Tangled Up In Blue (or Something to Believe In)

I don't know if you follow sports, if they matter to you at all. Having played and watched them for the majority of my years I have come to find my life is inexplicably tied to the events that take place on and off the playing fields; whether it's a diamond, a gridiron, a court, a field, a track, professional or amatuer, youth organizations or beer league softball, it is proven time and again the feats we can accomplish while wearing a glove or pads or a pair of Jordans have the power to raise our spirits or bring us to our knees in anguish.

While watching Sportscenter this evening on ESPN my weary eyes followed the crawl at the bottom of my television screen as the anchors rambled on about bicycling. Names had been leaked from PED (performance enhancing drug) testing done in 2003. Among them were Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz of Red Sox fame, two men that had at one time carried their team, along with the hopes and dreams of literally an entire nation, upon their shoulders. I dismissed the names as just two more to add to the pile of discarded "heroes" that had deceived us, until a piece by Jeremy Schaap aired.

Schaap spoke of the "Curse of the Bambino," the improbable comeback of the '04 Sox in the ALCS against their hated rivals, the persona of that close knit team of "idiots" that had renewed baseball fans' faith in their sport after enduring strikes and drugs and death in the preceding years. Schilling's bloody sock, Damon's hair, Francona's managerial style, just to name a few of the team's eccentricities. How it was all undeniably tainted, just like's Bonds' homerun mark, McGwire's biceps, Clemen's dominance. But this was bigger.

I remember sitting on the floor of my living room as Keith Foulke recorded the final out of the '04 series, watching as he was engulfed by his teammates. The crowd rushing the field. The celebrations that took place for months, literally months, in the streets of Beantown - the Curse was lifted!

And now, as all stories inevitably do, it ends in disappointment and betrayal. Big Papi cheated. Vick abused animals. Jordan had a gambling problem. Phelps hit the bong. Numerous other stories of our heroes of the playing field letting us down, role models modeling the same selfish behaviour we exhibit ourselves...

And in that dim mirror we see the same struggle we battle with; redemption always pursued by his unrelenting companion deterioration. Father's leave. Mother's stopping life before it starts. Politicians, police officers, civil servants of all kinds abusing the very system they have sworn to uphold. Then, in that one stronghold that is supposedly imepenetrable, we see pastors that cannot manage their homes, much less their churches; embezzlement, infidelity, dishonesty. Our mentors let us down. Our friends let us down.

We let ourselves down.

Go and Do Likewise...

I wrote this a while back, but thought I'd post it now...

A favorite phrase of Jesus Christ throughout the Gospels and His parables instructed those listening, in so many words, to “Go and do likewise.” Whether using the actual phrase or the single word, our Savior leaves no doubt as to His meaning. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, we should mimic His thoughts, actions, words, and ideals as closely as possible.

Then wouldn’t this command, this phrase, extend to the resurrection? One can only hope. I know I have been crucified. Throughout my short life span I have hung myself on many crosses; self-righteousness, consumerism, materialism… and the list goes on. If I were to meditate on my discarded potential, my words left unspoken, my “one moment” wasted, I would be awash in anguish and mired in mediocrity, my salvation lost at the feet of worldly idols.

The world is littered with decaying corpses, wrapped in linen, rotting in tombs, unwilling to rise from the death they brought upon themselves. I have been one. Refusing to accept the new life offered I strived to serve Christ on my terms. I wanted the six digit salary, the new home, the new car, the American Dream. Along with my shiny American Jesus, the one I could serve two days a week. I never knowingly wielded a hammer, but I’m certain I drove the nails.

Three days? If only three days were enough to acknowledge my sin, my stubbornness. Three years I pursued what the world had to offer, paying no mind to the stench of my own death.

