Conflict

"We are a conflict avoiding culture."
- Donald Miller, Interview with Relevant Magazine

How true is this. I want to think about this more and process how far-reaching its effects go. Everything in our culture is aimed at making life simpler, easier, quicker, less painful, etc. Every solution has to be advertised with phrases like, "For only $29.99" or "In just 3 weeks", catering to our aversion to conflict, hard-work and suffering.

What about my own life?

Are there things, habits or decisions that I choose based on avoiding conflict? I know in conversations that's a tendency I have. But what about other areas? Do I always choose the path of least resistance?

I wonder what it would do for our lives if we faced conflict head on, with strength and courage and humility and gentleness? I wonder what my life would look like...

All The Way From Michigan Not Mars

I just watched Rosie Thomas' All the Way From Michigan Not Mars DVD last night. It was pretty amazing, amusing and inspiring. I actually laughed out loud, literally. That was probably the only time I could've typed "LOL" and not been exaggerating. It made me want to go see her play, but she's only on the west coast currently. The movie, which was a mixture of documentary and live shows, did a great job of capturing Rosie Thomas' personality, which is wildly enigmatic to me. In person, in interviews, she is chatty, almost as if she has ADD. She's very bubbly and cheerful, in an artsy way. Once she starts singing, however, it's like time slows to a crawl, the audience falls silent and something beautiful happens. It's like a 180. Several times in the movie, she was on stage with Sufjan Stevens and Denison Witmer, joking around and laughing pretty hard, only to go into the next song and have the audience, and me for that matter, on the edge of their seats and a million miles away, feeling so deeply something that refused to be named or identified. I'm not sure if it's empathy, nostalgia or longing. Something in Rosie Thomas' music is pulling. It sucks you in and rolls you around and around and around, in the most mellow way you could imagine. And then, when the song was over, it was like coming up for air. And she makes that air very vulnerable, yet easy, and free from any pretension. It's like her music and personality strips away all the pretense, all the show, everything that tries to present itself in a better light, and leaves room for us to be ourselves and not feel alone or awkward.

I kept saying to myself as I watched... "I want to make music like this."

(I highly recommend getting the DVD. It comes with a vinyl, too.)

Coats and Hats and Being Your True Self

"...the world sets in to making us what the world would like us to be, and because we have to survive after all, we try to make ourselves into something that we hope the world will like better than it apparently did the selves we originally were. That is the story of all our lives, needless to say, and in the process of living out that story, the original, shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us hardly end up living out of it at all. Instead, we live out all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather." (emphasis added by me) - Frederick Buechner

I read this this morning and it wrung sadly true. I wish I could say I was living out the phrase, "Let people feel the weight of who you are, and let them deal with it." Unfortunately, I know I'm not. There's something strange and sinister at work in this world, that makes us hide from each other.

I'm just beginning to see and understand this in myself. It feels at times like a subconscious prison that I don't realize I'm in, but that completely keeps me from being free and fully alive. "Our original, shimmering self"... Do we really believe that who we are deep down is worth letting other people see? That they need who you really are, not who you think they need? That reminds me of another quote, "Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world truly needs is people who have come alive."

Expect another blog post about this soon...

If It's in You, You Have to Write

"If it's in you, you have to write."

That's one of the many quotes I wrote down from this past weekend's Songwriting Boot Camp near Seattle, WA. It was an amazing time, filled with lots of music theory, song critiquing and speakers encouraging us aspiring song-writers to write, write, write.

I came back a sickness. I caught the songwriting bug.

The only downside to that is not having the time to do it as much as I'd like. That, of course, causes a plethora of what-ifs and internal scheming, grasping at straws for anything that would restructure my busy life to allow more downtime for writing. How do we find that ever-elusive balance of living from our hearts and meeting our responsibilities? I feel as though far too many of us, as Americans, whether through resignation or lack of opportunity, give up on our hearts and simply do what's expected of us. We take whatever jobs we can and pay the bills, without much thought to what makes us come alive. In this particular economy, it comes across even more so as a luxury. It's part of the American Dream, though, to be able to enter the free market economy and sell your goods or services and make a life for yourself. Somewhere along the way, it seems like many of us stopped asking what makes us come alive, and just started asking what the world needs and what the world will buy. We've sacrificed passion on the alter of pragmatism.

