james

i said goodbye to a good friend yesterday...a guy from a small accountability group.  he’s been a weekly presence in my life for about 3 years now. he graduated with his degree from seminary and now he’s moving away. 

i always thought he was a good guy.  he IS a good  guy. 

and i’m a better man for having known him.

i’ve watched him grow in his faith; in his openness to other guys. we’ve intervened in each other’s lives at critical moments.  we’ve shed tears for each other. 

i cried when i hugged him goodbye; he cried back.  sunday turned notably dreary.

i thank God for letting our the paths of our lives coincide for the time they did. 

and yet, cursed be graduations.

cursed be moves. 

i will miss him.

may God hold you firmly in his gracious, merciful and relentless grip, my friend.

other pleasures

the pleasure of the sun on my skin

the pleasure of hard work and satisfaction of a job well done on the art show

the pleasure of being in the company of good friends

the pleasure of talking with a trusted friend on the phone and having my soul and spirit encouraged and fed

the pleasure of hunger being staved

the pleasure of eating leftover breakfast casserole, and the pleasure of remembering the brothers i enjoyed it with the first time

the pleasure of a hand on my shoulder during prayer

the pleasure of singing worship songs...loudly...very loudly

the pleasure of affirmation that my words penetrated someone’s soul and encouraged them

the pleasure of the warm and loving embrace of my wife

all very real. all very good. no shame.

a reflection on Isaiah 61-62

a friend once said to me “everywhere i go, i go too, and that ruins everything”. i am like this man; i tend not to like my own company.   

for whatever reason, i have always had a poor self image.  i struggle with many things, many sins, but it usually boils down to a struggle with just who i am, my very DNA, and who and how God has made me.  my default emotional position is “I may be a child of God, but he has only acquiesced to let me in to his family…he reluctantly allows me to be here…he graciously tolerates my presence…but when it all comes down to it, i’m peripheral, and he doesn’t really like me like you’d like a good friend. 

this is, of course, heresy…but like i said, this is my default emotional position…left unchecked, i’ll always return to this place. 

enter the grace ev free sermon on Isaiah 61-62:

“He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted…to comfort all who mourn, …to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.  …

“You will be a crown of splendor in the Lord’s hand, a royal diadem in the hand of your God.  No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate.  But you will be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah, for the Lord will take delight in you and your land will be married. … as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.”

that the Lord God Almighty King of the Universe would actually delight in me…with all my stuff?  i will never outgrow my need to hear this.

when i cry out to God and ask “why have you made me this way?” it’s like the answer is “so you can show the world that my delight can be even in people like you.”

and now with a constant flow of input from people who keep my spirit in check, i’m growing, slowly changing, from being consumed with how bad i am, to being overwhelmed with how GOOD HE is. 

so hear this, you who are in any way like me; let this sink down into the marrow of your bones and educate your conscience: his delight is in me…and his delight is in you.

an old journal entry

i happened upon a journal of mine yesterday.  as i read some of the entries there was a flood of emotions that attended memories of events long gone.   among those entries was the following:

 ___________________

2-Sep-01

i was washing pots tonite. so much crud baked onto the bottom of the skillet. stuff that wasn't cleaned off the first time.  and so repeated use over the fire hardened the thin veneer of oil and grease into a coating that wouldn't simply rinse off.  the metal scrubby: hard, sharp edges, scouring powder, lots of effort…and time. repeated circular motions over the same spot…and some, only some of it would come off.  apparently forever amen a part of the pan. is it?  would more time, more effort, more scrubbing and more sheer desire to restore the pan to its pristine, new condition yield its desired effect?  maybe. but there's the spot on the wooden handle, forever blackened because it got too close to the fire.  no amount of scrubbing will take that away.  if the pan had feelings, the scrubbing would hurt, as layer after layer was slowly ground away…good surface is affected by the cleaning of the dirty part. 

at times it seems my life is like that skillet.  layer upon layer of crud, sins never fully dealt with, baked to a hard coating, marring the appearance and making any cleaning now a much more involved process…sigh.  it all depends on the owner of the pot…do you want me clean?  yes.  grind me down, clean me off…make me shine.  restore me.

