Encounters

I think it was almost a month ago the first time I went to visit him in jail.

I had no idea just how much that first visit would affect me.

Just as life throws curve balls, and we don't really know why we do something that takes us where we end up, he was in a place where he could be found that day.
Call it fate, call it divine intervention, whatever.  He was right where he needed to be, so he could catch a glimpse into a world different than the one he was living in.

I didn't even get to meet him until after he was released from his first stint in jail.  By then, all the conversations about, and prayers for him had connected me to him, drawn me to him.
Our first meeting was one of old friends, at least to me.  To him, he was probably a little bit shocked at this crazy lady hugging him.

The differences between us were so staggering, it was almost comedic.
Black, white;  young, not so young;  fat, thin;  short, tall;  long hair, short hair.  The list could go on.

What struck me most about him wasn't what we could all see; it was what he displayed in his being.  A slight bit of fear and unease with his agreement to gather with this unlikely bunch, but the faith to go through with it, and the hope that accompanied him amidst all the introductions and joyous expressions of his return.

That's what I was drawn to.

Maybe he stayed because he recognized something in all of us.
Maybe he didn't see any strings holding any masks.
Maybe he saw and recognized that we'd all dealt with pain of our own.
Maybe he didn't see the telltale signs of people trying to hide that pain, or our shame.
Maybe he even recognized his own strength when in our company.
I don't know.

The beauty of his presence among us isn't knowing why he stayed, but in the staying.  Who he is, exactly, right now...  is what we were missing.
We couldn't be us without him.

We can't just pretend to know him, or his life, or where he's been without knowing him.  Nor can we do a single thing to encourage him, to uplift him, or to help him believe in himself unless we know him.

That's what drove me to go visit him the first time.  I wanted to know him more, I wanted to encourage him in this "hard place" he was in.

Being my first time visiting someone in jail, my assumptions were shattered upon our arrival.  Face-to-face visitation was reduced to cameras and low-resolution screens, and an old phone receiver.  Very 1980's-pay-phone-booth-ish, with about the same amount of personal connection.
About the time I was able to take it all in, we learned that we couldn't even see him that day.

I had to be okay with that; I already wasn't ready for the impersonal (dis)connection that awaited us.
I had to chew on this for a while.

Here I was, facing down a couple of stereotypes.
Prisoners.
What we think it's like in jail, based off of what we learn from movies and television.

But here was This Prisoner.
     A man caught up in a world of bad choices.
     A man in the process of being delivered from the demons that kept him trapped in that world.
     My friend.

In This Jail.
     Where our contact was through a computer screen.
     Where the guise of technology did nothing to make life better; all it did was separate us further.
     Where he'd live out his punishment for his offenses.

AND YET... my second visit completely changed my perspective...

This prisoner:
Our friend.  Who admitted his crime, and accepted his punishment.
Our friend.  Who, despite his surroundings, found Rest from his circumstances IN those surroundings.
Our friend.  Who wasn't sulking in his punishment, but making hopeful plans for a better future.

This jail.
Where the technology that screamed of our disconnect, became the motivating factor in his decision to reconnect.
Where solitude-as-punishment has become the resting place for him, and so many like him, whose life on the outside is so much worse than it is on the inside.
Which houses him now, is catapulting him into a future that will change the lives of all who call him "friend".

Now what?

What do we do now, now that our hands-off approach isn't sitting well with us anymore, when it doesn't seem like it's enough?

This mask-wearing, works-based mentality, surface religion we've been raised in tells us to feed the hungry, house the homeless, clothe the naked, visit prisoners in jail; like items to tick off on a checklist for our own righteousness.  It's easy to separate the humanity from the generalizations, to keep it all impersonal and separate from our real lives.

But what do we do when the nameless and faceless hungry, homeless, naked and prisoners in our midst are now our friends, people we have genuine relationships with, and care deeply about?

