To infinity... but beyond?

Dude... will you fight Nazi's, crack your bullwhip, take on sword wielding bad guys, swim through the Mediterranean on the back of a Nazi U-Boat, and then try to blow up the Ark if I asked you to do it?

Absolutely.

Would you dig a tunnel under four hundred feet of earth and help some 200 prisoners of war escape through war-torn Europe during World War II even if it meant getting caught in a barbed wire fence while trying to jump it on a motorcycle?

Yes. Especially that last part.

Would you go toe to toe with the dark lord of the Sith with nothing but a lightsaber, the force, and an especially loyal R2 unit at your side even if it meant learning dark family secrets and possibly losing a limb?

That would be very cool.

Would you carry the Ring through thousands of miles of muck, murder, mayhem and orcs and finally climb Mt. Doom and throw the Ring into the fires, only to be possibly consumed by lava afterwards?

One does not simply walk into Mordor, but I would do it for you on my honor.

Would you go and have coffee with a bunch of men, tell them about me, maybe pray with them, console them, and ask them to find a place in their hearts for a relationship with me?

WHOAH WHOAH WHOAH! Let's not get too hasty now...what you ask of me is such a burden?!

A little nourishment for Thanksgiving

Just a morsel...

My next paper for my Commissioned Lay Pastor class is on the nature of sin. I was going to title the paper, "Sin is like really, really, bad... m'kay?" Because, honestly, how can you write 2 pages on sin, right? But then, by the grace of God entirely, I had a really profound insight into the nature of sin last night from, of all places, my own sinful bad self doing sinfully bad things.

The actual nature of the sin isn't what's interesting here, so I'll leave out the salacious details. Suffice it to say, I was bored and I was online. No, wait... let me start at the beginning, because it'll make more sense that way.

When I write, I transport myself to another world, walk around for a while, and then write what I see. Like Narnia, to a certain extent, this world has a very powerful influence on me and makes me want to visit it as often as I can - but getting there isn't always the easiest thing. Sometimes I will sit and stare at my computer screen for hours trying to conjour up that one word of magic behind which all other words will flow. I'll put on music. I'll visit facebook. I'll watch TV. I'll play games. I'll read. I'll go back to facebook. I'll play solitaire... and again... and again... I'll be so close to this other world that I can taste it, but that first word will still not come and the writing will not flow. It's incredibly frustrating. It's not writer's block, per se, because that involves more the idea of not knowing what to write rather than not being able to write anything.

And so what happens is that I'm literally at my computer screen for hours straining sub-consciously to evoke this feeling, this connectedness to this other world, so that I can write and all I end up doing is draining my creative batteries and my physical ones as well. Not being able to write is my number one cause of insomnia (ironically, writing too much is my next leading cause of insomnia as I can't shut my mind off).

Last night, I was not being able to write. My mind was blocked. And I felt that longing to be part of that other world where my mind could soar and I could be a part of the word... but I couldn't get there. The words wouldn't come but the longing remained. So I began trying to answer that longing in other ways on the internet. I looked up old girlfriends. I tried to connect with people I hadn't seen in years. Anything I could think of to replace that longing I felt with a sense of fulfillment, of connection. I searched and searched and searched and never did find a connection. I stayed up way past midnight even though I knew I'd be tired the next day, and that being tired, I wouldn't be able to remain sharp and focused so that I could write the next night - thus prolonging my agony over this loss of connection.

It was only after I finally shut down my computer and reluctantly trudged off to bed that I had this sudden and powerful revelation on the nature of sin. Sin is the absence of God. We experience it by turning away from God. We turn away from God whenever we try to fulfill that feeling of love and connection that we experience with God with something human and man-made. Since that substitute experience can never ever come anywhere close to the feeling of fulfillment we get from God, every time we search for something that is Not God, we are disappointed and left unfulfilled - which drives us to seek further and further and further from God until we reach some deep dark corner of our life where we feel surrounded by darkness and utterly alone. That is where sin takes you. It starts out as an obstinate feeling of self, seeking self-fulfillment, and it takes you quickly off to places you'd never imagine going when you start the journey. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and a very powerful feedback loop. Sin leads to more sin, leads to more sin, leads to more sin. Yet turning back to God, coming back to where he is waiting for you, instantly brings you back to your senses - until you sin again.

Anyway... the idea is still a little jumbled in my head. I need to play with it some more, but I'm certain, at least, that I have an interesting framework for a discussion on the nature of sin for my next paper. I've got a little under two weeks to write it.

As usual, I appreciate all feedback... though I find I don't usually have time to respond because by the time I read your feedback, I'm usually neck deep into writing my paper. But I do read everyone's response and I do ponder what you have to say and I really do appreciate your taking the time to comment.

Did I sign up for this?

I lasted all of about two pages into my first CLP reading material before I found my head exploding with newfound insight.

I don't want to change. I like my theology where it is. Its not complicated. I don't need to be challenged.

I've been thinking lately that there was some piece of the equation that I was missing - some elusive tidbit that could help me to understand how come my Christianity doesn't sound like anyone else's description of the religion. Two pages into my first CLP reading and there was the answer. But...

I don't want to change. I like my theology where it is. Its not complicated. I don't need to be challenged.

I was watching Stephen Hawking's latest science program on the science channel explaining why there is no need for God in the equations explaining how the universe was created and how it continues to evolve and exist... except that his explanation was so fantastical that it made most religious explanations for the origins of the universe look almost boring by comparison. How does one explain to a great mind like Stephen Hawking that he may have math on his side, but his explanation of how the universe works makes it EVEN MORE likely that God had a hand in it? Why is it that great minds insist that there is no God when the evidence is all around them staring them in the face? These questions have left me thinking about the short comings of my own religion and wondering how one counteracts the general disbelief in the most obvious things in the modern world... and it made me realize that...

I don't want to change. I like my theology where it is. Its not complicated. I don't need to be challenged.

So here I am... two pages into my first article and I read that our job as theologians is to read the scripture, interpret it, and then seek feed back from the rest of the congregation - to create a dialog with Christ at the center (I'm paraphrasing quite a bit here). It was that last part, the part about the feedback, that suddenly made me realize what piece of the puzzle I'd been missing. I read the rest of the article with great relish... I was actually learning something NEW about religion - something I had suspected was out there but that I hadn't yet articulated in my own mind... And Then The Breaks Went On And...

I don't want to change. I like my theology where it is. Its not complicated. I don't need to be challenged.

What The Heck?! One article and my faith is being changed. One article and my theology is being advanced. One article and my world view is becoming more complicated (and simplified at the same time, but only if I stop resisting). One article and I'm already being challenged! Is this what I signed up for? Is This What God Had In Mind For ME?

I don't want to change. I like my theology where it is. Its not complicated. I don't need to be challenged.

Where is this all going? How much does God expect me to change? Will I become some sort of Christian Zombie parroting back theology to the masses? Will there be any part of Will left? Am I being transformed against my will?

I imagine Frodo was perfectly fine with leaving the Shire with Sam, perfectly fine with packing up his sack, grabbing some maps, taking the ring, and heading for some far off tavern to meet Gandalf. It was probably all perfectly fine until the Ring Wraiths arrived and Frodo had the first inkling that perhaps all was not perfectly fine, that this was a journey that he wasn't likely to embark upon and return the exact same person. This was not some trip to the market, or the bar, or even to visit a distant cousin... this was a journey of transformation. And between running for the Buckland Ferry and dodging dark horse hooves, I wonder if the dawning realization caused Frodo to pause, even momentarily, and wonder if it wasn't too late to turn around and head back to the Shire.

But, of course, he couldn't. And, of course, I can't... nor do we really want to. Frodo must know that this is the time to embrace his destiny... and so, for what ever reason, it is time for me to become whatever it is that God wishes me to become.

I'm ready to change. I'm ready to take my theology to new places. I'm ready to embrace a complicated world view. I'm ready to be challenged.

And so, I say... bring on the next article and let the transformation begin.
 

Cloud Contemplation #1

Question: Out of the four sources for Christian theology - Scripture, the Christian tradition, reason (and philosophy), and contemporary human experience (including the sciences), which two are most important for you and you do theology, and why?

This is the first question I must answer in my CLP training. Of course, there are readings to read, and lots of thoughts and studies to contemplate before I write my two page double spaced essay, but I was wondering how to answer this question just off the bat. I figure that before I can have my mind changed and my perspective broadened, I need to figure out where I stand in the debate to begin with. And I thought I'd share that with my fellow travelers because I value your opinions and vastly different experiences to help me shape my thinking on the subject. You may not make me see eye to eye with you, but you can at least illuminate corners of the argument that I might miss in the shadows of my ignorance. We'll call this exercise Cloud Contemplation... a modern study method utilizing the latest in social technology.

