Where's Waldo?

You remember the books and images of "Where's Waldo", right? Waldo was "lost" in the scene and your job was to find him. Well, I've started spending some time training to be a volunteer at a local rescue mission. My first time there, I experienced a strange feeling. I was the outsider. Even where I sat in the room - I was uncomfortable...By the end of my time there, I was looking forward to my next time there. What caused that change? How did that feeling of being the outsider subside? The next day as I was reflecting, something came to mind that I've been pondering a lot over the past months, if not years...Jesus' words that whoever wants to find his/her life must lose it. What is it to lose myself? I don't think it necessarily means giving all my possessions away. It doesn't necessarily mean becoming some sort of martyr...what came to mind as I was reflecting was something my college basketball coaches used to tell me...they'd say, "Mark, you have to lose yourself in the game." In other words, you get so into it that you're lost in it...sort of in the zone...when that happened, I played at my best...so, I began thinking, is that what Jesus meant? Get lost in the experience. Forget about yourself. Don't be so self-conscious...get lost "in the zone" and you'll be at your best...

Where is Hope???

Splattered everywhere in today's news are the headlines of the end of a fugitive's run...without going through all the details, a man killed his ex-wife. To impede the identification of her body, he pulled her teeth and cut off her fingers. Having disposed of the body, he ran...from California to Hope, British Columbia...where today people at his motel (pictured here) discovered his body hung by a belt from a coat rack...What happened? We can all speculate, but my guess is that, while something snapped in this guy to cause him to make decisions that ultimately led to murder and suicide, I doubt that he sat down one day and planned out the murder and suicide. What was the slope he slid down? Apparently he was a successful developer and investor...but he had also been part of yet another reality TV show...that incidentally was cancelled once the murder story broke. Was he just another "victim" of a society out of control? Or was he somehow "evil" to the core? I say "no" to both questions...My speculation is that people who commit such acts get to points of hopelessness and somehow believe that no hope equals no way out EXCEPT through such acts...I may be wrong, but my observation of people is that when they perceive no hope, some sort of end is near. Or, when what they had hoped in disappoints, and they see no worthwhile replacement for that hope, radical actions follow. An added twist to our culture and how individuals and institutions sometimes think and process - the woman's body was finally identified by the serial numbers on her breast implants...It's ironic that this guy's trail ended in a town called Hope...maybe this story will cause some of us to look at hope - where does my hope lie? Is my hope anchored in something or Someone that I can count on? Will that anchor hold? Ponder what the biblical writer sets forth in the book of Hebrews, chapter 6, talking about an anchor (a lifeline) of hope and where it's found...We who have run for our very lives to God have every reason to grab the promised hope with both hands and never let go. It's an unbreakable spiritual lifeline, reaching past all appearances right to the very presence of God. Could this be true??? Where is Hope?

Is it a small, small world?

It's been awhile since I've posted...doesn't mean nothing has been going on...in many ways, quite the opposite...two weeks ago we got our daughter back after a year as a nanny in Switzerland. It's great to have her home! The seventeen-year-old high school graduate has come home a 19-year-old young woman. I hope we're ready...anyway, we were able to go over and spend time with her in her stomping grounds. A memorable trip...since her return, she's been catching up with friends and former classmates. My wife recounted one of her conversations with a classmate; how they spent an hour together and that classmate didn't ask one question about our daughter's year in Switzerland...now, I can be judgmental in a heartbeat and I don't mean to say that's all this classmate is about, but it seems that it's very easy in our culture to focus the conversation on myself and not get outside to view the other's perspective...so often we can make life "all about me". In that kind of mindset, the world is shrinking...around me...I thought of the Disneyland ride to a small, small world...Our daughter's world grew this last year...we asked her what changed in her. She talked about generosity, discovering who she is apart from us, viewing things from others' perspectives...all growing world kinds of things...how do we as parents facilitate the growing of our kids' worlds? And, as I've found, as we do that, ours grows too...Recently I was reading something that I believe, relates to this idea of a bigger and bigger world rather than a small, small world. Martin Buber is a Catholic theologian. One of the ways he describes God is as wholly other...when I read that before I thought that meant that God is different than us...of a different kind...I thought rather theologically...those things are maybe true, but this time I thought of it more relationally... (isn't God's nature relational?). God is love. Love focuses on "the other"...God is so wholly other in his nature that he makes his mission, his good news, about "the other"...about us...about you and me...and when I make my life about others, I'm expressing God...so, the growing world is about re-orienting my life (to use Jesus' words - losing my life) to others. My daughter is teaching me about that...

No cuts!

This picture looks about like my school lunch line...yeah, I know...it's that old...so am I...only difference is that we entered from the right, not the left...if you're as old as me, you remember sloppy joe days and fish on Fridays...but, being the growing and hungry kids we were, there was one thing sacred in the lunch line...NO CUTS!!! You know, where kids tried to get in line ahead of you... they tried to take cuts...and worse yet was when a friend of theirs would let them take cuts...Of course, the rules were different if someone let me take cuts...funny how that works... Well, I was thinking about this the other day...and, maybe I need to let more people take cuts...maybe that's part of what Jesus talked about when he said if you want to really discover your true life, lose your life...lose it for the sake of others...put others' interests ahead of my own...a foreign concept in a "survival mode" world...but I will say this...when I do it (all too infrequently), a whole new world opens up...some pretty cool surprises happen...and, in the end not only am I no worse off, but I find that in giving I actually "get" something too...rarely something expected, but usually something pretty cool...My getting isn't the point, is it? The other person's best is the point...and I only discover what that looks like if I choose to let go of my "No Cuts!" principle...