Is there another way? Are these questions just the ranting of an ungrateful, spoiled American who doesn't appreciate the opportunities and privileges that he has? If so, what do we do with our desires and passions? The only option in the face of such condemnation at these questions, is to let our hearts die the slow death of safety and tenured employment.

I'm aware of the need for us to be content, to be truly grateful for the jobs we have and the pay checks we receive and I don't want to swing the pendulum completely the other way. Starving artists may be living from their hearts, but they're probably also malnourished and mooching off their friends and family in a way that is straining relationships.

So how do we live from the hearts that God has put in us, while accepting the responsibilities that we've been given and need to be faithful to?

A Waste of Perfectly Good Emotion

I was reading David Dark's book, "The Sacredness of Questioning Everything", last night and came across a section that grabbed my attention and wouldn't let me keep reading. I had to put the book down and just ponder what I had read as I fell asleep.

He was quoting something he had read or heard, someone's response after watching a particular movie, that perhaps had Tom Hanks or someone in it. When asked about it, the man responded favorably, that he had liked the movie well enough. But after seeing the man's hesitation or that he clearly had more going on under the surface, he was asked what else was on his mind. He responded, "Seemed like a waste of perfectly good emotion."

That struck me. As Dark went on to discuss the evils of our TV-infatuated society, I started drifting off on a rabbit trail of my own. I started thinking about the emotions I experience when I watch movies or certain shows and started considering that quote...

"A waste of perfectly good emotion."

The inspiration of Biggest Loser, the excitement of Monday Night Football, the persevering love in The Notebook, the warmth of family and love of Love Actually, the justice and compassion in Extreme Home Makeover... so many random emotions. And I started wondering, are these wasted emotions? These shows and movies are not bad in and of themselves. Not at all. They can be beautiful glimpses into what makes us human and what makes life beautiful. But, for instance, even before reading Dark's latest book, I couldn't stand Extreme Home Makeover because I felt manipulated. They got my eyes to tear up and I didn't even know them. I think I resented being taken advantage of emotionally. Part of why that show is so emotional is because it speaks to something deeply human in us. I'm not questioning that at all. What I am questioning is what good is that? What good does it do for me to get a little teary-eyed at the end of a show in the comfort of my living room? I simply change the channel, or shut the TV off and go about whatever is next in my day. Then, it really does feel like a waste of emotion...

Instead of sitting on the couch for an hour, getting a little misty-eyed with compassion for a family that is struggling and gets help, what if I took the time to get to know my real neighbors and found out what their needs were? What if I spent that hour, which would have been spent sitting on my couch watching people I'll never meet or help, helping a real neighbor of mine? What if my tears were because I really helped a friend who was discouraged, or helped a neighbor fix their fence or shovel their driveway? Would I be moved to tears then?

Yes. I would. It's happened. Not to the point of sobbing like a baby. But after a silly situation where I went 5 minutes out of my way to help one of my physical neighbors, I was flooded by an over-whelming sense of emotion. I'm not even sure what it was. Compassion? Gratitude? Or just a deep realization and sensation that we are broken people and something transcendent takes place when we choose to love each other?

Disclaimer: The situation above does not happen regularly. In fact, truth be told, I drove past my neighbor and had to battle my own selfishness until I finally turned around and went back to help. I definitely don't want to paint myself as a saint.

Thinking back on the emotions that came with helping someone, with no thought of getting something in return, I am puzzled why I don't seek out more opportunities to help my neighbors more. There was something freely and alive in me during, but especially afterward, as I drove on my way. I felt changed. And I think that was because those emotions weren't wasted. I interacted with a real human. His needs were met and my heart was expanded.

I don't think we need to throw out our TVs and start picketing outside Comcast's offices. But maybe I need to be more intentional with how I spend my time, to balance my movie-watching with participating in the real-life stories of the people around me.

Think of the millions of people who probably watch Extreme Home Makeover. Think of their combined salaries and time. Think of the neighborhoods that those millions of people inhabit. Think of the neighbors, in adjacent houses who are hurting and could use some help and compassion. And think of how many hours we just sit on our couches, tearing-up that some random family somewhere in the country got a really big house when they were down-and-out, oblivious to the people around us who may even be watching the same show, wishing someone would help them like that...

