Archive of "Confessions" Category
Overwhelmed and underpaid
The other night I was thinking about how much money my wife and I used to make when we lived in TX. I had a job as a Youth Pastor and Andrea worked in HR at a large company. We have consistently made less money every year after we moved back from TX.
I can see looking back how we have made our life hard finatially. I used to believe that to be in God’s will you had to suffer. This lead me to a martyr world view that produced suffering. There is enough pain in the world, it does not need me to create more.
I now believe we make choices, based on our values. Over the past several years I have made it clear that I do not value financial security. I no longer feel this way. I can now relate to most Americans.
09 is a good time to grow
I like the end of a year and the beginning of another.
I have some resolutions, but they never seem to matter, goals do…
The small steps toward wholeness, the completion of a task and the shaping of another.
Lately, I have been witness to hard times in relationships and I think that there is a depth to the human experience often forgotten.
Life does not get easier. Each day, each passing moment is a reminder of what’s to come…
Even the most fabulous lives in the world are not what they seem, we all create a reality outside of ourselves and look in on others to find who we really are. Even when we look at God or look for God, we can only understand that reality in part.
What is wild to me, is even after all the pain, and the pain to come, I still believe…
Because I want to, because there is something in my mind and in my experience that says God is love and he is best understood from my vantage point of Jesus.
I still like the church, in fact, I have been looking for a church for over a month now. What I am coming to believe is that I am all ready apart of a church and I am looking for validation of my identity in God/Christ/the church.
What I am finding is that I can not go back, I have come to far and scene to much to go back, but I can move forward, one small step at a time, into the great unknown.
Fear
I have been thinking about fear lately. Halloween is a time where people embrace the “scary” and have fun with the idea of horror and death. The community I grew up in disapproved and even went as far as to judge those who participated in Halloween. Currently, I am kind of ambivalent to the holiday, but last night a friend asked a question to those who don’t allow their children to participate in the “trick or treat”. How do they introduce the ideas of death and scary to their world view? This person experienced Halloween as an opportunity to do that with their children.
I do not have children, so I am not sure how I will handle introducing the idea of death and scary things as part of life to them in their formation. However, I think it is time to bring more of the scary things into our conversation.
What is it we are afraid of?
Why are we afraid of those things?
Take the economy or the state of the world. It is a scary thing… People did exactly what they were told to do by the experts and invest in secure money markets and they lost their security. It begs the question of what do we find our security in?
I find a lot of security in my relationships, relationship with my family and community.
I experience fear in the form of anxiety and it arises sometimes as a motivator and other times as an inhibitor. Either way my analysis or thoughts about emotion are part of my search to understand who I am. I have a core belief that looks like this: When I understand why I feel certain things I can control my actions. When I understand, I am not afraid…
I grew up in a family that did not allow me to participate in Halloween. I wonder how I might be different if Halloween was used to introduce the scary things to me…
I tend to be a reactive person, which does not work well in a community environment. A person who is filled with anxiety tends to over re-act or obsess over ideas, causing an increase in the very emotion they want to control.
Granted emotion is only a fraction of who any one person is, however it is the part that seems most real at times. Thoughts, relationships, roles we play in everyday activity are other parts of our whole. Never-the-less there is still the need for me to understand why we feel certain emotions.
Sometimes I think bad thoughts about other people I don’t know…
Why do we judge each other?
Honestly, what do you think?
This weekend I was in “the wildwoods” and I was around a majority of people outside of my everyday context. People whom like Nascar, Bud Light, Marlboro Red, the NRA, among other things stereo typical of this demographic.
But wait, we all are apart of a demo graphic and to some extent we are all stereotypical.
Differentiating ourselves in a myth, we create an ego that pulls us outside the everyday reality of who we really are. It is in very brief moments of clarity that our nature is revealed.
Like when we are sick, or scared. The truth is we are HUMAN.
For some people, like myself, who have come out of a conservative Christian worldview this is a scary reality. Why, because God judges the wicked, evil man (HUMAN), and condemns them to death for their wickedness? (This is the philosophy I operated out of for most of my adolescense.)