Hmm... Well, obviously Scripture is very important. Its probably not the only method of knowing God's will, but it's certainly one of the most definitive. The challenge with Scripture is not in its definitiveness, but in its definition. How it is defined seems to be determined mostly by cultural and temporal preferences. The same written passage can probably be interpreted several different ways. It seems that for such an inefficient form of communication to be considered the ONE and ONLY definitive truth of God is asking for theological stagnation and misinterpretation. But then again, perhaps God made the word flesh to transform such an inefficient form of communication into a perfect one. If the written text serves as nothing more than a way to identify Jesus as the one true authority on all things, then it has done its job.

The Christian Tradition is a curious thing in and of itself. I'm not quite sure how to define it. Are we talking about the things we have always done as having some weight over the things we have yet to do? I've found that looking backwards while moving forwards is the one guaranteed way to stumble. On the other hand, while going from Point A to Point Z, it's probably a good idea to remember Point A - if for no other reason than to judge how far you've come. Or are we talking about those things that define us as a religion - church structure and baptism and prayer and the like? To be honest, I haven't really given those much thought. It's sort of like asking a newcomer to the sport of baseball what he feels about the Infield Fly rule. A) It's such a loaded question. And B) Its such an integral part of the game that contemplation of it is way too complicated at this point. I can't weigh how I feel about baptism because I can't separate it out from everything else at this point. Baptism is baptism. Its part of theology to me.

Reason (and philosophy) - I really don't know anybody that goes against their own reason or philosophy when it comes to anything in life. 2 plus 2 is four... but I'll call it five because that's what my Pastor says. Yeah... that just doesn't work. But if you're asking about whether a specific reason or a specific philosophy has any bearing on my theology... that's a good question. I'd say as a starting point that if scripture is cherry-picked for theology that conforms to your own personal world view, then philosophy and reason are torn apart with jackhammers - gleaned cleaner than a grape vine on the day of Jubilee. Reason and Philosophy surely have to be accepted or rejected according to our own personal tastes and then probably modified to fit specific needs as life goes on. As a tool of theology, I think one would have to be careful about using "reason" or philosophy because of its varying nature as life goes on and new views about once strongly held beliefs come to the forefront. This is the one area where hypocrisy is probably most prevalent.

The last is deceptively probably the first - human experience and the sciences - probably informs more theology than anything else. Our lives always form the framework through which we see the entire world and try to make sense of it. Each new wrinkle in our human experience informs our own theology and then, in turn, can be used to do theology with others. Whether we are very good at turning human experience into theology or not, our natural human instinct is to relate life to our theology and our theology to life.

I think I'll leave that off there. Please weigh in while I still have time to chew the gristle of thought-provoking marrow.

Finally... A Diet That Works For Me!

If you want something done right, go ahead and create it yourself...

So here, in essence, is my very simple but so far extremely successful diet plan. I have no idea whether it will work for you, but it works for me just fine and its essence is simplicity.

A little background... why diet? Why now? Though I have tried before, I think I was doing it for all the wrong reasons. I wanted to look better or feel better... but for what? What motivation did I have other than as some form of ego boost? Here, I think, is where I made the biggest difference. There is a direct correlation between my diet plan and the reason behind my diet.

In November, I'm going to Disneyland. And the simple fact of the matter is, I did not feel capable of walking around Disneyland, much less taking on all of those stress-inducing rides. And I REALLY want to take on all those stress-inducing rides. But I don't want my heart or head to explode in the process. So, it is time to diet.

And here is my plan... I get one point for each good meal I eat. I don't define good meal because I know what that means for me. It might mean something different for you and that definition might even change through time. Because in the past, following various diets, I've found ways around the essence of the diet plan by using the diet's rules to eat things that I wouldn't consider good or healthy (because the rules said I could... see, right here, there's nothing that prevents me from eating this Double Cheeseburger... you get the drift). This way, the definition is locked in my head purposefully vague. I know what's good for me and I know what's bad, and the decision then becomes mine as to whether I eat well or not. I get no points if I don't eat a meal. And I get -1 points for each bad meal (or snack) that I eat. Simple. I can still have that Double Cheeseburger if I so desire, but it's gonna cost me a hard-earned point.

Further, I get one point for every fifteen minutes of exercise I do. This must be extra-curricular exercise (or as I phrase it, planned, out of the ordinary, exercise.) So, if I take three 15 minute walks every day, that's 3 points. If I don't do any exercise in a day, that's -1 point (which is where the planned, out of the ordinary part comes in - since, unless you're in a coma, you're likely to do some sort of movement during the day, but unless its specifically planned as exercise, it doesn't count). This, of course, means that I could go for an 8 hour hike and earn 32 points in one day... but if I could hike for 8 hours, I certainly can walk around Disneyland and do all the stressy rides, so I'm not worried about destroying my point curve.

Other things include sleep: 8 hours gives me a point, less than 6 hours takes a point, and other bad for you things like smoking or heavy drinking. As I come up with other things, I'll probably add them to the list. But simplicity is the issue.

Now, as to what the points are used for, I decided to not make them cheap. The idea is to trade off the points for things you can do. This is sort of a realistic approach to determining what your body will be able to handle when it comes time for the trip.

I decided that it costs 50 points just to be able to walk around Disneyland all day long (not including rides nor food). Multiply that by four days, and I now have to earn 200 points just to be able to have my feet stay underneath me. I think this might be overkill, but I don't want to hobble around Disneyland, I want to walk!

I then assigned a point value to each of the rides. It costs 10 points for the most stress-inducing rides (roller coasters, Tower of Terror, etc...). 5 points for each of the other E-Ticket rides (if only for the long lines themselves). 4 points for D Tickets. 3 Points for C Tickets, etc... So like the old ticket books of old, you can take your points and divide them up amongst the rides that you think you're likely to ride. For the old Maxi Book of Tickets, it would require you to have... 5 E-Tickets (we'll call it 35 points because realistically you weren't going to get more than 2 roller coasters in on any given day), 4 D-Tickets (16 points), 3 C Tickets (9 points) 2 B Tickets (4 points) and 1 A Ticket (1 point) for a total of 65 points a day. That brings each days total to 115 points without food. Fortunately, we've already decided that it costs 3 points for 3 bad meals and an additional 1 point for each snack. I can eat my way through Disneyland and still be okay.

How has this worked out for me so far... I have been really trying hard to maximize my points. I've been eating Breakfast every day since I started the plan. I have only gone out for fast food twice (both as a matter of necessity, not out of desire). I have been mostly keeping to my 8 hours of sleep each night. And I have been exercising as much as I possibly can. For instance, this weekend I went to Muir Woods and hiked for an hour. And then I went location scouting yesterday for at least a half hour (I didn't have my watch with me... but it was AT LEAST a half hour and probably more). I'm already planning how I'm going to get my exercise in this weekend when I'm in Ashland, Oregon.

Is my plan too simple? Probably. But it's also hard to deceive. I'm only accountable to myself - so there's no real way I can cheat. If I cheat, I'm only robbing myself at Disneyland since that's the only goal I'm really interested in at this point.

As for what happens after I return from Disneyland in November... well, there's always Disney World in 2014.

Anyway... this may have been convoluted and crazy talk and you may be naturally skeptical as to whether it will work and in what level I'll be able to maintain it, but it sure beats another blog post about politics, doesn't it?

Ignore my hyperbole

Look, I know of no other era in the history of the world with which to compare this current political climate other than the German Weimar Republic shortly before the rise of Adolph Hitler. I say this not to compare any current politician or group of politicians to that group, but only to compare tactics to tactics.

I've often wondered how it was that the Nazi's came to power in a country filled with reasonable moderate normal people. Pushed to the brink... sure. Lots of poverty and anger... I can accept that. But still, Nazi thuggery aside, don't right meaning people stand up to lies, half truths, and outrageous behavior? Not ten years before, the exact same tactics that Hitler used to win the Chancelorship of Germany landed him in prison because normal everyday Germans, still smarting from the end of World War I and the reparations that followed, did not and would not believe the lies he was spouting.

I've had my differences with the Republican Party, and in the distant past, I even admired them for a short period of time. But that was a different Republican Party than the one trying to fool the country today. While I might have disagreed with everything George W. Bush stood for, I nevertheless thought that he was speaking the truth (from a slightly skewed perspective) about the world. If Kerry said the economy was bad, Bush would say the economy was good and explain why. I didn't necessarily agree with Bush, but I wouldn't feel that he was just making stuff up. I might have disagreed with the Republican Party, but I listened to what they had to say with respect before I made up my mind on which way to vote.

I tried to do the same thing with the current Republican Party last night. Even though the PAC's and the politicians out there have been spouting off a lot of patently false nonsense lately (Birthers, swiftboating the President on Osama, etc...), I figured that when it came time for the Republican convention all that crazy stuff would stop and the truth (or something like it) would come out and I would be able to judge the Republican party for what they actually stood for and not for some crazy belief that the President was Kenyan, Muslim, Communist, and out to destroy America in some vast conspiracy. Boy, was I wrong.

