"Right Now" - Bright Light Parade

I was mowing the lawn, minding my own business, listening to my mp3 player (yes, I am a dinosaur who does not own an iPod), when the song "Right Now" by Bright Light Parade began to play.

I was captivated by the lyric, "I've realized there's more to life than hiding from what's inside."

In the context of the song, it speaks to allowing myself to express my love for God without concern for the opinion of others, to quit covering that up or excusing it.

None of us get there without first admitting what's inside that blocks this free expression.

Maybe we call it the Shadow, or Original Sin, or Illusion. I don't care what we call it, just that we see it.

There is a Me that I live with every day, and a Me that I want people to think I am. Like St. Paul, I say, "I want to do what is good, but I don't. I don't want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway." (Romans 7:19, New Living Translation [NLT])

So it is and so it will be as long as I do not invite God into that part of me. This is part of human nature. Scarecly a few passages into the Hebrew Bible, people are beginning to try to hide things from God. We read about Adam, "Then the LORD God called to the man, 'Where are you?' He replied, 'I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.'" (Genesis 3:9-10, NLT)

What a great cosmic joke it is for us to say God is all-seeing, all-knowing, and ever-present, and yet to think we could hide our nakedness, our realness, from God. God seems to play along, asking, "Where are you?" like a parent playing hide and seek with a child who covers his eyes thinking if he cannot see, he cannot be seen.

God has already seen our nakedness.

So, no more hiding what's inside. No more trying to cover up, medicate, numb, or compartmentalize it all away from God. We build a fortress of behavior and pretense around our weaknesses, which only locks us inside with them. No more pretending it doesn't exist! My part in the human experience is well-established. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I am flawed.

When I quit hiding from that fact, I can begin to allow God to see it, too, and healing can begin. I can tear down that fortress, but it can only be done from the inside.

"I've realized there's more to life than hiding from what's inside."

Pace e bene,
David +

My Name is David and I Am Needy

I am a needy man. I have moments of despair and doubt, loneliness and uncertainty, disappointment and pessimism. I need reassurance in those moments. Sometimes I can get it directly from God, feel the Presence, have a clear conversation with Jesus. Sometimes I get it indirectly, through a moving song, film, book, poem or even facebook post. Sometimes I get it personally, receive it from someone who loves me.

On my best days, I am still needy. What makes them my best days is that I recognize that fact and ask for what I need.

Maybe I'm setting the bar too low, but I anticipate I will always have one need or another. I live in a world made of human beings and temporal things. People are here for a season, not always available, passing on or away. Things last for awhile, then evaporate or wear out or become obsolete.

Don't get me wrong; there are a handful of people I trust completely, and others to whom I respond according to what they present. I'm not cursing my life in a temporal world, nor preaching that everyone is useless and going to hell in a hand-basket.

I'm just saying that sometimes I am needy and I reach out to these sources in order to satisfy my need.

I believe my neediness is what guides me to God. I am not self-sufficient, and how foolish it is when I think that I am. I needed parents and a heritage in order to get here in the first place. I needed care, food, direction, lessons, training. I did not teach myself to ride a bike the moment I popped out of the womb. People encouraged me to sit up, crawl, walk, run, and so on until I began experimenting with that daunting two-wheeler (four-wheeler if you count the training wheels!!).

Yes, my name is David and I am needy. My ultimate satisfaction will be my union with God. Every need I feel is a reminder and a signpost that leads me deeper and deeper into that union.

Tonight I had a brief encounter with a group of people who do not know they are needy. The claw and clamor for recognition, demand their superiority, and fight like the Gospel's "sons of thunder" for first place in a competition they believe leads only to first place or dead last.

Our false sense of independence is what throws us into these violent competitions. Ego wants a statue erected to it and the best seat at the dinner table.

Jesus doesn't support that attitude. He says to not take the seat of honor, but the lowliest one at the table. He says in order to be great in God's world, we are called to be servants, not slave-masters.

If we give up competition, what is left? Give up competition! How un-Western, let alone un-American!! What is left is cooperation governed by compassion. If we are busy serving each other, nobody needs to win because everyone will.

When we act as if we have no needs, we are dangerous to ourselves and others. We no longer see ourselves as human. How can we then relate to the humans around us?

No, my friend, I hate to disillusion you about priests, but I have to let you know this one is chock-full of needs. That is what opens me to love.

Thank You, God, for bringing me to the point of recognizing how wonderful it is to be needy.

