Monthly Archives: December 2009

December 31, 2009 · 8:25 am

Plumbing a Rich and Diverse World

The choices are endless.   Input of imaginative material is ever-streaming:  books, songs, films, adverts, emails, voicemails, snailmail… There are the daily tasks of work and family, hobby and friend, thought and action.  The mental life that Dallas Willard asserts is our life of both spirit and body is ever-present, ever-flowing, ever-full.

I said yesterday that I want 2010 to be a year of going deep.  I think of a diver slipping over the side of a boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.   He may go deep, but in the straight line that it down, down, down, there is so much to miss.  Why not simply stay close to the shore, snorkeling around the edges, or swimming along the surface for miles, as in the great feat of swimming the English Channel?

Our culture is like that ocean.  We slip from the boat and plunge, and the sheer density of the “imaginative matter” in which we find ourselves is overwhelming.   We don’t think about it that way much, of course…we just gobble up the next interesting thing.   The visual/aural world is expert in catching our attention.   Lights flash and our eyes move, desire is born, and money comes flipping out of the pocket, and we own yet another little piece of something that will land in the lawn the day after we’re dead.   But still, it’s exciting for the moment, and we tell ourselves our lives are enriched by the small experience of the light flashing.  But then, the light dulls, and we need another flash, a different flash, or a new sound, or a new look, or a new thought, or a new something.   Is this a bad thing?  Maybe not.   When do we not need new inspiration, new courage, new hope, and new insight and initiative? And if a little flash of light will give us that for a couple of bucks…who’s to say whether the investment was worth it?

But now that I’m in the water, do I drop lower, or grab more at the surface?   Go deeper with few points of focus is the plan, but then there’s the racking decision of what will make up the “few points of focus.”  Therein lies the rub.  To simply choose.  Nothing new here.  I’ve come to a few thoughts.

Write 500 words a day.   Post 200 times on the blog.   See through the lens of a camera.    Friendship, passion, creativity the major subjects under scrutiny.    Two major writing projects only.   Get them both out the door.    Sabbath with conviction.    Pay attention.   Be still, and know that He is God.

Yesterday, a few of you pitched in on the idea of how to go deep.

Now, what is your practice of “focus?”

Happy New Year…

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December 30, 2009 · 6:57 am

A Year of Going Deep

It’s an oft-cited complaint: American Christianity is three-thousand miles wide and litte more than an inch deep.  So they say.

The four of us, Anjie, Amy, and Daniel and I sat over dinner last night and re-upped on an old family tradition.  Well, that may be overselling it a bit…we did this particular activity several years running when the kids were little.   It wanted to be a tradition, and we got side-tracked somewhere along the way.  Anyway, last night, we sat and gave it another whirl.

We set goals for 2010.

It will be a busy year, a year of transition for Amy and I.   She’s off to pursue the acting career in New York after she finishes at Cincinnati, and I’m moving back toward the free-lance work that defined my life from 1996-2007.   How will it all shake out?   None of us know, but we’ve got lots of work to do, and most of it exciting and hopeful.

But I suggested a theme for the year, and I’m not sure what they’ll all do with it, but for me, it’s a thought that’s been nagging at me.

Going deep.

My new iPhone is the first piece of technology I’ve picked up since the whole computer craze began well over two decades ago  that I’ve both craved and dreaded.    It’s cool and useful, but it’s a gadget and distracting.  Colors and apps and calls and tweets and games and general megabytes of cool come racing out of that little screen, and life is play all over again.   Which is fine.  But as the choices of buttons to push proliferates, I am just stunned to think of the speed of the choices that must be made.   I turned 50 this year, and for better or worse, the clock of my life is ticking.  Nothing new, but my earthen life is not infinite, and there remain good things to do.  But I have to ask, “Which ones?”  And that perhaps can only be discovered by asking the question that precedes the “doing” inquiry.

Who am I going to be?

I know, at 50, I should have the answer to this down pat.  But if life is a journey, which we all say it is, then there is new terrain up ahead.   My sense is that if God knows me, and knows this being named Jeff He is trying to mold and shape, then I have not yet fully embraced all of His vision, and I still work far too hard on my own.   There is “being” work to be done, and it has to be done in the deep places of soul, prayer, thought, service, and love.

Perhaps the verb for the year should be “to plumb.”   But how to do it?  What does a “deep” day look like?   Is it a particular sort of action, or a particular way of doing a thing?  Is it not “doing” at all?

Just wondering…what would you tell someone who wanted to go deep in 2010?

How about something like…”to will one thing.”

