Community

Mentorship.

Friendship.

Relationship.

Intentionality and fragility.

Trust and commitment.

To walk together.

Alongside each other.

As one.

One body.

That’s beauty.

Safety.

A security that imperfectly reflects God’s reality.

In our humanity it’s flawed.

By law of our nature we crave it from people.

Yet as we savor it we taste a hint of bitterness.

Because it’s only a muddy reflection of fullness.

Unity.

Picking each other up.

Carrying each other’s burdens.

Motivated and compelled by love.

A commitment to care.

In and out of compunction.

Community.

That’s beauty.

The power of story.

Life as a bookcase.

Full of stories.

We pen them, we save them, we store them.

Then we pull them of the shelf to share,

As we sit around, we tell the stories of our lives.

Then as they read each excerpt, we search our shelves for one of a similar genre.

To read. To tell. To share.

It’s how we relate,

How we know there are others like us here.

They elicit feelings, connections,

These stories of hurt, brokenness and redemption.

The books on our shelves challenge and motivate, inspire and create, a deep bond with those we share them with.

Jesus taught with story because it’s powerful.

And we gain a glimpse of that great grace as we integrate with others over a gathering of stories.

The smattering of backgrounds and experiences, all different yet all the same.

Revealing our humanity, our deep core.

Knowing and wanting to be known.

We want to share them, to read them aloud,

If only one would be willing to listen.

But we fear they won’t understand,

That we will be judged by the plot we wrote or the words we chose.

So we lock up our library out of fear.

And no one is moved by our stories.

But the freedom to share is the freedom to read our story to those who may care to hear.

With each day we are writing.

Adding to the volumes we call our lives, yet it has always been designed that we write in order to share.

Even hurt and shame, disappointment and pain.

They weren’t meant to be books to be burned;

But read aloud. Shared. Heard.

They reflect God’s story, his redemption, his grace.

It need not be finished before we read it.

The most healing may come in reading it while in the midst of it.

Someone may be able to help shed light on the ending, help you write if need be.

Our stories, our pasts, our mistakes.

Meant to be shared, picked off the shelf, and taken to the fire.

Not to be thrown in, but to be read by its light.

Shedding light on the kingdom breaking in day and night.

Why do we fight our greatest desire to be known out of fear?

We need to share and hear these stories.

As mundane and seemingly as they may be, it contains power. There is great beauty and profound unity found in story.

We may not see its affect on us or those around us, but it does. Our souls sing.

To share and to hear.

To read and to see.

To wrap our ears around the whispers of stories winding through our weak bodies.

To continue to write and record those stories in the shelves of our memories.

Life is a bookcase. Full of stories.

If you take all the bookcases of the world across space and time and put them together, you find unity. Beauty. The complete story.

So let’s read.

Let’s write.

And allow ourselves to be moved, to be shaken by its mystery.

Progress and Success

We look around our world today and say that we are moving up. Moving out. Getting better, greater, more advanced. We see what we have created and we give ourselves a hand and then get back to work to make more and create more and hate more because we can’t produce fast enough.

We see all the progress we’ve made and we decide it’s the only way to success and happiness, so we force it on other peoples, other cultures, other mentalities, with the perverted perspective that we are helping them by puking on their culture and customs, throwing out their traditions and pace of life, by convincing them that our way is better. That to do it faster is to do it better.

Instant oatmeal, instant rice, instant gratification, instant convenience, instant satisfaction, instantaneously we have lost our knowledge and trust in something greater than ourselves. Than production. Than progress.

Is progress our prerogative? Is the American dream a privilege? Is moving faster improving life? Or is it destroying it?

We move so fast that we don’t even know what’s flying past. Our shoulders are bumping with the most beautiful things imaginable but we don’t even look over because we’re so focused on our own goals of success and mobility. We can’t even see the revelation that the radiance of the rainbow holds because we’re so entangled in our complaints of how we can’t advance the company with weather and inclemency.

