I'm wishing...I hope

Ok...today I was introduced to one of those concepts that tend to become game changing for me. I'm a sucker for little tidbits of facts that give me insight into how humanity works. Today...it came in a radio program about Disney movies.

It seems there is a template that Disney movies work from. Of course there is a princess, a prince, a villain, a sidekick, and some magical character that provides the bridge over some insurmountable obstacle. But there was one concept I had never really considered...the importance of the main character's first song.

It's called the "I wish" song

It's called "I wish" because Snow White invented the concept. The entirety of Snow White can be understood in her "I wish" song. She just wants to be with the one she loves. It's a humble and simple wish and tells us about the core of her heart.

Ariel? Her song is about adventure and and experiencing the surface world.

Quasimodo? He just wants to be with the "normal" people.

Belle? Something more than this provincial life

The concepts stretch beyond Disney of course. Dorothy sings about a life over the rainbow and Roger sings about leaving behind one great song.

We all have an "I Wish" song. It's the one we would have sang when our story began. It's almost always a song about love and adventure. It's what we were deigned to be.

Our lives are filled with obstacles that threaten our "I wish". Every story is about the wish and the things that get in the way on the way. Often the singer finds what their soul longed for, but it's not the way they imagined it (it's often better because it's more real) and it is never without scars.

So, today I'm wondering about your "I Wish" song. What was the song placed in your heart that you have been trying to fulfill since you learned the tune? Have you forgotten the words because the villain is too loud or you feel the affects of poison apples?

What is the song that creation placed in your soul?

staycation

I had the idea last night. As of noon today, all of the work I needed to do would be done and I was going
to the shore. My first time all summer. It's been a long season of working hard, loving the best I can, and holding things together with very limited funds. It's the limited funds that really prevented any kind of traditional vacation and I could feel the tired in my soul.

So today I hopped in the truck all by myself and drove south with nothing but a change of clothes and the latest GQ.

Each opportunity that I have to spend the day alone finds me watching people. I do it fairly naturally. Like some alien scientist, I watch them move and interact. I find them fascinating and beautiful. I am an invisible part of a great community. In the distance I could see the skyline of New York City. It provided a backdrop to the frolicking children of God gleefully challenging the ocean in front of me. There, life is hard...expensive. Here we were on vacation. Everything here is alright.

As evening fell I found a stand that sold fresh oysters and enjoyed the flavors of being alive while my skin tingled with the cooling breeze.

What an amazing thing to be alive.

The boardwalk was jammed with people...I moved among them undetected like Nicolas Cage in "City of Angels". Leonard Cohen sang "down the shore everything's alright" and tonight he is right. Humanity is beautiful. Back on the beach, fires are lit and people are gathering to roast marshmallows. I'm watching people live in peace.

I think this is what God had in mind.

In fact, I wonder if he walks among us like this sometimes. I believe he does. If people take the opportunity to open their eyes and see him he is shockingly visible. He's moving among us whispering "This is how it's supposed to be". "Perfect days are your birthright". "I made you for love".

As I grow older and understand God's voice clearer, I find I'd rather be a gardener than a builder of empires.

Cities require building. Brick and mortar built so high they block out the sun.

Gardens require tending. They live in communion.

God made a garden

We build cities.

Tonight my heart muses on Eden

God Alone

Tonight it’s a beautiful night. I’ve spent the day loving on boys, working hard, making a little bit of cash (not a lot…but a little), and praying for loved ones on journeys. I’ve got a cigar, a glass of wine that has been breathing for hours, and my guitar. I’m just picking and singing by the glow of the candlelight that happily bends to the soft breezes that join us on the porch.

I’ve lived well today. I’ve created things, loved those I encountered, and moved my life forward. There couldn’t be a more me situation right now. Even the guitar sounds flawless.

Yet something is missing. 

I keep looking to the empty spaces on my porch and wishing someone could be here. Someone to hear me play, someone who could sing, share stories of the day, someone who knows me and whom I know.

Is there something wrong with me? Am I too greedy? I’ve got great boys, a place to live, a job, dreams, a full belly…even the aforementioned luxuries. That should be enough…right?

