the opening of possibility

monday was not all it was cracked up to be today. it was not a great day. on the one hand, i secured my wife and i two tickets to see U2 in concert when they get to Dallas, TX on their current tour: U2 360. that was all it was cracked up to be. shortly before that i found out that i was not getting hired for a job i thought i had a good shot at procuring. this is a pressing matter for me since my current job ends on may 31st.

the aforementioned job going to someone else is outside of vocational ministry. and i see this as a huge possibility. i have worked now for 6 years in vocational ministry and i have been uncomfortable for all 6 years. i often even find myself uncomfortable in the christian mainline church that i am a member of. i am called to be a member in that mainline denomination. i feel that with the same certainly that i feel i will wake up for tomorrow morning. i am not sure that i have ever truly felt called to be in vocational ministry.

let me take you back a few years, if you are unfamiliar with my personal story. at the close of my undergraduate days at Southwestern University, i felt what i would term a calling to attend seminary. i was prepared to go to public policy school and focus on educational policy, but chose instead to follow a calling to go to seminary at Perkins School of Theology at SMU. i am glad that i did this. for three years of classroom work, i learned an immense amount, and i came out on the other side of this adventure much better able to think about and articulate my own theology. however, during that time i experienced what i would call partial discernment in vocation. i decided not to pursue ordination in the the mainline christian denomination i am a member of for a myriad of reasons. while those reasons don't matter here, suffice it to say that this was shocking to a number of people, and many people still try to sway me now to reevaluate this decision. because i decided not become ordained, i had to find a suitable internship to pursue my final year of seminary. i chose to come back to Southwestern University where i completed my internship and have been subsequently employed for the past two years. currently i am seeking employment in the university setting to pursue university administration as a long term goal.

but that isn't what this is about. it is about leaving vocational ministry and feeling very comfortable with that. when i decided that i wouldn't pursue vocational ministry in my next career iteration, i felt comfortable with that decision. a lot of people asked questions, mainly focused on why in the world i spent four years to get an advanced degree to not use it in their eyes. since i have made that decision i have seen a world of possibilities open up to me that i had forgotten i even had the time to think about when i was spending all day in ministry as my job. i think the bottom line for me is that i will have the time and energy to pursue ministry opportunities that i feel passionate about instead of turning them into a job. for whatever reason, around ministry, a job takes the passion away for me.

in some ways i feel like Jonah. i don't even necessarily like Jonah, i think that he shirked his loyalty, duty, obedience, and responsibility when it was plain to him what he was supposed to do. for the most part, we tend to call these people jerks in our society. but part of me finds some sort of identity in Jonah. i feel lost like he must have felt when something seems right and wrong at the same time. i also feel the unassuredness of stepping into territory that must have looked foreign. this might not have been where he felt like he wanted to go, but this was where he was needed.

i hope the ideas and passions i have for living life together can grow and blossom into something beautiful. for me the opening of possibility is not seeing greener grass, but seeing the dead grass in a new way.

community vs. communal

many things make up a person's identity, and only some of them are we able to control. mine is made up of parents who raised me well, who taught me to think for myself, and to accept the consequences for my decisions. it is also made up of very surface level things like..i am a male...i am married...i am going to be a father in a couple of months...i am white, educated, and middle class. there a lots of things that i could write, but one things consumes me more than others when i consider what i want other people to see in me.

it is this: i care more about being communal than being in a community.

let me explain. the word community comes from the latin meaning to have something in common or shared. it is a passive word. my favorite example is this: you can move into a neighborhood, apartment complex, or any other place of residence and you are in a community. you will have neighbors, yet it will not matter. you will not be required by anyone to care about who those other people around you are. you won't be required to help them in times of struggle or to provide for them on any level. there is no expectation, other than not wanting to be the creepy one on the block, that you will do more than live peacefully where it is you reside. end of story.

but to be communal is a different story altogether. it is to be active at its core. there is no do-nothing-option, because in reality, that is doing something. striving to be communal suggests that you care about something enough to move toward it, and it is my hope that this is positive. indeed there are plenty of things that are communal and yet destructive. however, at its most basic meaning, communal means to be doing things for the common good. which also suggests that it is leaning towards selflessness. (for a more technical image of this you could think about or read about the tragedy of the commons.)

