10/13/2020 0 Comments live on the edge of all you can beI have a running buddy who likes to say we all need to get comfortable being uncomfortable. The idea is in our discomfort we are most likely to find our best chance of being all that we can be.
The hard part about that is from the very earliest moments of our lives, our brains are wiring us to pursue safety and comfort. Our brains are designed to become fully automated machines that move us to safe and comfortable places without us ever having to think about it. The science in us would love nothing more than to make us all robots. I think of our brains as an unvisited forest. If we navigate that forest for the first time, we'll leave an imprint. The beginnings of a trail. If we safely navigate the forest on that trail, our brain compels us to use it again. And again. Until that virgin trip through the forest becomes a fully functioning dirt trail. Our brain wants to wire in us a network of safe trails. We spend most of our days responding to the science of our lives - following those wires - those habits - that have automated us to move toward safety and comfort. There is something in us, though - in every one of us - that makes us bigger than our science. There is a human nature longing that leaves us always wondering - is it possible that there's another trail in this forest? Is there a path that might be riskier but ultimately more beautiful? A path that makes me whole? When these longings stir in us, our brain tries to quiet them. Our brain wants us to remain comfortable being comfortable. Don't go there, our brain says. The brain, by design, is actually quite lazy. It's developed this nice trail for you to walk in life. It has no desire to start plotting and blazing another one just to accommodate your human longings. Your brain wants you to believe the trail you can see in the forest is the only trail in the forest. Your brain wants you to believe life is to be played safe no matter how beautiful you imagine it to be on the other side of risk. Your brain wants you to believe who you are now is truly all that you can be. Some science in our brains is a good thing. I'm thankful when I'm driving and an oncoming car swerves into my path that my lazy brain has been wired to have me automatically re-direct my car toward safety. So, yes, some trails are really good trails. Funny thing is, though, running trails has taught me there ARE other trails in life. Unseen and unimagined trails. My brain tried to tell me they were too long or too high or too rocky or just too dangerous. Don't go there, my brain said. But I went there. I let the luring of my human nature pull me away from the science that begged me not to go. Oh, did I discover how magical life can be. That we are humanly capable of far more than our science wants us to believe. I discovered the majesty found in being human is what makes becoming robots, no matter how safe and protected and comfortable those robots might be, a really tragic consequence of our science. It makes becoming comfortable being comfortable, in many ways, a sacrifice of a beautiful human life.
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10/11/2020 0 Comments Finding the Courage to listenI spent 13 years working with at-risk kids in a residential wilderness program. For the first several of those years, I lived with these kids and provided direct care for them 24 hours a day - several days a week. I was a youth counselor.
When I speak to groups about mental health these days, I often bring up those counseling years. When I do, I tell people that the first two years of that experience, I was THE WORST counselor ever. By far. Then one day I was having a conversation with a kid. Actually, it's more accurate to call it a fully escalated verbal assault. He assaulting me - and me him. This wasn't the first time that happened with us. This kid knew every one of my triggers and I knew his and we just took turn pulling triggers. Boom. Bang. Boom. In this particular conversation, though, I did something different. I stopped yelling and asked him a question. I asked this kid what on earth had happened in his life that had made him so angry. I couldn't possibly be the source of that much anger, I told him. I remember how stunned he was by that. I'd never asked him about his life before. In this conversation I'd learn that no one ever had. Through tears, that kid went on to tell me a lot about what had happened in his life. When you finally have someone interested in listening to a story you've been dying to tell for 13 years, you tell your story. All of it. That day, the world's worst counselor became a great one. That day he realized the secret to being a great one is getting rid of the idea that healing kids happens when you tell them all about YOU and start embracing the reality that what they need most is someone interested in hearing about THEM. As I've spent the last decade or so working more deeply in the mental health world, I've come to believe at the heart of so much of our mental illness is people who believe no one is interested in them - no one is interested in this story they want to tell. I believe that's at the heart of a lot of our illnesses. And hurts. Be still and listen. Maybe that gets to be too bible-like so we shy away from it. But that day, with that kid, when I just got still and listened - I literally saw healing in the air. Something beautiful happened in that kid I'll never forget. Too this day, when I get to believing the healing someone needs in their life is to hear a little more of me - I picture that kid and I try to quiet myself. And then I'll ask the question kids like that - people like that - long to hear. I'll ask how are you? And then I listen. In these vitriolic political times, when I see so much negative energy coming from two sides out-screaming and out-name calling their demands that the other side see the world through their eyes, I've been reflecting on the Christian story.
