wanting deeply

I want deeply to tell you about the things on my mind. My agony over what to do with my brain for a living. The burns of long-planted pain. The creeping suspicions I have about this and that.

But at the end of the day, I close my eyes. Those stories unwritten. The plans not made.

And that's mediocrity.

soup: from scratch

One thing on my life list is to learn how to make as many soups as possible from scratch.

I'm a decent cook, but I'm generally afraid of whole chickens, dried beans, and ingredients that I can't find easily in the store. (Did you know that pearled barley is on the top shelf in the SOUP SECTION? Because I thought it would be with the grains. Or the rice. Or the beans. Or the weird organicky bulk items.)

Anyway, I tackled homemade minestrone soup from scratch using dried beans yesterday using this recipe.

If you want to come over for soup, there's about two gallons of it at my house right now. Next time, halvsies. Also, more hot sauce. And tomato.

It was really cheap to make especially when you consider that I will be eating off of it for the next month.

now reading: a google document

About two months ago, I decided I didn't have enough lists in my life and I created a document of books that I'd read this year, books I am currently reading, books I want to read, and books that I want to buy so that I will guilt myself into reading them.

Here's what it looks like today, though I am not entirely sure that the finished reads list is comprehensive. I think I've forgotten a few trashy forgettables. What should I add?

Now Reading

1. The Forgotten Ways
2. Cuisines of the Axis of Evil
3. Don Miller's newest
4. Olive Kitteridge

Up Next

1. Culture Making
2. Seven Storey Mountain
3. Proust was a Neuroscientist
4. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
5. Wounded Healer
6. The Next Evangelicalism
7. UnChristian
8. The Myth of a Christian Nation

Need to Get

1. Bird by Bird
2. Culture Theory
3. Stanley Hauerwas--Resident Aliens
   

Finished Reading

1. The Last Lecture
2. Letters from a Skeptic
3. The Blue Parakeet
4. When Kids Hurt
5. Surprised by Hope
6. Sustainable Youth Ministry
7. Love is an Orientation
8. Traveling Mercies
   
9. The Unaccustomed Earth
10. The Book Thief
11. The Godfather
12. Youth Ministry 3.0
13. The Maytrees
14. Spiritual Development
15. The great emergence
16. twilight
17. angry conversations with god
18. jesus for president
19. jesus wants to save christians
    

and then a bottle of hot sauce fell on my head

Things fall apart in threes. It's some sanctified rule of thumb that this must happen.

The double computer death on Sunday is going to be categorized as thing one.

Realizing that my visual voicemail on my phone has not been working for a month, that I hadn't received any voicemail messages for a month, that over 40 messages have been gathering dust for over a month is thing two.

So what about thing three? I superstitiously have decided that was when a bottle of hot sauce fell on my head and then broke a bowl because I need thing three to be insignificant.

perspective

Sunday was diabolic. I don't say that lightly. Both of my computers crashed. My work computer in the morning. My home computer in the late hours of the evening. (Yes, I have two computers. It is extravagant and silly and absurd. I already know that.) The irony, the cataclysm of both crashes at the start of important conversation, encouragement, and proclamation of the Gospel can surely be interpreted many ways, but I think, I am truly convinced, it was a very lame attempt by the evil one to bury me in self-pitying woe, absurd busyness, and egotistical frustration.

Computers, cars, and people die.

As I write, my colleague in the Word is burying a friend, a man whose life has served the church, a man who gave more in his retirement from his professional field than many of those who are paid to serve.

Computers, cars, and people die.

Computers and cars bear no significance in my life. Sure, losing information, functionality, ease of transport, and funds is inconvenient and irritating. But that's it. Life is filled with general inconveniences and irritations. Have you visited a big box store parking lot lately? Those things epitomize the irritating side of life. I cannot complain about irritation when there are larger wounds to mend.

The temporary suspension of the blessing of technology cannot distract me from the reality that I have work to do. I have a hope that changes me, compels me, grounds me. It is a hope that heals and cares and sets aside the burn of irritation and self for the bigger picture.

Computers, cars, and people die.

As my fellow servant is buried in the ground this cold and brutal fall day, I am reminded that he will not be stripped for parts like a dead computer or car, but his brokenness will be made new. His scratches and bumps will be healed. His broken heart will be replaced. Love will course his veins.

trying to breath deeply: heart on sleeve

Tomorrow, a group of people are gathering here in St. Louis to talk about the Church, our church, and our congregations. The unifying element for all of us is a deep concern about the mission of the church, or lack thereof.

--

I'm reading The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch (okay, I have been since sometime this summer, but it just got bumped to the priority list). He makes a compelling case against much of western Christianity's institutional practice. As I am reading, I am scared.

--

I know something must change in the way we do "church." And though I've known this for some time, the intersection of this coming gathering, reading this book, and so many other things heighten the urgency I feel.

The fear I feel, I believe, is healthy. Much of my livelihood, education, training, is built around the institutional church. And it must change. For the kingdom. For others to know that I am not bullshitting this faith in Christ business. For others how have not yet been told that there is hope.

Change is scary, angering. I'm coming to terms with the reality that I am going to make someone angry. They are going to say hurtful things. And I will have to keep moving forward. Not out of my own righteousness, but in the conviction that when Christ told me (you, us) to go, he didn't mean write a check and say a silent prayer.

--

I'm breathly deeply. Or trying.

to the long-forgotten ever-present

To the long-forgotten ever-present,

I want to tell you that I'm leaving this behind me. That I'm moving on and moving up. That everything is going to be just alright.

But alas, time has shown that it isn't.

I can't get a handle on the mess in my mind or in my room or in the cabinet underneath the sink.
I can't get a handle on who I am or who I want to be.

I don't know who my friends are, who I can be happy around, who I can trust with the fact that I don't know if I like these people.

I don't know what to do with the words in my mind most days and so I bottle them up. Too dangerous for the people I sweat for. Too boring for my own eyes.

I could create a thousand dance metaphors but really it boils down to that fact that learning to dance has created the biggest culture gap in my life since moving away to live in the thick of another culture.

Starting every line with "I" further proves the inanity that I feel. I wish I had something better to tell you, something to say. But I've been living in a windowless cave for some years now and I've lost the view that made things tick.

Life has become unsustainable.
This has become unsustainable.

And yet, I keep coming back to it.