and this ultimately is what i hope people see in me. and if they don't, i wish they knew that i was striving toward this because i believe in the deepest places of my being, that in doing things communally we will truly make the world a better place.

a holy week worth living

i have a close friend who is going through a tough time this week. it has brought back a lot of memories for me of a special person that graced my life. i do truly mean that he graced my life. if you knew him you would know that willie was not one to back down from a challenge of any sort. he was tenacious to say the least.

willie was smart and vivacious and taken far too soon from us, but what will be the most lasting impact that willie had for me will be two things. first, he refused to let you be anything but your best. once he glimpsed even a bit of what your potential was, he was not willing to allow you settle for less. he wasn't overbearing about it, but he wouldn't allow you to half-ass things through life. he called you out and made you a better person. he is a person who continues to drive my dreams in memory of who he was.

second, willie lived out loud. he would not hold back what he thought or believed to impress or hide things from people. he also took joy in the small things. my wedding was the first and only wedding he ever went to in his adult life. he was so excited that he made sure everything was just right and even bought us a gift with his very own money, rather than the money both his mom and i thought he had spent of his parents'.

i pray that in this holy week we can see that living the life that jesus calls us to is more than about simply believing a list of things. it is also about doing and being. ultimately it is about being the justice and righteousness of god in others lives. and that makes it about being grace in other people's lives.

on the man crush

i watched Tiger dominate yesterday. he systematically staged a comeback that culminated in an 18th hole birdie that was high drama. i don't play golf, never have, and don't see it in my future, but i like me some Tiger.

i am not sure that i like me some Tiger as much as the announcers liked them some Tiger though. i can't be sure how many times they made some kind of admiring comment about him, mainly because i was too busy flipping back to the college basketball games that were on yesterday (and yes, my bracket has finally imploded), but it got out of control at the end.

statements like, "good thing he has been lifting weights," or "this shot will take all the strength he can muster up from those hours in the gym," or "i don't like it when Tiger wears those muscle shirts; i'm more of a straight polo shirt and slacks kind of guy," or my favorite of the day, "it is a good thing Tiger can bench 450 pounds because it will take all of it right now," were regular announcing fodder. i understand that Tiger is ripped. i remember the days of his youth when he wasn't as huge and i guess couldn't bench 450 pounds, but it was out of control.

for a comparison let us consider the two following photos:

the photo on the left is ca.2000 and shows a much less muscular and strong Tiger, yet no less dominate, and the photo on the right is ca.2009 and shows a Tiger who can apparently bench 450 pounds. needless to say the announcers had a not-so-discrete man crush on Tiger. and i can be honest and say that he is an admirable selection for a man crush. the dude freaking dominates on a golf course and he is good looking. as early as the second hole i had a deep feeling in my gut that the poor kid out in front, sean o'hair, did not have a chance. i only wish Tiger had slammed his hat into the ground again like he did last year when he won the Arnold Palmer Invitational tournament on another last hole birdie.

i am just not sure that Tiger gets my top vote for my man crush. it is probably Dean Karnazes or Lance Armstrong. two equally amazing athletes to Tiger. who is your man or woman crush?

labels redux

there was a comment a couple of posts back on something that i made scant mention of, but knew the idea itself was at the very least intriguing. i mentioned that labels could perhaps have precipitated our current economic situation, in part. so before we all go off the deep end here, let's have some disclaimers:

1. i am no economist. i am armchair at best, really. so don't go looking for broad or sweepingly good economic theory here. i will simply put forth my ideas on what i believe led us to the current meltdown and rebuilding of our economy.
2. labels in my opinion were a small part in this, although i must admit -- the more i think about this, the more i become convinced our need to label things led to this in some way.
3. back to i am no economist -- let's remember that.
4. human nature will not be avoided and labels are apparent and necessary in our processing of the world, so i am not suggesting label nihilism.

disclaimers out of the way, let's start on this rabbit trail and see where it gets us!

first, i want to reiterate that labels are part of the way we make sense of the world around us. "tree" for example is a label. in an ancient philosophy class i took, my professor waxed very poetically about the label of the tree that was outside our classroom. the bottom line is this -- labels are categories that we construct in order to order the world. this is all fine and dandy until we run into the fact that some labels are destructive rather than constructive, and i am not suggesting this in a postmodern philosophical way. (believe me, we don't really want to go there). so while labels are necessary, they are not all ethical. if we can all agree on this minor point, ok it is major, then we can move on to the broader subject at hand. i am going to assume for my own well-humored sense of logic that if you keep reading, you agree. if you didn't you probably didn't just read that last sentence or this one.