I listened to the speeches. They were dialed back a bit, but they were every bit as looney as the rest of the nonsense the Republicans have been speaking since 2008. To listen to it, you would think that Barack Obama was the antithesis of everything good and that he had singlehandedly caused every single problem faced by Americans today. You name it, he was blamed for it. And in a vacuum completely - nobody else had done anything wrong in this country. Rush Limbaugh half-blamed Obama for Hurricane Isaac yesterday and the rest of the party seemed ready to follow suit.

I'm not just disappointed. I'm alarmed. To be fair, Mitt Romney is too good for these bunch of crazy people he's been saddled with. The Grand Old Party sounds like a bunch of old people blaming (fill in the blank) for everything from cancer to pollution. I just nod politely and walk away. But, to bring this around full circle, I wonder if that's what the Germans did. Did they really believe half of the crap that the Nazi party was spouting, but assumed, incorrectly, that the more moderate elements of the Party would control things? This is one of those questions that can probably only be answered if the Republicans win and we look back on this same subject four years from now.

I recognize that such hyperbole is almost always false. Everybody claims that a Spanish Inquisition is coming, but nobody really ever expects it, and hence, they rarely ever actually occur. Its just as valid that President Obama might really be a bad choice for this country and that he really will usher in the economic end times. There really is no way to know - since both claims are rooted more in fear and guesswork than based in fact.

Unfortunately that's the only way people are being given to decide. We are presented with our worst fears and told to choose between which apocalyptic future we think is more likely to happen. That's no way to make an informed vote and both sides are to blame.

2012 Election - Rock or Hard Place?

Before I explain why it's imperative to vote Democratic in this next election, I want to start out by saying how disgusted I am with the current spate of politics in this country. If disrespect and outright lies could block access to the sun, this country would be in perpetual darkness. Both sides of the fence share the blame. Both sides are equally useless in running this country. But, we can't throw out the baby with the bath water. There are some good politicians out there... but there is no good politics right now.

And that's why we all must vote Democratic in this election. It's not because a vote for this party is a stamp of approval for what they've accomplished. They haven't. And it's not an endorsement of what they stand for or stand against - which is mostly a moot point anyway. Its because the other party has been using a tactic for the past four years that will spell doom for the country if it continues for another four years.

For four years, the Republican party has done everything in their power to block any form of legislation from moving forward. Good, Bad or Indifferent - the legislature of this country has sat on its duff for the last four years while the situation that got us into this mess has continued to fester and grow. Now, I don't think the Democrats are entirely blameless in this. They haven't exactly tried to reach across the aisle. But mostly I blame the Republicans who have basically said since President Obama's inauguration in 2009 that they were going to do everything in their power to block him from accomplishing anything.

If the Republicans win the election it will prove to both sides that preventing anything from getting done is the way to proceed politically in order to destabilize the other parties power. This is the absolute wrong precedent to set in bicameral politics. Once we start down that path, once we show that doing nothing has political advantages, this country will cease to exist as we've known it.

Of course, if the Democrats win it doesn't necessarily mean that the tactics of the Republican party will change. And it doesn't mean that if the Democrats gain the power to accomplish things that they will do so wisely. But something has got to give in Washington gridlock. Our nation's survival depends on it.

And if nothing changes... then a third party will need to be created in order to end the loggerhead.

I'm Pushing Up Against My Own Limits

God continues to lead me into uncharted territory and I'm no longer sure where I stand. I could use a little advice from all my blogging friends.

In finishing the book on the Spiritual Journey of U2, I've been thinking about what it means to serve out on the frontiers of Christendom - the area that, unfortunately, must now include a great deal of the United States as well. Theologically this is an area where most people probably identify themselves as religious, or spiritual, but do not identify with any particular church or religion. These people, clearly, are out there hoping for someone to show them the right path, but being either too stubborn to follow it or, having been burned by the experience before, hesitant to be lead into another soul crushing experience. What sort of theology must one adopt in order to reach these people?

I don't believe its a question of telling two different stories - one to believers and one to non-believers. I think its a question of how you engage non-believers and lead them to want to become believers. One of the issues that keeps coming up in the U2 book was how Bono could get so many people to become involved in very Christian causes (like social justice, poverty, AIDS, etc...) while on one hand being very forward about his own religious beliefs and on the other hand including all those non-believers into the mix. It probably helps being a rock star. ;) But it's interesting that so many people will recognize the importance of helping others if there isn't a religious tag associated with it, and then, ironically, lambasting religious people for not doing enough to help others.

The Geek Community has a great many people that are very anti-religious... and yet, I believe that the Geek Community is a caring community that could be a wonderful force for good in this world. But beyond their usefulness to the world, I believe there are a number of people in this community that are searching for Christ without knowing who it is that they seek, and every time the search leads them back to church, they are turned off by the notion of what the Church has become. How do you counteract that while still remaining part of the very thing that causes them such turmoil?

I No Longer Believe In Coincidences

I have detailed here recently my decision to enter the Commissioned Lay Pastor program. In that post, I mentioned how I had heard the call and then had it confirmed through prayer and the "coincidental" timing of Matt Cain's Perfect Game. Since that time, the coincidences have been coming fast and furiously.

When my power went out a month or so ago, and I couldn't watch the television program that I'd been wanting to see nor check my e-mail on the computer, I picked up a dusty volume of In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day that my good friend Andy had given me one year for my birthday, and I started to read it. Here was a book about being bold in your faith and answering God's call in your life. More importantly, here was a book that described the author's call in such a clear and concise way that I recognized it immediately as the exact same description of the way God had called me. It was the ultimate confirmation that what I had heard God tell me was authentic and that I needed to be bold. One clear line stood out in the author's reminder to me personally that often times God's call makes absolutely no sense to the person being called. It was an interesting coincidence.

After I made arrangements to begin the process of joining the CLP program, I admit that I still had no idea what God was asking me to do. I'm not Grade A religion material. God laughed when I asked whether he wanted me to go to seminary out of high school. But I had confirmation that God wanted me to go to the program even if he wasn't telling me why.

The hang up was in the idea of the CLP program itself. Its designed mostly for mission programs - when a church is trying to reach into a new community and needs someone who speaks that language (whatever that language might be) - a church might designate someone to take on the trappings of a pastor for a short period of time in order to better serve that new community. But what community did I belong to that wasn't already a part of the church? I only speak English, and then only barely... ;)

At the end of my last preaching assignment, I was asked to deliver the benediction. As of the morning of the service, I still had not thought what to say. I was preaching about why I was no longer looking for a career in film making. But I still have a passion for film and other geeky things. I was struck with a bizarre idea to use film quotes from familiar movies as my benediction - things like ET saying, BE GOOOD! Well, this was highly unorthodox... even for me... but when the time came to deliver my benediction I stood before the church thinking it was a really bad idea and realized that I had no other idea for what to say as a benediction. I delivered the benediction as I had prepared it and the congregation loved it.

Where this gets interesting, coincidentally, is that the next day at work I was telling my co-worker about my benediction and she laughed and said, "I wish my church was more like that. I'd actually want to go more often." Boy that really got me to thinking... what language did I really know, what language could I really speak? I am fluent in GEEK!

This set off a fury of thought about reaching out to my fellow Geek brothers and sisters as a community and hopefully engaging them in a dialog that led to Jesus. But wait... that's absolutely crazy, right? Is this not just my own wishful thinking? God, please send me out to talk to people, but don't send me to people I can't understand? I was looking for a way to serve God on my own terms. God clearly had other more important things for me to do. Surely he was calling me into ministry with the homeless or battered women or drug users or something. Geeks? Be serious, Will.

I put the thought aside and continued to wonder what it was that God was calling me to do. All I knew was that he would have something good for me to do and that sooner or later he would reveal that plan to me.

Yesterday our Pastor returned from his sabbatical. He had been gone for a little over three months - praying, resting, and renewing his faith in God and Christ. He had also been to the General Assembly - a gathering of the entire Presbyterian Church in the United States on a national level. It was at the GA where church policy was discussed and made and where our commitment to Jesus was always refreshed. This was the first time I had seen our Pastor since he'd left for his sabbatical and I was curious as to what he was going to preach.

Coincidentally, he told the congregation that the Presbyterian Church in the United States is committed to bringing forth over 1000 new congregations in this country in the next three years - and none of them are to be based in church buildings. The National Church has recognized the fact that we ought to be outside our church building preaching to the people out there, where the people are. This was, in fact, that subject of my first sermon. The National Church has further recognized the fact that these new congregations ought to be started by bringing together unchurched people with common interests and forming communities with them - like, say, a group of bike riders or a bunch of people who hang out in coffee shops, or... maybe... even Geeks.

PZOW! Lightning!

Here I am, about to enter classes that will allow me to preach to a new faith community and the only faith community I can think of preaching to is the Geek Community and then the national church basically jumps in and says we need volunteers to preach to the Geek Community. Total coincidence, right? Purely random.