When the stone was finally rolled away, I found myself at the mercy of a God that had been waiting on His prodigal. He had prepared a new home in ministry for me, at a local church that sits, ironically, at death’s doorstep. A sanctuary that holds 1800, cramming 120 in over two services, while I witness the same vices everywhere I turn. The gleaming facilities, the new sound system, the 5 acre campus…in the heart of a neighborhood screaming for the love of Christ. Death is all around us. The children walking from school to an empty home, awaiting the arrival of their mother from her second job. The men and women, laid off from once prosperous jobs, seeking revival of any kind. The food bank that opens one day a week (hunger must be on our schedule). But we are safe within our walls, in our carpeted pews, worshipping to music with no meaning, waiting for the lights to be shut off one last time, paying no mind to the hurt outside. The church doors only swing in.

The resurrection is real. What must it take, though, for us to portray it, to truly live? What scale of death must we witness? “Go and do likewise,” we are told, but we sit idly by. Instead, we go home.

To bring life, resurrection, to those around us, we must truly experience death. I’m losing the house. The car. The salary. The dream. To discover a new one. To tear down the walls of this building we call the church, to become it. I have hung on my cross, rotted in my tomb long enough. I will rise, accept the new life offered, and follow.

Go and do likewise.

Baby If I Could...

Alright. Two things:

"Children dream of wishing wells/whose waters quench all the fires of Hell."

- This Too Shall Be Made Right - Derek Webb

"If you think you're too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a room with a mosquito."

- African Proverb

Over the past few weeks I've had quite a few conversations with friends, family, acquaintances, leaders and followers in "the church," men and women I respect and men and women I don't. All of them have pertained to Life with a capital L. Where are we going? What are we doing? Why do we work? Just so we can play? Is there a difference between a vocation and a career? What is IT, that intrinsic IT that we are all trying so hard to attain in our individual lives, that IT that will make us all happy shiny people ready to take on this big bad world around us, allow us to beat it down rather than be beaten down, the IT we all strive so hard for yet never seem to reach, instead dying unhappy, ashes to ashes dust to dust, never to be what it was we once envisioned for ourselves? How did we get so lost?

I suppose what it all boils down to, to quote the poet Robert Allan Zimmerman, is this:

You Gotta Serve Somebody.

And we are all taught to serve the same master - you can disguise it however you want, call it materialism, responsibility, the American Dream, whatever. Or we could stop kidding ourselves and call it complacency. We are all taught to be mediocre, to not make waves, do our time collect our pension and die.

In each conversation, each argument, each exploration of the everyday human psyche I was told, more or less, to Go With the Flow, Don't Rock the Boat, etc, etc, etc. The feeling I got from all those people was that this world we toil in will not, can not, be changed. The institutions are there for our own good. Things are what they are. Life sucks, get a helmet. Why fight apathy when you are surrounded by it? Embrace it!

Now perhaps I'm being too harsh. Perhaps that's not what those people were saying. But that's what I'm hearing. Perhaps too many of these posts deal with this same issue. But you don't have to read 'em...

So I ask you again, How did we get so lost? I love that line from the Derek Webb song. I remember the dreams I had as a child, and how with each passing year each one slowly disintegrated. Only a small percentage of ballplayers actually make it to the majors. Journalists don't make much money. And on and on. We pretend like we want our children to dream, to believe anything is possible, then slowly steal their souls with standardized tests and statistics and Adderall and GPAs and status quos because We Have to Measure! we have to make sure everyone can be plotted on the bell curve and categorized...

But What If? What if I believe in a God that is greater than my mediocrity? Greater than any label man can give me? What if I believe, as Buber did, that we are all divinely sparked?

I want to believe. I want to hold on to that childlike faith we've all heard so many sermons about. I want to dig the well that quenches the fires of Hell. I want to be that mosquito on the back porch that keeps dive bombing you and pissing you off and no matter how many times you flail about you still end up getting stung eleventy billion times.

More importantly I want you to believe.

I want you to hold on.

I want you to dig.

I want you to sting.