Nothing new in the world…

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December 29, 2009 · 7:07 am

Alone

Musical theatre types exude energy; young, beautiful people (or those who used to be) who sing like angels, though what they sing about often falls somewhat short of angelic.   I’m sitting in the Falls Theatre at ACT last night at a showcase for New Musical Theatre songs and shows, waiting, along with Anjie, my daughter Amy and her friend Casey, and one of Daniel’s friends.  We’re waiting, of course, for my son to sing, which he did, amazingly, as usual.  But he wasn’t my only thought as the evening progressed.

Jennifer Paz, recently seen by Seattle audiences in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, sang a song that somehow caught my attention.   “Perfect” is a song about a girl clinging to a relationship, claiming that she can be “perfect” for her man.   And there was a beautiful moment, a line delivered well…perfectly.   I can’t repeat it verbatim, but the gist of it was the ongoing refrain of humanity: “I don’t want to be alone.”

I can’t say why, but it struck me that this was the crux of the matter.   Stuck in a boundary of skin, swimming in a pool defined by the frustratingly finite range of my experience, constantly reaching out to connect, to find that from which I can metabolize life both physically and spiritually.  Born into being through no effort of our own, we are impacted profoundly by the ways we are connected to the surrounding souls.   We reach out instinctively, children not yet aware of good and evil, not yet cognizant of the difference between loving discipline and selfish striking out.   Families’ words and hands dole out lifetimes of solid faith and identity or they shatter psyches and bodies in abuses that can haunt forever.   And always, always, alone stalks us.

What will we do to avoid being alone?

Stephen Sondheim says “No One is Alone.”   Maybe not, but for so many, it sure doesn’t feel that way.   And yes, I know loneliness and being alone are different experiences, and that one can be alone without being lonely, but I’m referring to that state of being that is existentially there, regardless of feeling-state.

Avatar (enjoyed the heck out of it, maybe I’ll blog about it later) posits a planet in which every living thing is connected in the manner of the brain, synapses running between every boundary.   And as I think about the world, I tend to see things in just that way.  The problem with Avatar is that it subtly asserts that connectivity is virtue, rather than as a conduit for both good and evil.   All the evil of Avatar seems to be introduced from the outside, as if the planet itself were sinless.   Too bad its not that way on this world.

To connect, to belong, to love and be loved.  We are desperate for it.  Who has the answer for how its best done?  Lots of people have answers.   Bookshelves are overflowing with answers.  Gurus and shamans and preachers shout and shake and shimmy, hollering profundities that cover the whole planet.   Who has it right?

Of course, I think the Christ has it right.  But even in following his words, his life, and his death, there’s a pretty wide range of actions and possibilities.   A pretty wide range of ways to screw it up as well.  And alone lurks, sad puppy, happy to dislodge whatever togetherness you think you might have.   More fodder for musical theatre song-writers.

On whose behalf will we push against alone today…

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December 22, 2009 · 7:24 am

Snowflake Lane

Bellevue Square was packed.  I stood outside in the small square on the east side of Macy’s, just in front of the old Baskin-Robbins (closed).  The brisk air seemed right, and what seemed to be multitudes had gathered.  I didn’t manage to crowd-surfed out to see the numbers on Bellevue Way, but several hundred lingered in our little spot, eagerly awaiting the arrival of that particular form of holiday entertainment known as Snowflake Lane.  We know Snowflake Lane well in our house; Daniel sang and danced on one of those very same platforms several years ago.   Back then, we were the proud parents (still are) of one of the performers and of course, had a wonderful time.  And last night was fun enough, if (as I often say) you like that sort of thing.

I don’t remember a lot of what Daniel did during the show, but it seems he actually sang and danced along with various Christmas tunes, much as they did last night.  But they’ve gotten rid of everyone but the drummers.   The announcer said that we were going to experience one of the largest drum lines around, and I suppose we did, although frankly, my experience was no more than a cool half-dozen.

It’s not easy to brood in the midst of such high energy frothiness, but of course, I found a way.

My brooding was set off by the fact the fact that the drummers weren’t particularly skilled drummers.  In fact, they were playing along with canned music, hitting a few eighth notes on the rims and on the downbeat of every measure, they would whack the drumhead.   That’s about as good as it got (though I’m being a bit more tacky than these enthusiastic young people deserve).   Truth is, I appreciated and enjoyed the high-stepping dance they all did; fun to watch.  It’s always cool to see young people dancing like crazy people.   The only drawback was they danced the same simple dance for 20 minutes, whacking the drums as they did so.

