Beauty at 35000 Feet

I'm flying between San Antonio and Atlanta right now and I have the window seat facing south. I just happened to look up from my book and see the beauty that is the sunset, a scene that spreads miles across the sky. The prism of darkness of blue in the east into the blood orange sky in the west amazes me. A perfect separation of light and dark.

I don't know if I've ever really looked at a sunset horizontally, but it is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. And as I keep trying the look back behind the plane from my window, the darkness overcomes the light, though a flicker of orange fights through. But in a moment it is gone, and the peacefulness of the night sky reveals the illuminations of our own invention below as active cities, a fork in the road, or a cluster of homes to come home to.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iTouch

cycling haiku

Last week, a new friend of mine posted a rather philosophical haiku he made up while he was cycling. I made a snarky reply that if we ever rode together, I don't think I could be philosophical or even do haiku. But then we were talking Friday night in person, and he said that he does haiku a lot to help him focus his thoughts through the ride. My focus comes from my iPod, which I keep low enough to hear traffic.

But the route I chose was especially difficult for me yesterday, the out route was a net climb of a grade I didn't expect. And despite the iPod, I started thinking in haiku. I'm blame Jack, though only in jest. Here are the various haiku I came up with.

My lungs are burning
Legs will fall off very soon
Should have gone golfing!

The wind in my face
Downhill is so much better
Does that car see me?

iPod shuffle fail
Fifth Kelly Clarkson song now
Need my sexy back

Dead squirrel again
Such a bloody mess to see
Who gets his nut stash?

All downhill to home
Which is good, my back is sore
Golf would have hurt, too.

An Evening with Susan and Don

This past Friday, I had the excellent opportunity to go hear Susan Isaacs and Donald Miller at Living Word Community Church in Red Lion, PA, who hosted the Million Miles Tour. I've been giving up the top real estate of this blog since the tour was announced, so if there are stops near you, definitely go see them. You won't regret it. Susan killed the stage with humor and grace and a fantastic British-accented God voice. Don was inspirational; his narrative lecture was just what I needed with a mix of wit, humor, and poignant revelations. I can look at conflict a whole new way, never really giving much thought that negative feelings and conflict actually existed before the Fall in Eden. It gives me a new perspective that I shouldn't try to avoid conflict all of the time, maybe not even most of the time, but rather live into it, through it, and when necessary actually force myself to jump into it.

Listening to Don talk about just how closely story and narrative that we see played out in film and TV daily actually could apply to our lives if we just recognized that that's how we really tick, not in the 5-steps to a happier life way that we are commercially sold. Even more important, there is no biblical promise to us that our life will be any better with Jesus. Our promise in Jesus is for after life, not in this life. Our conflict is promised in Jesus: loving God/loving neighbor - both against our Fallen nature.

So that struck me in two ways:

1. I've been living life recently by rote or mechanics. I can't say everything has been random and meaningless because coming home to play with my kids and love my wife in the best ways that I can are not meaningless. But I haven't necessarily lived through each moment or day. It's somewhere between mailing-it-in and capturing each scene in the daily or weekly story.
2. Lately, I've been living as if it doesn't matter whether there is really a heaven. I should be content and looking to living in the Kingdom here on earth regardless of any promises beyond.

Now #1 will happen again and again, and it's something I'll have to break out of. I need to re-initialize my habit of writing here, and for Burnside (I'm soooo overdue). But I want to do even more writing as I'm finding more opportunities to write for my job, which also excites me. It's just hard to keep switching between creative, commentary, and technical writing. But #2 was something I thought was relatively noble or particularly relevant to being Kingdom focused. And while I still think I should be focused "Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven", I shouldn't forget about heaven, or the new heaven and new earth that are someday joined and restored. Honestly, I don't know what to do with that yet.

I'm disgusted with much in this world, yet I want to be a part of God's story for the world. I want my story to be Kingdom-focused, Love-focused in a way that my wife and children both live through that with me and know God's love as fully as it can be known from one human to another. My current work is noble and I am really enjoying it again, despite the added stress, but I am not placing that over time and focus on my family. I'm still evaluating how to add the focus within and without the Church. So now it is time for me to start living into the story, embracing the conflict, and examining where in each act of the life play I'm in, and how that might start over or begin a new.

The personal side of the evening was that I got to meet and hang out with Susan and Don before the show and in the tour bus afterward. That was awesome, and I'm so glad to have had a chance to connect personally with both of them. I've appreciated so much getting to know Susan from her book and being able to write a few reviews for it, and discussing life over email. And being connected with the Burnside Writers Collective is a privilege, and getting a chance to meet and hang out with the writer who founded it and support us in our writing is even more of a privilege. He really is as down-to-earth and normal as you expect when you read his books. And that is great to find out up close.

