation takes time, and requires a pause for rest, even if you are an omnipotent being. However, if we look not much further down the road in this story, it doesn't take much to destroy it. One act, one choice, one diversion from the flow of things, and things go into disarray. The "first humans" of the story perform one act of disobedience, and all that has been created is wrecked. What took time and rest for God to do, humanity managed to subvert without even putting much thought into it.

I take this simple message from the Judeo-Christian Creation narrative: creation is difficult, tiring, and time consuming (and beautiful), but destruction is easy(and painful in the end).

Regardless of where you come from or believe, I think there is a lot of wisdom to be found in this.

Unfortunately, what often happens in our culture is that we lose perspective of and respect for everything that goes into the process of creation, and acknowledge only the product. In short, we have not the patience to look for the story behind things, and we are too quick to define something solely in terms of its utility to ourselves. (For a great example of the consequences of consumer oriented thinking, check out http://www.storyofstuff.com/).

As a society, we forget the process part of creation, and focus mostly on the product itself. As the Creation story points out however, the process is vital. God's act of creating the heavens and the earth, life, and humanity establishes the idea that we are part of what has been made, part of a bigger process, and not simply the consumers of creation. When we forget that, we abuse creation and damage it.

Fortunately, this is not all there is to the story. We have alternatives. The Creation Story makes a serious point of humankind being made in God's image. This has implications even within the context of the Creation story itself. God is established in the story as having a creative nature. The very first thing described about God's character in the Bible is that it creates. It engages in process, and it is pleased in doing so. After all, when each day was over, "It is good."

If the assertion of the story is that we are made in God's image, then it would seem that we would be fulfilled by engaging in the process of creation. We are creative beings, not just consumers of the creativity of others.

I got to listen to one of my classmates give a great presentation of Zygmunt Bauman's "The Art of Life" this week. Bauman discusses happiness as being the product of our engaging in an artistic life, by making choices and taking actions that have meaning for us. A vital part of this process is the choice. We decide to move, and what direction we want to move in. We do not determine the consequences. If our our "art" is not appreciated by others the way we want it to be, there is nothing we can do about it. Our joy comes from the decision to be creative itself, to pursue a meaningful life that in the process of being and becoming.

We do not pursue our lives alone. In the creation story, humans are in community with one another and God. After things get busted, God continues to bring people into community over and over again to pursue a different life from that of others.

Abraham has Sarah

David has Jonathan

Elijah has Elisha

Jesus has the Disciples

Paul has the early Church

We are not supposed to do this by ourselves. We are individuals, but we are individuals together. There is no individualism vs. collectivism. The creative life can and is both.

We can choose to live our stories together, to share them, respond to them, and then continue to grow and move.

One of my favorite church songs says it this way: "We will guard each one's dignity." In other words, we should respect and love one another such that we protect and support one another's unique journeys, and do not allow one another to be robbed of the lives we are creating. We should help one another paint without stealing away the brush, and fend off anyone who does.

We have an opportunity to turn away from the empty life of consumerism, false normality, and "us vs. them." We get to make a different choice. And when we do, we join a larger community. We are each painting our masterpiece, but are part of a bigger masterpiece, more beautiful than any of our own lives by itself. May we create with humility in awe of this.

Creation is good.

Something Practical?

I like to wax philosophical with enormous frequency. Part of this is due to pure interest in the big questions and subjects, and part of it is due to fear of getting real.

Today I wanted to discuss a few practical things I've been thinking about/ starting to try and do to live more spiritually. These are not prescriptives, just some things that one person has found to be helpful in his own journey. Take what you will, leave what you find useless.

1) Sharing meals with people is a great way to feel connected to community. I've had a few potluck dinners with some other young people from my school community (and beyond) and it is seriously a highlight during my week. I love cooking for others and accepting the gift of food from others, and there is something intensely spiritual about such actions. It gives new meaning to the word "communion." I wonder sometimes if Jesus was keenly aware of the community building nature of mealtime when he began speaking at the last supper, and indeed imbued the food and drink with the quality of holiness, such that every time we eat together, we are sharing in something greater than us. The word solidarity comes to mind.

2) Writing letters admitting your mistakes and affirming love for others can relieve enormous burdens. I have been repenting for mistakes I made with my relationships with many people for a long time, and while I have begun learning the hard lessons I needed to and turning down a different road, I still felt a weight inside. The act of repenting to God is great, but there is something humbling about honestly and actively taking responsibility for the things you've done and said that helps make it real to me. The response of the other may be positive, negative, or non-existent, but the act of laying down my pride has been changing my mindset towards others, and it's provided a strange kind of release to be a truly different person that wasn't there before.

Those are what I've got so far. This week I watched something that was really helpful in moving me away from the self-hating guilty thoughts and actions I used to revel in, so I wanted to share that to. Here's Rob Bell. If I ever meet him, I'll thank him for sharing such profound encouragement in such a simple way.



You don't have to live this way....

Or in the words of the late John Lennon

"War is over, if you want it"

The Beginning of the End of the Beginning?