second, what in the world did i mean when i said that labels in part led us to the current economic recession? recession -- a label mind you -- is the current word de jour. depression, down turn, crisis, idiocracy, greediness, and others are ones we have heard lately as well. in plain english let me say the following: our desire to label people led to financial decisions that seemed prudent to people who apparently graduated with business degrees but not degrees in risk assessment. so in non-vernacular let me restate that: the financial institutions in the mortgage, banking, and credit industries began to loan money to people who we would otherwise categorize as too risky for loans of the size they were receiving; or in other words, these supposed financial gurus who were running the companies such as AIG, Washington Mutual, etc. graduated with business undergrad degrees and MBA's but not with actuarial degrees, nor apparently did the people with the actuarial degrees think to actually asses the risk of giving people hundreds of thousands of dollars who could potentially go bankrupt today, tomorrow, or the next day despite that money.

third, so where do labels come into this anyway? i want to begin by saying that people seem to be labeled as financially secure or unsecure. we see this all the time with loans, credit applications, debt management, and interest rates. just go try to buy a car to figure this one out. without going too far down the subsequent rabbit trail, i think it suffices to say that banks and others decided that people who were heretofore labeled as financially unsecure, suddenly became secure in the wake of the advent of ARM's or adjustable rate mortgages or even worse -- balloon ARM's. this was a lending strategy that inflated the housing market and subsequently the credit market as well in order to consequently drive our economic "security" upwards. everyone seemed to profit...that is until the piper came to collect and well we all know what happened in the past, nearly, two years. so labels played a major role in my opinion of how we got to where we are.

is this incredibly over-simplified? YES. do i think that it is too simplified to have real and appropriate meaning? NO.

we like to label a lot of things in our country. see for example: liberal/conservative/independent; pro-life/pro-choice; black/white/brown/other; educated/uneducated; rich/poor; and i could go on, but i think i have made the point at least sufficiently. our affinity for these labels is great in that it gives us a very strict order in which to live our lives divided off from people on the other side of those labels, but the problem is that those labels really tell us nothing of who that person is. take for example the label pro-life. this is one that hits pretty closely home for me. however our conception of pro-life is that i am anti-abortion. and while this is true, i also want people to know that i am anti-death penalty, for geriatric care, and for the ethical treatment of humans and animals in what i would more closely call a whole-life stance rather than pro-life. of course i simply relabeled things, however i hope it at least gets closer to who i really am. my point is this -- a label is often times misleading and doesn't tell the whole story. the rest of the story, as paul harvey would say (let me say that if i had something to poor out for the brother, i would have just now), is actually meeting with, talking to, and developing a relationship with that person, whoever they are, and loving them for all their perceived and labeled faults. it is too easy to go through life huddled up with people who believe the same things i do and care about the same things i do. in what might be a very poignant thought, i recently read that the beauty of our diversified belief in this country allows us to see ourselves in others (i apologize that i don't remember where i saw this -- and it is paraphrased to be sure).

but if i get back to the original point at hand it is this: just because we relabel someone who is really not financially secure, financially secure, it doesn't mean that they really are. furthermore, our house of cards that we build on top of that relabeling will eventually come crashing down, and well...it has already.

fourth, we think the people who are at the head of the major corporations in our country are both financially savvy and in way more stressful positions than we are. all of this may be true, but it is no substitute for ethical action on anyone's part. just because i believe someone is smart, does not mean that they will act smartly in all situations or that they get some kind of accountability free pass for stupid decisions. we have for too long decided that people who deal shadily in business are just playing politics and that the working joe or jane on the other end of the their shady dealing are the unsmart and less shrewd individuals (just see the case of Enron or more recently the Madoff scheme if you think i am kidding). the reality it seems to me is that we have decided those at the top of these decision making rackets are labeled as faulty but not really at fault. which excuse me, but how about the guy who perhaps makes the most prudent decision of selling drugs to support his family? we lock them up for years and demand restitution, but for those in the Enron scheme or Madoff himself, we think restitution is out of the question and will give him a slap on the wrist, but this is where the rich/poor label is most evident: our justice system. i won't go on about that, but it is worth thinking about, if only for the mental exercise, but hopefully for a change one day in how people are represented.

