Coming Clean

I want all that I do to be beautiful. But oh how I need change.

When I die, I want those I leave behind and others who come after to know me and say all I was and all I did was beautiful. And I feel like that’s selfishly ambitious… but I just don’t see how.

Anyone else have similar notions? Any ideas how we can band together do such a thing?

Thanks Ochuk. Without you, I would not have found this awfully simple yet oh so true site.

So… I’m trying to figure out what’s next for this blog.

The next entry in The Road I Travel is a bit tricky. In some ways, it would be easier to jump up to the fork in the road, do a look back, and then go on from there… …but I’m trying to keep a chronological, flowing story going. I feel that I’ve been successful so far, so I’d hate to break the tempo.

I’ve found that beauty has been a recurring theological theme for me lately. In discussing my thoughts on faith and life, I keep coming back to it. And not like aesthetic beauty, but the beauty that breaks you down, creates that ache of longing, and brings forth hope. The beauty that’s embodied in ever faithful love. …Love, also, seems to have been on my mind, too.

So, I’m thinking about blogging about that, but when I try to tackle these things outside of dialog, I feel like I fall flat. And I don’t really have a “virtual” dialogue partner in my mind to drive the discussion in any interesting direction or structure.

I’ve got two peices that I started to write and should revisit. One’s entitled “Where The Fight Is” which is about where we find aggression and why we externalize it and when/if we should. The other is “The Mind of a Troll” which is a personal piece about how I troll when I so get in the mood. Brief confession: I was kinda trolling cozart the other day. I was also kinda dialoguing with him, but I didn’t want to put the energy into really taking the discussion anywhere. I’m glad Adam took over - he seems to have the energy I did not - and still do not - have.

My combative flare seems to be mellowed at present by the man-lings. Who are both doing well, thanks for wondering! Lisa is doing fine, too. We all spent half the day out today, so that’s a good sign of recovery.

In conclusion, a few starting points for you to go check out:

So good ol’ Ochuk’s blog has tipped me off to Myles Werntz’s blog. It’s pretty much awesome. I’ve been reading it pretty closely lately. You can find it here. He’s been doing a particular series I like called Building a Mystery. He also recently did a series called Sin and Sinner that’s worth checking out - very challenging on a personal level. It’s all under his theology category.

Then, lets take a trip in the way back machine to read about the good ol’ early church fathers. I’ve got a number of sites that I use to research them, but this place is perhaps one of the better ones for finding complete works. So click here to read about our forefathers in faith. The earlier they are, the more I like them… but they’re all good and interesting to read. Sometimes I wonder why it feels like we’re here and they’re there - as though there is some kind of divide. …but now I’m getting ahead of myself.

So that’s all for now. Don’t worry, I’ll be back shortly - hopefully before the weekend but who knows. Time for me to go start some other things.

This is perhaps a story that Jeff has not the wholly heard.

So, by the time I was off to college, I was more or less getting back on the straight and narrow, and I was looking to involve myself with similar people. But I have this tendency to track fellow geeks, nerds, fantasy buffs, and other “social rejects”. Oh yes, do not let all this personality fool you. I am a social reject. I can be “that guy” at the drop of a dime.

So, my first couple of days at college, I was a little depressed because I was finding myself among “my people” and not the people I wanted to be with. As a result, I reluctantly and dejectedly went with a bunch of guys to the Fall Fraternity Rush. We were all going for free food and entertainment. A few of the guys were going under the pretense of hooking up. Me, I was just going to be with these guys. Along the way, we passed a place I would have never expected. I probably would not have even noticed it if we had not deliberately passed it by. The only reason why I noticed is because one of the guys said, “Oh, do we really want to go to a place that has that?” And he pointed to a cross up on the side of a house. …a fraternity house…

Well, we passed by it and got our free food and had our entertainment. It was all fun and games, but I kept thinking about that place with the cross on the side of the house. It was probably just some kind of gimmick or “ritual” thing, but it was the only frat house I had seen with a cross on it. Curiosity won me over so that by the end of the night, when we were heading back to the dorms, I feigned I had left “something” behind at a house, and I went and visisted the house with a cross.

As it turned out, this house didn’t merely have a cross on it. It had Christians living in it. They publicly identified themselves as Christians and seeking Christians for membership. What and how could this be? Fraternities are social beer orgies. Not so with this one.

After talking with a number of the guys, I realized I liked this place a lot. This had a lot of guys that I wanted to know more, that were interested in living and growing as I was, that liked to do a lot of the same things I did. I decided I wanted in, and so I returned over the next few days.

