Tall Monastic Guy

colonizing joy

I was reminded this week of a poignant experience I had two years ago while hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park. While staying in Estes Park the boys were at an all day camp so I took the opportunity to take off on a solo 20 mile hike.

It was the first week of June in the high country which means the hills were alive with the sound of music – birds chirping, wildflowers bursting with color, the smell of pine purified air. It was the beginning of the pandemic so everything was crisper and cleaner due to a lack of car and foot traffic.

About a mile or two into the hike I paused and allowed myself to be embraced by all the granduer and gratitude that surrounded me. It was one of those moments where the bliss and justice of the natural world sneaks up and gives you the hug you didn’t know you needed.

And then…

An inner crisis. Something inside me began contriving and uncomfortably forcing theology and bible verses into the scene and just like that the sacred presence got sucked out of the moment. All those June mountain scents and scenes with a distinct divine power all their own became rudely hijacked and replaced by the musty stench of a seminary library or an old church basement.

Something inside of me felt held against my will by an evangelical culture I thought I had left far behind. A culture where a Bible verse or worship hymn had to be shoehorned into every occasion without consent in order for it to have any perceived value.

Before I took my next step on the trail I determined right then and there to a) be kind to myself regarding what just happened and b) return to all those bliss filled scents that my body found so genuinely pleasurable.

The moment was already enough. Joy was already doing what genuine joy does, pulsing its way from my beating heart throughout the rest of the cells in my body.

In that moment those old fundamentalist tapes felt like an assault like a terrorist attack on pure human joy which throughout my life has felt so terribly elusive.

Like Instagramming all meaning out of the moment and assigning value to it based on a level of certain satisfactory feedback, this is the impact of a constricting religion made in the image of the empire.

And it’s the very essence of colonization.

“Everything is possessed of personality, only different from us in form. Knowledge is inherent in all things. The world is a library, and it’s books are the stones, leaves, grass, brooks, and the birds and animals that share, alike with us, the storms and blessings of earth."

--Luther Standing Bear, Lakota

Is it the shoes? A parable about infinite & finite time

Sometimes I dream
That he is me
You've got to see that's how I dream to be
I dream I move, I dream I groove
Like Mike
If I could Be Like Mike

These aren’t just lyrics to a popular Gatorade commercial. It was more like a soothing lullaby which embodied the dreams and desires of so many coming of age young men of the 1990’s. Race, ethnicity, urban, rural, socio-economic, tall-short… didn’t matter. Mike was our icon. He defined the culture. The closer you could get to Mike, the closer you came to meaning.

The reality was, unless you’re me, you’re not going to be 6 foot 6 inches tall. And you’re never gonna have the unstoppable elbow fade-away or drive the baseline and dunk over a 7 foot Ewing or Mourning. You knew you’d never fill those shoes.

But you could wear those shoes.

When I was 18 years of age - a senior in high school - it was the 11’s. The Jordan 11’s were not just the next version of Air Jordan sneakers they were the ones he wore on his comeback tour after rudely teasing us with the minor league baseball hiatus. These were the one’s that said, “I am back. And I’m here to make a statement.”

I was modest kid. My senior season I was content wearing the shoe that was issued to the entire team and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Until that fateful day I walked into Fair Oaks Mall and laid on eyes on the 11’s.

Just a few steps into that shoe store and I became so intoxicated, so drunk off that new shoe smell. And what I experienced next was a massive choir descending on a gleaming golden staircase as they sang the doxology in perfect harmony. The celestial beam of light from the heavens shone down on the only pair of footwear that ever mattered in the history of footwear. My mouth was on the floor when I heard the voice say, “clean up in aisle 3” as a mop was required to clean up my drool.

My trance was interrupted when a store employee who turned out to be a friend of mine walked up beside me and together we folded our arms and gawked at the shoe for a few minutes and he listened to me lament that the $135 price tag was simply beyond my reach. And then he whispered those words dripping with honey and hope, “You know I could get you my employee discount right? That’d drop it down to $90.”

That’s $45 less. Instantly, I went from fantasy mode to practicality mode. This could happen.