It’s been a lonely season…and rightly so.  It’s a combination of summer and personal journeys of friends and family that has made it so. I can’t complain about it, I want the people I love to go have great experiences or find the life that coincides with their destiny. I just miss them.  I miss their company, the work we do together, or the process of seeing them grow. I miss having someone to talk to that you feel really sees you…sees you and loves what they see.

Conventional wisdom says that we aren’t supposed to feel this way. We are supposed to be self-sufficent and satisfied with our own bootstraps as company. Loneliness is equal to weakness and, in my experience, unnecessary exposure to dangerous souls. If I am to love myself then it stands to reason that I have no need of anyone else.

However, experience and philosophy often do not rhyme and in this case the dissonance is felt. When there is a collision of idea one must ask which one is out of sync…my belief or my experience.  It has always been my practice to look to the story of God for an answer to my own so I went to the beginning of relationship.

Our story tells us that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. How it all happened is not for me to say nor do I think we have the information we need to tell the story of the birth of the cosmos. What we do see in the first chapter of Genesis is a sculptor coming to an unformed lump of clay and setting to work.  He takes the elements present and by his word begins to create. Light, air, mountains, oceans, plants, flowers, trees, fruit, and animals. A perfect ecosystem balanced upon itself. In God’s on words, creation was good. God could sit on his back porch on a perfect evening, strum his guitar, and bask in a job well done…a day, several in fact, lived beautifully.

Then he had this idea…an idea that would literally change the world…

“Let us make man in our image, in our likeness”

Theologians have debated God’s moves since the words were written. Whatever you believe, one things is true; God set to work making a being that shared his heart, his mind, and his breath. This was different. This wasn’t a work simply for which to be proud, this was God making someone to talk to. God intentionally introduced a creature to the cosmos that would be able to see the world the way he did and be free to create and decide just like God. They were created to grab hold of the world. The command is simple…now it’s your turn to create and make this planet hum.

God and man walked together. God shared his life with the man…showed him all of creation and helped him understand his own heart. While man was built with the capacity to do anything he wanted to do, it would take some time to realize all that he could really be. It’s the joy of growing. Their walks in the garden helped with that. 

Then there was name the animal day - a crucial day where God realized that Adam was missing something. 

Up to that moment all of creation bore the stamp of “good”. Now, like a restaurant that failed an inspection, the license is being revoked. It is “not good” that man is alone. 

God made Adam like himself…complete in every way. Adam had everything he needed to fulfill his commission. He could completely experience the image of God just as himself. However, as God looked at Adam he noticed one giant thing missing…Adam had no Adam. He had no one to share his heart and his life. He had no equal.

This isn’t good.

If Adam is going to realize fully what it means to be alive there has to be a heart for Adam to give himself to. Someone to walk with. Someone to trust.

Adam goes to sleep, the image of God is divided, and Eve is formed. Eve is someone who is literally his flesh and bone. He who was complete is now found in communion.

I’ve never really thought about the intentional vulnerability of God in the creation of mankind until this moment. As soon as someone enters into relationship their life changes. In an ideal situation it changes for the better. We are designed to live in response to the others in our world. We gain our identity and support from them as well as a partner in creating a world. We long to be known and loved by another human and reel when love is betrayed…sometimes irrevocably.

God, we will discover in the next part of the story, is about to know what it is to hurt. His life is about to be altered. Some would say that he was better off alone rather than to take the risk of love…especially in the face of such failure. But love must love. God had a heart aching to be known and love bursting to be expressed. That only happens when we move into the life of someone else.

What we do here isn’t religion. We were absolutely designed to know and be known. Our faith is one of walking and talking with the one who created us and to hear his heart. His heart informs ours as we turn to others and open our chests to them. Injury will happen and healing will be required. But to not do it is to miss it.

To miss it is to not be human. To miss it is to not know God. 

He wants us to hear him play and in the listening we learn a new song to sing.

So tonight, I’m perfectly lonely. I think I understand the heart of God just a little better because of it. I'm going to get back to playing now.