The subject of my prior post has been on my mind a lot over the last few weeks, and as the title implies, I have been wrestling with the question of where to go from here.

Then I watched a very interesting short video, which I think I might be smart enough to embed here...



What I want to focus on is the part where Brian gets down and start drawing in the dirt. Regardless of your opinion of the kind of theology a person subscribes to (lots of folks are freaked out by Brian McLaren) he does point out something we have been prone to do. We tend to look backwards through the lenses of our experience with certain types of theology and interpretations of the biblical Jesus, which can have the effect of turning him into a figure we try to plug into whatever structure we happen to find ourselves attached to. The problem is that this can end up making Jesus an object that we project our own ideologies, agendas, and politics (both the nationalistic and church varieties) upon.

We do need to look at how Jesus came about. We spend about eight months of the year in church discussing stuff that happened after the resurrection, and really only look at the story of why Jesus came on the scene during advent. I believe that if we look deeper into the why of Jesus, and less on the "how to do [your denomination] successfully, we'll find some interesting things.

So why Jesus? What made him so necessary and important? The most common answer might be that we are depraved and Jesus was the sacrifice necessary, but I think this sells Jesus/God short. If Jesus was just the ultimate sacrificial lamb, why bother with all the preaching, teaching, and showing of new weird and wacky ways? So why all that?

When I look at the story of the Old Testament, a few things stand out. First, their view of God was pretty inconsistent. If you look at all the different acccounts of God and man before Christ, there are times when God is looked upon as a genie, when God is a bringer of wrath, and when God is just someone we aren't talking to because he doesn't make our crops grow like the Baal worshippers crops grow. With a few exceptions, the people of the old testament had little or no clue who God was as a personality. I think Jesus is a vital character for showing the truest nature of God. As John puts it, he is the "word" of God (word being translated from logos, which not only means word but knowledge, reason, and account). So in Jesus, perhaps we are presented with some knowledge of God.

The other thing I see when I look at the old testament is the failure of systems to help people get better at dealing with God and one another. Sure, there are some bright spots, but all in all, what ends up happening in the old testament is that people get more attached to the system (a temple, rulebook, a country) than they are to one another and God. It's not that the nation of Israel were a bad people, they just did what come naturally when presented with uncertainty. They clung to whatever structure they had. You see the golden calf in the wilderness. You see the outcry for a king just like everyone else. I think you get the point. Jesus changes that substantially. His mindset and attitudes guide everything he does, and as pointed out in the text itself (I'll try to find the exact passage later), the law is fulfilled when we act from that mindset. Not because we know our doctrine backwards and forwards, but because we adopt a different mindset. This is incredible to me. People think that by claiming Christ, I'm looking for some hocus pocus to stave off a fear of mortality, and that's probably somewhere in the back of my head. But what is most appealing about Christ to me is that his life offers hope we can be different. We can live without a concrete rulebook that tells us all the answers (which doesn't exist, because the world is evershifting) because we can claim Christ and by doing so, exchange an attitude of competition, exploitation, and power pursuit for one that actually helps us live better lives with one another.

Now where do we go from here? I'm not really sure, but I think moving from contemplation to action sounds like it has to be involved. If we're really interested in becoming Christlike as people, then to the best of my understanding, we have to move from a hypothetical understanding of God, love, and all that to a manifestation through action. We need to actively cultivate community, live towards justice, and become practitioners of grace.

To my colleagues in Limbo, it's time. Dual meaning intended.

Peace

Here Lies the Church

So the theme in our Sunday School/Discussion Group/Still figuring it out the last few weeks has revolved around the idea that Christianity has been losing relevancy in the last few decades. The thing is, I think that the "mainstream church" has been losing relevancy for much longer. In fact, like many others, I would say that the church has been losing relevancy since Constantine made it a state religion. What followed, I would argue, has been for the most part a series of church manifestations which have served more to maintain power in the hands of some and to keep others oppressed.

The thing about Christianity is that it has been fundamentally incompatible with the pursuit of power since its foundations. To make it work as a tool for personal or social gain, it has to be subverted to the point of unrecognizability. For almost 2000 years, the populace at large was unaware of this, as most were too illiterate to read scripture for themselves, and those who did question what the state/church was telling them were persecuted by an institution whose founders were themselves the victims of persecution.

During the 20th century, a lot of things happened. A lot of thinking type fellows describe what happened during the past hundred years as a movement from the modern world to the postmodern world. Describing postmodernism would take forever, since it is not fully defined itself, but there are a lot of ideas that have come out of postmodern thinkers and writers that presented a deep threat to church elites. The main threat was the idea that absolute truth was in the eye of the beholder. In otherwords, what is actually the real truth about anything cannot be known with 100 percent certainty. Fundamentalists have been dismissing this idea as immoral for the better part of fifty years. What hasn't been done as much is to ask why such an idea would threaten the church. I think the biggest problem for many within the church is that they are in danger of losing the power to tell others what is right and wrong, true and untrue, without some kind of perspective or reason. When people question you, it is hard to control them. You have to engage with them on equal ground.