So, I'm talking to my Kenya group about these thoughts and feelings and my pastoral advisor says to me, "Oh by the way, Will, another member of the church came to me this week and said that they had decided to become a Commissioned Lay Pastor as well." I'm telling you, there is something in the water at my church.

The more I travel the world and speak to Christians the world over, the more I read about the Christian experience, and the more I experience Christianity myself, the more convinced I am that there is NO SUCH THING AS A COINCIDENCE. This is like deja vu in the Matrix. If you experience a coincidence, you have been witness to the moving of the Holy Spirit in your life. God's motives may be mysterious, but his methods are on display for all to see. You see coincidence, I see divine appointment.

It seems as if God has given me my answer and my call. Tomorrow I meet with my official ministry liason for the CLP program and then my last step will be to bring this forward to my church governing board. I now have some idea what God has planned for me and I am eager to get started on the next step of my journey.

And now I feel safe to begin my next post... Jesus was a Geek. Come back soon.

43

At some point on my birthday every year I am reminded that I share this day with the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki by the United States - an act that finally brought World War II to a close and that was so horrific, nobody has felt the urge to repeat it since. Every year on my birthday, the Japanese have asked the world for peace and for an end to the threat of nuclear war. I can think of no greater birthday wish than that.

I am not naive. I've been on the other side of the equation. I've experienced war first hand (well, as first hand as one can get from a satellite in orbit over a war zone). I've cheered at the death of the enemy in real time - before the somber music and cool video game effects appeared on CNN days later. I've been through all the justification responses and righteous indignation that I've ever wanted to have in a lifetime. In the end, war is still wrong. Dead is still dead. And blowing stuff up is still no way to bring about peace.

We all know it. Deep in our hearts, we all know that any sort of killing is wrong - but we are so obsessed with it that we can't fathom any other concept. The peace we offer is done so with the threat of the big stick backing it up. That is not a way to make a lasting peace as it only lasts so long as we can guarantee our security. We are forced to constantly threaten death to our enemies in order to maintain peace and security.

I've been thinking about this a lot over the past few weeks because of the shootings in Aurora, Colorado. Our love affair with guns and violence is ingrained into our culture in such a way that it has become a part of our American identity. There is no simple solution to the idea of preventing these shootings from occurring in this nation, but the one wrong headed approach to this problem is to suggest that guns are part of the solution. If a rogue nation attacks the United States we don't defend their rights to have weapons and then suggest that we should let all rogue nations have free access to weapons as well because it's their God given right. No. Instead we pound them into dust, confiscate their weapons, and do our best to make sure that these weapons are never again allowed in the hands of those people who seek us harm. Why can't we do the same thing for guns in this country?

To find a solution to a problem, we first have to be willing to change. And I'm not sure that we're ready to go there yet. Our desire to own weapons is tied to our notion of freedom. Owning weapons is not yet associated with death and killing and maiming and the harming of the innocent. Our desire to protect our freedoms from other nations is strong - even unto the point of killing others to maintain them. Peace, real peace, does not come from strength of arms, but from strength of soul. It is not enough to be able to kill every single man, woman, and child on this earth a thousand times over. If we want a lasting peace, we need to be able to build up every single man, woman, and child on this planet and help them to achieve their best life. A first step toward that goal would be to stop trying to kill them.

Now that's a birthday wish I could really get behind.

A Rambling Follow Up To My Sermon

As a follow up to my sermon...

Here are the latest sticking point I'm dealing with in my quest to find salvation for those not yet affiliated with Christianity. I think my quest comes out of a personal perspective that goes something like this... I know a lot of people that are excellent loving human beings - many of whom, quite frankly, that put most Christians to shame with their acts of goodness - but that wouldn't touch Christianity with a ten foot pole while wearing gloves and a full body suit. It's not that they don't know Christ. The problem is that these people know "Christ" all too well. The branding of our religion has been so horribly mismanaged that these people think they know Jesus and the Jesus they think they know is not a dude they want to associate with. So these loving people go on loving other people and being good people while throwing up barriers to the TRUE gospel because of the false gospel they have heard. Are they doomed because of the evangelical missteps of others?

I admit that the sticking point in my thinking is that I believe Jesus when he says that he is the way and the truth and the life. I have found nothing else in all my travels that comes even close to Jesus as the way to live. Nothing. Even those many misguided individuals who think that they can be "spiritual" or perfectly good people without religion, no matter what they do are never going to reach their goal without finding Jesus. I believe this like I believe a boat without a rudder either crashes into rocks or goes in circles. No matter what your best intentions, without Jesus, you will fail to reach your goal of salvation.

But I define salvation a little bit differently than most. I don't see it as a place with pearly gates and unlimited non-fattening ice cream. I see salvation as a place where you are once and for all truly at peace with yourself and with each other - a place that is completely absent of all evil, where only love can reign. And really, can that be any place but in the presence of the one who made love, the one who is love? So salvation and Jesus line up perfectly with each other in a way that no other religion can offer - not Buddha, not Mohammed, nobody else.

So that's the sticking point. These people through no fault of their own are rejecting the one thing they truly want and need because flawed people have been representing Jesus to be something that He is not (and perhaps I am doing the same thing as well).

If Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and if we can not possibly convey that concept to others except through our limited human flawed perspective, then how does anyone ever get to know the real Jesus? I've always been taught that Jesus calls people to him. We don't save anyone ourselves, we only facilitate God in his work. Therefore, the only one that can truly present Jesus to other people is Jesus Himself. And I'm thinking that if that's the case, Jesus can take any form He wishes and follow any set of rules He wants in order to bring people to Him.


I think labels are man made constructs. I think God sees humans far differently than we see ourselves. I think He divides us into three groups - saved, not yet saved, and not willing to be saved. I think the first group is very small - maybe less than 1 person in a million. I think the second group is almost everyone else. And I think the last group is also very small - because to belong to the last group, you have to know Christ and reject him anyway. And I don't just mean that you heard about him on some TV talk show, but REALLY know him.

So the vast majority of us are wandering around in various places on our own spiritual quests - some near the end, some having just begun, most probably somewhere in the middle - and God is leading us at our best pace towards true wisdom and understanding. Fortunately, God grades on a curve and each student has his own curve - that is what true forgiveness is all about. One day we will all stand before him and we will know instantly whether we passed or failed - because the scales will fall from our eyes and we will see ourselves as God sees us and we will know whether we have pleased him or whether we have rejected him.

Anyway, that's where I'm at... it's not a complete theology... and some of it might be fancy wish fulfillment with scripture quoted conveniently to back it up. I don't know. I don't speak for God. I'm also not at the end of my spiritual journey and I still have a great deal to learn.

The Age of Exploration (Sermon 7/15/12)

Well... Here it is... I hope you enjoy...

Age of Exploration

            I grew up wanting to be a filmmaker and I’ve spent most of my life pursuing that dream. So what, might you ask, has prevented me from becoming a filmmaker? The short answer to the question is that God has had other plans for my life.

            When I graduated from high school, I went straight to film school. I bombed horribly. No matter how much I wanted to be a film maker, my heart wasn’t it. Here I was finally getting the opportunity to play with real cameras, lights, and other gear and the one thought that kept coming to my mind was, “Is this it? Shouldn’t I be doing something more with my life?”

            When my friend, Jay, told me that he was dropping out of film school to join the Navy, I told him that he was an idiot. But somewhere in the process of trying to talk Jay out of it, I had a firm push from behind to go out into the world and find the answers to the questions I’d been asking. I called Jay and told him that I was joining the Navy too.

            What I didn’t know then, but I realize now, is that I had just taken the first steps in my spiritual journey.

            It sounds kind of strange to say that a young person raised in a loving church family would have to go out there to find God, but then Jesus’s own story of the Prodigal Son probably wouldn’t ring so true. Even the author of Ecclesiastes admits to trying out all the real world has to offer before finding that such a journey ultimately returns to God. All people take spiritual quests. All spiritual quests end in God. Not all spiritual quests take you to Hawaii for three years, though, so I guess I was luckier than most.

            Of course, I had no idea that I was on a spiritual quest. I was, like most young people, merely trying to find my place out in the world. I only wanted to answer one simple question – what is my purpose in life? It seemed that any day I would find the answer to that question and that the rest of my life could begin in earnest – especially the part where I was making movies and winning Oscars. But the more I looked, the more I explored, the harder the question was to answer.

            At first, I tiptoed around the question. I read a lot when I was in the Navy. Not just the collected works of Heinlein, Asimov and other great Sci-Fi legends, but also classics like Dante, Shakespeare, Steinbeck, and the X-MEN. I also read about the history of Christianity and of Christian thought and started wondering which of the various factions of Christian theology was correct. I became obsessed with the idea of figuring out which words in the Bible were true and which were made up. It was all a chasing after the wind as I came to the conclusion that nobody really knew. I either accepted all of the Bible as valid or I didn’t. That wasn’t a terribly satisfying answer. I wanted truth, instead I got faith.

