Monthly Archives: May 2009

A few thoughts from the morning meditation.

“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory…”  Hebrews 1:3

Reminds me of the Christ’s encouragement to let our lights shine, from Matthew 5.   I’m into verbs these days–the tension between being and doing notwithstanding–so I’m thinking, “to radiate.”  Merriam Webster online has it like this: “to send out in or as if in rays.”  The most striking thing about these definitions is the tension between the thing that is radiated, and the thing that radiates.  When I think of the sun radiating, I figure it has no choice.  It’s on fire, so to speak.  But the intentionality of “to send out” is surprising.  What does it mean if I have something to radiate and just don’t bother?  Again, Jesus:  “Let your light shine…”  The light is not ours to come up with…it is present, not of our own making, and frankly, we can take no credit for it.  We are not makers of light.  We are however, radiators.

Makes me think of heat.  Plus, what do you do with a busted radiator?

II Corinthians 5 has us reflecting God’s glory as Moses face did when he came down off the mountain.  I look at the folks I know, and if I was cynical, I’d say where’s all that glory?  But truth is, where is it not?

Let your light shine…

Implies that our primary potential action in relation to light is to shut it down.  That the natural thing is to close it off, refuse it, hide it, get out the basket to put it under.  So many of us spend our lives doing just that.  Fear, bad experiences, shame…light gets shuttered and clamped down.  Strange that light-shining seems so dangerous. But in a world that loves dark…

One final note:  I told two people yesterday that I’d found the meaning and purpose of life.   They thought I was kidding.  And perhaps I was.

But maybe not.  Or maybe it’s just a clue…

Time to write a book…

After watching The Diving Bell and The Butterfly a couple of weeks ago with my Wednesday film group, some questions came up that produced surprisingly vigorous discussion. If you don’t know the film, it’s the story of a major European magazine editor who has a cataclysmic brain event that leaves him paralyzed but for eye movement and a single eyelid that blinks on command. It is based on the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, famous French journalist and editor of Elle magazine, who at the age of 43 suffered a massive stroke that left him incapacitated physically, but quite intact inside. It’s a fascinating cinematic journey that begins exclusively from Bauby’s point of view (we even see one bad eyelid laced shut–from the inside) and roams through his early confusion to the lucidity he demonstrates in writing a book through a terribly cumbersome and time consuming process. His thought life is paramount, obviously, and a rather innocuous comment from one of our group members about “his imagination allowing him to escape from reality” lead us into a long, heated debate about what else…what is reality? And then on, of course, to the big question…

What is it that makes us human?

One friend feigned being wounded when I accused him of being a dualist. That’s it, we said, no movie next week, we’re getting out our Bibles. So there!

I get passionate about the Jewish idea of unity rather than the Greek idea of duality. My friend Jeffrey and I talk about the mind-body problem whenever we get together (which isn’t nearly enough), and fret over the difference in substance between the material and the immaterial, while marveling over the symbiotic connection between the two. What I get amped up about is the fact that some people argue for the “mere-ness” of the body, that it is “nothing more” than a container, say…a box for the really important part, the soul (or spirit – depending on who you’re talking to). And it’s a long way from this discussion to the banishment of the arts, but there is nothing “mere” about physical life, in my view. Paul is always brought out, the fact that he buffets his body to make it stay put when it’s supposed to, who will deliver me from the body of death, etc. And while that language seems to lend itself to the material-is-no-big-deal advocates, I argue that Paul is referring to the sin nature vs. the Godly-nature (I could say “spiritual nature” but I think that’s leads the wrong direction, too.) The sin nature expresses itself in both my material and immaterial parts, and when the Godly-nature is winning, it expresses itself in both the material and immaterial realms. When “I” battle myself in a Romans 7 sort of way, it’s two sides of Jeff at war, sure enough, but both sides have material and immaterial armies encased in the “me” that is both fighting and at stake.

The point for the artist is that when the body gets kicked into “mere-ness”, the whole notion of incarnation (read art-making, not to mention messiah-arrival) becomes denigrated. Yes, the body changes and sloughs off, but so do thoughts and emotions. The New Testament position is, as I read it, that one day, this current physical body will erode and give way to another body after a terribly inconvenient separation. But the notion of resurrection means that “I” will live again. God created human beings as spirits and bodies, and called us living beings. Without incarnation, whether earthly splendor or heavenly splendor (I Corinthians 15:40), is there a human being at all?