So we updated our rituals and made things look like the culture at large, but continued to tell people the same thing once they got in the doors. Obviously it hasn't worked. The answers the church is used to giving people do not answer the life questions they are asking. People want meaning in there lives, to know how they can love and be loved, and we tell them to accept Jesus Christ as their savior.

Things are changing, however. There are a lot of thinking and feeling Christians out there engaging in ancient ways. By ancient ways what I mean is that there were certain ideals and ways of engaging with people the Jesus discussed in the Bible exemplified that, on their own merit, drew people to him to the point of accepting persecution. Heaven wasn't a goal, it was a state of mind for these people. They adopted the attitude of Christ, as much as they could, and it became their way. Before there was a Bible, or church doctrine, or 5 steps to being a Christian.

My friend Kevin asked us if we (the church) were hibernating or awakening, and I think the question is complex. The church as it had been is dying. It just is, and it's time to accept that. I don't think the church will always be a dominant religious or political force forever. But I do think people will start to re-engage with the character of Christ. There are a lot of people struggling through the questions of faith, but with a desire to have the kind of love in action that they see in Christ, and it is beautiful. Christianity has always done best as a voice in the wilderness, offering an alternative to a system of dominance and subserviance in the form of mutual servanthood in love.

I have been in hibernation long enough. I've put my spirituality aside to get myself back together, but I'm waking up now. The Church proper may be increasingly irrelevant, but I think the spirit and character of Christ is as relevant as ever. It is a difficult way, with little in the way of obvious rewards, but it should be obvious that the way of success by any means is killing us as a society. We need different ways, and there is something in what was once called "The Way" that seems to present an awful lot of good ideas.

I will point out that I've breezed through an awful lot of material here, so this discussion is far from being properly contextualized. Hopefully I'll be discussing these things more in depth over time, but for now I just hope you'll join the conversation, regardless of your own viewpoint.

~Phil

To Judge is to Lose

So yesterday we had an interesting conversation in Sunday School about judgment. While we ended up talking about whether or not it is "okay" to judge others, this was not the topic I found myself drawn towards. Instead, I was thinking about an earlier inquiry we as a class were making into why people do not pursue some of the more creative and bold ideas they have in their lives. My suggestion was that it was because other people, and especially those we are close to, provide a prohibitive function towards truly creative living through the judgments they make. It's just too mentally taxing for a person to try and live creatively without the knowledge that the people in their life are going to be providing unfaltering encouragement.

Perhaps the reason we are so amazed as a culture when someone does something unique is that it seems like they had to do it on their own. When someone lives in intentional poverty their entire life to demonstrate solidarity with the poor, we can't believe it and think they must be special, but the truth is it takes community, which is the antithesis of judgment.

I have never known anyone who has improved their lives, accomplished a goal, or really done anything that was the direct result of having judgment in their lives. Constructive criticism? Yes, but that is different. Having people who are not afraid to talk to you and let you know that what you are doing is not getting you where you want to go is different than judgment. We all lose when we judge, because we inevitably think of others as lesser than rather than seeing them as people of value just like ourselves.

We say that judgment is unavoidable. It's not entirely true. The feeling of disapproval is unavoidable, but there is a difference between thought and action. One of the great things about being human is that we have been gifted with he incredible tool of reason, and should be expected to use it less to prove how right we are and more as a partner to our own hearts. When we allow a feeling to control us without our brain checking in to tell us "is this necessary, is this loving, is this who I want to be" we usually lose out. We lose out because we don't take the time to step back and be intentional about our lives. I love the word intention, because it suggests I am not a slave to whims and whimsies, but can elect to take actions that will move me towards maturity and grace or not.

The problem is that this takes practice. It takes a lot of practice, and I am learning everyday. The last year has been the best teacher I've ever had in terms of showing just what I'm capable of for both good or ill, but I'm learning, and it is a source of comfort.

Here's the thing about judgment. It doesn't just hurt the person we judge, but it shuts us off and in turn hurts us too. To judge is to be certain, and that is something we can never be as humans. We like to be certain about everything. Money, jobs, relationships, our fantasy baseball team, anything. This however, is a fallacy. Just because we label something with a term of certainty doesn't mean it is set in stone, and we have to learn to live in that tension. We have to accept that that money, that dream job, that person, that bacon cheeseburger might not be there like we think it will. In the end, you control nothing outside yourself, and even that is a chore. Its tough to accept, but it is freeing. Knowing you can care about people without believing they should respond this way or that takes the pressure off. Knowing you can only do what you can do in one day makes a job ten times less stressful. Knowing you don't control the outcome of every college football game means you can be a fan without becoming a nut job.

Knowing that your judgment will not change the course of some one's life means you can become a friend instead of turner-away. Now, the hard part is actually doing it, and I'm a hypocrite just like everyone else here, but I'm trying my best.

"Put others' rights before your own feelings, and others' feelings before your own rights" - Coach John Robert Wooden.