I find myself NOT reflecting on the Christian truth we Christians most often migrate to - that God came to earth to die on a cross to save us all. No, instead, I've found myself wondering why God would have bothered coming to this crazy world at all. I mean, if you read your bible, you'll discover the world wasn't void of political screaming and name calling when God came to hang out with us. And, I've come to believe, my God is a God of options; it's not like coming to live with us was his way of throwing his hands in the air and conceding there is just no other way. I have to go live with this mess I created. No, it seems to me, God left the ultimate comforts of home to jump right smack dab in the middle of the greatest collection of burdens this world can assemble. And it seems to me he did it for a reason - a reason rooted in desire more than desperation. A desire for what, though? That's what I've been wondering. There is a story in the 3rd chapter of Matthew in the bible. It's early in Jesus' ministry. He goes to John and asks John to baptize him. John responds like a lot of us probably would. Uhm, wait a minute - you're God - shouldn't this baptizing thing be going down the other way around. Like - you baptize me? Jesus says, no, this is exactly the way it's supposed to go down. So John baptizes Jesus. And when Jesus comes up out of the water the clouds open up and there's suddenly a loud booming voice from heaven. It's the voice of God and it says, this is my son, and man do I love him. What did Jesus do in that baptism that made God such a loud and proud dad? I don't think it was Jesus being willing to be baptized by a mere human. I think it was because of how much Jesus desired to experience being a human. I think God built his model of life on the foundation of love. And I think God made a desire to see life through someone else's life - the desire to experience and feel and walk in the steps of another human - he made that the main interstate for love. In that moment of baptism, Jesus wasn't saying I want you to baptize me John, he was saying I want to see and feel what it's like to be you, John. L. Ann Jervis says, "to take an empathetic stance towards another means that I am able to transcend myself and my own experience in order to enter into the experience of another. Those who have received such empathy from another will know that there is nothing more healing or more validating than this." Jesus was taking one of the first of many steps he would take to transcend being God to enter into the experience of being me and you. He didn't do it because he had to - he did it because he knew that was the best road to take to demonstrate love. He did it because he didn't ever want us to have any doubts about the best road we could take to loving one another. I get why Jesus died on a cross. I'm beginning to think it's even more important to consider why he ever came at all. A few weeks ago, when I was trying to finally complete the Georgia Jewel Ultramarathon after two previous failed attempts, I remember getting discouraged the last few hours of that race. It seemed like every time the trail straightened out and I found any sort of a rhythm - the trail suddenly turned. It turned and I was sure it was taking me far away from the finish line I'd been dreaming of for years.
I found that finish line, though. I'll never forget the feeling of sitting in a chair on the other side of it and reflecting on what I'd just done. I felt sure of one thing. The winding and unpredictable trail that led me to a third attempt at that finish line, the 37 miles of taunting trails that too frequently twisted and turned me away from that finish line - daring me with every step to lose sight of where I wanted to be - those trails made the man who was sitting there. Yesterday, I led a two hour online training about our brains and trauma and resilience and what's at stake when we do and don't understand all of that. In trainings like that, I come alive. Passion pours from me. Even through a screen I can see people embracing the message. I feel them looking at their lives and the lives of the people they serve with new hope. Often, when I finish a training like that, I lean back in my chair and exhale. It's like sitting in that chair at the Jewel finish line. I sit there and look back on my life and consider with awe how crooked the path was that got me there. In one of those rare moments when life seems to make perfect sense, I'm reminded that the path that got me there seldom made any sense at all. If I think about it, I probably spend too much of my life trying to make sense of things - too much time trying to make the path to wholeness a straight line. Trying to make sense of things makes it easy to forget every meaningful finish line I've crossed in life and running has come at the end of some of the most squiggly lines ever drawn. I remember one race when my buddy Tracey kept screaming at me: you need to run the tangents - meaning, from turn to turn, he needed me to run the straightest line possible. You know, maybe there are some straight lines in running (although I rarely find them)! But I'm not sure life has many of them. And maybe that's the point to life? Maybe life isn't about finding the straightest path, but instead discovering the beauty in life is found in the curves. Maybe life is about meeting one another in the switchbacks and being the encouragement to one another that says, this is just a curve - the finish line is still there. Maybe it's in those reminders - those moments together - where we come alive - our passions pour from us. Maybe it's in those moments together that the lines in life feel as straight as they ever get. I've told this story before. Some of you have probably heard it. But Goff's devotional this morning leaves me needing to tell it again. Maybe to you - maybe to me.