It also happened during this time that the brotherhood took an interest in me. A cool and cautious interest. Apparently my interviews were not all up to snuff. For example, I argued against predestination. I argued for the freedom of man. I did not deny the omnipotence or omnipresence of God, but I would not name it as predestination - namely because I identified predestination as an active and forceful predetermination on God’s part.

I never really learned what was and was not said about me. If I had, I probably shouldn’t say anyways. What happened during this time though was that it became apparent that there were some Calvinists/Reformed in the crowd, and they wanted to hear it said their way. So, I’m a smart guy, I know this is the right place for me, and I know what they want me to say. So I said it. And then, after talking with a guy in private - in a bathroom stall - I got saved. Again. Sitting next to a toilet. …I wish I could remember how we ended up in there…

I was pretty miffed at this whole “saving” business, but, again, I was pleased by people’s desire to faithfully and truthfully serve me. I got over it. Besides, there’s nothing wrong about professing your belief a thousand times over if it will be of some benefit to someone - and I don’t mean me.

But still, pretty awful, huh? Probably the best lie I ever told though! And to tell you the truth, I’m not really so sure it was a lie. It was just confusion on both parties parts. Probably mostly mine. I’d like to hear what I said that got everyone so concerned - but no one has ever been able to tell me what it was. …who knows… But after that, with a few minor personality bumps along the way, I was brought into the brotherhood.

My time in the fraternity has all been of tremendous benefit to me. I really blossomed in my faith and as a man during this time. I became very close with a number of great and Godly men, and I spent a lot of time in prayer, study, and discernment with them. In a lot of ways, it was the spiritual environment that my church and family should have provided me - the kind of thing I had with Scott back in the day. It was not hyped. It was not one gimmick and flashy thing after another. It was raw, personal, challenging, encouraging… it was a communal life of faith. It was Christianity for the glory of Jesus and for our sake.

This chapter of this fraternity has in many ways has helped and shaped me into the man I am today. I love Theta Xi.

So, I made it back to work today after a week off. I’ve decided I don’t like work.

I like the people that work around me, and I like my projects. I just don’t like the people who work those projects with me on a regular basis. The particular reasons are different per person, but it all comes back to them being uncomfortable with me. I understand it. I mean, I’m just notably younger them, and I’m carrying the title “architect”. I do the task assignments - never mind I ask people about what they want during our meetings. But, traditionally speaking, they should be in my position - not the other way around.

Plus, I’m not really helping anyone in the broad Christian sense of “someone” or “my neighbor”. I’ve really had a burden on my heart lately to do something more in that line.

And I don’t feel like I’m really growing in my field. I feel like I’m just becoming an expert on the projects I work. I’d like to be using and learning more about the new stuff than getting stuck with only the old stuff. As it is, I feel discouraged about seeking out “new stuff” and leveraging it. There’s so much legal crap in order to get to use it anyways.

So… I dunno. Kinda sucks. Just got to stay focused so that I can get the job done while I figure out what to do next, adjust to the new baby, and finish up school.

In highschool, I had 4 significant milestones that lead me back to Christianity and trying to figure it all out.

The first was an “Understanding Religion” seminar that a bunch of students got together and did over a 6 week academic program I attended one summer. I was introduced to Universalists, Ba’Hai, Hinduism, Buddhism, Wicca/Paganism, Calvinism, Catholicism, and a few others. I found myself intrigued by all of them and thinking about each of them. I readily identified with the Calvinists and less so with the Catholics. Yet I had never encountered Catholicism before, so I paid careful attention between the Calvinists and the Catholics. When I surveyed the general response to the two, people felt the Catholics were asking you to make a lot less assumptions and take more on faith - especially on topics such as justification and the eucharist - and the Calvinists the other way around. I found that weird - weird in that I was trying to figure out, what’s the difference between assumption and faith? But, that’s what I got out of a few people I talked with afterward who didn’t care either way.

The next thing that happened was a class on World Literature I took my senior year of highschool. The first semester studied ancient texts which were all - surprise, surprise - religious. So, I read a lot of the Bhagavadgita, the Zoroastrianism texts, and Eastern Myth and Philosophy. That was really good for me because it got me thinking critically about pantheism, polytheism, dualism, and sorting why those do and don’t make sense. In a lot of ways, it prepared me for Mere Christianity when I read it in college. In so many ways, reading C.S. Lewis is like watching dormant and yet ventured paths of my thought blossom before me.