Pace e bene,
Fr. David+

Necessary Grace and the Meaning of a Single Day

In the middle of a busy afternoon, the cell phone rang. "This is the hospital calling and we have a patient who would like to see a minister..." I am one of the overnight and weekend ministers on call, so I shifted my day and headed to the hospital. Who am I to know what to say to a stranger on a hospital bed? What words can I offer to a family whose loved one just died? The hospital doesn't call me for people who can wait for the day chaplain. I don't often know how I will be called upon to serve; this leaves plenty of room to depend not only on grace but on necessary grace. I stopped at the nurse's station to check on the patient, but his nurse was on her rounds and the man at the desk could offer no information. After a short walk to the room and a knock on the open door, I met the patient. He was an older man, although I could not tell if he was all that much older than me. Heavy, restless, and uncomfortable with a mass of grey dreadlocks and piercing brown eyes, he looked up at me and said, "I'm going through some stuff." Medication and weariness interrupted his thoughts from time to time so that constructing a sentence ebbed and flowed like trying to start a car motor on a cold winter day. Sadness, regret and doubt clouded his words. Relationships had fallen away; expectations were unmet; potential was unrealized. Jobs came and went, some good, some not so good. He was a talented photographer in the 35mm film days; his illiteracy never allowed him the chance to catch up. He had never become the man his mother envisioned, never felt able to fill his father's shoes, lost touch with his children, and was estranged from his brother and sister. This was his life: alone for three weeks in a hospital bed, with one visitor other than me in all of that time. His next home would be a brief stay at a hospice facility. Lacking a heart transplant, there was no other prognosis and the one he had was short-term. He did not look at his life and ask me, "Is God punishing me? Does God not like me?" He only asked, "How can I know I'm all right with God? I have failed at many things." I quoted Psalm 51:17 to him. "My sacrifice is a contrite spirit; my humbled heart You will not spurn." I assured him that the moment we ask, "Am I all right with God?" God rushes to answer, "Yes, and how I love you!" It is not in our achievements that God delights, although we feverishly continue to build our personal Towers of Babel as though they make a difference in eternity. It is in our hearts that God delights, in hearts turned toward God, in hearts that ache and long to feel connected with God. God does not need us to have a perfect heart, only a humble one, only one that needs God and knows it. He was tired, so I excused myself and told him I will see him tomorrow. Tomorrow? Tomorrow, he will be taken off of an IV medication and switched to oral prescriptions. This will increase the likelihood that the hospital will be able to find an "end-of-life care placement" for him. I asked the nurse to include a staff note to let me know the next facility to which he goes so that I can be a friend to this man who could use one. Tomorrow may or may not find him still here. He does not seem to have many tomorrows left. But he had today, and today we talked, and he cried, and he told the nurse it helped. Today he had the opportunity to hear that God loves him, loves him deeply and fully as if he were God's only child. God forgives him. God is always offering a new start to him. I hope he'll be around for me to see him tomorrow. We were a somewhat unlikely pair to find common ground, but faith, hope and love make up some powerful common ground. Today, I could offer him all three. A time will come when faith will be rewarded and hope will be fulfilled, and only love will remain. Forever. Not regret, not sadness, not doubt. Pure love. Necessary grace.

Just Like God's Own Lippizaner

Training for a marathon at age 56 after not running for thirty-odd years has turned out to be less daunting and more exciting than I imagined. Good coaching has been the key to joyful running.

Still, I managed to get a knot in my thigh muscle that sidelined me a bit, and it took massage, rest, and gentle, warmed-up stretches to work through it. I tried to run on Monday of this week, but it was too painful. Monday night I received the massage, and Tuesday and Wednesday I took it easy, just walking and nothing more.

Now, Thursday is here and I went to the track intending another day of walking while my teammates ran. Our long runs are on Saturday, and I wanted to be able to join them for that.

I walked about a mile and felt good, so I decided to try a light jog. I was fearful that the knot would return and decided the jog would help me overcome that fear. As I began to jog, I was joyful that no pain began. It was a beautiful morning and I felt like I was God’s Own Lippizaner Stallion, prancing. So after another 400 meters, I became God’s Own Trotting Lippizaner, and 400 meters later, God’s Own Running Lippizaner.

When I was a freshman in high school, back in the days of the dinosaurs, we had a nun who told us we were thoroughbreds who had tremendous potential, but that potential needed to be harnessed and directed.

I remembered that this morning as I harnessed and directed my inner Lipizzaner.