We thing progress=success, that faster=better, that advancement=prosperity. But I challenge you. Look around you. Slow down enough to allow your eyes to focus. But I warn you, you may not like what you see.

There’s a reason people go on mission trips and come back moved because those people had nothing, yet they had everything, and it was reflected in their moods and interactions with the world. Those people have nothing. In our eyes. they don’t have things. They don’t have luxury, convenience, progress. They are “underdeveloped, third-world, or even developing.” Yet developing into what? Monsters who are blinded by their own ambitions and dreams of achieving success that they step on all who get in their way, sacrificing family, friends, and more just to score that thing which they think will bring them happiness. What they don’t realize is that happiness has been at their door all along, just waiting to be let in. but distraction and convenience and hope for achievement has prevented that door from being unlocked. We think that’s too easy. It must crawl through the window. We must earn it. Sweat for it. Progress for it to come.

But its already here.

There is a deep beauty in the way a tribe takes its time to cook. No stoves, no boxes, no mixes. Just food cultivated with their own hands. Yes, they could save so much time if they adopted our lifestyles, but it would destroy a piece of who they are.

We already have replaced our roots with boots that can brave any weather, so we can get to work and make our lives better, to the point that we don’t even know who we are. We get in the car and go to do meaningless things which we assign meaning to in order to cope with the fact that we are not happy. We mask reality with a medicine that we think is good. We progress into progress and are left hopeless when it doesn’t alleviate all the pain. The American dream doesn’t crack up to all it seems. We think we have it all when we look at the Africans and how everything they have is small and “insufficient,” but I think we have it all wrong.

I do not think progress is evil, but when we worship it like our culture, it becomes an all-consuming idol that robs us of life. Complexity replaces simplicity, achievement replaces proximity of family, success replaces happiness.

I do not think they are all at odds, but I think we must examine the lives we’re enshrouded in and realize that maybe we don’t have it all right.

Humility plus eyes to see equals beautiful reality.

Fall.

Hey.

It’s okay to make mistakes.

It’s okay to be wrong,

To step out and fall on your face.

A baby never learned to walk without crawling,

And he sure didn’t learn without falling,

Falling down, falling into the wrong crowd.

Falling and failing is what creates a strong man.

How can you learn when there’s never anything to be learned from?

Regrets teach us and scars remind us of where we’ve been.

So we can learn and grow and mature.

So walk forward.

Maybe even run.

Don’t be afraid because the sun never ceases to set, just like we will walk forward so why not learn from out pasts.

Walk. Step. Try. Fall. Fail. Walk in the wrong direction.

Seek to know what a life with character is.

A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are made for.

So take risks. Take a chance. Take a break. See where it goes.

Maybe nowhere. But maybe somewhere. How will you know if you don’t try?

If you don’t scrape your knee and shed a few tears as you cry from the ground.

But after the wound is bound, you now have a new perspective, a new way to walk, a new view of all that is about you.

So walk.

It’s okay.

Yes, you’ll slip. Yes, you’ll trip. Or maybe even be tripped.

But that’s okay.

It’s better that way than to be locked in a cage and afraid to move for fear of doing something wrong, your song caught in your throat for fear of singing it wrong, your feet numb from standing in the same place so long.

So go. Walk. Make mistakes.

And feel the freedom to do that with the knowledge that your father will always take you back.

He catches you when you fall, but its not until then that you realize his strong hands are even there at all.

So fall. Fall into him. Fall in love. Fall of your horse.

Fail. Fail at your job. Fail in this area or that. Just don’t sit stagnant, the paralysis of analysis preventing you from moving.

Move.

Hey. Just remember.

It’s okay to make mistakes.

Dare to dream.

Oh the freedom in dreaming.

In allowing yourself to feel, your heart to sing to the tune of the song it desires to live.

I fear I’ve pressed these dreams down, compacted them like brown sugar and suppressed the beautiful doodles that could and would spoke off of them.