I dream I move
I dream I groove
Like Mike
If I could Be Like Mike

So, I went home talked it over with dad. I couldn’t squeeze the cheddar out of his wallet but I did get that all important blessing to use my hard earned lumber yard summer job money to make the purchase.

I was now floating a few inches off the earth in possession of the coveted Air Jordan 11’s.

Elite & envied, when I slipped on these shoes the world moved in slow motion with a Guns & Roses or LL Cool J soundtrack.

My 11’s made their debut on the night of the homecoming game. I ended up playing about 5 games in those magic shoes.

But this parable ends with a thud.

After playing about 5 games, I noticed one day that Steve Campbell was walking down the hall in a pair of 11’s. And that’s fine. I didn’t need to be the only person wearing them. But within just a few seconds I began to question whether or not I had locked my varsity room locker. So, I run down to the gym and into the varsity locker room. Sure enough, my locker was propped wide open and my 11’s were gone.

Did Steve Campbell take my shoes? I mustered up the courage to ask him. He said no. He was the type of guy who would steal your shoes.

SO… Here’s what I’m faced with from the finite perspective of an eighteen year old:

It comes down to an either/or choice between:

1. Fight Steve Campbell for my shoes. Perform before the audience of my peers. Help them understand I’m a worth my salt. I’m a stud. You don’t mess with me etc.
2. With more than a dose of shame, just let it go. You live with the lingering self-questioning, “Am I too soft? Can I not stand up for myself?”

And then there’s the infinite perspective which really only comes into focus after (at least) 26 years of processing. From the perspective of infinite time there’s an infinite number of angles through which to process a parable. Here are just a few:

• Transformative Questions – Sitting with these questions is a major element of sacred time. Questions like… What does it mean to “own” something? How do property and possessions truly shape us? How does ownership impact our perspective on sacred and finite time? What does it mean that Michael Jordan is one of the primary influences on my life, my mannerisms, my desires? (25 years later Mike is a billionaire and I work for Network/Urban Mercy) How much do I crave an audience? How much do I crave the approval of others? But the main question when it comes to my capacity to step into and see through the lens of sacred time – What does it mean to own something?

• Your life is preparation for your life. What is taking place right now in your life is not just about the present but it draws from the past and projects into the future. Living with an understanding that Your Life is Preparation for Your Life is what it means to live in sacred time.The young man in the parable wouldn’t only decide to not fight the finite battle over shoes, he’d quit playing the finite game that he was so passionate about and his passion would turn toward something very different in the near future. The seeds for this very piece of writing were planted through the experience of having a coveted iconic possession taken away from him. (Of course, at the time, he thought the world was ending!)

As it relates to this particular parable and a perspective on infinite or sacred time,

• How might one use an iconic symbol in a way that produces redemption & life into the sacred future? How might we transfigure an iconic cultural finite object into a subject for redemptive purposes? Like the author of Mark’s gospel…

 Mark 1:1 – The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah.

That phrase, good news, was used only by Ceasar and the Roman empire. It practically had a trademark symbol on it like a pair of Nike shoes. Ceasar is exclusively the one who uses the phrase, Good News, and he used the phrase good news whenever there was a military conquest of another territory. So, whenever Rome increased their property and possessions by colonizing and conquering a rival, Ceasar would announce “good news” throughout the empire.

Another interesting note, the name, Mark, as in the gospel of Mark, means war, and we begin to notice that through Mark’s language he’s stealing from the rich to communicate to the poor. We learn that Mark is at war with the empire. And his favorite weapon of war was using the empire’s language against them. Mark also used the phrase “Kingdom of Heaven” or “Kingdom of God” which was language used to subverting the empire’s iconic symbolic cultural language for a different end.

Think Banksy’s graffiti or hip-hops tradition of sampling other music or even the simple act of shopping at a second-hand clothing store. There are ways to play the finite games of the empire from an entirely different infinite perspective.

When it comes to the tale of the missing Jordan 11’s, from a finite perspective it’s just a silly and somewhat sad story of teenage acquisition and loss.