God has created a universe for my pleasure, filled with redwoods and stars and brooks and oceans and sunsets. Today I felt like I had the opportunity to offer God pleasure, to give God a show in a simple way that celebrated who I was created to be.

What a precious time that was when all else fell away, and in that whole universe there was only God and God’s Own Dancing Lippizaner.

The Good Race

I have often heard 2 Timothy 4:7 quoted:

“I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.”

There is another racing metaphor in Galatians 5:6b-8, though that I missed:

“The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you.”

This morning I joined my friends for our weekly team run. We are training for a 10K run in March and a marathon in May. Many years, counted in decades, have passed since I was a runner, and I harvested a huge crop of couch potatoes in the meanwhile. The trip from apathetic spud to athletic stud does not happen overnight!

It does happen the moment I set that intention in motion, and it happens with every footfall along the track or trail. It happens with the strength of others who encourage me, whether they are running alongside me or cheering from the sidelines.

I have not met all of my training goals, although just to be training is on overarching goal that I have met! I have not allowed an unmet goal to dissuade me, though. I’ve only been back at it for a week. This was my fourth training session. The goal was a 4 mile run; I made it 2.5 then finished with intervals of jogging and walking. I went the distance, though, and appreciated the significance of what I had accomplished. I know that every day I train moves me forward, and I only need do what is in front of me today.

My coach talked to me just after I ran out of gas and needed to walk to recover. He suggested after I recovered that instead of running or walking the rest of the way, I should employ interval training for short distances. Pick a spot 20 yards away and run to that, then walk to the next spot, and then run another twenty. Choose something to run toward, rather than just running.

I know all about breaking large objectives into smaller goals, but at that moment, I needed someone to remind me to do it. By grace, I didn’t arrogantly think, “I know that already!” Instead, I thought, felt, and said, “Thanks, coach!”

I had a kidney yanked out when I was two years old, and because of the danger of injuring the other, I was forbidden from playing team sports in school. I never had a coach before.

Now I’m 56 and for the first time, I’m training with a coach. I’m also surrounded by others who lift my spirits. Warren, who has been training about a month longer than me, is able to pass me by, but he said a sincere, “Looking good!” as he did. Deana was teaching me a Chinese affirmation she says while running. And so it goes, good words all around.

To borrow from the Galatians quote, “no one cut in on me” with aspersions to keep me from the race. No one said, “You can’t do this!” or, “Getting tired, yet?” Instead it was, "Looking good!" and the Chinese for "I am connected to the super-abundant energy all around me..." (I need remedial work to remember it eactly, but at the time it helped!)

In our walk run of faith it is important to listen only to the voice of eternal truth, just as in any endeavor, we need to be attentive to those who support us at every step. Our all-loving God who calls us does not mock or discourage us. God cheers us on, saying, “Look at my child run! Isn’t that a magnificent sight?!”

So, don’t let anyone else cut in on you. Run your good race, my friends!!!!

Keeping Faith When Expectations And Experiences Disagree

I don't know why some things don't play out the way I expect. The fact is, they often don't.

Sometimes, things turn out to be far grander, richer and joyous than I expected. Sometimes, they turn out to be more meager, painful and disappointing.

My experience is not so different from that of anyone else I know. After all, we say, "Life has its ups and downs."

I'm in one of those passages at present. Things were not as I expected in a certain situation, and I'm confused by the muddying of what seemed so clear. I also don't have any idea what the next right thing to do might be. In the meantime, I am questioning my decisions leading up to this situation.

I have learned a big lesson already involving my personal journey into living with authenticity and how that might look a lot different for me than the way some other people would like it to look. I am made in God's image, not anyone else's. My life should look the way God envisions it. Even I can be confused about what THAT looks like, but I can see what fits and what doesn't.

I'd really appreciate some clarity here, but this remodeling of my life is right on time. A spiritual director told me, when I was in my 20s, that God sends along a crisis of some sort every 7 years, and that it happens so that God can clear up our misunderstandings and lead us into a deeper knowledge of what is true for us. Well, I'm turning 56 in a couple of months, so I'm ending my 8th cycle of 7-year periods with a bang!

And you know what? It's all right. It's all perfect. Even if it is embarrassing, even if it is confusing, even if it is unclear or makes no sense at all. It's all right.

I am 8 cycles closer to living my life fully than I was when I started! There are things I have learned that have held true. I welcome this new season. I'm not sure what my life will look like, but I am sure it doesn't look like it once did, and that's a good thing.

I'll just keep faith and hope to coast for a year or so after this latest shake-up is done.

