finding solace on the smoking porch

around noon on a saturday afternoon, i tried to find solace in a warm cup of coffee, a warm spring breeze and the four thousand incendiary ingredients in my cigarette. but alas, i felt almost crushed by the weight of monotonous work, ministerial responsibility and academic drudgery. but then, whispering through the soft northern breeze i heard the voice of my Savior, "come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and i will give you rest. take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for i am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest in your souls."

in that moment, i collapsed into Christ, wherein i found rest from:

pastoral responsibility
the accusations of conscience
the persistent, piercing voice of self-rejection
the futility of punching buttons
my failure to be present to those i love
the consequences of past sin
my fear of commodifying Christ
the parable that i am to pen for homiletics class
my barely submerged longing for home
my failure to listen and speak life into those i love
my increasing fear of death
the pervasive doubt that consistently counters my faith
and the list goes on.

dear God, i am so thankful for this momentary experience of the rest that both is and is to come. send your Spirit to guide me towards a deeper understanding and experience of the rest that is available in Christ.

my prayer for you, sinners and saints, friends and foes, commenters and lurkers, is that you too will collapse into Christ and so find rest for your weary and burdened souls.

an existential car ride

my occupation arrested my vocation, he admits,
suspended between sentimentality and hope.

what once brought me pleasure
now renders me fat and tired.

the place i called home
has turned into a hospice

i've moved beyond becoming
in order to struggle with being

it is time for the past to impregnate the future
for becoming to issue forth from being.

happy haiku friday!

torn weezer t-shirt

tucked into brand-new gap jeans

past kisses present

memorandum from captain random:

kellie is going to make me see fever pitch. go ahead, laugh, i can handle it. i figure that submission in this instance will save me from later trips to see meaningless drivel like mona lisa smile and murder-in-law. i've heard that holli-brooke is hot to see the later. perhaps they can go together.

at least we won't have to pay for this abusive adaptation of nick hornby's work. we got free tickets for enduring sound problems during the previews for the upside of anger. i would give the latter three stars. fine performances, horrible plot twists. regarding the latter, let me be the first to say only southern children get stuck in abandoned wells.

while we were driving back from his grandfather's interment, josh told us that the receptionist at the mortuary had died unexpectedly the day before. he then said that "apparently, she was the life of the place." we about died.

funniest line of the week: "you had me at blood and semen." ~peter la fleur in dodgeball. is there any end to the entertaining mutations of line?

if you are a fan of crash davis, you'll love ball four by jim bouton. i hope that ron sheldon kicked some royalties bouton's way. otherwise, sheldon is a shameless plagarist.

i've been surprised to find myself returning to a number of christian practices, such as morning devotions, that i once rejected. i think that there is a lot of value in the faith of our evangelical mothers and fathers (pronunciation note: evangelical, pronounced eh-van-gel-i-cal is code for acceptable, Evangelical, pronounced EEE-van-gel-i-cal, often with a southern twang, is code for unacceptable) passed down to us. once we deconstruct the guilt and manipulation with which such practices were foisted upon us, i think that many of us will return to them. a positive, corporate, illustration of this assertion is the way that evangelical, but not Evangelical, churches have been rediscovering the beauty of christian liturgy.

there's twenty of them!

the way up is down

the moment i heard of his grandfather's death, i knew i needed to attend. so after speaking with crummy, i called a couple of friends and we decided to trip together. we planned to leave at 2 a.m. on tuesday morning and arrive home sometime before wednesday. i knew that a day trip of a thousand miles would shred me for the rest of the week, since i am much closer to thirty than i am to spring break at daytona beach, but suspected that the trip would be worth it. i was right.

i am honored to call crummy my friend. after scoring in the 99th percentile on the LSATs and matriculating at george washington, josh decided to go to seminary. at the seminary he struggled through the doubt, cynicism and damn-near despair that few students escape, but he kept at his studies and graduated within three and a half years. after completing seminary, josh had a decision to make. he could begin candidating (seminary-ese for applying) for pulpits or he could go home to carlisle, pennsylvania and provide home care for his grandfather, who was slowly dying of a brain tumor. josh made the right decision.

for the last six months josh has lived in his grandfather's home, overseen his grandfather's affairs and served his grandfather in every which way (up to and including changing his adult diapers). he also took an overnight inventory clerk at target so that he could start paying off his student loans. josh sacrificed the opportunity to work his way into a wealthy firm in order to serve God and His people. he then chose to sacrifice the christian ladder of success in order to serve his dying grandfather. his reward? serving his grandfather during his dying days and letting his grandfather die in loving, familiar arms. josh said he wouldn't exchange the last six months for anything. i am inclined to believe him.

i was so proud to sit in an aluminum sided assembly of God just of I-83 in carlisle, pennsylvania and hear my friend eulogize his grandfather. my intent was to honor my friend for eschewing the good in order to do the best. the tears in his eyes and the strength of his embrace suggested that my intent was correctly interpreted.

there are some people of whom you can truly say, "with friends like those, who needs enemies." i know such people, because i was once one of them. but in the years since i chose to stumble towards Christ and try to serve His church, i have been surrounded by friends who enable me to love and serve not only those who love me, but also my enemies. i am surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses. for this i am so grateful.

overheard...a good word for my fellow bloggers (not to mention myself)

"one of the arguments we often use for not writing is this: 'i have nothing original to say. whatever i might say, someone else has already said it, and better than i will ever be able to.' this, however, is not a good argument for not writing. each human being is unique and original, and nobody has lived what we have lived. furthermore, what we have lived, we have lived not just for ourselves but for others as well. writing can be a creative and invigorating way to make our lives available to ourselves and to others.

we have to trust that our stories deserve to be told. we may discover that the better we tell our stories the better we will want to live them."

~henri nouwen, bread for the journey, entry for april 29th