 ___________________

a friend was present when i read this; he watched as old memories stirred, and grief rose, borne on the wings of failures from long ago.  in his wisdom and in his discernment he reminded me of who i am in Christ, that i am a work in process, and that there is growth and change in me that others can see, even if i sometimes cannot.  i thank God for that man, for his encouragement that transforms sorrow into peace, and for others like him who help me see that the prayer IS being answered; the Owner of this pot IS at work, scrubbing, grinding, polishing, relentless in his determination to restore and renew.   one day...yes, one day...

reunions and reflections on tarnish

i’m on my way back home from dallas…the final foray into processing my mom’s estate is over.  it has been 6 months since her death; time to clean up the house and get it ready to put on the market. 

so much stuff to sift and sort…there’s the usual paperwork, of course.  lots of clutter to rummage thru and toss.  and then there’s those reunions with things that evoke poignant memories: the cheap aluminum sugar bowl i remember seeing on the table breakfast-after-breakfast from my earliest days in that house; christmas records i used to listen to as i watched the colored lights reflecting off the gaudy aluminum christmas tree…yeah, we had one of those…it was painfully smaller than the one the what’s-their-names down the street had.

there have also been some surprises, like finding a copy of the Dallas Times Herald dated Nov 22, 1963; the hand-made guest book my parents had at their wedding – all those years i’d been snooping thru their drawers and closets and i’d never run across that!   and baby clothes my mom had saved along with a note thanking God for the joy her children had given her.  that one was particularly hard.

i rediscovered artwork i hadn’t seen since high school, and as i looked at it, people, places and circumstances that attended its creation bubbled back to the surface of my consciousness.   it was the catalyst for a thought: i’d “abandoned” lots of stuff at my mom’s over the years, but as long as my mom’s house remained my mom’s house, this was a place where my orphaned possessions could nevertheless “live”.  there was the gracious side-effect that i could come back periodically, reconnect with my roots, stir the pots of memories and let them simmer on the back burner of my mind.  and this i have done for the past 3 decades.

but this time it was different.  clearly most of this art work was too big to take back, and even if we could, there’d be no place in our home where we could absorb it.  and so the reality dawns that now is truly the time when the-fate-of-X is finally decided; sheep and goats, wheat and tares, good fish-bad fish.  i now must choose to never see some things again, to close the door to potential future reunions and intentionally relinquish chunks of my life into the arms of a different era.  sigh. 

the house is now empty; carpets have been ripped up; the spider webs are off the walls; the rusty old revolving clothes line has been officially put in the trash.  but a few things have survived the cut. 

among the things i brought back with me were some silver serving utensils, gifts to my parents for their 25^th wedding anniversary from some now-forgotten, unrecoverable giver.

smudges, brown and black spots, an ugly film covering the entire surface, such that i could barely detect my own reflection on the back of the spoon.  not a very good likeness of me, but a fairly accurate picture of the way i sometimes reflect God:  a hazy, confused image on what should be a smooth, polished surface.

the tarnish may obscure the reflection, but interestingly it’s the presence of the tarnish that announces the identity of the underlying metal.  stainless steel maintains its luster… and is worth considerably less.  so naturally, when i paw thru the kitchen cabinets and come across the cutlery, it’s the dirty filmy “ugly” pieces ones i pick out to save because they are more valuable.

there are probably ways to keep silver from tarnishing…i think you can wrap it up in zip lock bags and keep it away from the air.  i suppose there may be value in suffocating your silverware if its primary purpose is for display.  but if it’s going to be used, it will get dirty.   just like us…when God puts us in contact with life, he runs the risk that we will come away smudged and dark and dingy.   fortunately tarnish can be polished off.  but it takes special cleaners.  and work.   and in my case, blood.  and sweat.  and tears.

i’m glad it can be removed, being the tarnish bearer that i am.  i know there will be a day when my luster will be restored like new…and it will be that way forever.

till that day the firm, mighty, and merciful hand of God will continue to scrub and polish me with the precious blood of Christ. 