     People.  Who have lived real lives, with ups and downs, successes and setbacks, fears and victories.  Just like us.
     People.  With faces you remember after you part ways, a name, a recognizable voice, and hands that have worked right along side yours.  Just like us.
     People.  With smiles that remove the years from faces, with laughter that lightens the room, who've cried real tears, who've experienced fear, insecurity, and judgement. Just like us.

When we "serve" those on our list who have fit the bill of scriptural need, we move on with our lives, feeling a bit more righteous because we're following the rules laid out before us as followers of Christ, thinking we're "being the light", giving to those in need, and "blessing" others.

What if, by treating people in need as something we need to do, we're the ones missing out?

What if, in our quest to make Christianity a list of rules to follow, we miss the fine print, the meat of the New Testament, the heart of what makes us followers of Christ?
     We call ourselves blessed because we have so much...stuff, or we call ourselves blessed because God's answering our self-centered prayers, or we call ourselves blessed because everything seems to be going our way, or we even call ourselves blessed when we help more and more people.
     That word "blessed" even pisses me off, because we use it to describe every good thing in our life.

What if the people who are truly blessed are the ones we look down our noses at, the ones who are in the middle of strife, the ones who are suffering, the ones who take our assistance not with happy hearts, but because they know it's all they can do; knowing that we are just as lost as they are - and that they're the only ones who recognize it, because that realization doesn't come until we take the mask off.

We're all familiar with the Sermon on the Mount; yet refuse to change our perspective of it, because it's really hard to shift our focus from ourselves.

What if they're the blessed ones, and we're not?

Who's the one in need now?

Ruins

It's where he finds us...

We follow our hearts... chasing what we think leads to happiness
We follow the crowds... in order to stay relevant, (or stay under the radar)
We follow expectation laid upon us... unable to break free, or even declare ourselves "me"
We follow advice from family & friends... people who "know" us, or what's "best" for us
We follow what we think we want... every want, wish, and whim
We go where we think we're supposed to be... or expected, or suggested.

It's where we find ourselves:

Wandering...

     Lost...

          Afraid...

               Disillusioned...

                    Not sated by any of what we've done.

We stop.  Look around. Become aware of the loss of any sense of control in or over our lives.

It's in the devastation of death

...the crumbling of all we thought we knew

...the ruins of what we've made of our lives.

It's where we don't even have the strength or the power to look forward anymore, to look up.

It's there... where we find our connection to something greater than we are.

That's where He finds us.

In Convenient Discomfort

I have a nail and a screw embedded in the rubber of the same tire,  on my barely three-month old car.

We kind of take it for granted that we're safe in the things we have: our homes,  our cars,  etc.

Three days after a near-fire in my garage,  on top of a slow-leaking tire,  I had the epiphany that God's answering my prayer to keep me riveted to Him.

Humility is huge.

It comes continuously, on the heels of every mistake.
It comes with the realization of our dependence on community.   Not for what we get,  but in the giving;  where we realize just how much we have to give.   The humility comes from just how much we've received as well.
It comes in the form of advice from friends,  provision in the form of just enough,  & knowing yourself well enough to know you don't know it all.

In our false sense of security,  when things don't go our way & we end up at the tire store getting four new tires, we find ourselves in the discomfort of a new place.  One where we don't know anyone,  where the noises and voices are foreign to us.

The beauty of realization shines through, when I understand that this may not be where I thought or hoped I'd be today,  & this is not part of my normal routine.

But this is normal for someone else.
To hear the joking behind the doors leading to the work bays.
To hear the workers questions, advice, & evidence of a shared passion or skill, just confirms their comfort,  their familiarity.

Just because I am unfamiliar with what they do,  doesn't mean they're valued any less, or any less important.   On the contrary - without them,  how many of us would be stranded where we are,  or half-way to where we're headed?

How many people serve us,  in some capacity,  day in & day out,  yet they go unthanked,  or even worse,  treated like somehow they are less-than?

ALMOST EVERYONE.

Grocery store clerks,  gas station attendants,  restaurant servers,  tool booth attendants,  the list can go on & on.

This is where gratitude kicks in for me.   Whether someone is "getting paid to do that job", they're still doing it.  For me.  For you.   And they're still human,  just like me & you.