And we hundreds seemed to think it was a really cool thing.   We drove an hour in traffic, braved all manner of pushing and shoving both coming and going, and barely escaped with our lives.  Give us marching band dancers in red whacking drums, throw in a little fake snow, and I guess we’ll do about anything.

I guess it just struck me as odd.

Children were delighted, of course, but then, my kids were always delighted to pull pans out of the cupboards and whack ‘em with spoons.   In other words, it didn’t take much to get them excited.  Maybe I’m being a bit Scroogish, but after our Taize service at church, and after taking time to reflect on the need in culture for depth instead of width, this particular drum line conceptually struck me as shallow, superficial, and fairly antithetical to the deeper strains of Christmas, even the excitement of gift giving and love.  Pop Culture seems largely about distraction, and that was about the most concentrated bit of distraction I’ve seen in awhile.   Now don’t get me wrong–I’m the first person to defend the right of an event to be nothing but fun, nothing but delightful, and delight can come from many arenas.   So to argue with myself, I suppose the delight of the people standing along Bellevue way night after night to experience this manufactured holiday cheer is fine enough–stop complaining, Jeff.  Maybe I’d've been happier if some snowflakes had hit my particular spot in the lane.

It was good to be with family…Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Betty, Amy, Daniel, and Anjie.  We all stood gaping, remembering when Daniel danced along.   Maybe I’m just getting old.   Maybe I’m tired.   Or maybe my brain’s kicking in again, and things are getting clearer.    If nothing else, I’m hoping 2010 is about going deep.

…just the mood I’m in, probably…

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December 3, 2009 · 6:55 am

Run, Lola, Run / Choices, Chance, Outcomes

My small film group watched Run, Lola, Run last night, a 1998 German film in which a young woman receives a desperate phone call from her boyfriend.  He has lost 100,000 Deutsche Mark, and unless he can deliver this enormous amount of cash to his drug-dealing boss within 20 minutes, he will most likely be killed.  Lola, determined to help him, springs into action.   Without spoiling the fun too much, suffice to say that the outcome of this race against time is the heart of the story, and when the result of the “first run” isn’t good, the filmmaker decides to tell the story all over again, and then again a third time.  With each “run”, Lola’s journey varies slightly early on, and as you might expect, those small variations play havoc with the outcomes.  A friend said afterwards that it made him think “butterfly effect”, referencing the well known idea that runs something like this:  a butterfly’s flapping wings in a particular place might play an important role in the creation or prevention of a tornado half a world away.

In other words, stuff matters.

This isn’t a movie review, but is instead a brief meditation on the way we think about our action, our prayers, our lives, and the lives of others as we trundle down the path.   What do we control?  How do we know what we know?  As the film suggests, do all our questions roll down into one question that’s the same for all of us? And are there really that many answers, or is really just one answer, that leads back to the question, and we go back and forth between the two as long as we live?

Well, I don’t know about all that, but here’s the question I have:  how do you think of the equation that is choice + others’ choice + Providence + Evil + chance (luck) + prayer?   I’m sure those terms aren’t accurate or exhaustive in the equation, but you see what I’m getting at.   Most conversations tend to hover around which one of these is key, which one determines the rest.    Are our choices, born out of personal responsibility, the lynchpin?  But what of when we are “acted upon” by others?   Outcomes are changed by that action, yes?   And the prodding of temptations and “promptings” (sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference), what of that?   And does chance play any role at all?   And there’s prayer.   The language of scripture about prayer is diverse and provocative and strange, and we drive ourselves a little crazy trying to figure out how God goes about orchestrating things.   I know what people mean when they say that “everything happens for a reason”, but my sense is that it’s more accurate to say that “meaning can be made from everything that happens” or “I trust God to sort out the meaning and purposes of my life’s events.”  We are desperate to understand our lives, to make sense of them, to retain a feeling of control, power, and predictability.

Run, Lola, Run is a pretty elegant reminder that life, like football, is a high-pressure game of inches.   Of course, we can’t really think that much about it or we’d lose our minds, frozen into inactivity wondering what alternate future would unfold if I left the house 5 minutes earlier, or had done this rather than that, or if…fill in the blank.    Paul’s reminder that all things work together for good for those that love the Lord is as good a final word on the subject as I can think of.   Ultimately, we trust that God set up this chaos-theory world, and that while our actions don’t determine everything, and control little, nonetheless, they are the part of the equation we can directly impact, and therefore, a deep responsibility.   But grace seems just in such a world, and just as you’d expect, grace shows up as a major player in God’s dealing with the world.

Get the call, respond, run for all you’re worth, trust God with the rest.   Not a bad way to live.

Another hat’s off to the mystery…

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