Story ... at 1AM

It's 1AM and I just finished catching up on about 20% of the back logged emails I have on work-related lists that I should be staying up on top of. In fact, it is my job, but so is managing a team of technologists, speaking and writing to advance my organization, and be the key member of a multi-million dollar project seeking a lot of money in a grant. That project will both increase my team and take up 50% or more of my time by the new year, which will make keeping up on this backlog of emails that much harder. At the same time, it will make it that much more important because that project will make history in our niche of technology, and I need to be aware of what else is making history.

So that's my story of the past 2 months. I've been writing like crazy, reading even more, and preparing for 4 presentations in the next 4 months. What I haven't been doing is anything here on this blog, or even for my supposed-monthly column for the Burnside Writers, which has a new website that you should check out. I promise, I will get back to writing monthly for BWC.

So I mentioned story, and I'm just flabbergasted just how much the notion of story is all around us in more than a subversive way. Donald Miller has a new book out that has become a best seller and is touring with Susan Isaacs, who wrote a great book that I've reviewed a few times. I know that I should be reading Robert McKee's Story very soon, but have you seen my list of book to-read at Good Reads? It's getting too long, and it isn't even that long.

But back to story - remember it's after 1AM - it's almost everywhere I look, listen, or read these days. And that's AWESOME! For me, it's awesome because I can live into that. There's so much conflict, but it doesn't feel threatening in the way that I feel attacked. It's saddening sometimes because there are days that I just go through routine of waking up, helping A* with the kids, go to work, come home, do stuff with the kids and A*, watch some TV and then go to bed. Then there are days like today where I stayed home because A* was sick, I got some max time with the kids, went into the office when a friend came over to watch the kids, did some important work, came home, had a wonderful, though short, play time with Amelia, good interaction with Tayte, and then treated the family to a DQ night of pumpkin pie blizzard. The DQ element was spontaneous, something in my gut that I felt was good for us. And it was. And just as importantly, it was our story tonight as a family. And that is cool.

My story has been a lot of work: good work, hard work, busy work, but it has taken away a lot of attention I need to be giving to my spirit. The family story, I hope, hasn't been affected too much. I try to keep work at work except for nights I can catch up like tonight when everyone else is asleep. But tomorrow I'll pay for that. We'll see I guess. The point is that I recognize the story, and as long as I try to live through the story rather than watching it go by passively, I think I'm going the right way.

I see an orange battery light flashing at me, which means I need sleep, I think...

It is good to be less certain

In an email to a new writer friend from the BWC, whom I've ony ever conversed via email, we were discussing the downside of humanness in past prejudices our families had or were affected by. My reply was something to the effect that humanness makes me sad and that's why I like tv, movies, and books. I like these escapes because they tell stories often unseen in reality, stories which complete the cycle of redemption and restoration while preserving the fraility or humanness of the characters. (i.e. everyone is flawed)

It is that last point that I think keeps us, me especially, from contributing to the completeness of the redemptive cycle. We are so sure of ourselves (in general) that we have so much difficulty letting down our guard enough for compromise, grace, or the possibility we could actually be wrong. Again, I'm saying this generally, but I know enough of the truth in my own heart to say it.

On the flip side, sometimes even within my strengths, I lack appropriate confidence in my abilities, outcomes, and decisions. It both a self-worth issue and a genuine check and balancing habit I've developed, specifically in areas that I've only recently taken on, like writing. I would love to write more: technical, spiritual, commentary, or even fiction.

But I was the kid whose best verbal SAT score was 470. I said my BEST score! So I connect with author John Leax who struggled as a student but has given his life to teach and write. As I get older, I find that I love more of what I didn't like as a kid, and don't enjoy as much what I used. I need to constantly read, yet I am tiring of actively engaging in computer work. Complete opposite as a teen. I enjoy leading and managing now, taking some risks and putting my name out on some research or ideas, while as a teen I prefered to be less noticed lest I fail publicly.