I was in my mid-twenties I suppose. Life had it's challenges, not the least of which were drinking and gambling. I lived life in the fog of hangovers and debts, all the while trying to figure out the next drink and the next bet. I'd dropped out of college. Went back to college. Dropped back out of college. You get the picture. During this time, I went to work for a local carpenter. He was a Christian. I guess I was too. Only he somehow managed to be a Christian who smiled all the time; I was the Christian who wandered through life wondering why God left so many people without a reason to smile. So more often than not, his smiles aggravated me. One day, we were all sitting around at lunch inside the frame of this house we were building. I wasn't much in the mood for anyone's happiness. Maybe this carpenter sensed that. Because when I looked over at him he was eating his sandwich with a smile no mere sandwich is capable of producing. That's when I asked him the question, the answer to which shaped my life as much as any answer ever has. I asked him, why are you always so happy. He asked me, do you really want to know. I told him I did. He told me he had a relationship with God that made it really hard for him to NOT smile. That was it. That's all he said. He went back to eating that sandwich. He didn't whip out his bible or hand me a pamphlet or lead me in any chants or prayers. He simply went back to eating and smiling and I guess hanging out with his friend: God. I've been pondering his words for over 30 years now. Really, it's one word: relationship. That was the first time in my Christian life I'd ever considered God through the eyes of a relationship. To me, God was always this distant thing: a cross on a chain - a bumper sticker - a last ditch effort to pull me out of the latest hole I'd dug for myself. God was always the most convenient place or thing or whatever exactly he or she was to blame for a life falling apart. A relationship, though? A person who could be so closely by my side that I'd be overwhelmed by the joy of a bologna sandwich? I didn't know THAT God. But that day I started looking for him. That day I started looking inside me for the God to love and smile about, and I stopped wildly pointing my finger to the sky with blame over my inability to feel anything but hurt. It has been a journey. I haven't arrived. I'm quite sure I never will. There are still days I find myself looking to the sky. I have my finger cocked and loaded and ready to point. But then I hear the voice of that carpenter. I see his smile. I hear him say "I have this relationship with God that makes it really hard for me to NOT smile." So I look inside. I look for the friend that carpenter introduced me to that day. Many days that friend will hand me a bologna sandwich. I thank Him. And I smile. 10/7/2020 0 Comments Pray to be a miracle, not see one.I'm working on a bad habit I have. I'm trying to stop saying the words "I'm praying for you." I'm not trying to quit praying for people - quite the opposite really - I'm just trying to stop saying that I am.
Coming from someone who professes the power of prayer, from someone who has survived a lot of battles in life because of the unwavering folded hands of prayer, this all might sound like a slap in prayer's face. It's not. It's actually an attempt to harness a more transforming kind of prayer in my life. This is all driven by two things. First, it is the number of times I've found myself saying to someone "I'm praying for you" and then never uttered the first word of concern to God on their behalf. I've discovered in my own life that I'm far more dedicated to talking to someone else about prayer than I am to talking to God in the act of prayer. Second, I made this discovery about my prayer life as I've heard people say to me "I'm praying for you." Many times "I'm praying for you" sounded like the kindest way to say "I have no idea how to help you" or "I'm too busy dealing with my own stuff in life to get wrapped up in the burden of yours." Too many times "I'm praying for you" has come across as the Christian way of saying I have your back without actually having to have someone's back. Believe me, those points I make about other people - they come so harshly to me because I have realized how frequently I do that to other people. And thus - the reason for trying to break this habit. Sadly, I think we Christians have used "I'm praying for you" to hand over all power to transform lives to God. We use "I'm praying for you" to either directly or indirectly deliver the message to God that this or that person needs your help, God. I think too often we've turned "I'm praying for you" into the quickest way to remove from our to-do list the possibility that WE might be the help they need. I wonder, how many prayers each day does God hear someone ask him to be the miracle in someone else's life. I wonder, as well, how that number compares to the number of times God hears someone asking for the opportunity for THEM to be the miracle in someone else's life. Well, the only meaningful answer I have to those wonders is my own prayer life. And I will tell you more often than not my prayers start with - be there for them God, be there for them God, be there for them God - and then occasionally I might add - and if there's anything you think I can do, God, feel free to let me know. So, I'm letting you know, I'm working on asking God to show me what I can do to help you more than I'm asking him what he plans to do to help you. I'm working on asking you if there's anything I can do for you more than I avoid that question by telling you I'm praying for you. I'm going to spend more time asking God for the opportunity to be a miracle and less time asking him to let me see one. 10/5/2020 0 Comments who deserves grace?I love telling stories. I suppose that's why I love that Jesus often used stories to teach. One of my favorite stories is one He used in the book of Matthew to teach about God's kingdom.
