Category Archives: personal

Your Friends

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Most of the time, I think your friends will tell you more about the state of your life than any other group of people. If you’re willing, you can look at them and get a feel for where you are in life, compared to any relational goals (if you have any goals, that is).

Off the top of my head, here are some “diagnostic questions” to ask yourself in relation to your friends:

  • How many of them are there? Is my circle expanding or contracting? We all go through seasons where we are either transitioning to a new community, or simply retreating for some “alone time.” However, I think that we can sometimes identify potential themes in the size of our circle, at least as it relates to our capacity for loving others. If your circle is growing smaller, you may need to think about where your capacity for love and engagement is, and address that part of your life.
  • How healthy are they? This is even more dicey. Sometimes we find ourselves in turbulence and storms, and never realize that we find ourselves in these places because this is who we cultivate. Our friends influence us — our decisions, our moods, our focus — and if we surround ourselves with negative people who seek destruction in their lives, then you can bet it will spill over into our own.

This may be a “duh-factor” for a lot of people, but I think sometimes what we need most is some way of objectively measuring the state of our lives, and the best way to do that is through the filter of others lives. If you take a look at these people who are closest to you, you may get a hint or two of where you are in life.

My .02.

What Kind of Deal Is This?

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Last week a family in our faith community lost a baby. The baby had come too early, and was born with some chromosomal problems, and after one week, Campbell Joy crossed into eternity. The memorial service was one of the saddest scenes I’ve ever encountered: a small coffin over a grave, friends and family huddled in a cold pouring rain.  A Hollywood director couldn’t have thought up a more apt setting.

Today, some other friends got news that their baby (due in about 5 – 6 weeks) was too small, and may need to be “delivered” (the doctors said, “taken”, but I’m not comfortable with that language). Because the docs are going to wait a week, I have no idea how serious this could be, and my mind goes to the some less-than-optimistic places. I imagined myself having to walk through the loss of this child: what would I say, how could I be there for them in their pain? I thought of all the other ways that we experience loss in this life, and the roads I’ll have to walk through with my friends, regardless of where they are and when it happens.

To a great degree, I think that love actually is defined by our reaction to others’ pain. It certainly is revealed by it, brought into focus. Engagement with someone else’s pain = love. Retreat away from that pain, and you are retreating from love. I like to tell people, “As a pastor, you don’t get paid for the good days; you get paid for the bad ones.”

All of that lead me to the question, “Why do this community thing?”, which really isn’t the right question. The question is, “Why do this love thing?” If all love will — almost by definition — lead to pain, then why do it at all? I started listing out all of the ways we can experience pain in community:

  • Break ups
  • Death
  • Injury
  • Aging
  • Separation
  • Failure
  • Infidelity

All of these things will, nearly inevitably, accompany each relationship. And what can we place on the other side of the equation? What balances out this terrible list? “Life” and “Love”? What does that mean?

I think it means a lot, actually. I think that to the degree we weather the pain of relationships, our love and life expand, grow larger and more abundant. To the degree we retreat away from the pain, we shrink a little, atrophy away, grow dimmer. I believe we were designed as “lovers”, that is, to expand and grow into great engagers of humanity, and do you know why?

Because our Creator is the same way. God shows us the way love and pain works: As the very definition of love, God doesn’t shrink away from pain; he engages it, looks it full in the face, and as he does (or did) that, he shows that love overflows and extends in welcome embrace to the other. Ultimately that dialectical embrace of love and pain spilled over to the person of Jesus the Messiah, who simultaneously engaged our pain and revealed the abundant life we are called to.

Engaging pain is a tough deal, but the expansive, abundant life of love on the other side of the equation more than balances scale.

I Unplugged…

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So I did it. I left my computer at work on Sunday night, and — here’s the important part — left it there until Tuesday morning (my phone is “dumb”, not smart, so no, I wasn’t cheating!).

No e-mail.

No twitter updates.

No blog reading.

Nothing. And you know what? The most amazing things happened.

(a) The world did not end.

(b) There was nothing that I walked into this morning that needed dealt with yesterday.

(c) I actually relaxed more. Felt more peace, more engaged with my family.

I’m just saying.

My Reading Universe, Pt. 1: Eugene Peterson

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The other night at church, someone asked, “Hey Eric, what are you reading?” This is always a very complicated question for me to answer, because I’m using churning through 6 or 7 books at a time, but I thought I’d take a few minutes here and outline the major “pillars” of my reading universe. These are the people that simultaneously, form, shake, and enhance my ministry, my world view, and my creative spirit. There are numerous other authors, of course, but these are my “mainstays”.

So over the next few days/weeks, I’ll outline who these folks are — to me, at least — and why they matter. In short, they are:

  • Eugene Peterson
  • NT Wright
  • Brennan Manning
  • Flannery O’Connor
  • Cormac McCarthy

Let’s start with Eugene Peterson. He’s the guy who wrote The Message. When I began my vocational ministry “career” someone — quite randomly — threw his book called Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Ministry at me, and I through myself into the book with the enthusiasm of someone who’d thought they had the whole world figured out (I was soon to find otherwise). I suppose the next thing I read by him was his translation/paraphrase of the Bible, The Message, then after that I devoured 5 or 6 more of his, including Five Smooth Stones and Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places.