            I suddenly came to a crossroads of my young spiritual journey. If I couldn’t historically or scientifically verify the validity of every word in the Bible, did I believe in it? Did I believe in God? I was 20, living in Hawaii, completely on my own, and I didn’t have anyone trying to persuade me one way or the other. I could decide the answers to these questions all on my own. Not what was I taught… what did I believe?

            The answers to both questions were yes. I did believe the Bible and I did believe in God. In my case, the seeds planted here at Lakeside had landed on good soil.

            Now that I believed in God, I decided then and there to give myself over to Him. “Lord,” I prayed, “I’m completely lost here trying to run my life. If you can run the universe, surely you can take me where I need to go. From now on, you’re in charge. Lead on.” I think I suspected that God would reveal to me the answer to my questions then and there and I could get back to that award-winning lifestyle any moment, but, again, I was wrong.

            Instead, as no quest ever truly takes you where you were expecting to go, I began to develop a curious new question about God and my new found faith – in short, what about everyone else? What about people who never encounter a Bible? They are created by God. They live their lives. They die. Having never been given the opportunity to know Christ in their lifetime by being born into the wrong circumstances, were they doomed from conception to the eternal flames?

            I went to the one source that I was sure would have the answer to my questions. I finally read the Bible. Cover to cover. Word for Word. Not bad. Some boring bits, but on the whole – a pretty good read. It didn’t specifically answer my question though.

I sought out other books. I searched for answers. I prayed for enlightenment. Though it was only a nagging question that really had nothing to do with me, per se, since I believed in Jesus and I believed in God and I’d been fortunate enough to know Him my whole life, I continued to look for answers all the same. For some reason, the fate of the rest of the world plagued me. It just wasn’t enough for me for Christianity to be some sort of Golden Ticket to a fantastic chocolate factory, I really needed to know that anyone could have a relationship with Jesus whether they were ever formally introduced to him or not.

Of course, what I didn’t realize was that my spiritual quest was starting to affect my other life – the one that I live the other 99% of the time when I’m not trying to resolve deep theological questions. When I got out of the Navy, I tried film school again – only lasted six weeks this time. I changed majors. I studied writing for about two weeks, realized that I knew more than the teachers, then switched to History for a semester or two before settling on archaeology.

(As an aside, I suppose I really studied archaeology because I wanted to be Indiana Jones. If you can’t film them, join them.)

It came time to decide where to go to get my degree. I sent out college applications to all the state schools and universities in the west and Florida. Two days later, I got a package from Idaho State. I’d never even heard of Idaho State before I’d applied there. I was just being thorough. But again, I received that gentle nudge that told me that God had some sort of purpose for me to go there. So despite never having set foot in Idaho before, I went to school at Idaho State in Pocatello. Film school, as you can imagine, was completely abandoned at this point.

Though I was majoring in Anthropology in order to become an archaeologist, I found myself trying to resolve the religious questions that still lingered in my mind. Anthropology is the study of all people in all cultures, past, present, and future. In my studies of other disparate cultures from around the world and in different times, I began to see an interesting trend.

So far, every culture in every time has had religion. Humans, it seems, are by their very nature religious beings. While most scientists have tried to explain this fact by suggesting that as social creatures we need the connection that religion gives us to one another, or that religion is some sort of reflexive response to primitive stimuli like thunder or death or other things that primitive minds can’t explain without science to show the way, I began to wonder if humanities need for religion wasn’t something internal – some part of their very make up.

C.S. Lewis postulates in his book, Mere Christianity, that all human beings, having been created by God, are bound together by a desire to return to God because He is that feeling of perfection humans strive to attain. Though I hadn’t read C.S. Lewis at the time, I had arrived at a similar theory. If the soul really does exist, then humanity throughout history, would always feel the urge, the need, to seek out God. For those not born into Christianity, the desire to find God would still be there – but it would manifest itself in a way that was culturally significant to that particular person. In other words, a Christian would worship God, a Muslim, Allah, a Buddhist, Buddha, a Native American, Coyote, etc... All would be seeking to find God and to worship him, but they would do so in a way that they could understand and that they were taught.

I knew that I was on some pretty unstable ground. My teachers were already warning me about using my Christian upbringing to answer scientific questions. Trying to write a thesis in which I explain that all religions are essentially the same thing would have been the very short end of my anthropoligcal career. But I knew that the thought was important. If everyone on the planet is a child of God and everyone yearns to get back to God, to be closer to their creator, then all sincere religion, all sincere seeking, all spiritual quests lead to God – the one and only God. No matter what shape that quest takes, all of these yearnings are yearnings after the same thing.

We – all of us, all of them, everyone – are exactly the same in our desire to find God, to find love, and to be truly happy.

In this, in all my studies and readings and explorations during and since college, I have only found two people that have the right answer to humanities ultimate goal and how to achieve it – the author of Ecclesiastes and Jesus of Nazareth.

The author of Ecclesiastes, reputed to be King Solomon, tells a story of a spiritual quest that takes him to the very ends of the Earth in search of the answer to the question that plagues him – what is his purpose here? As you may recall, Solomon was gifted by God with divine wisdom. He begins his book about this quest by saying that everything we do here is meaningless – that all of our efforts to find satisfying happiness on our own, whether that be through hard work or leisure or wealth or pleasure or escape – that all of these attempts are a complete waste of time. The truth, he says, is that we all live and we all die and nobody is exempt. Everything else means nothing… EXCEPT our relationship with God.

Jesus said, “Sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and come and follow me.” And the rich man walked away very sad because he was very wealthy. Isn’t that a great punchline. He walked away sad. Why did he walk away sad? Because he was very wealthy… Think about it. We assume that the Bill Gates’ of this world are extremely happy – ecstatic even – because of their vast wealth. But here is Jesus saying that this rich man who has done everything in his power to conform to the religious doctrines of his day, who was considered a righteous man by other people, this man walks away sad because of the vast wealth he has in the bank. Imagine someone giving you a million dollar bill and you burst into tears, and cry out,” Oh what cruel fates! How will I ever give away all of this money?”

This is, I think, the crux of the question. After all my years of searching, after all my questions, after all my explorations, I believe more than ever that Jesus is our Lord and that His way is the only way because of this passage. Because Jesus is saying that the only way to achieve immortality, to find love and happiness, is to let go of everything this world has to offer – all of the false hope, all of the false love, all of the false promises of security and power – to drop it all / give it away because it is utterly meaningless, and then to follow him and become a servant of love to your fellow human being. And it doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, and it doesn’t matter where you were born, and it doesn’t matter how you were raised or what you think you know about the world – all of that is a chasing after the wind – what matters is that you leave it all behind and do as Christ does.

Jesus of Nazareth is the only religious figure who teaches this selfless love. At Idaho State, I took a course of Western Philosophy from Plato to Nietsche. It was a worthless class in that after we learned everything about a particular philosophy, we also learned why that philosophy was wrong, invalid, and did not conform to reality. As I learned the entire knowledge base of secular humanism, it occurred to me that the one philosophy that could not be refuted was the one taught by Jesus of Nazareth.

Love your neighbor can’t be refuted. And you can’t tell me that those people who follow this philosophy – no matter what their background or upbringing – aren’t the people the Jesus is talking about when he says, “For I was hungry and you gave me something eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me.” Jews, Gentiles, Samaritans, Romans… in the end, it is what’s written on our heart that defines us.

At Idaho State, I learned all sorts of things about life and religion and respect for other cultures. But when it came time to go for my Master’s Degree in Religious Anthropology, I had another major revelation – there are no jobs for religious anthropologists. The formal side of my spiritual quest came to an end, but even after I came home, I continued to follow Christ wherever he led me.

He returned me to Lakeside finally after a nice long prodigal journey of my own. I came back to join the choir… and maybe have a few cookies every Sunday. That plan lasted all of one half choir rehearsal. I joined the bell choir. Then I became an assistant youth leader. Then I was asked to join Session. Then I became the head youth leader. I went on mission trips. I went to Kenya. I became a deacon. And God continues to lead me into places I never expected to go.

In fact, long after I had given up on any thought of film school, I was approached by two of my youth group kids. They wanted to make a film and wondered if I could help them. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Faith, as it turns out, is the assurance of things hoped for. I got to make my film. My journey has finally come full circle.

Every single one of us is a child of God. Every single one of us yearns to be reunited with Him. We all search for love. We all search for Happiness. Since all love and happiness comes from God, we all search for God. And if we are fortunate in our search, we will discover God in service to others.

Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind, body and soul. Love your neighbor as yourself. Everything else is meaningless – a chasing after the wind.

Amen.

The Importance of Blogging (Quick Note)

Just a thought really...