You Can Call Me Al

Dateline - Sunday, August 8, 2010

77 years ago today my father was born. It was supposed to be a work day for me, but circumstances have created a solitary morning…one of which up to now I hadn’t looked at the date. August 8…my dad’s birthday.  I called my mom.  She was heading out the door to church and apparently ran back in to catch the phone - happy to hear my voice but on hers I could feel the crunch of the ticking clock. We acknowledged Al’s birthday and she went on with her day.  Left a message with sis…she is probably as unaware of today as I was.

This is my way of calling Al.

For the last 30 years I’ve said Happy Birthday in my own way to the man who I was only able to be near for 8 years of my life. I don’t have many memories of the life I had before he had to go. I don’t know if it’s one of those things where tragedy causes a reinvention and so much of your life gets lost or the fact that I was simply 8. 

I can remember a few things. I remember that he was huge. 6 foot 7 inches of man. Funniest when standing next to my 5’4” mom but way cool when I was carried in his arms. He always smelled good…being a man of his time who always left the house ready to meet the world. I can’t remember ever seeing him in a t-shirt…even mowing the lawn.

He was kind. He had an infectious laugh kind of burst into a room…it matched the voice that seemed to come from his toes. 

He had deep fears. He was afraid of communists and hippies. He distrusted teenagers of all kinds and didn’t have much patience for children…except for us. He had incredible patience for us though we were always dressed to warm because he didn’t want us to catch a cold and die.

He was a pastor. Not a full-time one…but one who served from calling. He experienced an old-fashioned conversion and never looked back. Studied for the ministry and spent the second half of his life speaking in small churches and loving people where he was invited. Found a small urban church that couldn’t afford him and spoke there whenever he was asked.

We never had a home church that I could recall…we were always on the road somewhere and I was always in the front pew watching my rock star dad. 

It was in preparation for the ministry that he met my mom. It was 1960. The dating was brief but somehow the engagement stretched until 1971 when my mother finally issued the ultimatum. Story is that within the first year he turned to my mom and said “this is great…we should have done this earlier”.  The man had stones…

The rest of my memories are really just stories and photographs my mind has put into home movies. There was bring your child to work day and I spent the day in the post office where he worked full time emptying and filling a single bag of mail or the times he would come home early enough for me to ride up and down the hallway wrapped around his leg or how cool it was to sit in his basement “study” and draw on his stationary with the red felt pens he used for notes. 

I remember having to wake him in the middle of stories because he worked so hard that he often fell asleep with me in his lap. He would tell me he wasn’t asleep - only resting his eyes.

I remember the last night he was in the living room. He felt good enough to come out and go through the slides he used in churches to show them the holy land. He was an expert on every detail though he had never left the midwest. It was his greatest attraction…a multi-media walk through an exotic land.

He got tired and couldn’t finish.

A few days later the ambulance came. He had gotten to spend his remaining days at home. Cancer had won the battle for his body but not his soul. I sat with my sister and could hear my mother crying in the next room. It was her tears that made me cry when she came into us.  I didn’t cry again until I was 20.

Then I cried for three days.

Now I cry every year on August 8

I cried today.

I want to honor my father. It’s quite a thing to grow up without one. For the most part you have to raise yourself…looking for shadows of manhood in other places to help you make sense of your own. I know he would have done anything to be there as I became the man I am. I know because I would do anything to remain here for my own sons. 

However, in so many ways he is here. It’s his laugh that comes bellowing from my lungs when I’m with people I love. I have his legs, his walk, his smile. Apparently, I’ve followed in a similar professional path. I don’t share his same fears…but I do have his ability to keep moving when fear or pain finds a place in my heart.

So…I guess you could say he has been here. I’ve worked hard to listen to his voice locked in my DNA. There has been many nights that I’ve asked him questions and heard a voice that sounds like mine - but taller and with wavy black hair.

So…Dad, thanks for being there for me all these years. I haven’t grown without scars…and there is a lot I’ve done that you probably wouldn’t have ever done…but you were always happy to sit with me and show me your soul.  It’s helped me become a man who loves deeply. Even during those seasons where I am grappling for someplace to stand…the man you are gives me the confidence that people will be better because I was there. 