Gets me going…

Focus isn’t easy.  Brain science is telling us that effective multi-tasking is a bit of a myth.  Not that we can’t get multiple things done at the same time, but we’re beginning to learn that it decreases effectiveness across the board.  But we live in a world with a thousand sparkling possibilities, and to say one “yes” means to say a hundred and more “no’s”.   I’ve always struggled with this, but I in the past six months have gotten a pretty good look at it from a personal point of view.

In the past six months, I’ve lost over 20 pounds.  Not a huge thing, certainly, but it’s taught me something.  I kept thinking, “Oh…this is what focus looks like.”  Many other things have happened, many other tasks accomplished, but I had a particular goal in mind related to turning 50, so I worked really hard.  Why?  I don’t know why, but that’s not the point.  The point is that for whatever reason, my mind clamped down, and I determined to get it done.   And while I didn’t quite hit my midlife crisis (#42, but who’s counting?) goal, I came within spittin’ distance.

In July-August of 2007, I decided to finish a major draft of “Hunting Grace” if it killed me.   Focus.  And I did.

For the past 18 months, I’ve been focused on the life of the NW Church in Shoreline, and while it has been an amazing and gratifying experience, one of the things it’s taught me is that within that focus, the scope of the work has been too broad to be as effective as I (and the rest of the staff) need to be.  A church needs focus as well, and we’re still hunting it.   It’s better than it was, and the new preaching minister will help, but I know there are hard choices ahead.

Beyond that, there are hard choices for me as well.  I’m going to be acting in Taproot Theatre’s Enchanted April this fall, and will continue at the church at least through the end of the year.   At the same time, my mind is beginning to turn toward future writing, acting, and directing projects, and wondering what the focus of that work needs to be.  A few friends and I are meeting (albeit irregularly) talking about various theatrical possibilities, and the idea of shooting a film keeps running around in my head.   I have a couple of possible germs for stories, and then there is the art and faith book I’d write if I knew I only had a short time to live.

All that being said, these days I pray for God to lead me, to help me make the most of the time.   The NW Church experience was all Him (and will continue to be so) and now I wait for the word on the next bit of Kingdom work to focus on.

I’d take…”let there be lights…action…”

Here we are a month later, and it’s time to get back to work.  I wrote a long email yesterday to a student friend, and the words tumbling out called to me, and I found myself enjoying something I’d been missing.  So here I am again, scone in tummy and coffee aromas near, decidedly chasing down words that will reveal but not embarrass.

Lots has happened.  I watched my daughter’s brilliant turn as Lenny in Crimes of the Heart (Cincinnati), turned 50, wrote and shot a video for Willow Creek Community Church for their upcoming Leadership Summit (Chicago), finished up a certification through Mission Alive in Ministry Coaching (Dallas), and the Northwest Church has decided who will follow me in the pulpit.  I’ll wrap up the regular week-to-week preaching on August 30th, and then will be strictly used in relief.  However, I will continue (as of right now) on staff full-time handling worship, leadership development, and a few other things.

In the fall, I get to act a bit again, appearing in a small role in Taproot Theatre’s production of Enchanted April.   I’m excited to return to that world.  I did a bit of acting in the Willow shoot last week, and am fairly horrified to see what the camera captured.  I play a very irate Elder who is ballistic over a building project gone financially awry (“Do you know whose money is being wasted here?!”).  Oh, well, it’s done, so we’ll see.  But the video process always gets me pumped about doing a film.  My usual hubris kicks in and I’m sure I can produce some award-winning thing (absurd), and I start wondering if I can find a few ten thousand dollars lying around.  (Lights, Action, Bankruptcy.)

Yes, I’ve learned to Twitter, and can’t figure out for the life of me what I’m doing that’s interesting enough to bother the few folks who claim to be interested (my “followers”).  I got a new guitar for my birthday, thanks to my lovely wife, and also now have a Wii (currently plowing through the Zelda world, and enjoy the occasional game of bowling.)

Daniel is home for the summer (though he’s headed to Europe pretty soon for a couple of weeks), and it’s been really good to sit with him, kick around our various angsts, and even make a bit of music together.

Just now, it’s time for my Friday coffee with my friend who says he just climbed out of bed.  I feel that way most of the day, most days.

Lots of new theological thoughts, but I’m not sure I’m ready to air them out.   Maybe I am.  We’ll see…

Reading Job…