Wouldn't that make them just as "important" as we think we are?

Notes on a Resurrection

Death on a tree...

  

   Made from dirt

   Walking the earth

   Just as we were meant to be.

   Seductions offered, choices made... 

      Death came on a tree.

Three days in the ground...

   Dead and buried in the ground

   Living what we think is life, but unable to be found

   Unaware of the mirrored stone that binds us where we are.

   We try and try, but the stone we don't know we carry leaves scales in our eyes...

      We can't see the error of our ways.

The stone rolled away...

   Lo and behold, by grace alone

   The mirror shatters, the scales fall away

   We now understand the Way.

   So much to learn, shocked because we can't earn...

      Rescue and safety from our own bondage.

Resurrection...

   Living in light 

   Now we can really see that it's not about me

   A seed once planted in the dirt of my heart

   Grows into the tree that I carry

     That pierces me

     That lifts me up

     That gives me a new perspective

         

          Shows me Life.

     

Good Friday, Do or Die

We sure do like to "do" stuff, don't we?

We invest in courses, books, programs, and degrees that teach us how we can "do" this, or how we can "do" that...
We pour ourselves into our work, and call it "doing our job"...
We focus on our "outreach"; we worry if our "missions" are effective enough...

We continually add to our to-do lists, whether personally or corporately motivated to do so, hoping for the shallow satisfactions of feeling productive.

And if we're not "doing" something, we're plagued by guilt.
(I'm not immune to this.  It's Friday at 2pm.  I'm still in my pajamas, totally throwing my to-do list in the air.)

The social atmosphere of today, at least all of it that I'm exposed to, is one of action; be it socially-, mission-,  career- or goal-oriented.  We're surrounded by this mentality, and taught this from a young age.  This has been modeled for us, and this is what we're modeling for our children.

In our rush to "do" more, our self worth becomes identified by what we DO, instead of who we ARE.

How ironic, today being Good Friday, that Jesus cried out for us, "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do."


We look at the Scriptures to see that Jesus met the needs of the people He encountered.  We're so quick to jump on board with this, because this is something tangible that we can accomplish.  This is what our performance-trained brains, as well as the passing paradigm, tell us.
The gospel accounts tell of Jesus feeding the crowds with the loaves and fish.
Yes, Jesus fed thousands of people.
Want to know what he did next?

HE LEFT!!  (He didn't sit around, telling the people to keep coming back so he could supply their basic needs over and over again, calling that one thing he did his ministry.)

Matthew and Mark's accounts say that he jumped on a boat with the disciples and hi-tailed it out of there.  Luke's account doesn't say he left, but the loaves-and-fish account is followed by the sentence, "Once when Jesus was praying by himself..." (- my guess?  He left.)  John's account also tells that Jesus left the scene.

Why do we overlook that???
Probably because it's easier to follow the expectation to "do as Jesus did", instead of finding out why, or what happened next.
Probably because we come from a society that compartmentalizes, breaking things into easily digestible nuggets - (it's easier to memorize that way.)

What we fail to pay attention to, is that Jesus did everything He did for two reasons:
1)He knew who he was.
2)He only did what he saw his father doing.

It wasn't to make himself look or feel good.
It wasn't to model a new kind of ministry.
It wasn't to shock and awe people with something that went against the very grain of society (even though it very much did).

Jesus did all these things to shine the light of a new reality into the darkness of life for people bound by religion.

I really want to tear into the fish and bread story, but I'll give my cliff-notes.
(I will tell you that I see a lot of Jesus rolling his eyes, in all four accounts.)
Jesus knew who He was, and was listening to God.
What is God all about?  Community. (I would think 5000 people could be a community; a big one, but a community never the less.)
What else is God about?  Provision.  Love.
I find it fascinating that it was a child who had the fish and bread.  And that this child had something the community needed.  And he gave it. (That's my take; I really don't think he'd be mentioned in scripture if he put up a big stink about someone taking his food...)
Anyways, this kid gives up what he has, because the community needs it.
And it's enough.  It's more than enough.