I couldn’t have gotten here without you.

Happy Birthday.

Puffy Shirt

Minutes ago I had on a puffy shirt. I also had on a pair of linen pants tucked into my boots that I had wrapped with cloth and tied with leather straps to cover the fact that they were more cowboy than courtier.  Around my waist a leather belt did nothing to hold my pants - it was to keep my shirt cinched up and to hold the pouch in which I carried my coinage. Around my wrist I wore the token given to me by the queen.

Yes, I, ladies and gentlemen, went to the Renaissance Faire.

Now, before those of you who are far too hip or jaded proceed to laugh, I must tell you I had a great time - and I need to tell you why.

It may not surprise you that I would enjoy going to a place were knights, princes, and princesses abound. This place was chock full of them. There were also knaves, monks, wizards, poets, ladies-in-waiting, elves, jugglers, wenches, pirates, and cutpurses. Shouts of huzzah, giant turkey legs, miles of handcrafted cool stuff, musicians, performers, and the general commitment to staying in character made this day extraordinary fun; but I’m not sure this is why, when it was time to go it felt (as one of our merry band put it) cold outside the gates.

The shell of the man who walked the shire today now lay on my floor like molted skin. I’m now sitting at a table, reheated pizza on a plate, air conditioning on, and reflecting my ideas into a machine that holds more information than all the libraries of europe combined; and considering why did we all just want to go back. When one considers the realities of renaissance europe, there is little that holds any modern appeal.  Life-spans were short, disease and poverty were rampant, and the fates of many were dictated by a few who held all the power. Communication was severely limited and the living was hard. Trust me when I tell you that there are no illusions.

It’s the reminders of what we are missing that makes it hard to leave.

Our company was one of honor and love. Inside the gates of this land, people who lived most of their lives in the margins of our developed world get to feel noble and valuable to the community - if just for one day. Our troupe all carried burdens up to the ticket booth and was able to leave them outside in the world where they belonged.  We all knew that outside was a world we could hardly afford, but here we could laugh. There was plenty to eat, creation to enjoy, sport to celebrate, conversation to be had, and mead to drink. We spent the day enjoying each other and meeting new and interesting people who felt safe sharing themselves with us. Each of us could see each other and ourselves a bit more clearly - even with the unusual disguise. We spoke of how life was supposed to be and for a this day we could feel it.

When the day was done we entered our cars (which felt so unnatural) and drove back into reality. I couldn’t help but think that we could live this way all the time if we didn’t have so much we felt the need to maintain. Too much house, car, technology, and stuff. The “real” world is loud, obnoxious, and so expensive. We arrived back at the driveway that held our cars, gave final embraces, and went our separate ways…alone. Our merry band broken.

Something just feels wrong.

Ask me what I want in life. At the end of the day I don’t want to live my life in costume (though I’m quite happy in my puffy shirt.)  I don’t want to spend the day pretending to be a character when all the while I live a life that doesn’t reflect my soul.  I want to live fully.  I want to love without fear and be with people. I want to spend the day working hard for my good, the good of my family, and the good of my community. I want to have a vital part of my section of the world and help create space where people feel they can laugh. I want to work side by side with people, like the ones I spent the day with, and offer what I can to make them better as they do the same for me. I want to return home from a day of celebrating everyone around me and have a nightly joyous reunion with my breathtaking queen who is a daily wonder to behold as she lives creatively and lovingly. My heart desires to raise my wild and wonderful children (and someday their children) to be people of honor and love.

I want to help you heal.

I want to live how my heart feels…what my soul sees.

I want to age in peace, in a loving community, knowing that I learned how to live.

I think we can do it. It will require some work and a commitment to simplicity and ridding ourselves of those things we can no longer afford because they rob us of our ability to be human. 

More than anything…I want you to come. This one can’t be done alone. Our joy is in the together.

I’m putting the band back together.

And buying a few more puffy shirts.

And maybe a hat…