Third, I started attending a church again with a friend. This was both good and bad for me because while I was rediscovering the need for a communion with believers, I found myself really not fitting in with baptist theology. For example, one night after Bible Study we began a group prayer, during which someone asked if anyone was “scared of the fires of hell” to stand up. Well, I am scared of hell. I’ve got no bones about saying so. So, I stood up. You know what happened then? I gots me a good ol’ baptist saving. Okay, I really shouldn’t be so condescending - they thought they were honestly serving me. But c’mon folks… even Christians should remain fearful of the fires of hell - just as they should remain fearful of God - even if our hope says we have no need for it. But anyways…

Fourth, I began a quest to understand the early Church Fathers. I wanted to know what they thought about Christianity, what it meant, how they practiced it, and everything else. I figured if there were any Christians who knew what Christianity was about, it would be them. Calvin, the Catholics, the Baptists — they got nothing on the early fathers. They are all just poor images of the real, first thing.

There were a few other milestones that happened during this time that need to be talked about, but it is more appropriate to come back to them later than try to deal with them now. For in the moment during this time, these things were inquisitive but largely inconsequential.

(I wrote most of this two days ago. I saved it, forgot about it, wrote about the park in the meantime, and then Lisa, being nosy (and taking advantage of my lack of logging out) found it, liked it, and so I’m posting it after a few very small edits.)

Alright, so, I’ll say it: I’m in love. But in general, I tend to try to avoid that phrase as it makes me cringe. I cringe because I tend to think that people don’t really understand what it means and what they do mean is merely “I’m really excited and infatuated about this person or thing.” So, since I don’t want to be a part of that crowd, I try to avoid saying it.

But today I cannot avoid saying it because I am thoroughly in love, and I need to get it off my chest. So let me first tell you about my day.

My day started after a night of bad sleep - bad sleep being waking up every few hours to help Lisa with baby William. I was up around 7:30-ish to fetch Joshua out of his room because he was awake and beginning to grumble about his bedroom prison. After cuddling with Lisa in Mommy-Daddy bed, Lisa heads off to shower, and I head downstairs to start the morning routine: breakfast, childrens’ clothes, then shower. We’re out of the house at 9:20 for the baby’s first doctor’s appointment.

We arrive around 9:40. Josh is watching the fish in the aquarium, Lisa is filling out paper work, and I am relaxing. Josh grabs a book, and we read it together. Josh, not being interested in the book, puts it down where another boy picks it up to have it read to him. Josh gets jealous, and so I enter into Operation Distraction. Operation Distraction is a mild success, but it utlimately results in Josh initiating Operation Terrible 2. After a few unsuccessful attempts at Operation PD (Public Discipline), I have to resort to Operation MD (Mean Daddy). Josh and I go have “a talk” in the van, where I force him into “the chair” (his carseat), let him scream, turn up the music, and wait for the screaming to subside. Operation MD continues to have tremendous success. We go back inside, and the rest of the doctor’s visit is pleasant.

We return home where we all have lunch. Lisa and William nap for the afternoon while Josh and I mess around. I keep asking Josh if he would like to go to the park. He consistently answers no until it reaches 2:00. At 2:00, I begin to inititate Operation Nap Prep, and Josh initiates Operation Guilt. Operation Guilt goes a little like this: “Park?” “No, Josh” “Park! Park!” “No, Josh, it is time for your nap. You know this.” “Park! No Nap! Paaark!”

Because of Operation Guilt, I let Operation Nap Prep last much longer than it should. This results in me losing my temper. Josh suffers the pain of Operation TL (Tough Luck/Love) - he is thrown into his crib to sort out this nap thing for himself for the next 1.5 hours. I crawl into my own bed, desperate for sleep now.

My merry housewife, however, awakens from her blissful afternoon nap at the same time William does. They share a feeding in bed next to me - which typically I wouldn’t mind, but it was an awful distraction today. My nap essentially stunk - even after Lisa and William left the room. But, at least Josh’s nap was good - because he woke up happy and ready to go.

Josh and I then headed to the park as I promised.

We headed back home where Josh balked at dinner all night - I did not give in though, and he went to bed without a decent dinner. Perhaps he’ll eat better tomorrow (nope!). He and Lisa got to have some quality Mommy-Josh time during bath time and bed time, but Lisa, not yet recovered from the pregnancy, cannot be firm with Josh like you must be. So, I, the enforcer, had to finish the job.

William and I bonded tonight while I was on the ‘net and reading. He slept in my arms the entire time. Lisa and I shared desert and tea and read The Screwtape Letters. And now, I’m preparing to be off to sleep.

