.

As an answer to the first question in the video*, “What is required to be fully present in each moment, to notice the now?”, I have a few practical thoughts. These are a few things that I have worked on and found varying levels of success.

I’m able to be more present in the moment when I…

1. Put my eyes on my surroundings. It’s easy to keep my head down, plotting my next few steps, deep in thought about some worry or plan or situation. I don’t have the research to back this up, but I’d guess that something chemical happens in the brain when we look up and notice our surroundings.

2. Put my eyes on the people I am with. I also try to pay attention to how often I look at my friends in the eyes, not to creep them out, but to truly notice them and hear what they are saying to me. It makes a difference when I do that. More importantly, I want to do this with my wife and my son. It’s amazing how I could be home for 30 minutes or an hour and suddenly realize that I haven’t looked at either of their faces.

3. Replace grasping with intentional breathing. In my more chaotic days, when stress levels are at maximum, and the task list is beyond reasonable, I find myself grasping for relief.  Often it’s food that I can most easily access, so I grasp for that unnecessary snack. It isn’t that snacking is inherently wrong, but I know when I’m using it like a chain smoker would use a cigarette. To grasp at something is an almost an act of panic. There is no mindfulness in grasping for a bag of potato chips and eating half of the contents.

This last one is the most difficult for me, but when I get it right it means that I stopped what I was doing and closed my eyes and focused entirely on my breath for 5 minutes or more.  Occasionally I’ve used a short phrase from Scripture that I whisper as I exhale. I would do well to add that element more often. But I’ve discovered that something happens to the chaos within when the moment is simplified to breathing.

I’ll spend the rest of my life learning not to miss out on now and be mindful of the present, knowing that sometimes it is a moment, as Buechner put it, ”that is trying to open up your whole life.”

 *I’ve been experimenting with video lately and will be posting all video content at http://lookingforquestions.com.  That blog is primarily focused on the value of questions and learning to ask the right ones and will serve as a repository for any video I create, even if I don’t post it here. I actually owned lookingforquestions.com a few years ago and originally wanted to do this with it, so I’m looking forward to what develops!

Last week, I was reading Richard Rohr’s book, On the Threshold of Transformation: Daily Meditations for Men, and came across something that has been a theme in my life, though not one I’ve always allowed to play out:

Every man wants to discover something, to find what is missing here by journeying to a new place. We forget that we take the same old self to the new place

Sometimes we refer to this as the geographical solution, the idea that we can solve our problems through an experience far from home. Encounters with the unfamiliar can indeed open new possibilities and perspectives-but only if they break through our filters and actually change us. New experiences are more often diversionary tactics.

For a long time now, I’ve wanted to move to Oregon.  My wife and I visited there on a vacation a few years ago, and I’ve never been able to get the scent of the Oregon air out of my psyche.*  What’s interesting is that whenever times get especially stressful, the state of Oregon comes up at some point, even if it’s in jest.  ”Let’s just pack up and move to Oregon,” we’ll say.

Lately, we’ve struggled with our church attendance at St. Bartholomew’s.  We love St. B’s (as it’s affectionately known), but have found ourselves talking about looking for a new church home because of some challenges that have made it difficult to get to church.  But once we thought through it, we realized that those same challenges would exist no matter where we go.

Wow.  It appears that I am the problem.

Whether it be a reliance on new experiences or the hope for a change in location, we take our baggage with us wherever we go.  Trying to find a new geographical location to live out our neurosis usually only gives us a different backdrop for the script to play out.

Along with some other emphases for Lent, I’m inviting God’s change in me while I stay where I am.  Instead of looking for new experiences and a change of scenery, I am looking for God in the scenery right before my eyes.

.

*The premiere of the new television show, Portlandia, hasn’t changed this.  However, I can’t stop watching that show.  It’s like a train wreck I can’t look away from, but in this case the train was filled with kittens and puppies.

Sleep, sleep tonight
And may your dreams be realized.
If the thunder cloud passes rain
So let it rain, rain down on him.
So let it be.
So let it be.