One last thing - I love Burn Notice. It's a TV show. Figure out the premise for yourself. But something a character said caught my ear: "The machine wanted you so it took you. Now you're part of it. I'm part of it. And that's what we're here to destroy."

Destroy the machine that is binding you with it's chains! Press on towards the goal to win the prize that God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus! While we cannot escape this world we can rage so passionately, so fervently, bringing it to its knees in awe of our love, our unrelenting desire to serve a God that is greater...

Or maybe I'm just an idiot with a keyboard and a pop culture fixation.

The Other Half of the Battle

Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!" But he said to them, "Unless I see in his hand the mark of the nails and place my finger into their marks, I will never believe."

Eight days later his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands, and put out your hand and place it in my side. Stop doubting and believe."

Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!"

Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." John 20:24-29 [ESV/NIV]

One of my favorite cartoons when I was a kid (still would be if I could find 'em!) was G.I. Joe. Watched it all the time, had the action figures, blew them up with M-80s, might've even dressed up like Snake Eyes once or twice. I was a kid. Leave me alone. The part of the show I remember most, as I'm sure most of my fellow Gen X/Y/Z/whatevers will agree, were the mini-PSA's shown in the last five minutes or so of the program. Kids would be getting into some kind of trouble, stealing or picking on someone, some type of juvenile dilemma, and the Joes would come onto the scene and enlighten them with some moral truth. Everyone would smile when one of the Joes would say, "Now you know! And Knowing is Half of the Battle!"

I suppose it is. "Knowing" does seem to help us out in life and in our faith: we know (or most of us do) that stealing is wrong, that if a cat is stuck in a tree you should get it out, that you shouldn't lie, that there is a God with a capital G somewhere out there in the mass expanse we have come to call the universe. Beyond that, though, what do we reallyknow?

Having just read an article in Relevant magazine by David Dark (awesome name) and watched Bill Maher's Religulous, I have been saturated with doubt. Both works cover the topic of agnosticism. Both works point to our innate sense of doubt as human beings, especially pertaining to religion. After reading and watching them, I have to ask myself the aforementioned question: What do I really know?

I believe the Bible is the Word of God. Do I know that? I believe Christ is the Son of God but yet God Himself in the flesh and that he has sent the Holy Spirit to empower us, embody the idea of the Trinity, one more tenet of faith so many people struggle with. Do I know that? I believe that somehow God has interwoven some plan, a call, into my life that is almost impossible to see through the struggles of daily life yet I continually try to pursue and discern it. Do I know that? I, we, could type page upon page of beliefs we hold about our faith and our God and our lives - but does that mean that we know those things? I mean know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, those things?

I'll answer my own question - We don't. I have a pretty good idea who my Creator is and I try daily to act upon that idea. But until I meet my demise in this world and move on to the next, I can't prove a blessed thing. And sorry, I won't be able to send any communication back to help the rest of you out.

So why the taboo? Why when a movie such as the Maher documentary is produced is there such an uproar? Why when an article such as the one written by Mr. Dark is read are we so shaken?

Because we can't stand not knowing. More than that, we can't stand the idea that someone else may know something we don't. We're so wrapped up in our insecurity and fear that someone else, whether it be a peer or elder or God Himself, may have knowledge that we're not privy to that we force ourselves to come up with a whole slew of ideas and theories, enough to fill libraries ten times over, just to prove that we know.

But we don't, do we? I don't even know that my lungs will continue to supply air, gather oxygen, deliver it to my brain (crap, I don't even know enough about the human body to write this sentence coherently!) long enough for me to finish this sentence. But I'll continue to type, laboring under the premise that those things will happen.

And so it goes with God, or Buddha, or Krishna, or yourself. Whichever god you decide to serve, whichever religion you decide to follow. You labor faithfully, assuming someone somewhere knew just enough to give you a pretty good idea.