I hope that's not manipulative or guilt-inducing. That's not my intention. I'm simply wrestling with my own self-centered life and wondering about the ways that I could love my real neighbors more, and in doing so, experience deep emotions that aren't wasted.

What Lies Have You Fallen For?

As I've been processing things lately, I have been bumping up against thoughts and words and phrases that come up to the surface in the midst of emotional upheaval. Phrases like, "I felt like God pulled the rug out from under me", "God doesn't seem to really be that concerned with me" or "It's like there's something deeply wrong with me..."

I've read a few books by John Eldridge in the past few years and while I am frustrated by the way he tends to proof-text quite a bit (pulling verses slightly out-of-context to support an already-assumed-to-be-true statement... It's like, Dude, what you said is true—you don't need a verse for it...), I have been introduced to some spiritual/psychological concepts that ring extremely true. He talks about how we experience emotional wounds as we grow up, and that our enemy, the devil, uses these in his hatred for us and God, to deceive us and lie to us and get us to agree with his spin on what is real and true about God, the world and ourselves, imprisoning us in a mire of self-preservation, fear, anger and loneliness.

I am finding that there are a lot of lies that I believe, bits of experiences that have been distorted to push seeds of doubt deep into the soil of God's character. Once they've been planted, so many experiences after that only serve to water and nourish those lies and deceptions, causing deep emotional and spiritual strongholds that we erect in order to survive and cope with the things we've experienced, the pain we've dealt with and the confusion we've struggled under.

If the devil isn't real or there isn't some personal evil being in the world that is set against me, the pain and suffering in this world can only be blamed on two people. God or myself. Maybe you could say the physical, material world, but that would fall back on God's shoulders (in the absence of a real Villain in this Story). So, in light of the pain in this world, God is holding out on us and we can't really trust Him. Or there is something deeply broken and evil in us that is beyond hope and we deserve all the misery that we experience.

That is the lie. C.S. Lewis, in The Screwtape Letters, talks about the primary tool used by satan and the fallen angels with him is to deceive us humans into believing that evil spirits do not exist. And if we believe that they don't exist, when they actually do, we are forced to make false conclusions about the world around us because we have this innate and God-image-bearing tendency to cry out for justice. Someone is to blame for evil. God, me or the devil. And if the devil can make me dismiss him as a real player in all this, then evil is God's fault or mine.

I don't know if that whole thought process makes any sense to any of you. I know that was kinda paradigm-shifting for me. The devil is kind of like the bogeyman in a lot of churches... not really talked about. And then so many people go over-board with the whole "spiritual warfare" side of things that it caricatures that reality into some hocus-pocus mumbo-jumbo. Especially in this post-modern, science-worshiping culture of ours.

The reason I think it's critical for us to acknowledge this is because we're crippled if we don't. We cut ourselves off from most of the spiritual and emotional healing that is possible if we're casting blame in the wrong place. It would be like refusing to go to the doctor because you somehow conclude that since medicine cures the flu, and the doctor has the medicine, but allowed you to get sick in the first place, the doctor is evil, when in reality, he is the one you need to see most. Or worse, that you deserve to be sick, so you don't seek help at all.

I've found that these "lies" in my life only surface under emotional pain. I don't typically notice them when I'm just going through the motions of life. But once the status quo is jostled off its center and things aren't coasting along normally, I find strange thoughts just beneath the surface.

I think we need this. We need to go deeper. We need to scrape away the topsoil and see what's underneath. Especially because anything less leaves us treating the symptoms of brokenness with little behavior-modification band-aids. And it keeps us from being honest and authentic with God and each other. It's the whole, "If you walk in the Light as He is in the Light, we have fellowship with each other" thing. Life has created some dark cracks and shadows in our lives, that the devil has whispered into and brainwashed us with. We need the healing light of redemption and transparency and healing if we are ever going to experience wholeness.

So, don't necessarily comment on here about it, but take some time and think about the emotional pain you experience or even the things that you "struggle" with in life and go deeper. Ask yourself why you do them? Ask how it feels? What do you think about God or yourself in those moments? I'm finding that I've wasted a lot of time going through the motions of pursuing God, when in reality, I've not been real with Him and faced up to situations in the past where I felt betrayed and abandoned by Him. I'm not exactly sure where to go with that, for as a friend said, "Clarity does not equal healing." But I know it's a start. Hopefully, a small step towards a deeper, more authentic and life-giving experience with God.