But the point of this whole post is to show that I have all these things, a lot of which is not fun, but none of which I’d abandon. This is being in love - often it’s retrospective more than in the moment - and I cherish every moment of it. And above all, I thank God for it. I cannot imagine how else I could have come by it all. How fortunate and blessed I am… I am so not worthy of it.

The Road I Travel is slow going and without a lot of details… but I suppose, that’s the way it is in general. It’s important though to understand at the very least my feelings and my thoughts on how it is I am where I am today instead of just knowing that I am here. It’s an attempt, though feeble and perhaps ultimately fruitless, at avoiding a label. Labels are destructive and dehumanizing. It’s part of how the Nazi’s brainwashed Germany into killing “Jews” and not Jewish people. If I merely subscribe to allowing myself being labeled without some form of explanation, my road is lost on all those I encounter for all they will see is the label. I, like the rest of us, am more than a label - I am a person and hope to be treated with the dignity that accords.

Yet, it is also curious how willingly people will subscribe to labels. They welcome being treated and talked to as a thing and not a person. I suppose, perhaps, that it may be so that they can shirk responsibility for what it is they cling to - “I’m just saying that’s what my religion says. Tough cookies for you if you want me to talk about it.” Or perhaps they truly are certain that the label is representative of all that they are - but that’s a tough pill to swallow for the rest of us (or at least me) I think. I don’t dislike people who identify themselves as or with a label; they just frustrate me because sometimes (if not all the time) they deliberately have nothing personal to say.

Certainly labels and categories have their place concerning our ideas about people. It forms the basis of our identity with people and how we talk to people. But the role of the label is diminished in active relationships and active dialog, and that’s what I’m trying to build in some way here.

If I can encourage you to be more than a label, then maybe Coming Clean about The Road I Travel isn’t as fruitless as I think it might ultimately be.

I’ve spent the past two evenings with my eldest son at the park. It has been beautiful both nights.

The sun was setting behind the dam, painting the low-hanging feathered clouds pink, and setting the lake aflame with reflective fire. Josh swung back and forth, taking it all in, pointing out birds, dogs, the sky, and the moon.

Later as we ran through the park between trees, slopes, and the gazebo, Josh would stop and gaze upward pointing at the moon. I snuck up behind him and lifted him quickly in the direction of the moon saying, “I’ll throw you up to the moon!” Josh stiffened with nervous excitement. He looked at me with an anxious yet uncertain smile and said “I scared! I scared!” This both warmed and amused me as Josh was obviously telling me something personal and heart felt - which is not the norm in a two year old’s life. So we settled for trying to grab the moon and added jumping later to aid our efforts.

Josh also learned these nights to slide down the slide like a rocket as well as how to throw your arms wide and back and to scream as you run down a slope. The latter made for a lot of excitement, especially once I added snatching and a bit of wrestling to the game.

As full night drew near, we climbed back into the van and headed home pretty well tired out. These are two special days - days unlike the many I get to have with Josh. I doubt I’ll forget them, but I’m writing them down to make sure. Perhaps one day he’ll find them, and they’ll rise a memory or two to him as well.

Roger Said:
I notice that people always put “the end” last. Maybe you should write a little something about that…

The thing about “The End” is not so much that it is last as much as it is unfairly considered final.

Consider, for a moment, the word “Amen”. It ends just about every prayer you’ve ever heard. It’s the last word in the Bible. But when we reach it, we don’t just stand around blinking at each other waiting for the world to go black… we go on.

So it is with “The End”, and as such both “Amen” and “The End” get a bad reputation. They are the death knell for what came previously. The exposition, growth, and beauty that came before can no longer continue. You have to now close the book and move on with a kind of emptiness that nothing more will be of what lies on the pages.

But is it really so?

I think part of the hang up with “The End” (as well as “Amen” …and anything else conclusive) is the sense of dying that is projected by the thought. We have reached the terminating point, and what was is ceasing to go further. But that’s just a tad bit unfair, isn’t it?

“The End” should be seen as the culmination point - the point at which all that has been said must now be actualized in some sense. In stories of fiction, a moral should be considered from the story. In Scripture, the lessons should be further pondered and certainly lived. In life as we know it, our being will transcend into our immortal reality as God sees fit. The End is never truly an end at all, but an unknown beginning that continues and makes good of what came before.

So, while we all relish the intellectual engagement of a good book, a good life, or a good blog post, we should not fear, not be depressed, nor otherwise be let down by the end of it, but we should instead look forward to the good that has come from it and, more importantly, will proceed from it. If we do not carry it on into a new life, then the end is truly a terrifying thing.

How’s that, Roger?