From an infinite perspective, stories like these become parables worth sharing again and again. They are verbs rather than nouns with a myriad of meanings that ripple out and relate to new circumstances throughout the infinite and sacred future.

There's ALWAYS MORE to the story. It was never just about the shoes. 

It's about time

"Time isn’t the main thing. It’s the only thing." ~ Miles Davis

Last Friday was a very ordinary Friday but a day that revealed two very different versions of time.

Version number one:

I’m stuck in the waiting area at the Honda dealership to get an oil change and that oil change turned into a transmission and brake fluid change. And one hour’s worth of work turned into three plus hours.

I enjoyed a nice burst of productivity for about an hour and half but then it became purgatory-like and the minutes became hours. The minutes turned into decades.

Version number two:

By noon, I finally get the car back in time to make it to my 1pm meeting with Matt. Matt lived in a dorm in the middle of the hallway and I at the very end of the second floor of Wright Hall during the 96/97 school year of Huntington College. We knew each other’s name and that was about it. But in the past five years we began to connect and strongly resonate with one another via social media and as Matt planned to visit Colorado for vacation, we scheduled some intentional time to connect. Right off the jump, we connected so easily and on so many different aspects of life. It was a wonderful two and half hour conversation that felt like it lasted 15 minutes.   

Time behaves like that. Usually, we live out of version one or finite time. But on occasion we unexpectedly slip into version two - infinite or sacred time.

It's so difficult to see that other version of time because our economy and culture operates on the fuel of speed within the realm of the finite. In this realm, time is money and words like “efficiency,” “bottom line,” and “productivity” are the common vernacular and the idea of any form of waiting is to be avoided at all cost.

It’s hard to see beyond the confines of capitalism in this finite and competitive dimension. It makes the restrictions placed on us by a pandemic feel absolutely impossible. It causes fractured relationships to feel beyond repair. Within this dimension of time resolution, healing, or reconciliation should materialize asap or it’s never gonna happen.

With all this in mind, I’ve recently returned to an ancient story in the book of Genesis. The story follows the life of a man who grows up in a very blended and very dysfunctional family of origin. The man, whose name is Joseph, has the ability to move in and out of sacred time and the reader recognizes this through Joseph’s own special visions and his ability to interpret the special visions of others.

In living with this unique way of seeing, Joseph seems to hear and accept a divine message that goes like this, “It’s just not time yet.”

In the story, Joseph has visions that make no logical sense within the realm of finitude.

His first vision makes no sense in the moment, makes him look like a pretentious tool, and places him in bad standing with his family. That vision would eventually become a reality but not until 25 meandering years after receiving it.

It wasn’t time yet.

He remains open to these wild visions. He’d have another one that would help him interpret Pharoah’s vision but that one, regarding a coming famine, wouldn’t make sense until 7 years down the road of finite time.

It wasn’t time yet.

The busted relationship between he and his brothers created an intense longing within the family for healing and reconciliation but the healing wouldn’t happen until 30 years after the initial fracture.

It just wasn’t time yet.

More often than not the thing we want to see resolved or healed doesn’t happen when we think we want it to and sometimes we consider it a lost cause when in reality, it’s. just. not. time. yet.

13.8 billion years ago is the approximate age of our universe.

4.5 billion is the approximate age of our planet.

But in terms of us humans showing up on the scene, up until about 300,000 years ago there was a lot of “it’s just not time yet.” In other words, in regard to infinite sacred time, our species just showed up a few seconds ago.

So, we hold these longings - these aches.

For a cleaner earth.

For healing of deep social wounds.

For our minds to no longer be pre-occupied with the threat of a virus.

And perhaps above all, for personal fractured relationships to be mended and sewed back together.

Stepping back and stepping toward sacred time allows us to see and experience divine provision even in the midst of famine, chaos, and crisis.

So, some of the questions were left with go like this:

• Can we trust that there’s another dimension of time beyond just the finite urgency of the moment?
• Can we see divine provision now in this unimaginable moment of chaos?
• Can we, like Joseph, trust the reality that there’s always more to the story?  