What if the story of Jesus feeding the 5000 was a model of community, instead a model of ministry?

We're so quick to "do what Jesus did", when we don't even fully understand what he did, why he did it, and what that meant to the people around him.  Not to mention that so many of us wander around not knowing who we are, trying out different avenues of activity or "doing" all kinds of stuff, thinking it will tell us who we are, trying to apply to our lives lessons that don't make any sense because the setting was different.

A couple years ago I heard a pastor from overseas say that we Americans work ourselves into [forced] rest.  I agree.  We run the cycle of doing and doing and doing until we crash, spent and exhausted, with no fulfillment; so as soon as we're able, we get right back out there and do it all over again.
Talk about going around the mountain!

What if the priority was changed from "doing" to "being"?
If all we're focusing on as the church is teaching how to do, without teaching us how to be, then we're just "doing church", instead of "being the church".

We can't "be the church" if we don't know how to "be", how to abide.

And we can't know how to "be" if we don't know who we "are".

In order to know who we "are", Christ only asks that we do one thing.  That IS one thing he modeled, and we celebrate/remember it today.

All the years of hearing that I was created for a purpose, that I was loved, that I was forgiven, didn't tell me who I was.  In a sweeping moment of clarity, all that did for me was let me know that every bit of my screw ups in my past had a reason, all that I had done wrong in my entire life was to be learned from, not lived in. 
I tried for years to do this, and tried to do that, hoping that I'd understand who I was.  (See above in the working to exhaustion bit.)
It's funny, looking back, I can see that I had to understand that my past did not tell me who I am today.
That person I thought I was, I had to kill;  I had to crucify all my selfish wants, wishes, desires, my pride, and even my dreams.

Of everything I wanted, I wanted God more.

It was only then, by hanging myself on the cross, that I really live, and continue to learn who I am, and all the fullness of that.



Psalm 46:10
"Be still and know that I am God."
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know.
Be still.
BE.

Decisions, decisions. ..

Disclaimer: I'm writing this in response to some stuff that has happened in my life, and the people around me.  There is a specific audience.  If you are wondering if it's you, then it's not you.  It is in no way complete, or absolute, or the only way to handle situations.  If it doesn't apply to you, or even make sense, then, dear reader, chalk it up as the writings of some other yahoo on the internet, and move on.

Our lives are based on, & the result of, the decisions we make.   Sure, we all have to deal with the effects of other people's decisions as well,  but for the most part, our life is what we make it.  

Every moment is ripe with the opportunity to learn from the situations we're in;  to either learn not to make that same decision again, or we can choose to make better choices for our lives.

Some of us pick up on this dynamic early in our lives,  while other people have to go around the mountain over & over again.  (Aaaaand over and over and over again...)

[Rabbit trail.  What, or WHO, is the mountain?  Sorry.  Shiny things.]

We all come to pivotal moments in our lives, where we have to make a decision to change things.  If you're at one of those moments/days/weeks/months in your life, this little list may help you assess some things.  Or maybe it won't.  Either way, do with it what you have to. 

If you find yourself in a situation that seems vaguely familiar, or even if it's the downright same, you have to ask yourself some questions.

(Take this as a sort-of self-assessment.)

1.  What was my response to this situation last time I encountered it?

2.  Will I be making the same decision again?

3.  What brought me to this situation?

4.  If I make the same decision this time, as I did last time, what am I expecting to be different?

5.  If I make the same decisions as I did in the past, why should the situation turn out differently this time?

6.  What did I learn, or not learn, the last time I was in this situation?

7.  Who am I seeking counsel from?  Do I have someone that I trust enough to keep me accountable through the decision-making process?  Am I being completely honest with them, so they can help me in the best way possible?  And, am I listening to them?

8.  Am I a different person now, compared to the last time you were in this situation?

     -  If so, how?

     

     

It's always helped me to move into the next stage of life by understanding what brought me to that stage, as well as keeping a firm hold on the lessons I've learned along the way - to be read "applying them".

Hope this helps... someone.