I preached last Sunday on an area that I considered borderline controversial. In a nutshell, part of my sermon explained my conviction that all religions are essentially the same and yet, they all lead to Christ. It was pretty convoluted and to be fair I was mostly concerned that the essence of my argument couldn't be properly conveyed to the congregation in the length of a sermon. So, nervously, I stood up and delivered my sermon.

It was not only not controversial, but apparently the congregation rather liked it.

In hindsight, I realized that all of the blogging I've done over the years where I've tried to weigh in on a controversial topic has finally paid dividends. Though I wasn't aware of it until Sunday, this has all been great practice for writing sermons of substance.

Thank you all for your praise, but mostly for your criticism. It has made me a better writer.

And now, I will resume my practice...

Tying up loose ends

At age 42, I am not a writer. I am not a film maker. I am not much of a office drone. I'm not exactly sure what I am, but I'm not any of these things that I set out to be. I'm either on one of the longest training programs ever invented, or I've been fiddling away while my life clock burns. But I was not completely cognizant of these obvious facts until God decided to drop a little bombshell in my midst - a drop of perspective and a new challenge.

About 8 weeks ago, while I was minding my own business at a mostly boring Presbytery Meeting, God told me to become a Commissioned Lay Pastor.

Now, before you all freak out and start giving me excuses, I want to save you a bit of time... I had the exact same reaction. Wait one minute here, God, did I hear you correctly? Did I understand it correctly? Is this some metaphor for changing my life? I was confused and desperate for clarification.

I started with research. The CLP program was started by the Presbytery mostly as a way for lay people to help out as Pastors in situations where no current Pastor could do the job. For instance, if a Church decided to offer a Spanish Language service, they might call a CLP that spoke Spanish if no regular pastor was available to do the job. In time, the CLP program had developed to include all sorts of Mission related calls that might need pastors - calls for CLP's to reach out to a local residential living home or a teenage program of at-risk youth, etc... Each CLP is associated with a specific church and their pastor's abilities apply only to their specific call.

I didn't have a call, per se. God told me to be a CLP, but He didn't suggest that there was a specific reason for one. I asked around to see if I'd missed something. Nope. No CLP needed.

In the meantime, I started some soul searching and came to the conclusion above. This was not a pity party, but just an acknowledgement that if my life was going to matter in some way to the Earth I will one day leave behind, it probably won't be as a writer, film-maker, or office-drone. Being able to relegate these things to a new proper place in my life, made me realize that I'd not only not reached my potential, but had, in many ways, stagnated.

AHA! I thought! This was a wake up call by God to realize my true potential. Thanks, God... I'm glad that's all it was... I would have been a terrible CLP, and...

The problem was, the CLP idea wouldn't go away. It occurred to me that whether I wanted to be a CLP or not was irrelevant. God had already written it on my heart. But maybe I'd misunderstood. Maybe, secretly, deep down inside in places I didn't want to think about, I had always somehow harbored some thought of becoming a CLP and it had just chosen that particular moment to bubble up and latch on. Didn't Freud say something about this?

The next day the cover of Presbyterian Monthly magazine at church blared, "Answering God's Call..." and that Sunday, the sermon topic was all about Jonah and Abraham and Moses answering God's call... So, maybe it was all a coincidence... but just in case...

I talked to Pastor J.D. about it. He told me about the program, asked me all the same questions I'd already asked myself, and seemed convinced that while I might not know the answers, I was certainly sincere in asking the questions. He said that I was in a period of Investigation - trying to understand God's call to myself.

I asked God bluntly the next day, Did I just make this up? Is this really what you want? Was I imagining the whole thing? I got my perfect answer that night.

On my way home, I had a sudden thought (in hindsight, it was as sudden and as clear as the thought that I should become a CLP) that Matt Cain was going to pitch a no-hitter that night. It wasn't that it was a stretch to imagine that Matt Cain could pitch a no-hitter. He can pitch a no-hitter any time he takes the hill. He's really good. It was the clarity and the certainty of the conviction in my head that made it stand out in my mind. In fact, as I got home and got out of my car, I thought, "I should probably watch the game tonight." But I didn't, because I had work to do. Of course, Matt Cain not only threw a no-hitter, he threw a Perfect Game.

I realized the next day that God had given me my answer. Just as there was no logical way I would have ever had a thought that I should become a CLP, there was no logical reason why I would have suddenly thought, Matt Cain's going to throw a no-hitter tonight. I've had these bizarre "premonitions" before, but few with the clarity and insight that I'd had on those two occasions. God was letting me know that I hadn't imagined things.

Okay. I'm committed now. To what? I still don't know. Since I never saw this coming, I really don't have any idea where I'm going next.

In the meantime, I'm tying up loose ends. I've been rushing to finish two movies before the end of summer. Those are the main two obligations I have left from my old life. I will continue to write, continue to make amateur films, and continue to be an office drone, but I will no longer consider these things to be the end result of my life. God has called me to do something different now. Who am I to ignore such a call?

A Psalm For Understanding

Lord, you delight me
with your call.
But I am confused.

I know what you want
But I don't know why.
You send me forth
and I am bewildered.

I go forth
into the wilderness
but I wander aimlessly.

Give me clarity, Lord.

You caught me off guard.
I was foolish in my delay.
I wasted time asking
for confirmation.

Who else could it be?
You set the stars in the sky,
you know their course
before their first illumination.

Your confirmation was perfection.
Anything less, and I
would have had reason to doubt.

Knowing that it is your call
does not tell me
why have you chosen me?

I am unworthy.
I am unprepared.
I am not the one that I would choose.

Give me clarity, Lord.

You have your reasons.
That is good enough for me.
Lead me to your flock.
Tell me what to do.

Give me the ability
to be your presence.
Your love to be my love.
Fill me with your spirit.

Send me forth, Lord.

Where there's a Will (Version 2.0)

I will be going incommunicado for a brief time. It's been coming on for a few weeks now.

As a previous version of me has said before, there are two sides to Will - the Creative Side and the Totally Kick Ass and Takes Names Intelligence Specialist Side. The wimpy, nice, creative side has been in charge now for a little over ten years. He's really done a number on this place while he's been in charge. Eeeuch!

Now, the other Will is in charge. And he doesn't like what he sees. And he's really not liking some of the things going on in his life. Therefore, I've stuffed Creative Will in a box for a while so that I can take care of some business.

Things are going to change around here. Rapidly. And then, I will return you to your regular... hippy... programming.

Preach the Gospel... use words if you must.

I think the worst thing that can happen to my brothers and sisters in Christ is to have a microphone, gavel, or TV camera shoved in their face. It seems that when a Christian is asked for their opinion on any issue, good or bad, they feel duty bound to answer the question with an authoritative response as if they speak for all Christians everywhere. Even in the rare case where these spokespeople do speak for all Christians, they seem to forget that they don't necessarily speak for God.

I say this because I have seen the struggles of faith firsthand in the churches and in larger regional bodies of church government over issues that divide the rest of the world as well. Abortion, Same Sex relationships, the Death Penalty, and on and on, these issues divide the church as easily as they divide the nation and the world. Yet if you turn on the TV there is always some Christian pundit ready to give an answer for the Church that is so authoritative, you would assume it was written in stone by the hand of God.

While I think every Christian ought to have the moral authority to speak their mind on these issues and to attempt to prayerfully discuss these issues with other believers and non-believers alike, I think this mind-set that some Christians have that their thoughts MUST be correct and that everyone else is wrong is starting to get out of hand.

It's one thing to say that you believe Same Sex relationships are wrong and that the Bible clearly spells that out. It's another thing to say that you should punch your children if they display same sex tendencies as one Baptist minister did a few weeks ago. That message flows from the outright conviction of the Baptist Minister that he is 100% correct in his thinking and that, therefore, the next logical step is to do whatever it takes to prevent such a horrible outcome for your children.

I read, too, of a conservative minister who has preached that extending the right to vote to women has been the cause of our great nation's demise.  Now you might think that God does not want women to be deacons or elders in your church (and certainly not ministers), but to suggest that their ability to think and to vote their conscience has somehow caused this nation harm is taking your religious views and perverting them to the point where they no longer support your thoughts but undermine them. You not only sound like a loon when you say things like that, but it also speaks to the fact that the words you are speaking are coming out of your mouth and not your heart.

My biggest issue with a great deal of what is being said by Christians is that these words have taken on legalistic, exclusionary tones that damage not only the work of the Church but also the message of Jesus Christ. The Bible says that They will know we are Christians by our love. These things that are being said show no form of love that I would ever want to be associated with - and I'm a Christian. You can imagine how the rest of the world views us.

I do not know what the solution is. I would not muzzle my brothers and sisters or attempt to control WHAT they say, only the way that it is said. You are free to have your convictions in Christ. You are free to disagree with mine. You are free to argue with me, plead with me, and entreat me to come over to your view. But please, do not allow your views of Christianity to come before God's. Speak with your heart, not with your mouth, and that will make all the difference.