In sacred time, there's always more to the story. 

Dogmatism, Drunks, and Death

In March of this year I decided it was time for me to explore a space of abstinence from alcohol. Throughout the madness of 2020 I got to the point of offering myself an extravagant amount of permission to have a drink or three on most evenings.

I consumed enough bourbon to the point where my attention and intention to my family and parishioners felt questionable at best. And I’m sure it didn’t help the growing inflation rate of the spare tire around my mid-section.

I decided it was time to try my hand at alcoholics anonymous. I decided on a local group, settled past the stigmas and began drinking coffee out of a Styrofoam cup while huddling up with drunks in a musty smelling church basement.

In all honesty, in that moment, it was better than good. The decision to not drink barely felt like a challenge and walking into a meeting where I felt the freedom to be an ordinary knucklehead like everyone else felt like a new angle on salvation.  

I was over six weeks into this newfound sobriety when my healthy 77 year old dad got body slammed by Covid-19 and died quite suddenly. My memory of playing nine holes of golf with him just one month prior was still so fresh. How does anyone prepare for something like this?

Everything is just fine

Zach is not alright and he may never be alright. Can I live with that?

About every six weeks, Zach loses all sense of meaning or reasons to exist, so he leaves the planet via vodka or whiskey. A bender that renders him a stammering stumbling oozing mess of humanity that lasts sometimes up to a month.

He’s on one of those now. Trying like hell to kill himself by diving into a liquor infested pool.

He was so appreciative to see me yesterday afternoon and gladly plopped himself down on the curb near his encampment to hang with me. It was cold but we faced the warm afternoon sun.

He slurred Psalms and philosophy from memory and spouted vernacular that went way over my head.

That's Zach. Poet. Philosopher.  Diplomat. Kind and thoughtful thirty-five year old friend who currently smells of vomit and vodka.

An old soul to say the least.

We sat there.

What do I say?

I want to fix it.

Why?

Because this is uncertain and unknown and I hate not feeling in control of outcomes.

We sat there meandering around the idea and desire of suicide.

He grabbed my arm desperately begging me to kill him right then and there. I awkwardly laugh at his request.

Hand still gripping my arm he warned me that it was time to scream. "Go for it." 

Fuuuuuccckkkk!!! Times four.

Then we both settled down a bit, remaining there in the chilled air and warm sun holding hands as if we were 3 or 93.

Other than his jaw making an occasional disturbing grinding noise, we sat there in the silence of East Colfax.

My seminary training didn’t prepare me for these moments. Theory… academics… book smarts… mostly all out the fast moving car window. This is not fixable.

We rested our heads on the curb behind us.

This is not fixable. I cannot dominate or subdue this moment.

I am not in control.

Driving home last night I thought about my attachment to feeling like things are alright. For everything to be fine. To feel in control. Like a white Christian cisgendered male does.

Zach is not alright. So many people, so many situations are not alright. And justice certainly needs to be brought to the table. But the question for me is this, can I sit in the chilly sun of uncertainty with Zach in the reality that things are not alright. Can I live with that?

Can I face my own addictions to certainty, control, and alrightness to the point where I can sit with him, scream with him… let him be accompanied in his current state of humanity without needing to fix him?

Where’s the hope in that?

It’s there. No, it’s there. There were moments of laughter and making light of death. Hope was in the clasping of our frozen hands. Hope was in embodiment and relationship.

Stop trying to colonize, dominate, and subdue the moment. Relax into the terror of being out of control. And just sit there in friendship.

Zach.   

(Photo by Katy Owens, @katyyyowens)

Now's the time to waste your time

I’ll never forget my first encounter with civil rights icon Vincent Harding. I’m helping organize a conference and Dr. Harding was up next as our featured speaker. It was my role to welcome him, direct him to the stage, and introduce him. As he walked in the door of the building, we made our acquaintance. I was much taller than him so he gently pulled my arm down so we could meet at eye level. Still holding my arm, not sternly but affectionately, he just stood there and said, “Ryan, tell me about yourself.”

