A Ghost From 1986 & An Orange Shark
We all want to be seen on our level. We all want the big people in our world to smile at us, to lower their faces to ours, to affirm our efforts. We want those further along in life to talk with us as equals. We want those who seem all done—all grown up—to treat us like we are, too. This undercurrent keeps social media afloat. These desires lead to car payments and mortgages beyond prudence. These insecurities can push us to constructive self-improvement or inauthentic personas, hard work or cheating, striving or faking.
A Series of Serendipities
My friend, Logan, and I went to Estes Park to record a unique podcast episode—hanging 90± feet off the ground on a portaledge (where we spent the night). We had no plans for the rest of the weekend. So, we followed whims and whimsies and got more out of northern Colorado than I could’ve hoped.
Go West, Old Men. Go West.
To celebrate my good friend’s fortieth birthday, we headed west. We aren’t young men anymore, but we pretended we were for two adventure-driven days along the Washington-Idaho border.
What Should I Do After I “Never Forget”?
I’m still proud of my country. I still hate that thousands of innocent and heroic people died that day. I’m still amazed at the incredible character and sacrifice of those who ran toward danger rather than away—both at the sites of the attacks and later on foreign soil. I still understand why our elected officials made the decisions they did after the coordinated foreign attacks. But I don’t want to remember the same things my Facebook connections do about September 11. Even more, I wish the world had heard something very different from America than they have over the past 19 years.
The Blue Subaru at My Counselor’s Office
An Old Testament prophet claimed that God wants to remove our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. He wants to make us more human, more in touch with how love and grace feel both to give and receive. He is revealing that intent and process at my counselor’s office. He is using hours in my sister’s passenger seat and at cafe tables to show me his heart—the prototype. He’s proving his adjacency on dusty trails, in cold streams, and in precipices overlooking summer lightning storms. And even in a tall station wagon parked next to mine outside a nondescript office building.
Asking Jesus an Impossible Question
I play a lot disc golf with my friend, Nate. Nate’s a decade younger with daughters who are now 30 months and 14 months old. Over the past few years, Nora and Mabel have accompanied a large percentage of our … Continued
My Last Church Service with a Worship Feeder
Before meeting Todd, I’d never been in a service where the person leading music checked out of their “duty” and just prayed on their knees until the instruments stopped. I’d never seen someone walk off the stage to comfort someone during a song. I’d never seen someone put down their mic and their ego and then shout praise or whisper prayers while everyone else kept singing. Years after these firsts, Todd lost his voice and still led our church services—just with his mic muted during the music. In every other church I’ve attended, I’d never seen anything like that. That role went to the person with the best voice, the most musical experience, or someone with the pedigree of specific liturgical castes.
The Long Way Through Colorado
What do you get when you mix together rocky trails, dirt roads, canyon detours, and no cell signal? Throw in five of your church friends and a Turo minivan rental, and you get a 1,200+ mile expedition in the Colorado Rockies. … Continued
Fighting Fire with Posture
When my heart wants to stand and demand others to conform to my wishes and my worldview, I need to get low. To listen. To ask questions. To read or watch or listen to voices different than my own. I need to hold my hands open and relinquish my ego. I need to recognize the trauma or influences that have shaped others, and I need to admit I’m a product of the same.
What Your Conspiracy Theory Says About Your Gospel
Whether we post that link or not, there are bigger questions for our soul, though—introspections like: “Why do I want this to be true?” and “What does this say about my gospel?”
Crying for Sunday Afternoons
That’s the way peace will be made—even if at a glacial pace. That’s the way society will united—or at last some seams repaired. That’s the way wrongs will become right: when we lean into our prejudice and choose what is right. Whether we ever change our culture, we can change our own hearts and maybe the heart of one new friend at a time. Even if at first we hesitate for a second or two, when we choose to do the right thing, we stop the inertia of evil, the progress of hate. It might be awkward or wobbly at first, but we can get where we’re supposed to go. And we can get there with new friends.
Playing Life From the Red Tees
Between you and me, I like the game. Thanks to thousands of dollars a year in free airfare, laughable amounts of serendipity, and incredible friendships, the social media game is one of the few in which I can play at a competitive level. Recently, though, I was confronted about my complicity in the madness. It came from an unlikely place: one of my favorite tracking apps.