A Change of Direction

For an entire year I've been working on a little piece of animated anarchy that I am happy to see finally deposited on Youtube. While it didn't actually take me an entire year to do the animation, it took me an entire year to reach the point where it was animated. I had to buy a new computer. I had to learn several new programs. I had to write scripts, cast parts, record voices, shoot live footage, shoot green screen footage, and a host of other technical things, all so that I could take a thing out of my mind and bring it to reality on Youtube. It may not be Pixar, but I'm pretty happy with the results.

But I had a clear deadline of May 1st for a reason. I need to change direction now. While I'll still be animating the rest of the 11 episodes of my series, the hard work of figuring out how to do it is done. The rest is just going through the paces and using my creativity to do the work. My focus must change now to two new challenges - one immediate and the other pressing, but with a little more breathing room.

I have a sermon to deliver on Pentecost Sunday and I've been letting my mind mull over the topic even as I have been praying without ceasing about the challenges of preaching. God is definitely leading me on a path, but I keep stopping every time I find a pretty view (expecting it to suddenly dawn on me where it is that I am going). I know that I will reach the end of the path and will have plenty of time to write the sermon, I just kind of wish to have it done sooner rather than later.

I'm also actively starting to put together my story and my script for my Folk Music documentary. For longer than I've been alive, my Dad has been associated with a group of people that were either in his Folk Music group in the 1950's or were associated with his group. They get together annually to sing and share stories in a Hootenany that has been ongoing for at least 30 years now. Though none of them ever had the kind of fame that is reserved for the lucky recording artists, they were in and around all the groups that did have that kind of fame. They played in the same clubs, borrowed music from the same sources, and even, on occasion, sang together. So, collectively, they have a fascinating insight into a period of American music that is rarely discussed or talked about (with the exception of the excellent A Mighty Wind). Of course, at its heart my documentary has to be about the music and the friendships that have kept them together for 50 plus years. Right now, I'm mulling over the best way to tell that story.

So... my hands are busy animating. My mind is busy documenting. And my heart and soul are busy walking down a path of God-led discovery. If there is any other part of me not otherwise occupied, I hope it finds a nice hot tub to soak in until it's needed.

The 99% Spring

As spring rolls around, we are once again forced to put up with the foolishness that was the Occupy Movement last year. While this group had legitimate grievances, their protesting turned into a sort of whining miasma of petulant protesting for the sake of protesting - like an entire movement made up of three year old temper tantrums. Needless to say, the whole Occupy Movement needed a time out, and that's exactly what we've all be enjoying over the winter months.

 But once again, spring returns and the Occupy Movement is back with a new slogan - the 99% Spring. Hopefully, their winter was a fruitful one and a time for reflection and a new strategy. Here are a few suggestions that I have for the movement on ways they can actually achieve some sort of progress.

First - DO NO HARM. I've always considered this tenant of the Hippocratic Oath to be a good first step for just about anything in life. If you can move forward without going backwards, you are making progress. The most effective protesting is always peaceful protesting. See Ghandi, Martin Luther King, etc...

Second - ACHIEVE SOMETHING. There are SO MANY THINGS that are wrong out there - pick one. Figure out a way to protest it, keeping the first idea in place. And then protest the heck out of it. In the past week, I've read articles about a Minnesota Hospital that replaced its front line staff with bill collectors so that it could collect on debts from people trying to access health care at their emergency room. What?! Seriously? I'd have an Occupy Movement right on their freaking lawn! Or how about the article the other day that talked about the sleazy, immoral, and probably illegal tactics of all these mortgage companies and banks doing robo-signing on foreclosure notices? How hard could it be to stage large peaceful sit-ins in their lobbies and parking garages? If nothing else, moving the Occupy Movement away from large family friendly parks and into places where these evil and immoral things are actually being done would also move the focus away from the protestors and towards the things being protested.

Third - GO HOME WHEN YOU'RE DONE. Look, even Jesus rested from time to time. MLK didn't constantly march on Selma. Ghandi didn't incessantly criss-cross India by foot and his hunger strikes rarely lasted more than a few weeks. At some point, you have to give the protests a rest and let people take a deep breath, so that they can agree with you and try to figure out how to correct these evils. If you are constantly protesting, then people are spending all their time trying to figure out how to make you stop protesting, not figuring out ways to actually address the issues you are bringing up.

These are my three simple suggestions to the Occupy Movement and the 99% Spring. I, henceforth, wash my hands of these radicals and loons... unless they should actually take some of these suggestions to heart.

Go Up, Young Man!

North Korea is quite the insular nation. They have closed their borders to pretty much anyone except China. Their people do not travel. They do not have any concept of the world outside their own borders. As a result, they are a dying race of static people living day to day with no concept of a brighter future.

As goes North Korea, so goes the world.

In 1944 when Germany started raining V-2 rockets down on England, the world woke up to the military possibilities of rocketry. Pretty soon there was a "space" race going on between the two leading industrial technology winners of World War II - the United States and Russia. Russia beat the United States by launching Sputnik and putting an orbital satellite in space first. This scared the hell out of the Pentagon and more money and funds were allocated to this strategic threat. We are still living in the shadow of Sputnik.

For more than 50 years now, our space bound technology has been largely tied to strategic threats. The only reason we went to the Moon first was to show Russia that if anyone was going to build a base there, it was going to be the United States. While it is true that NASA has been allowed to continue its existence doing scientific missions, the origins of NASA's birth and the reality behind its existence has always been quasi-strategic. If we weren't afraid of needing space ships to knock killer satellites and stuff out of the sky, we wouldn't need NASA anymore.

And yet, think of what the world has gained because of our "space" race, no matter the reason for its existence. Computers, satellites, cell phones, the internet, digital technology, wireless, fuel cells, etc... All of the greatest technological advancements of the last 50 years come about directly as a result of our ventures into space. Heck, if there hadn't been a space race, our schools wouldn't have upgraded their science and math classes and the United States continued dominance in these fields would not have been possible. It was our vision of a world outside our own that allowed the United States to grow and become the technological leader on this planet.

Now our fifty years of fame has dried up. At a time of economic crisis, our vision has become shrink-wrapped and bound inside our little borders. While we might not be as land-locked in our imagination as North Korea, we are every bit as earthbound. Our policies are based entirely around how to make things work now... not looking forward to the future. Technology in the last few years has produced things like... Facebook... Google... the I-Phone... a better 3-D film... Sure, we've also tackled disease and earthquake preparedness and cars that park themselves - but all of these things are designed to make life here better right now. Viagra does nothing to solve the hunger problems faced by 25% of the world. The proliferation of nuclear technology does nothing to solve the problem of over-population (though it could... in a hurry... unfortunately). Our brand new military aircraft, though very cool to look at, does nothing to alleviate our growing lack of resources as we strip this planet bare.

No, my friends, the solutions can't be found here on Earth. We need to expand our horizons. We need to change our insular views and start looking outwards again. We need someone with a vision to take the reins of our imagination and to lead us to a bright new future.

I'd much rather invest in the trickle-down theory of economics if I thought that there might be something incredibly new on the horizon. Putting half the budget of the United States into a project like a Lunar or Mars Colony would have repercussions for the world's economy that we couldn't even begin to imagine. But before we can do that, we need to have someone in charge that can rise above the petty challenges of today and see the importance of the challenges of tomorrow.

I am disappointed in God's people today...

Just a reminder from one of the great books of the Bible...

Micah 6:

1 Listen to what the LORD says:

“Stand up, plead my case before the mountains;
let the hills hear what you have to say.

2 “Hear, you mountains, the LORD’s accusation;
listen, you everlasting foundations of the earth.
For the LORD has a case against his people;
he is lodging a charge against Israel.

3 “My people, what have I done to you?
How have I burdened you? Answer me.
4 I brought you up out of Egypt
and redeemed you from the land of slavery.
I sent Moses to lead you,
also Aaron and Miriam.
5 My people, remember
what Balak king of Moab plotted
and what Balaam son of Beor answered.
Remember your journey from Shittim to Gilgal,
that you may know the righteous acts of the LORD.”

6 With what shall I come before the LORD
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8 He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

9 Listen! The LORD is calling to the city—
and to fear your name is wisdom—
“Heed the rod and the One who appointed it.
10 Am I still to forget your ill-gotten treasures, you wicked house,
and the short ephah, which is accursed?
11 Shall I acquit someone with dishonest scales,
with a bag of false weights?
12 Your rich people are violent;
your inhabitants are liars
and their tongues speak deceitfully.
13 Therefore, I have begun to destroy you,
to ruin you because of your sins.
14 You will eat but not be satisfied;
your stomach will still be empty.
You will store up but save nothing,
because what you save I will give to the sword.
15 You will plant but not harvest;
you will press olives but not use the oil,
you will crush grapes but not drink the wine.
16 You have observed the statutes of Omri
and all the practices of Ahab’s house;
you have followed their traditions.
Therefore I will give you over to ruin
and your people to derision;
you will bear the scorn of the nations.”