I said, “Well, Mr. Harding, I’d love to spend time with you after the session, but…”

He interrupted, “Ryan, don’t worry. Tell me who you are. Are you married? Do you have children? Share with me.”

An invitation to waste time. To set my urgent agenda to the side and stand there with Presence.

The Living Presence came and stood there, calling as at other times, “Samuel! Samuel!”

These are words from 1 Samuel 3: 10.

The story teller said that in those days a word from the Living Presence was rare and no one had much vision for God’s heart.

God came and just stood there.

Not fixing anything. Just standing there beckoning for nearness, calling for relationship. An encounter with divine intimacy. 

It’s the same theme at the very beginning of the creation poetry in Genesis, the earth was formless and void, darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

The deep waters was ancient symbolism for chaos. Do we know what chaos feels like? And the word hover in the original language? Not like the over-bearing mother imagery of hover, but instead a nurturing compassionate presence. Just standing there inviting nearness and companionship.

Apparently, this is God's way and apparently it becomes more poignant the more chaotic and distant things feel. 

Wasting time like this feels inefficient.

Inefficient. Unproductive. Two words introduced into our language during the industrial revolution. Words that describe machinery not human relationship.

Thank God for saints like Vincent Harding. 

And Fred Rogers. 

Mr. Rogers Neighborhood pulled me in as a child. The miracle of tying shoes, feeding gold fish, and playing with puppets. He just stood there paying attention to the vulnerable heart of a child. To my heart. 

At some point, that all became so silly, kinda stupid, beneath me, a colossal waste of time.

And this is the tragedy. The real chaos begins to set in when wasting time in relational connection becomes beneath us. 

I believe right now, these times, qualify as chaos. As a time when the word of the Living Presence feels rare. The pavement beneath our feet is as uneven and unstable as ever. 

So, what if now is the moment to re-learn how to tie our shoes and feed the gold fish. Maybe, now is the time to allow yourself to be pulled further down to eye level. And just stand there wasting time recognizing that the One who beckons is already hanging there, standing there, hovering, calling for your sacred companionship.  

Letting go of slave holder religion

For those of us that grew up in the bubble of Christian Pleasantville, we experience a strange compulsion to divinize and Christianize everything we see. Everytime we experience something we feel the need to shoehorn our pre-conceived theological conditioning into it and shape it into something that fits what we’ve been taught.

Have you ever had the compulsion to say things like, “Isn’t God good?” and yet right after it leaves your mouth you wonder where that came from and whether you actually meant it?

Or maybe you experience something and immediately you seek to find a biblical parallel or Sunday School story that allows the moment to make sense to you?

Among all the recent stories of racism, systemic oppression, and a twisted biased outlook of law and order it’s time for the church to examine the ways we shoehorn Christian culture into everything we experience. Believe it or not, this pattern of thinking within the church lays the foundation of the societal evils of racism.

When we shoehorn our theology into all of our experiences seeking to christianize them we end up with nothing less than slave holder religion. We sanitize and adjust the narrative to appease our religious perceptions and become tuned to our psychological frequency.

Unknown worlds trigger our anxiety and fear. Just like pilgrims entering a new world we’re often told there may be savages that will need to be eliminated or assimilated. This is how psychology works. It’s all about self-protection and preservation.

This is what drove the mystic Meister Eckhart to pray, “God I pray to rid me of God.”

This is the prayer that reveals the powerful recognition that there’s no concept of God that can actually contain God.

There’s no concept of the present moment that can actually contain the infinite depth of meaning contained within the present moment.

I’m not saying don’t be a Christian.

I’m saying be curious. Sadly, curiosity and Christianity don’t often show up in the same room together.

Be a learner. Stop pretending you have the answers or slipping out of the discomfort when you realize you don’t.

May we have the courage to let go of God which in reality is the work of liberation from slave holder religion.

Symptoms & Systems

Symptoms make us nervous… He’s coughing! She has a runny nose or a fever! Stay away! They could be contagious!

Behaviorial symptoms have always made us nervous. He looks at porn! She drinks too much! They over spend! He over eats! Stay away from those unhealthy people! They could be contagious!  