One Word We All Long to Hear During This Pandemic
Human life has been melted down to data points. People have become percentages. Podcasters, pundits, and peers in my social feeds have openly performed the algebra of how many dollars a human life is worth—whether a person’s continued existence is equal to another person’s business. Our respective mortalities have been reduced to probabilities. Our livelihoods have been dumped into bulk bins of essential and nonessential.
50th Earth Day
In contrast, our planet only gives. It’s The Giving Tree times a gazillion. While it groans, it also offers us immutable demonstrations of hope, resilience, and symbiotic relationships. It pushes life literally through cracks of resistance—whether its own rocks or our concrete. Flora covers its scars. Fauna return by instinct. New life constantly arrives as does new adaptation. Somewhere on the planet is already tomorrow, already pulling us forward.
The Right Side of the River
When I start to grow ungrateful or when my memory fades, he sends me a new reminder of his goodness. He flashes some serendipity. He shows off his sovereignty. He proves his thoughts are higher, his plans better. He lets me revel on one side of the river and then invites me to the other side.
Men of Carhartt
If an angel called you something, it’d probably stick. That’s your nickname now. Even if nobody else ever used that name for you, you’d probably say it when you looked in the mirror. It’d definitely make it into your journal.
What I Prayed for You This Morning
This morning, I was prompted to walk around to the various lots of our church and pray specifically for the distinct populations that fill them. For those of you who attend Blue Ridge, here is what I prayed for you in each of these spots. For those who don’t attend my church, here’s a peek into why the parking lot ministry is so critical to the mission of Jesus.
A Gray Heron Took Me to (Virtual) Church
For me, it’s a been a hard factory reset on my hardware. It’s led to more time in nature, where I feel Jesus most and closest. It’s asked me how much of my identity is wrapped up in my commercial value and what those paychecks afford. It’s confronted my privilege, my arrogance, my condescension. It’s alerted me that I’m not as good of a friend as I had previously thought. It’s reminded me that I’m not in control.
Doing the Kalalau Trail the Hard Way
Kauai’s infamous trek draws adventurers from around the globe. (We met hikers from Canada, Germany, Ireland, Japan, and Russia in just a couple days.) We did it the hard way—and all proud of that. On our last day on the … Continued
That Time I Stumbled into Empathy in Canada
In the meantime, we can dream. We can hope. We can hear the news and pray for those affected. We can ask for the Source of empathy to wrap his arms around the hurting. We can give to charities on the ground of each conflict or disaster. We can leverage the privilege of our safety to wish it for someone else.
The Weirdest Verse in the Bible
But I’m burying the lead. Let’s not gloss over an important part of this rule: it was transcribed in the Bible. Not a fan fiction version of the Bible. The real-deal holy book. I’ve attended more than 5,000 church, chapel, and Bible class sessions and have never heard this addressed once by the person at the front of the room. Religion seems to focus on the more Flannelgraphable passages of the Bible.
Finding Myself in Other People’s Words
If you’re looking for a theme to connect a lot of these titles, it would be self discovery. Many of these books describe personal journeys that led the authors to a better grasp of who they are and/or who God is, and how all of that intersects with cultural realities. That’s been indicative of my year, too.
The Day My Boyhood Dream Came True
Colin McRae (the youngest to win the World Rally Championship Drivers’ title) said, “Straight roads are for fast cars. Turns are for fast drivers.” For one gloriously-rainy Saturday in Snoqualmie, Washington, I got a chance to be humbled in the dirt, mud, and gravel of some slippery turns.
The Night God Welcomed Me Into Darkness
I walk in this darkness with “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” I have access to the source of all light, the genesis of all triumph, the fountain of all good things. His rivers flow in the dark. His waterfalls pound boulders whether tourists watch or not. His tides rise and fall without intervention. His purview surpasses my imagination.
The False Dichotomy Tearing Apart the American Church
Thankfully, all of us also hold enough of the antidote to heal both ourselves and the people in our lives. We can neuter the algorithm by not running it on our hard drives. We can ask questions instead of making assumptions. We can trade arrogance out for humility. We can make room for options like both and neither and somewhere-in-between. We can walk right up to nuance instead of staring at it through rifle scopes.