What more could I possibly add?

You can't make this stuff up...

Star Wars - The ultimate space fantasy for a 7 year old kid. A young man learning to use his father's light sword to defeat the very evil Darth Vader with the help of a kindly old grandfather, a bad ass space pirate, and his furry alien sidekick who kind of looks like your teddy bear on steroids. There's a princess and a space battle, and then, literally with seconds to spare, the young man's new best friends come out of nowhere to save him so that he can make one of the most unlikely lucky shots of all lucky shots, thus destroying the Death Star and saving everyone he loves. How about that for a story?!

I think I've always been drawn to that ultimate story. Star Wars set the bar so high for most kids of my generation that I think we've all been trying to top it ever since. Bigger explosions! Bigger suspense! More sexy damsels! Better looking space pirates! Better dialog! Better special fx! But never that sheer surprise of that story that seems so familiar to us and yet was something we never saw coming. You can't outdo that. Once it's been done, you have to find something else that is even better - but not the same.

LOST was an original story too. A group of survivors of a plane crash trapped on a mysterious island. The story dealt with issues of life, death, redemption, betrayal, love, etc... all the good things a story ought to deal with. And yet, when it came time to go big or go home, many of the show's fans felt as if LOST had let them down. What expectations did they have for the show's finale, I wonder?

LOST was a fantasy and a bit of fluff, but it dealt with some heady human issues. Unfortunately for its ultimate success, it's formula was always to keep something back - to hide some aspect of its truth and wisdom from viewers so that they kept coming back for more... but also, by hinting that there was some other truth and wisdom hidden away from the audience, the show promised its audience some answers to things that quite frankly could not have answers without improving on real life. I mean, really, what did the audience think the writers were going to disclose about the Island that would have solved all the shows mysteries and explain its mythology and mystery all in one fell swoop to the satisfaction of all people? Such expectations about a fictional show are at best, unrealistic. And those few writers that have had the misfortune of trying to meet those expectations have ultimately fallen on the sword of hubris.

I bring all of this up because there is one story that trumps both of these stories, and the best part is that its a true story. A true story that is more heart pounding, thrilling and entertaining than Star Wars and that has an ending that beats the mystery and thrills of LOST? Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying.

I think the story is somewhat familiar to you all. A world of corruption. A once proud race brought to ruin by its own greed. An oppressive regime. A people crying out to be saved. And, of course, the all important prophecy of a savior that will bring the people out of ruin and defeat the evil empire! That is the background in which we find our savior Jesus Christ on the road to Jerusalem after three years of fulfilling the prophecies concerning him.

But this is where our true story diverges from the rest and that is what makes our story so much better than any human scripted drama. Because like most humans today who pay $12 to go to a theater for some light entertainment, the people of his time expected Jesus to arrive in Jerusalem and administer the beat downs of all beat downs on the corrupt rulers of the City and the oppressive Empire that held them all in thrall. They were expecting a kind of real life battle royal - where Jesus, the savior, would bring forth all the power of Heaven to bear on the earthly power of Rome in a winner takes all kind of fight. And Jesus did enter Jerusalem as a mighty and triumphant savior and the people did rejoice. But what they didn't know, and what most people still can't understand, is that this story had a very different ending in mind - an ending that would solve all the mysteries and explain its mythology and mystery all in one fell swoop to the satisfaction of all the people.

Instead of liberating the people from Rome, Jesus liberated them from death. And in order to do that, he had to be arrested, tried, beaten, and horribly murdered by the same corrupt officials that everyone had been expecting Jesus to beat down. There was no last second reprieve of Jesus crying out, "Father, please!" and then God dumping Pontius Pilate down an endless pit into the center of the Death Star. This was no fake sacrifice. This hero really died. Brutally. And his followers were scattered, demoralized, heartbroken and probably hunted.

But the conclusion is what makes this story incredible... Jesus defeats death and returns to Earth even more triumphant and radiant than anything the people could have ever imagined.

The thing that always strikes me about this story is that it is the Ultimate Story. There is no other story like it, nor can there be. Anything similar will always fail in comparison to the original... and so the only way the story can be topped is by finding something that is even more over the top, even more truthful, even more moral, even more compassionate, even more hopeful, even more good news than this one. From a writers stand point, I can assure you that no such story exists - nor will it ever.

So when people question my faith by throwing logic at me - how can you believe a story that's 2000 years old and often contradictory in parts? - I think about what they have to say and then I remember that tearing down a story is nothing unless you can find a better story to replace it. I can find flaws in Shakespeare, but that takes away nothing from the brilliance of his prose. I can find flaws in the Bible (or at least they seem like flaws to me) but these flaws can not diminish the fact that the story of Jesus is so perfect and so integral to history and explanations of life that no amount of flaws can diminish its essential truth.

Or to come full circle... this is a story you just can't make up. We're human. We just don't create stories that are better than the truth.

Adventure Saturday #2 - The Hiller Air Museum in San Carlos

On Saturday, February 18th, my brother and I went to the Hiller Air Museum in San Carlos. The museum has a fascinating collection focusing on the history of air travel, with specific emphasis on the San Francisco Bay Area. I learned so much about airplanes and air travel in the course of one morning that I was ready to don some goggles and hop in a WWI Biplane by the time I was done. I highly recommend this museum to any and all people who want to learn more about air travel.

Our day started with a nice quiet drive to the Hiller Air Museum. Considering the Bay Bridge being shut down this last weekend for construction, we were surprised at such a quiet and fast journey to the museum arriving just a few minutes before it opened.

The Museum, itself, is housed in one large building - about the size of a modern warehouse or very large car dealership. As you enter the vast main lobby, to the left you will find an incredible gift shop, to the right you will find the main exhibit space, and in the lobby itself there is a glass paneled meeting room (for lectures and such) and a few large aircraft dangling overhead.

The tickets for the museum can be purchased in the gift shop. Now normally I'm against such a blatant grab for dollars by forcing people into the gift shop in order to enter the building, but in this case I'll let it slide because this was quite the gift shop. Almost any kind of airplane or aircraft related item could be found in this gift shop - all of it quality stuff and reasonably priced. I think we spent a good fifteen minutes walking through the gift shop looking at all the wonderful stuff to buy. It actually put me in a great mood for the rest of the museum. We bought our tickets ($11 for adults), got our wristbands, and headed back into the lobby area.

We were immediately met by one of the museum's very friendly and helpful volunteers. He asked us if we'd been to the museum before and when we said we hadn't, he gave us the 19 Cent tour... pointing out where everything was and then showing us on the map. I hadn't even walked into the exhibit space yet and I was already impressed.

We crossed the lobby and entered the exhibit space. The various aircraft and exhibits in the space are presented, more or less, in chronological order from dates prior to the Wright Brothers flight all the way up to the future of air travel and NASA research area. The entire exhibition space is open air with many aircraft being so large as having to be suspended from the ceiling. There were plenty of information cards, plus a cellphone audio tour available at no extra charge.

I learned more about the history of aircraft in the first twenty feet than I had ever learned at the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.. Some of the more interesting things that I saw at the museum - a giant picture of a very early aerial exhibition at the area now occupied by Tanforan Shopping Mall, the actual mock up of the nose cone of the SSST plane that was never built by Boeing, a hover disc simulator that Hiller had been building for the military but that was never put into service (think of a one man hovercraft that can fly and you kind of get the idea), and an eastern bloc communist fighter craft still being built today that is so cheap that many westerners (with lots of money) are buying them as pleasure craft - imagine owning your own Top Gun fighter craft!

Upstairs in the main exhibition hall is a observation area where you can see the planes suspended from the ceiling at closer to eye level. There is also an area set aside for flying computer aircraft simulators (much like the ones you can buy for your computer at home) with the assistance of an actual flight instructor. It's an extra cost - $3.00 per 20 minute session - but you can get actual flight instruction while you do it. Naturally, this is where the kids gravitated.

Back into the lobby, looking for Dave, I discovered a vast aircraft maintenance and preservation lab that could be observed through glass. At the back of the lobby there is an open air courtyard that opens on to the San Carlos airfield. In the courtyard is the nose-cone section of a real life 747 jumbo jet. My brother Dave called me on my cell phone from the cockpit of the jet as he was busy playing with all of the myriad controls. I walked out to the back of the jet and entered the nose cone section at approximately first class.

The nose cone has the entire first class section of the 747 - both upstairs and downstairs - as well as the cockpit. I enjoyed sitting in first class - a section I doubt I will ever visit in real life - while my brother pretended being a pilot. Closest thing I've had to a playground experience in 30 years!

We finished our tour in the gift shop again where I managed to avoid temptation... mostly. I shall definitely be returning to this museum in the future. I really had a great visit and am ready to go back and learn some more.