Sleep, sleep tonight
And may your dreams be realized.
If the thunder cloud passes rain
So let it rain, let it rain
Rain down on him.

Lyrics by U2

I’m having one of those moments when I keep hearing or reading the same theme repeatedly, then at some point I snap out of my stupor and acknowledge the pattern.

On Epiphany Sunday last week, Father Jerry asked a question that has followed me around this week:

“What if you asked a trustworthy friend to follow you around for 24 hours and give you an assessment of your receptiveness to God during an ordinary day?”

I would not be able to pull that off, because I would end up sabotaging the whole thing by putting my best foot forward. However, it has me thinking about these ordinary times and asking myself whether or not I have created more compartments in my life where I may or may not be living the life of a follower of Jesus.

Then, today’s message by Dixon forced us to consider the implications of our bodies as the temple of God. Does it not mean that we are Christ-ones first, before any other label or title? Our identity as Christians is an ultimate stamp of identity. All other titles and labels must be filtered through through that one; it’s not just one of many designations for who we are.

God is at work to remove the disconnect between our “Sunday morning lives” and our “Monday-Saturday” lives. This is his work of creating wholeness in us. Those dividers that we create to compartmentalize our lives work against that divine purpose.

The point where this ceases to be a nice theological theory is in the ways we create daily practice. For without the difficult work of creating an ongoing ordinary-life liturgy, we are actually creating an ongoing cycle of disappointment and internal division.

Epiphany celebrates the revelation of God in the form of his Son, Jesus. What better time to recognize that God is revealing himself, not just in the religious moments of our life, but in the ordinary ones, too.

I feel blue.

I have a cold.

I need to fix the ceiling fan.

I’m almost done with the 4th season of Lost.

The computer crashed.

I’m tired.

I’m just not feelin’ it right now.

I’d like one quick game of Halo.

I can’t decide which writing software to use.

My writing environment is not ideal.

These reasons not to write have been incredibly valuable to me lately as I’ve been in a writer’s slump (I’d call it writer’s block, but that imply that I sat down to write at some point since my last post).  But the real reason for this post is to determine if I actually WANT to write.  Apparently, I do. I’m glad I passed the test, because writing a blog post about reasons not to write is to risk never having the gumption to write again, because if I can’t pull this off, then I might as well close shop!

Whew!

Love of mine
Someday you will die
But I’ll be close behind
I’ll follow you into the dark
No blinding light,
Or tunnels to gates of white,
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark

If heaven and hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the “No”s on their vacancy signs
If there’s no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I’ll follow you into the dark

~ From I Will Follow You Into The Dark, by Death Cab for Cutie

A recent article in Christianity Today calls this a doomed romanticism:

The message of the song (and the album) is that life is short and difficult with no ultimate meaning, but if we can just huddle together, we may find some cure for our loneliness and despair. There is no heaven or hell, just the body heat of another mortal to keep us warm.

I hear Ecclesiastes in many of the songs from Death Cab’s album, Plans, where the above song is found.  I like the way it confronts me with the harsh possibility that this life is all we have. I need to have that possibility shoved in my face every now and again, just to provide some strengthening tension for the sinews of my faith.

Read Ecclesiastes 4 and consider the similarities to I Will Follow You Into The Dark:

The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh.

Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind.

Again, I saw vanity under the sun: one person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there is no end to all his toil, and his eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks, “For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?” This also is vanity and an unhappy business.

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!  Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Yes, the two passages are headed in completely different directions.  However, it makes me wonder if Death Cab’s “doomed romanticism” would benefit from following Solomon on his dark journey, to see if there are other possibilities beyond nihilism.

“Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.” (2:11 ESV)

There is something important to understand about this word, “meaningless” (הבל “hebel”) that has also been translated “vanity”.  If you care to know anything about what Solomon is saying in Ecclesiastes, this word hebel is the key.  According to Barnes’ Notes on the Bible, the word used here denotes something beyond a lack of meaning (I have a hard time believing that Solomon was a true nihilist). Hebel is a reference to that which:

“(1) passes away more or less quickly and completely;

(2) leaves either no result or no adequate result behind, and therefore

(3) fails to satisfy the mind of man, which naturally craves for something permanent and progressive: it is also applied to:

(4) idols, as contrasted with the Living, Eternal, and Almighty God, and, thus, in the Hebrew mind, it is connected with sin.” *

Solomon talks about the hebel of life “not with bitterness or scorn, but as a fact, which forced itself on him as he advanced in knowledge of men and things, and which he regards with sorrow and perplexity.”*  The word is meant to remind us of how temporal, not meaningless, our existence is.

I’m of the mind to get the message of Ecclesiastes all over me during the next month or two because I think it’s an important book.  All of us move through our lives wondering at some point if our lives really matter.  Solomon’s answer to that isn’t simple, but it is clear:

You will be gone tomorrow.

But you are here today, so live in this flash-in-the-pan existence with full reverence for God.

It’s the only way that being here today can matter.

* From Barnes’ Notes on the Bible, Public Domain. Found it here.

On Turning 40

I recently had a birthday and hit the big 4-0, so I want to reflect on this momentous milestone. I don’t connect well to the tired “over the hill” jokes that come along with this particular age, mostly because I don’t feel old. I don’t feel like I am over the hill, and I don’t regret my place on the timeline. Actually, it’s the opposite in a lot of ways because I like getting older. Plus, my life is abundant, by any measure. I have an amazing wife and son who both make every day a blessing, I don’t have any serious financial problems, and I am driven to try new things.

So forty is not a scary thing to me (I’ve had a number of people tell me that forty is the new thirty, so perhaps fifty will carry more of the “getting old” stigma).

Maybe a good way to approach this is to think of some of the most important things I’ve learned in the first forty years, even if I don’t always live them out.

1. My wife and son are gifts from God. If any venture causes me to begin a pattern of gradually ignoring them, then I am moving farther away from my most important calling.

2. I want to spend more energy to love my family well, instead of critiquing things they do or don’t do. This may sound like a no-brainer, but it doesn’t play out that way naturally. When we are hurt or disappointed by people we love, our tendency is to relive what has been done to us, creating a vortex of emotion that only taxes our own well being.

3. My voice may not be the best and most important interpretation of an idea or situation. This revelation is a big one, and almost never happens before someone is at least in their twenties. Let’s say it together because it is good practice: “I could be wrong on this.”

4. You can’t set a career path at 18 years old and think that you’ll be on it the rest of your life. I’m not much of an extrovert, so my first career choice of youth ministry was probably not carefully thought through. I envisioned myself teaching rooms full of teenagers, eager to hear what I had to say, and about the time they got bored, I would wow them with my abilities. Let’s say it together: “I was definitely wrong on this.” I know that there are people who are happy in doing one thing all their lives, but that is probably the exception. I take delight in the freedom to continually search for and discover work experiences that reach closer to my personal center.

5. Finding and living in community is one of the hardest things to do, but it’s worth the continual effort. I’m going to resist the temptation to say that the Church is the most frustrating organization on the planet. Any organization that has human people in it is a minefield of potential conflict and misunderstanding. That’s why those who avoid being well-connected in a community are fooling themselves to think that they’ll find one that doesn’t require personal risk. However, I’ve learned more than I can describe from the concentric community circles that I’m involved with. I grow and learn because I’m a part of those communities. Yes, I screw up and say the wrong thing more often than I’d like. Yes, I get frustrated with people doing things “I would never do.” But I am strengthened in the midst of all the unkept, awkward, messy interactions I have with the people I live life with.

As with the many other things I’m learning, I struggle to see the lessons above realized on a consistent basis. Sometimes that’s incredibly frustrating, especially since I’ve had forty years to get this figured out.

Perhaps “figuring it out” isn’t the point at all.