Which end of the spectrum?

This past week I was reading and praying and two pictures came to mind. The first was of a person in a fetal position...fearful, fists clenched tightly, holding on to what's "mine"...The other picture was that of someone laying down, arms stretched out to the side, palms open...All of a sudden that picture caused me to think of Christ on the cross...and then I connected Christ's call to lay down our lives, take up our cross, die to ourselves, surrender everything...all...If those two pictures are at either end of a continuum. And we're all somewhere on that continuum. I know which end I want to be at...but I also know how I'm drawn or I can bend toward the fetal position, especially when times are tough. Survival, self-preservation - those are both strong impulses...but, there is a better way...the way of Jesus...who calls us to lose our lives in order to find our lives...do I really believe that to be the way to the life I want???

18-2 or the bottom of the ninth?

Working out at the gym with a friend early this past week, he was telling me about the baseball team he coaches. Over the previous weekend, they had played a doubleheader. In both games they were leading after seven innings only to end up losing both. Since they played the same team the following day in another doubleheader (they won both of those), they had a team meeting after the two losses. He talked to them about digging deep, finding out what they were made of. As he shared this with me, he added that in the last innings of those first two games,everything mattered...every pitch, every play in the field, every coaching decision. He explained how much more fun it is to be in those games than when you're in a blow-out, winning 18-2...As I listened, I thought about a book I read recently, Wide Awake, by Erwin McManus. In it, McManus talks about how we go through life one of two ways: we either sleepwalk through life or we live life wide awake, fully engaged, experiencing the moment and grabbing all life offers. Thinking about this "global economic crisis" makes me think we did a lot of sleepwalking in America the last 25 years. We now have a chance to live life wide awake. Times of crisis, tragedy and uncertainty can awaken us to what really matters and the true priorities of life. The Great Depression caused people to live wide awake. And because of that, we now look back on a Great Generation - those that lived through the Great Depression, whose lives produced character, self-discipline and a long-term perspective. What if what we're now experiencing produces the Next Great Generation - kids and grandkids whose lives reflect character, self-discpline and a long-term perspective? Paul Young in his bestseller, The Shack, says that if anything matters, everything matters... Put me in coach - that's the game I want to play in!

Poking Through The Clouds

My family and I live in the Pacific Northwest. We know about cloudy days…recently I was able to take a few days off and head to central Oregon for some fun, a little business and some time for a personal retreat. My first day there, I decided to go skiing. It’s about a 30-minute drive from where I was staying up to Mt. Bachelor. Most of the way up it was cloudy…overcast with even some fog…but, as I got within a couple of miles of the lodge at the base of the mountain, the sky broke out into a bluebird day…The mountains were spectacular and the snow was great! When I started up the lift to ski, per my usual tendency, I wanted to get all I could get in terms of skiing…after a couple of runs I was feeling it…actually, I felt it the first run…I’m not in skiing shape. This was my first ski day this season…after a couple of runs I started slowing the pace a bit…it dawned on me that, when it comes to skiing, my appetite is often bigger than my stomach…when you back off a bit, you enjoy it more…so I did…earlier in the morning, as I was reading and praying, God revealed to me some pretty cool stuff…part of it related to the parable of the sower…I heard, “Don’t let thorns choke out the life I have for you.” The thorns are things like money and the cares of life that lately have had me, if not in the pit, at least in a cloudy, overcast, even foggy zone…Thanks, God, for helping me poke through the clouds today!

Some quotes to start the year...

Near the end of the year, a friend sent me some quotes by Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsy, who, prior to and actually for the first year or two of his imprisonment, was a committed communist. Arrested for questioning Stalin, he saw humanity at its worst and at its best during his time in Russian prisons. After reading the first couple of quotes, I looked for more. I'm posting a handful of them here. Read them slowly...re-read them...memorize them...chew on them...my question: Would Solzhenitsyn have penned these nuggets without the quiet, the perspective, the force, the halt - of prison???

1. Do not pursue what is illusory - property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade and can be confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.

2. Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.

3. Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice

4. It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.

5. Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.

6. The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it.

7. Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.

8. Even the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless if there isn't the will to do what is right.

9. When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.

10. Our envy of others devours us most of all.

11. How can you expect a man who's warm to understand one who's cold?

12. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Authority

Maybe it's the fact that I have 2 teenagers; maybe it's a book I'm currently reading entitled, "Generation Me" - either way I've been thinking about what authority is, was - what it means...authority figures are (or more accurately, used to be) parents, bosses, coaches, the law...but that doesn't seem to be the case today...for many young people it seems that either they themselves or their peers are the authorities in their lives...thinking a bit further on that, I wonder whether, if I'm truly honest with myself, I'm not the authority in my life? I can say I live by rules or under God's authority, but if I look at the way I make decisions, I decide...sometimes those decisions are congruent with laws, God's ways or even in the best interest of others. But more often than I may like to admit, my decisions favor my best interests...if I want to follow the guy I claim to follow I have to ponder again his words...If you want to find your life lose it...I had someone ask me this week what that meant...what would you say it means? For me, that means I must put others' interests ahead of my own...Jesus summed up what he called the law and the prophets by saying we should love God and love people...love acts in the best interest of the beloved...I've caught glimpses of the joy that comes when I set my agenda aside and live for others' interests...glimpses that are pretty amazing...that prove that it is more blessed to give than to receive...I have a LONG way to go, but I'm catching glimpses...I catch a lot more glimpses of this in my wife than I do in myself...I'm thankful for those glimpses...