I think we'd all agree that external symptoms are typically an indicator that something deeper is going on in an individual.

The external symptoms of societal groups also make us nervous and provoke our judgements. That group is stealing our jobs! Those people over there are always seeking free hand outs! Why are they always commiting crimes? Stay away from those people! (Or lock them up, deport them, etc.)

We point fingers and cast judgment on both individuals as well as entire societal groups when we see external symptoms that make us uncomfortable.

Our default is to fixate on symptoms rather than examining the deeper source of the pain - the system.

I’m not much of a car guy. All I know is when I hear a symptom that makes me uncomfortable such as a rattle here or clankity clank there, I make an appointment with a professional who understands how the system underneath the symptom operates.

Human diagnostics are similar. The external symptom is always pointing to something deeper.

Jesus refered to external symptoms using the metaphor of a cup. In speaking about the pious ones who judge others, he spoke of the outside of their cup being clean (free of symptoms) while the inside of the cup (the system) was filthy.

You blind Pharisee! First wash the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will become clean, too. - Matthew 23:26

For the Pharisee, the internal workings of their system was a disgusting mess. If they were to dig deeper and investigate why the inside of their cup was so dirty, they would trace it back to deep trauma - the pain of war, slavery, and suffering oppression generation after generation. In response to the trauma, they developed a religious ideology as a coping strategy to survive. It’s what we do. Our coping strategies don’t typically start out as toxic but when left unexamined, they eventually - like a virus - take on a life of their own. The unexamined ego runs wild and the inside of the cup never really gets diagnosed or properly addressed. 

This is how both individuals and societies operate. 

Symptoms – the wonky behaviors – don't just happen. They stem from the system that creates them.

Systems - the interior condition of the cup, must be carefully and prayerfully examined. What was the pain or trauma at the source of the issue? What circumstances and responses allowed it to come to this? 

And whether we're speaking of individuals or societies, the work of examination begins with listening with the ear of our heart. Can we allow both individuals and societies to honestly share their stories while we listen with care and compassion? Eventually, we'll ask and address the deeper questions that allow us to see the source of the pain.  

Symptoms whether physically or spiritually are not to be ignored, but the invitation is to be present, to listen, and ask the deeper questions that reveal the foundational system that lies beneath it all.  

The Tao of Todd: the practice of reciprocal humiliation

As I prep our little sanctuary and prepare to preach, Todd arrives an hour early to charge his cell phone, grab some brief relief from the streets, and hustle me out of five bucks.

He begins the hustle process by telling me he’s been sober and that he went to two AA meetings in a row the day before. I'm beginning to recognize Todd’s warm-up act. It’s a predictable presentation within our community. “I’ve been really good man! … (now in a much lower voice) Hey, if I pick up trash on the property are you able to give me five bucks to get a SubWay sammich?”

Todd goes outside and picks up trash for ten minutes. I reach for my wallet and slip him five.

Apparently, that’s the salvation he was looking for so he leaves before my sermon starts.

You may ask, "Will Todd use those five bucks for high octane beer and a pack of cigarettes?" Probably.

"Don’t you feel taken advantage of in relationships like these?"

Stories like these affirm the misgivings and cynicism in the minds of those who maintain a safe distance and prejudice toward the poor. This distance allows folks like the DPD officer who speaking of Denver’s chronically homeless recently said to me, “They’re all the same.”

Our perception of people like Todd becomes so much more complex the further out and deeper down the relationship goes.

Early one morning two years ago, Todd was hit by a city bus. While it didn’t kill him, he did break his pelvis and was sent to a rehab facility for a month. A vulture in the form of a lawyer caught wind of his story and sued the city, eventually winning Todd $4,500.

“Ryan, this is the most money I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Despite my best counsel, the money vaporized within weeks on hotels, booze, and taking his lady friend to a few meals at the most extravagant restaurant he could imagine, Applebees.

In the midst of all that lavish spending, Todd stopped in on a Tuesday last fall to hand deliver a most thoughtful gift, a massive gold ring with a cross on it. “I saw that at the pawn shop and thought of you and everything you done for me, man.” He handed me that ring with a toothless yet dignified smile and the type of deep pride that makes you stand up real straight.

