Help Wanted

I have the oddest job.

A lady in our faith community had a biopsy done. I called her afterwards. I wanted her to know that I was concerned – that I cared. Besides, I’m a pastor – it’s what I do. She proceeds to tell me how it went, in great detail. Did I mention that the tumor was on her breast?

After we hung up the phone, her husband asked her, “Were you just talking to the pastor about your boob?”

I have to wonder along with her husband. Why am I privy to such things? What makes me different than any other guy who would be rightly shielded from too much information?

I know a lady who wrestles with obsessive-compulsive disorder and bulimia. She called me one day to tell me she was doing better.

“I just have to tell you… I just started the first period I’ve had in years.”

“Alright,” I exclaimed. And I celebrated with her over the phone.

All in a days work, I guess.

Joanna in my Ear

In my ears there is a voice, high and with a bit of a screech. It is loud and careless. A little hard to listen to. And she sings…

“And a thimblesworth of milky moon
can touch hearts larger than a thimble.”

And I am disarmed.

“O my love,
O is was a funny little thing
to be the ones to've seen”

I think of all those who shared a thimblesworth with me. Two nights ago I shared a loaf of bread and a glass of wine with one friend and four strangers. We each tasted the bread and passed the glass for a sip. We spoke simple words to each other. “Peace of Christ to you.” There was thimblesworth of their eternity in that sip and in those words. We tasted death; we drank life.

Faces of friends flicker across my mind now… Mike and J and Tim and Paul and Michael and Willie and Kellie and Matt and Mark and Dan and Serenity, whom I have not met and the Queen Mother herself… and I am disarmed by the thimble they have offered me and yet still do.

And what is it we have been the ones to see? Have we seen our faces unveiled? Have we tasted our eternities? Have we run our fingers over the textures of our souls?

It has been a funny little thing to see you and to be seen by you.

Like a Pendulum Swings

I heard a lady say, “Balance is a state that I pass through going from one extreme to the other.”

Why do I still think that balance is the only correct state of Christian existence? Have I lived so long with a gospel of life maximization (God can help me get the most out of my life)?

I am a deeply imbalanced person, fractured and petty.

I wrote this a year ago but never posted it…

Last night I crawled into bed, saw that my wife had inched over onto my side of the bed, and said, “move your ass over.”

“What?” she said.

“Move your ass over.”

“You just wanted to say the word ‘ass’.”

“It’s in the bible.”

“As in, a donkey.”

“Yeah, ‘Balaam got off his ass’ so get off yours and move it over.”

“What’s with you?”

“Ass, ass, ass.”

That was a real conversation. 25 years following Jesus, 20 years as a spiritual guide, and that’s what I’ve got to offer the most important person on earth to me.

Have I grown at all? Or does growth have anything to do with improvement? Does maturity mean that I am better, or does it mean that I am more aware of how un-good I am? And if I am more aware of my fractured-ness, does that make me more aware of my need for One who is good?

I can only hope that God looks at me like I look at my children. They are horribly imbalanced. The cry when they don't get what they want, and they want everything. One minute they can be so happy and excited you can't stand to be in the same room with them, and the next they can be ill-tempered little snots. And while I may shake my head over them or grind my teeth, underneath it all I am passionately in love with them - snot and all.

To Know Him Is To Love Him

My second son turns six this week. He and I spent his last birthday together on the beach watching the surfers and collecting shells.

We also watched Return of the King together, and we talked about how some of the characters exemplified the positive traits of manhood. Gandalf’s wisdom. Aragorn’s courage. Sam’s loyalty. Frodo’s commitment and perseverance. Who knows how a five year processes words and ideas like those?

I look at him now, and I see this pure kid. He is all play and honest desire - for candy and video games. And I think about the man is even now becoming and how maybe the boy he is can remain in the man he will be. I wonder if I will be a rock for him to stand on or a rug that’s pulled out from under him.

And now, this moment, I know him for who he is… he is my six year old hope.