Jesus said God's kingdom is like someone who manages a large vineyard. The manager needs help, so he drives into town early one morning looking to hire workers for the day. The manager finds several folks who are unemployed and anxious to work. They pile in the back of his Ford F-150 after being promised a fair wage. And off to work they go. Around lunchtime, the manager drives back to town looking for more help. Once again, several folks are looking for work. They too are offered a fair wage and off they go to join the workers hired earlier. The manager repeats this trip to town two more times that day. Once in the afternoon and another early in the evening. Both times, additional help comes back to the vineyard after being promised a fair wage. At the end of the work day, the manger brings the workers in to pay them. They line up - those hired last were first in line - those hired early in the morning were in the back. The manager handed the last ones hired a buck. The workers in the back of the line saw that and thought, this is going to be our big day. If the workers who only worked a couple of hours were getting a buck, what on earth is our haul going to look like? Well, according to Jesus' story, their haul looked like a buck. Every worker that day, no matter how long they worked, they all received the same pay. One buck. And as you can imagine, that didn't sit well with the workers who worked all day. The point I think Jesus was making here is, when it comes to God's grace, when it comes to His love for us, God doesn't have the time or interest to work out the math. He doesn't have formulas to help him figure out who has or hasn't earned their grace and exactly how can it be fairly divided between you and me. You know, the bible doesn't tell us, but I have to believe there was at least one worker at the back of that line who thought, you know, my family is starving. One buck will help me feed them a couple of days. I think that worker must have felt so blessed by the chance to provide for them that fair or unfair really didn't matter. I've made a ton of mistakes in my life. I'll make more today. Some will be big. Some maybe not so much. Through them all, though, I continue to feel God's grace pouring uninterrupted into my life. Believe me, the math and the grace formula in my life would suggest I'm not deserving of the kind of grace God has given and continues to give me. Realizing that, getting lost in the gratitude of it all, makes it really hard for me to wonder whether anyone else deserves God's grace as well. The reality is none of us are deserving. Whether we showed up at 8AM or 5PM - none of us deserve the kind of grace God pours our way - but He keeps on pouring. The bigger lesson in all of that, I think, is we should probably stop working out the math on each other when it comes to deciding who deserves OUR grace. Maybe we should work toward a model like God's, where we line everyone up in our lives and say I'm loving you all with the same measure of grace. Oh, that's radical. I get it. It's radical and it's hard and pretty daggone unimaginable. But I know this. We've been doing the math on each other for a long time. We've used the model of "deserving." We've developed practices and systems that help us determine who deserves and gets what - many if not all of which are guided by personal filters that help us decide who does and does not deserve love. I'm a big fan of scoreboards for college football. They make Saturdays exciting. When it comes to life, though, I'm not sure scoreboards are working out well for us. When Jesus began his ministry, he did what a lot of people do when they begin a new venture. He returned to his home town. He returned to friends and family and familiar faces.
It was a Sunday, like today. Jesus gathered with his people in a Synagogue he'd surely attended as a kid. To help with his first sermon, he asked someone to hand him the old testament. Jesus opened to Isaiah 61 and began to read: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. After Jesus told this familiar crowd that God had sent him, what was the first thing he told them God sent him to do? Heal the brokenhearted. Jesus' ministry started with the belief that the people he was talking to had broken hearts. Jesus didn't start his ministry by jumping on people for believing or behaving the wrong way. He started his ministry with the belief that beneath all beliefs and choices are hearts. He started his ministry with compassion, not judgment. From the very beginning, Jesus set out to transform lives, not indoctrinate them. I looked up the definition of indoctrinate - I found: the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically. From the very beginning, from his very first sermon, Jesus was pleading with us to understand that if we interact with people motivated to change their minds - the way they think and behave - without first exploring the hurts in their hearts, we are missing an opportunity to transform people. We are missing an opportunity to love. Jesus opened his sermon by saying God had sent him to heal the brokenhearted. I think Jesus went home, back to his roots, to deliver this message so WE would always understand that the roots of our efforts should be healing the brokenhearted. I know too often, my efforts are to indoctrinate - to change minds without ever exploring the hurts in someone's heart. I know too often, as well, that I'm on the receiving end of indoctrination, people wanting to change my mind without ever exploring the hurts of my heart. You know, when Jesus was reading the book of Isaiah from the old testament, he was reading a prediction come true. He was reading a prophet predicting this very preacher would come along and encourage people to go heal broken hearts. Well that preacher came. Now we get to look back and read the prediction. We can read it come to life. But now, what do we do with that? Do we go out to indoctrinate lives or transform them? Do we go into the world to change people's minds, or heal their broken hearts? Or - is it possible - Jesus was telling us the best way to change people's minds is through their hearts - through love? I'm going to say something that might appall some people. It may even cost me some friends. But this week, I've had an ongoing virtual conversation with an old high school friend. In a few weeks, this friend is going to vote for someone different than I'm going to vote for.