I would be lying if I said, “I am gracious to myself”. I think the root of this judgment and poor thinking of others comes from a misguided “Christian” world-view.
Today I have been practically reminded of how this worldview of sin, death and judgment affects people in a negative way.
A buddy was talking to me tonight about a concerned friend who wants to make sure, my buddy, still believes the right stuff. Still believing the TRUTH.
The truth is we don’t Know.
The truths in the Gospels are simple. “Die so that you might live.”
*Jesus died is a hard argument to loose.
*Jesus rose again, that is a hard argument to win.
Why is it so important to win?
Jesus lost. His followers lost.
The most compelling part of the story of the Gospels from my reading is that Jesus rose again.
When we see Jesus, do we see a blond haired, blue eyed, white guy, or do we see the person smiling at us across from a craft food booth in Wildwood, (the Wildwoods), with a couple of browned teeth who is doing his best to love.
I want to follow Jesus…
When other people seem to have more fun
Lately I have been morning my inability of having fun.
Then I realized fun is a choice I am not making in my day to day decisions.
I have become obsessed by the work I long to complete that is un completable on a large scale.
There are things that are fun for me, i am now doing.
Cooking being one of them.
My goal is to find ways to eat more food that is a live than processed. I would like create meals based around that theme and see how my body reacts. How weird that this is fun for me.
Watching American Idol has been fun for me lately.
I love it when a singer gets it right, they pick the right song and connect with the harmonies and melodies of the moment. This is embaressing how fun this is for me.
I like walking my dog in the morninig. I try to run but I get to tired quickly. It would be fun to be in good shape again.
I like reading a chapter in a book and pondering the ideas presented. I have fun thinking about the possibility that God is involved in every little detail of living.
i would like to pay more attention to my body, my breathing my eating. I want to think of my self, more than my thoughts or my emotions. How is that possible and why do I long to be more than my thinking, and doing?
There is so much depth to living that I have only tasted in part and I want to swallow it whole.
Going away scares me
This weekend I will go away with some friends to North Carolina.
In preparation for this trip I think about a couple things:
How much money will i spend?
How far will I be behind in my work on my return?
How much sleep will I get?
IN these questions is the suggested assumption that negative things will take place.
The realization from this is a negative outlook on traveling.
A loss of control and a feeling of vulnerability.
However, if you were to ask me one of my favorite things, i would reply, “traveling”.
How odd, don’t you think?
Wanting the Best for People
I had a conversation with one of the people on our Sales Team.
This is an amazing person with a heart to serve others. He is caught in a place I have found myself in several times. A place where hard work is just not enough of a motivation to do everything in there power to succeed.
I know he wants to do what is right and I believe he will.
This is how I know I want what is best for people.
When I surrender the right to tell them, when i believe in more than my own instinct.
I would like to be like this more often…
How about you?
What is a Preacher
A preacher is one who communicates the gospel to people.
I have often found it hard to view the pastor as the soul preacher, even more now than before. Today we have all sorts of preaching but very little gospel revelation.
I have scene the gospel and I have experienced the Kingdom in the most unlikely of places. The parts of the Gospels that inspire me are the part where the impossible is realized or the wrong is made right. IE, sitting with sinners, healing the sick or talking to woman.
There are parts of the Gospels so human they often go un noticed by most evangelicals, parts that reveal the very nature of man and the very possibility of God.
Tomorrow night I will share the story of One Village Coffee to over 100 employees of a Whole Foods Market in my community. This is an opportunity I am grateful for. From the perspective of the listener, I am just another voice in the market of wholesaling goods through their venue. From my perspective I am a man apart of a emerging organization designed around organic principles of growth. Care for the customer and contribution to greater society, the enabling of the poor to sustain a society longing for growth and change.
I am a simple person full of dreams for more than I can create, the possibility that God is involved in Creation and wants all of us to be involved together. Tomorrow night will be a moment like that, and my only hope is that I will be aware enough to see the Gospel. The place were the Good News of God So loved the World… The space and time where The Creator steps in and Create His image, divulging the secret of the Universe…
There is a God and that God is love, and in Him there is no darkness at all…
Wont you pray with me…