I’ll be honest: sometimes, I have no idea what Peterson is trying to say, and even when I do “get” him, the result can at times be a bit, “meh.” But what sings through, much of the time, is the voice of a poet and pastor, who at times just nails the balance of rigorous intellectual pursuit with the gentle voice of an artist-pastor. Peterson was the guy who showed me that you did not have to be a “Type A”, CEO-type in order to be a leader in the contemporary USAmerican church. He also reminds me that “pastoring” comes from a long tradition, with deep wells. We don’t need to “invent” discipleship for people. In so many ways, the same words and disciplines that worked for people in the 13th century still work today.

Chicago Drifts Slowly Away

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Opened up a Eugene Peterson book tonight, looking for some words to share with my musical worship team, and out popped an Intelligentsia “Buy 9 Drinks, Get the 10th Free” card. It was ironic. I remembered getting that card with a friend of mine almost three years ago when we were at a Willow Creek conference together. At the time, I thought it would just be a matter of time ’til I’d “need” that card again.

Little did I know.

Now, indeed, as the lyrics to the Maida Vale song go, “Chicago drifts slowly away…”

I struggle to embrace my life without sidewalks, without Autumn (I mean, really: you can’t call this Autumn), without the long walks through four neighborhoods, getting the chance to observe lives in microcosm.

I am beginning to doubt my timely return to “home”, and again wonder what to do in exile. Maybe I should take my own advice by way of God and Jeremiah: “Seek the shalom of the city you live in. Settle down; have a family.”

Okay sure, but was Babylon filled with crazy rednecks who were obsessed with college football??!!??

Just kidding. Kind of.

In my darkest moments, I don’t know why I’m here. Nothing “fits” with me here. But this is where I am, and my faith says clearly, “This is not about you. God writes his story everywhere, and your choice is whether or not to be a part of it.”

“Blue”

Girl, I know you’re in need of a hero
But the glory’s never called my name
I huddle at night,
And shy from the light
While Chicago drifts slowly away

And down here on the avenue
Where lovers have waited for years
To come when you call
Put a hand out when you fall
Hiding in phone books that are cloudy with tears

And is your heart blue?
Are you crying?
Girl I’m lonely too
Is your heart blue?

Well you sang your song to the darkness
And the silence just called back your name
Now that lonely song
Holds back the dawn
That can rise up and usher in your day

And girl you know I’m looking for you, girl
Thought I might find you downtown
And your wedding dress
Is stained and torn to shreds
From running ’round with your “other man”

And is your heart blue
Are you lonely
From all the bad times you been through
Is your heart blue

I’ll be your flame
In cold December
You will remain
You will remember our love

Is your heart blue?
Is your heart blue?
Girl I’m lonely too
Is your heart blue…

Just So Everyone Knows…

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There is a scene from Thornton Wilder’s play, The Angel That Troubled the Water.  A doctor comes to a healing pool every day wanting to be healed of his melancholy and his gloom and his sadness. Finally the angel appears. The doctor goes to step into the water but the angel blocks his path, saying, “No, step back, the healing is not for you.” The doctor pleads, “But I’ve got to get into the water. I can’t live this way.” The angel says, “No, this moment is not for you.” And he says, “But how can I live this way?”

The angel says to him, “Doctor, without your wounds where would your power be? It is your melancholy that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men and women. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children of this earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In love’s service, only wounded soldiers can serve.”

————–

I don’t know why
The angel follows you from so far behind
You say it’s a surprise
Keeps you guessing all of the time

You made a mistake
I can see it written over you face
Tears sketching out the truth of your pain
But I say, it’s alright

You were so good to me
Even angels long to be
Broken on the wheels of love
Broken on the wheels of love
Broken on the wheels of love

I saw your dress
Saw it hanging on the back of a chair
Oh baby, yeah, I was there
And I guess your virtue ain’t all that it was

You had a good time
Gave your heart to all the valentines
And now I know you might be disinclined to admit
But it felt pretty good

You were so good to me
Even angels long to be
Broken on the wheels of love
Broken on the wheels of love
Broken on the wheels of love

All the stories in the lonely places
All the songs in the silences
We’re all strong in the broken places
Everybody’s broken on the wheels of love

Broken on the wheels of love
Broken on the wheels of love
Broken on the wheels of love

A “Non-Update”

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Haven’t posted here in a while; I’ve been processing through so many things.

By nature, I like revolution over evolution. My idea of change is an abrupt rupture. “Break it or leave it.”

I also function in three-year seasons. Any intelligent person could see it in my resume. I get restless, and I want to try something new. It’s a function of a few things, I think:

  1. My restless nature
  2. My hunger for new things
  3. My pleasure in bringing sustainable order to chaos
  4. My resistance to deep community

So I’ve been here for 3 years, and the urge is simmering, boiling and rising. I look around me, and see both evolutionary and revolutionary change. The consequences for this now are so much larger, as I have kids who are rooted and grounded, with friends of their own, but I am also a child of Abraham, following a God who calls us to leave our homes and follow him.

As far as I can see, I have one of three paths in front of me (always leave room for more, though, YHWH likes to surprise):

  • Stay and grow through this job, go deeper into community, and enjoy watching my children grow up;
  • Cut the cord and step into a more challenging leadership role (that I am simultaneously confident in and terrified of); OR
  • Cut the cord, trade in my ministry toys, and go play somewhere else.

I have been in vocational ministry for 10 years. Essentially, I have been doing the same job, though largely through passion and choice. Still, the same job?

Isn’t it time to grow? Time to stretch muscle and sinew? I’m wrestle with the fact that maybe my malaise in life has been a result of not aspiring high enough, not risking enough, rather than too much. After all, I’m not aspiring to anything that people haven’t told me before that I was capable of.

One thing is for sure; something is coming; always is…