fifth, and finally, labels in washington, and i mean D.C. not the state, have prevented us at times from moving toward what i believe are real solutions to problems. i do not believe that a dichotomous solution of republican or democrat will ever really lead us to a true solution to those social or institutional ills of our society. i suggest that the third way, or that way that recognizes that we are not always politically "right" (not in the political spectrum kind of way) must win the day in order for us to begin to move that way. our representatives must be expected to do what is best for the totality of the people they serve not the interests they serve or the lobbyists they serve either...of course that was the idealistic vision of our representative democracy anyway. but in the real world, it means that we can be happy without being always right or always served. for whatever reason our needs seem to take precedence in matters of politics. and what i mean to say in that regard is this: that even though i may care about the poor, i must be comfortable first in order to care about the poor second, for example. we are at base self-preservationists, and this seems to operate most acutely in the world of politics.

so labels are necessary but they are not always ethical, and that is the short way of saying that in the five points above, i at least have some semblance of logic that suggests labels got us to the economic situation we are in. we will never escape labels, but i certainly hope we can begin to see through them just a little bit more.

painting with words

my wife and i are netflix users. it allows us the maximum flexibility of renting movies and sometimes watching them immediately and sometimes sitting on them for awhile. recently we received the John Adams series that had aired on HBO in the mail and i was excited. as a history major and one interested in the revolutionary war time, i had heard that this was a well done series that maintained integrity in the details and the arch of the story.

i must admit, despite my interest in the time period, i knew relatively little about John Adams. he has frequently taken a back seat to his greatest friend and intellectual foe, Thomas Jefferson. their relationship, as portrayed well in the series, was one in which they found common purpose for ends and yet divergent means to reach those very ends. they were colleagues of the highest degree and because of their differences of opinion and political persuasion, found themselves foes at times. and in one of the bigger coincidences of history, they died on the same day, July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution.

the mini-series is based on the book John Adams by David McCullough. he is a fairly prolific and now famous author in the history world. his books are exceptionally well researched and he has a humility about him in his interviews that suggests, anyone can do this arduous task if they would just set their minds to it! when he won his second Pulitzer Prize, McCullough was described as a writer who is "painting with words" when he writes history. what a great image, for so many reasons. this was also the title of a featurette documentary about him on the dvd.

upon watching the said documentary my wife said to me, "i want him as our neighbor." i couldn't agree more. he is a congenial man. a man that introduces himself to those along the street, and he is a man who has a wealth of knowledge. he owns a writing "shack" although he says that it is his office, and therefore not a shack. it is small and secluded from his home and he has all he would need, and many of the things that we think we need are not included.

i believe my wife and i want David McCullough as our neighbor because he is a master story teller. he knows how to make the story of who we are and where we have come from into something that is both riveting and interesting. he can make those subjects we learned about long ago into something we care about again. and mostly, he exudes excitement and passion in his craft. i wonder what the world would be like if we were a little more like David McCullough day-to-day; if we cared enough to tell a story that would capture people's attention? perhaps we all need to learn to tell our own stories better, so that we can all become better neighbors.

"i have no idea where you fit!"

a student and i were chatting it up yesterday afternoon in my office. he actually had needed a copy of something that i had in my office, and i was happy to make it for him, but our conversation quickly turned to things theological. he is going to be attending my most recent alma mater and i was happy to help him with letters of reference, etc.

in the course of our conversation we covered over a great many things including my views on eschatology and salvation, what the concept of "the kingdom" means to me, and some political identifiers or labels. he informed me that he and some of his peers had been discussing a few of us older guys, alums of our fraternity, and where we stood politically and theologically. he said for several them they were easy to label. conservative, liberal, sort of moderate, and then he said the conversation turned toward me. he informed me that when my name came up and his peers asked him where he thought i stood he simply said, "i have no idea where he fits!"

labels are easy identifiers. they help us categorize people for easy use, but they can be deceptive. i told him i don't believe in traditional labels, and therefore find myself to be outside of them, generally speaking. i explained to him that on some issues i tend toward what would be considered a conservative viewpoint and on others a liberal stance. and that is ok.

after we finished talking i couldn't help but to think that part of what got us to our current economic situation has to be our need to label and adhere to those labels as though they make us and tell us who we are. and that seems to not only be trifilingly simple theology, but also simply bad logic.