But it can't stop there. When I'm unsure of my God, I question Him. And whether it be in prayer, scripture, or a fellow believer, He answers. Perhaps sometimes I'm so smug in my knowledge of Him I'm too deaf to hear when His truth is announced to me. Which will undoubtedly arouse more questions.

And I realize that's how I came to faith in the first place. Doubt that I was living my life the way I should. Doubt in the knowledge handed down to me from my grandmother, parents, and friends about my faith. While resting in our knowledge gets us halfway there, it is the doubt, the questioning that truly cements what we believe.

When we ask, God makes Himself known.

50 Ways to Leave This Life

Have you ever considered, truly considered, what dying will entail? Not the nice death we all imagine, the "I want to die in my sleep," or the "He has a DNR order, so we'll drip in some dope and let him go peacefully." And especially not the whirlwind thing, a la Elijah (I suppose he didn't actually die, so much as disappear). I mean dying, the Angel of Death, the whole nine yards.

Suppose you're driving down the street, texting, and you don't notice the light's red as the kid in the 16th birthday sports car comes flying through the light. That's not pleasant. You go skydiving for your anniversary/birthday/pre-wedding/always wanted to kind of thing and the chute fails you. The grounds hard and gravity's real. Or you contract mesothelioma, from paint or a ship or the air; your lungs fail. Not suddenly, gradually. Long, painful and slow. One day your fine, the next your coughing up blood and in a month you're on a respirator with vague memories of what it was like to breath freely. A little harsher than allergies. Cancer. Pneumonia. Drowning. Fire. Heart attack. Stroke. Depression leading to suicide. Stray bullets. Plane crashes. None of these things make death sound pretty - even the ol' standby "He/She's in a better place now" doesn't alleviate the sting to the person on the receiving end. Perhaps the most sobering realization for all of us is the knowledge that we will all face this inevitability someday.

A man died today. I knew him for three weeks, and as I write this I realize I didn't even know his last name. His first was Billy. He was homeless. His place of final residence was behind two dumpsters, a space about 10 feet wide and 4 feet long littered with cardboard boxes to guard against the wind and the rain and the sun, shirts that were too dirty to wear any longer, trinkets collected from the streets, reeking of urine and stale beer, the latter undoubtedly used to numb himself to his situation.

He had pnuemonia, a fever, and had been hit by a car three times. He hadn't moved in 2 weeks. The high today was 98 degrees, far too much for his body to take any longer. So as we drove past him in our air-conditioned automobiles, no doubt hustling and bustling to our next destination, wringing our hands because we should've brought a red wine to the party instead of a white, he passed away. Alone, save one friend with medical issues of his own, laying in the vomit and urine and dirt and beer beside him, caring for him as best he could.

And this happens daily. Not just to some homeless guy behind a dumpster. The other things too. All the pain and hurt and fear engulfs us all as we leave this world. And as I spoke to those that knew Billy I wondered what would happen when he arrived in the morgue. What's that they say on the Dr. shows on TV? "Time of death?" When that question is posed over Billy's cold, lifeless body, a body that hadn't been suited for living for quite a while, the answer given by the paramedics will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 P.M. Central Standard Time. But I would venture to guess it was long before then.

When did the apathy take him over? When did he decide to check out, to jump in front of moving automobiles with hopes of a lawsuit? To no longer care for those that had cared for him, to leave his wife, children, home, his LIFE, to go to the streets to die? While the cause may have been the heat, his lungs, the fever, the symptoms arose many years before.

How many are there out there? Homeless folks, pastors, stockbrokers, truckdrivers, dentists, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children, You and Me - The Walking Dead, those already mired in self-doubt, insecurity, hatred and fear; rotting decaying corpses, empty black hearts refusing to take part in fellowship with Christ, with one another?

Maybe I'm rambling. Maybe it's an isolated incident; either way the world'll keep spinning.

Right?

But there are so many ways to die.

What will it take for us to choose to live?