So, do I feel taken advantage of when Todd hustles 5 bucks from me before church? Of course I do! It’s humiliating to feel swindled. I hate feeling bamboozled just as much as anyone. But in this relationship in particular, it’s important for me to recognize Todd and I share in the humiliation. This is the divine gift of reciprocal humiliation.

Of course, you don’t want to feel taken advantage of. Nobody does. But when you’re homeless, broke, toothless, uneducated, mentally ill, saturated in PTSD and addiction you earn a daily PhD in humiliation. The question we have to ask ourselves is this: “Am I able to swallow a teaspoon of humiliation in order to be in friendship with someone who is drowning in it?”

These relationships of mutual humiliation stretch the muscles of our soul. Middle class ethical and moral standards which were once rigid and immovable can become increasingly nimble in relationships with friends like Todd.

From the ground I’m standing on my standards want more for Todd. I’d love to see him become housed, healthy, and learn to operate with honesty and class. But what if this is as good as it gets for him on this side of heaven? Am I able to reside in that tension? Is it possible to rest in that reality?

Are we willing to expand our definition of integrity for the sake of loving who Jesus referred to as the least of our brothers and sisters? Am I willing to suffer the humiliation necessary to endure this friendship?

These are the questions we must square up with if we want any skin in the game of healing the gross lacerations between the rich and the poor.

The past three years is the longest duration Todd has resided in one place and I consider it a huge honor that he’s spent that time with us. A career hitchhiker and contract dishwasher, due to mental illness and attachment to booze Todd has spent his entire life migrating from town to town across America. Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Kansas, Wyoming, Louisiana, Texas, and Montana… Todd’s been everywhere man. But what a divine gift that he sees something in us that is worth the hustle and intimate familial exchange of humiliation.

deep water - When heroes, parents, and Jesus go away.

I recently lost a hero of mine to Parkinson’s Disease. I was introduced to John in 2008 during a vulnerable season when I was desperately seeking a guide to help me see the reality of God’s presence among the poor. About 5 years into our friendship John began the ugly process of dying but with a degenerative disease like Parkinson's it felt almost impossible to fully face it due to its slow cruelly subtle nature of breaking the man down.  

But when I finally received that call last week I felt the words of the Apostle Peter echoing in my soul, “Never, Lord, this can’t ever happen to you!”

John was like a real hero for me.

Real heroes never ask or require you to worship them. Jesus Christ never once requested his followers to do that shit. Heroes can be cool, but hero worship is not.

Real heroes are real human - trustworthy with deep character but scandalously human.

Real heroes creatively invite you to be the truest most soul-healthy version of you.

Real heroes do their best to prepare you for what lies ahead.

Being human means eventually facing the temporal and limited nature of our heroes. It’ll break you open, take you to the end of yourself, and leave you with a million questions. When we watch our heroes die a part of us dies too.  

I’ve had so many conversations in recent years with friends who have lost a hero or a parent through their physical deaths or a painfully severed relationship. In many of these situations the words from the good therapists (and I’ve uttered them too) sound something like, “It’s now time to begin parenting yourself.”

A brutal reality.

I believe Jesus began his ministry by teaching his students to begin parenting themselves. When Jesus began his healing work he observed some ordinary fisherman doing what they do. Business was not good so Jesus offered some radical advice that went like this, “Go over there. Try the deeper waters.” They caught so many fish their nets began to tear.

Go further out and deeper down. That’s it. That’s all he said. Break out of your old routines and comfort zones. Move beyond the safe and familiar places. The good stuff is in the deep water.

In the shallows is where we outsource our true self on to the people we admire. The shallows is where our sense of identity is tied to external attachments that teach us nothing about who we really are or could be.

The deep water is scary.

Heroes go away. Parents go away. Jesus goes away. It’s terrible. Further from the familiar shore and out in the deeper more dangerous waters. 

It's terrible but it's necessary. 

Because that's where the good stuff is.