“fine, thank you. and you?”

it’s no profound observation that the "how are you?" question is often not really a request for an update on someone’s status. for that we have facebook and twitter, where every fleeting thought, however trivial, can be presented to the world as “breaking news”. as a language guy, i accept the fact that “how are you?” functions largely as verbiage that greases the social machinery. and so "fine" is an acceptable answer; contact with another has been made, their presence has been acknowledged, even if only in cursory fashion.

well, yeah, i’m a linguist, but i’m also one of those the-glass-is-half-empty people. so it’s no wonder that i’ve come to believe that “fine” is really just superficial, and that a truly “authentic” answer to “how are you?” consists of something more along the lines of:

"do you really want to know?"

"hmmmm…could be better."

“don’t ask!”

the desire for “authenticity” results in me adopting a “Saint Eyore” persona and perpetually presenting myself as being “under the pile” of life. left unchecked, my own particular brand of “breaking news” can be a real downer.

so i was thinking about this yesterday and came to a realization:

i surrendered to Jesus on 23 sep 1971. today it will be 14068 days since that event.
14068 sunrises; 14068 mornings that his mercies have been new.

14068 days with their own arrays of anxieties that i’ve worried over; 14068 days of worries that God has taken care of and been faithful to me in.

14068 days, not one of which has passed without either sweet, bland or bitter awareness and acknowledgement of God’s presence with me; 14068 days in which God has never dismissed me.

14068 days of exposure to his Word thru book or sermon or memory or gracious face of his family.

during each of these 14068 days i've sinned against God and man at least 7 times; and in each of these 14068 days i've received forgiveness for those sins 7 times over and then some.

the transitory up-and-mostly-down blips of my emotional condition pale in comparison to God’s goodness to me over the long haul. as much as i might like to believe it, i’m really NOT in the cross-hairs of life. quite the contrary.

so then, “how am i?” hmmm…now that i think about it, very fine, thank you. and you?

relevance theory and lingering effects

not long ago when we were returning to CA on a flight from dallas, i had occasion to observe a rather surly flight attendant who could have been the “poster child for relevance theory” in that she said nothing more than was absolutely necessary to point her audience in the direction of her intended meaning. i had already noticed a couple of things: her curt manner, and how she narrowed her eyes and stretched the corners of her mouth into a smile-like configuration…the result was not unlike the picture of a possum i saw when i was in elementary school perusing an encyclopedia article on “rodents”.

anyway, the beverage service was about to start, and with service cart in tow towards the designated starting position at the front of “coach”, she backed up the aisle, casting cold glances behind her, announcing to the passengers “arms and legs…arms and legs…arms and legs…” obviously a warning to her audience to keep their extremities out of the aisle, as she would be only too happy to collide with them if they didn’t. (i, fortunately, was sitting by the window, so i was out of target range.) then the “service” started; she came back pushing her cart down the aisle stating “something to drink” without the slightest hint of question intonation in the vicinity. now circumstance and experience normally sanction a passenger’s ready assumption that such an utterance constitutes an “offer”, and therefore s/he could justifiably supply implied information along the lines of:

[would you like] something to drink[?] 
or  
[can i offer you] something to drink [?].

of course on this particular occasion, i felt they could also be equally justified by filling it in as:

[you’re lucky if i give you] something to drink[!]

she eventually came to our row and a “something to drink” was directed first at me…

me:             “I’ll have a diet coke.”

Flight Attendant: [blink]

[eyes move in melanie’s direction]

melanie:      “Do you have cranberry juice?”

FA:              [single nod]

…then to “arms and legs” sitting by the aisle.

A & L:        “Orange juice.”

FA: [take plastic cup, scoop ice, open can, pour, extend hand in direction of window]

                  “diet”

[take second cup, more ice, another can, pour, extend hand towards middle seat]

                  “cran”

[repeat process, relinquish 3^rd cup]

                  “orange”

[push cart forward while directing withering look at next row of obstacles to inflight contentment]

sigh.  you never know the effect you may unintentionally have on someone. outside of our being a nameless collection of faces with irritating requests, just like those she sees every other day, she will likely have no particularly salient memory of the passengers she “served” that day. she will certainly not remember me, the diet coke in 16A. melanie and i, however, will remember her for a looooong time.