Blessings,
David

You Can Do This.

The earth is an interesting place, with its deserts, mountains, valleys, and so on. Likewise our lives, with their deserts, mountains, valleys and so on!

Sometimes uphill seems like a long journey; sometimes downhill is scary as speed picks up. No matter what your personal topography looks like at this moment, God is with you.

God does not do things to us; God goes through things with us. God is not afraid of our challenges. Isaiah 53:3 describes the prophesied Messiah in this way: "He was despised and rejected; a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care."

If I have to deal with rejections, mistreatment, isolation and grief from time to time, I'm grateful that these qualities were not absent from the Messiah but actually integral to the Messiah.

I am convinced God understands us and never abandons us, no matter how the conditions may appear. Romans 8:39a reminds us that "neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God."

Whatever the path looks like, God is with you. Keep walking in love with love toward love, because you can do this, and you never have to do it alone.

Blessings,
David

Life in the Real World

Mistakes are made. Mechanical things break down. Good people experience challenging times. Results differ from expectations. Addictions, diseases, and accidents happen.

These are the circumstances of the world in which we live. Our emotional lives often mirror the natural world. Around us and within us there are calm sunsets and earthquakes, gentle, refreshing rains and hurricanes, bubbling streams and class 5 rapids.

Don't ask me why, I only work here. I don't get to set policy.

Our faith is not necessarily measured or demonstrated by the circumstances in our lives. "The rain falls on the just and the unjust."(Matthew 5:45) Our faith shows in how we respond to them.

Our faith is not necessarily obvious in the first blush of experience. We grieve, we regret, we get angry. We react. We over-react. Welcome to humanity.

Faith is like a steady beam of light that eventually cuts through the fog. Maybe I can't see how to express it immediately, but I hold onto it until I can.

It is time that we quit being ashamed of being human. Let's just be humans with faith, humans who look for the way to bring it all around to good, to love, to hope, to compassion.

Jesus was not ashamed of us. What a beautiful thought that God incarnated into human flesh, human conditions, a human world. God must not have been ashamed of us if God chose to dress up like us. Maybe God really fancied us. Maybe God thought, "I think I'll grow a beard. I think I'll experience a family vacation. I think I'll enjoy some wine, maybe even make it myself."

Maybe, just maybe, God is trying to tell us there is holiness in being human, sacredness in wearing these fragile skins.

I don't know, I just work here.

Blessings,
David

Faith?

There was an important life-lesson waiting for me in the book "High Calling" by Evelyn Husband, about the life and faith of her husband Rick, who was the commander of the ill-fated space shuttle Columbia:

Faith begins where you think it ends.

Belief will carry you pretty far, but when the fog is thick and the path is uncertain, when questions have no answers, when the "how" or "why" don't make sense, that next step is where faith begins. Until you need it, until there is nothing else to support you, faith is not faith.

I'm not sure why God thought it was such a good idea to set things up so that we sometimes have to rely on faith, but I'll go on faith that it is.

Blessings,
David

This is How It Feels to Be Held

I prayed tonight about my friend who's light is flickering. I think I will go by tomorrow and visit him between our church services.

Sometimes I still wrestle with God over how things are not in my control, how even though I am linked with the God of All Creation, Etc., I still don't get to call all the shots. Another soul is on its own trajectory, and I have been invited to walk alongside for a few brief steps. I can't change anything except I can change everything. I can offer one more heart than he had before.

There was a time in my life when the circumstances of ministry made this a common experience for me, for years. It has been awhile, and in the meantime I have grown older, more aware of how precious a soul is, how fleeting life is. And in the last couple of years I have seen three friends I loved, one whose presence I cannot remember being without in my life, move on.

For reasons also not in my control, God gave me a gift to love this new friend. As a result, I'm sad that we will likely not have much more time together on this side of the veil.

It doesn't seem to matter whether it is a friend I have loved all my life or one whom I met recently but who has touched my heart; there is grieving involved. Grieving is the field where the mortal and eternal meet. Some rending is required both on the part of the one leaving and those left behind. The illusion is that a connection will be severed. The truth is that the connection will be stronger. It just takes a while to get to that understanding, and head-knowledge of it is of no use. The heart must figure it out.

It helped me tonight to listen repeatedly to Natalie Grant's rendition of the song, "Held," with it's profound chorus:

"This is what it means to be held
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell
We'd be held."

As will he. As will I. As will all who have loved him longer than me.

We will all be held.

Blessings,
David