I’ve been just trying to keep my head above water, no time for dreams or love or feeling. I’m afraid there have been points where I have become numb in order to keep my head above. It seemed like I didn’t have time to entertain any thoughts or allow my mind to dream of the powerful things that could and would be accomplished in life. What God could do, where he could lead, what beauties I would see along the way.

But today. Today I will dream. I will see what song my heart sings. I will feel, I will speak, I will write.

Maybe one day I will write, a book, a collection of stories or poems. One that breathes life as it permeates the reader with a deep connection and solidarity with those who already walk in life.

Maybe one day I’ll sing. I’ll write songs and become good at an instrument, breathing life though music.

Maybe one day I’ll dance. Now, I’m not talking waltz or swing, but the kind of the streets. I’ll learn to breakdance and go to underground dance battles, meeting people and hearing stories most will never hear because they’re afraid of the streets.

Maybe one day I’ll soar through the air as a stewardess, learning what it means to live in an airplane, experiencing the anxiety that some feel through being there to help.

Maybe one day I’ll teach. English, Spanish, art, music, kids, teens, adults. Using each day as a chance to grow and encourage them to say what’s really on their hearts, allowing them to be known and express themselves through learning, through growing, through making mistakes.

Maybe one day I’ll found an organization. In another nation. One that god uses to radically change lives, restoring hope and life holistically through whatever it may entail, opening doors to see a beauty I’m only dreaming of.

Maybe one day I’ll be a wife, a partner in life to one whom I see reality through, whom I see beauty and love and God through. Learning to support and love and work through the things that will be tough. Being sanctified through and through, learning to love outside of myself.

Maybe one day I’ll be called mommy, my eyes being opened to the deep mysteries of God, of the gospel, that only a mom can know and cherish through the act of being a parent. Walking side by side with one who looks to you for everything, maybe I’ll be the kind that teaches my child to sing, but not just with his vocal chords: with his life.

Maybe one day I’ll live where it’s not safe.

Maybe one day I’ll learn to appreciate my mistakes.

Maybe one day I’ll have my PHD

Maybe one day I’ll live at sea.

Maybe one day I’ll know all the languages in the world.

Or understand all the cultures and religions of the world.

Maybe one day I’ll play piano and guitar well.

Maybe one day I’ll be able to tell you an endless string of stories of a Kingdom and how it’s breaking in.

Maybe one day I’ll see those I love most be reunited with a God who loves more.

Maybe one day I’ll experience redemption by seeing the one no one had any hope for soar through the clouds on wings she didn’t even know she bore.

Maybe one day I’ll understand and rest in the tension that characterizes all of life, making it worth living.

Maybe one day I’ll be a part of making blind eyes see.

Maybe one day I’ll understand the fullness of reality.

Maybe one day I’ll look out my back door onto a calm lake that lies in the foothills of beautiful mountains, with a humble home that is just big enough to host a host of beautiful people in, living and sharing life together, experiencing love and restoration through the mere presence of the others. Gathered around the fireplace, or outside on the porch or the deck, or even lying on the lawn looking up at the billions of stars.

Maybe one day I’ll look back and praise God for the ride he’s took me on, perfectly content with who he’s growing me to be, able to see the world clearly with no regrets, just a deep peace that says he gave me all I needed.

Maybe one day I’ll close my eyes, knowing it may be the last night, but being at peace, holding close the one I love as I fall asleep.

Now I could go on, and I know that I shall, for my mind is now unlocked, the cage beginning to open, as I watch this dot of a doodle grow into a flower, then a sailing ship, then a sun, then a moon, then a swallow flying over an entire city that has been moved by the presence of beauty. It just grows and progresses, and the beauty is that whether it all happens as I picture or not does not define my contentment.

It’s not in the achieving of these dreams that gives me my value or assigns me the measure of my human dignity.

So I shall dream, for now my mind and heart are free.