Now, here comes my big I'm on my knees confession: at the end of our conversation, very much like when the conversation started, I think the world of this person. I suppose that's because when I think of this person, I don't picture the presidential candidate she's supporting. I support a friend who has devoted her life to working in social services. I picture a friend who is married to a man who has devoted his life to educating and coaching young people. I picture a friend who has raised three beautiful kids, all of whom have gone on to serve our country in brave and beautiful ways. I didn't finish our conversation praying that she'll change her mind about who she is going to vote for. I finished our conversation in prayer for her grieving heart. This friend recently lost her dad - one of the kindest and most generous men I can I recall from my childhood. You see, the reality is, as much as we want to de-humanize people by their voting preference, all voters are struggling through some very human struggles. As much as I see all sides wanting to accuse the other sides of being heartless, this world is as full as ever of people looking to mend their very real broken and hurting hearts. The declarations have been mounting this week. "If you're voting for this person, then you are this." "If you're voting for this person, then you can't possibly consider yourself to be that." "If you're voting for this person, please just disappear from my life." In many ways, it makes me very sad. It makes me sad to see us so broadly screening people out of our lives instead of spending some time digging a little deeper into the hearts of the lives we're screening out. Because I have to share another shocker - completely from my own experience - there are a lot of people out there who are far more glorious and magnificently complex and creative than the Donald Trump or Joe Biden masks we want to imprison them with. In other ways, though, this all reminds me to be very grateful. I've made some choices in my life, I've hung out with and supported some questionable people in my life - to this day I continue to cast votes for directions in my life that on the surface would paint me as something less than who I truly long to be. Yet, there he is. There's Jesus. Right there beside me. Paying little attention to who I've voted for, paying little attention to the mistakes I've made. There he is, far too committed to loving the person inside me to be appalled by the appalling person I too often appear to be. There he is, much like he was when he walked this earth, not asking me who I'm going to vote for, but instead exploring all the spaces of my heart for one more place to pour out his love. I'm grateful for the chance to have explored some of those spaces myself this week. In doing so, I experienced love and connection and unity. The cultural momentum we're all being sucked into would tell us those spaces aren't there, not in "those" people - don't waste your time looking for them. Well, it's my experience - that might be the fakest news of all. 10/2/2020 0 Comments Living life to the tune of graceI was driving yesterday and a Kari Jobe song came on the radio I'd never heard. After simply listening for a few seconds I found myself humming along. The song was beautiful. It felt like peace. And yet, when it was done, I was left unable to recite a single word of what she'd just sung.
When I got to my office I looked up the lyrics. As I read them a beautiful melody became a beautiful story. The peace I'd been feeling suddenly had a definition. Music can do that for me. Just the simple sound of it. I don't often run with music playing, but I always take music with me. Because if the miles start getting tough one of the quickest ways I get myself back on track is turning on a favorite playlist. I love the analogy Bob Goff uses this morning to compare music and grace. I look back on some of the darkest days of my life and realize just how unfamiliar I was with grace. I look back with some regret and wish I'd known more about it. I wish I'd felt how strongly God was wanting me to hum along with the grace he was pouring into my life. God gave me a great gift in spite of my deafness - or ignorance - in those moments. God went ahead and wrote the lyrics to the songs of those dark days. And when I sit in my office and ponder those lyrics, the words miraculously tell a story of hope and redemption. They joyously sing light into darkness. The true value and meaning of that gift is today. Today, when the days get tough, I can just start humming. I have no earthly idea what the words to this song of today are, but I hum along fully trusting I'll get to google them one day. And when I do, they will tell a beautiful story. One filled with hope and redemption. One written to the tune of grace. |
Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
May 2024
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