But I was also very sure of myself in a few areas, specifically of faith, and in all of them within a narrow set of experiences and no respect for my lack of them. I connect with Leax in this writing:

Though my style has perhaps over the years grown a bit more complex, I think it has not changed much. I still like to grow plain statements out of personal stories. My voice remains simple and direct, closely connected to speech. Bu as the years have passed, my tentativeness has grown, and I find prose harder and harder to write. I am less and less sure of what I have to say. This uncertainty has nothing to do with any lack of faith or conviction. It is rather to do with three shifts in my thinking. First, I have an increasing respect for the wondrous mystery of my life. Second, I am more aware of the limitations of language. And third, I am dumbfounded by my finiteness before the infiniteness of truth. ("Truth by Moonlight" in Grace is Where I Live, p.85)

The first and third I am connecting with daily, struggling even. But they are not bad by any stretch of my imagination. If anything, it helps me find something to look forward to in the revealing of my life moving forward. What will my kids do next? How can A* and I connect more deeply with each other and others in true community? What will this new project bring in the next step of my job/career? Some of these bring frustration, but I am so trying to be positive, hopeful, and faithful in each.

Thoughts on the last day of vacation

I am spending my last hour on the beach, at least bathing suit time on the beach. Tonight we'll likely be out to take some family pictures and maybe flying kites. I wanted to get one more time in the ocean a little deeper out than Amelia can go and some time to myself to decrompress my head. And by deeper I mean no deeper than my waist. I have a serious issue with deep water.

I knew going into this week that it wouldn't be relaxing in the ways vacations have been in the past. And I surprised what has been relaxing, like staying behind to take care of Tayte, who did not like the beach one bit, or pushing the double stroller down the boardwalk 4 miles through the massive crowds. At the same time, balancing the relationships all crammed into one house has been very difficult.

There is a certain exposure that comes with close proximity. It's hard to escape and if you don't check your own expectations at the door, then your disappointment will be magnified times ten. I think I was able to do that fairly well until last night when I was so excited to take Amelia out for fun. It just didn't work out like I had wanted or expected, and while Amelia still had a blast I was left saddened by what didn't get to happen, specifically A* getting to be there to experience Amelia's joy, too.

It was during those moments that I wondered heavily about just how hard it is to simultaneously be a father and husband. I've never expected to be "easy", but as our children are growing and becoming more actively dependent on us, I fear being divided by the various situations that leave out one parent from experiencing the joy, and each other from being connected in that experience. I have not yet determined what is worse: staying behind and missing the joyful experience or missing A* while that joyful experience is happening. At this point it is missing A* that is harder, I think, but I can't quite measure it right now.

My time alone is almost up. The vacation is almost over. Tonight and tomorrow morning will be transition back to "normal". Sigh. Normal is mostly fine, but can I carry a little of this beach calm back with me like the inevitable sand we'll take home with us?

A Sense of Unity

This past Sunday our senior pastor preached from John 17, which is Jesus' prayer in the garden. Since Easter, they have been preaching through the gospel of John through conversations Jesus had with various characters. John 17 is a conversation with God, naturally as a prayer. The pastor emphasized the repeated theme of unity - Jesus' repeated recognition of unity with God and a prayer for us to be united with each other and united with Jesus/God. It is quite powerful and beautiful, and in many ways overwhelmingly unrecognizable.

But I've been reading through The Shack, I'm not finished yet, but immediately on Sunday I recognized the beauty of the picture of unity painted in the book. As I was reading the book, I struggled with the notion of God, Jesus, and the HS being anything more than an abstract concept I "believe" and will one day in the next life "understand". But the story really drives home the simplicity of life together, united through 100% authentic love for no one else but another, joy fulfilled with companionship and conversation, and beauty completed from the messiness of life by grace and mercy. Where we see a mess, God sees a fractal, so the story goes.

Through the book and this prayer in John, you cannot help but feel the magnitude of this unity discussed, but isn't it so easy to be skeptical based on the reality of how united we are as people with each other, and how much we resist true, authentic community? The book has a theme that our human rules get in the way all the time, which is true. Rules represent justice and/or fairness, not grace and mercy. Our actions are inherently selfish in nature, despite our best efforts to be anything but selfish. In short, we fall short of the glory, the beauty, the unity of God.

But I have been wondering and realizing just how un-united I am with myself. I battle within myself between the creative, thoughtful, and introspective side and the logical, engineering, take-action side. I think it is why I am so interested in finding balance and centeredness in the bigger perspective. Too often one side wins over the other in a way that isn't fulfilling. I don't generally see it coming, though when I do, it's hard to get out of my own way and step back to save myself. I, instead, play by the selfish rules of life we have laid out for ourselves, mostly that of self-preservation. And that just leads to isolation, loneliness, and absence of love.

When I let go of myself I can be united, within myself and with others. That is what I sense Jesus was saying at the center of his prayer. That is what I'm trying to believe now that I can live out.