I wonder if when Paul McCarney penned those words over 60 years ago, the words 'money can't buy me love,' if he saw coming just how much we'd come to love money, and just how much that love for money would come to cost us the love we need most.
I spent some time this week with a beautifully diverse group of people. It was part of a process for becoming a facilitator of an initiative called CHATS (connecting humans and telling stories). In this process, I was challenged to connect with some walks of life that I frankly don't typically walk with. Why that is I am left to ponder. But I do ponder it differently now. Which, at its core, is the mission of CHATS. During one of the activities, I was partnered with someone who is quite different from me. They looked different. They had different pronouns. In many ways, they come from a completely opposite place in life than me. In this activity, we were challenged to reflect on an image we had chosen to reflect our outlook in that moment. I chose an image of a dead-end sign. I reflected to my partner that the way I see life, there is no such thing as a dead-ends. I shared that my life has become an example of 'the end' often becoming a beautiful beginning, if I'm willing to explore it as such. Dead-ends are a myth to me, I shared. Then next day, my new friend offered to our group that my reflection had shifted the way they see life. They shared that too often their own mindset in life is dead-end thinking, thinking constantly telling them they are not enough, and that as a result of my reflection they were going to challenge themselves to see more possibilities in their own dead-end thinking. As they shared this, I found myself moved, so sweetly and beautifully moved. Because in the moment of another expressing how my words had shaped them, their words were shaping me. In very real time. Their words were making me wonder, have I truly looked beyond all of the dead-ends in my life in a search for more possibilities? Later, in another exercise, I reflected to our group on the image of dollar signs. I shared that I thought we live in a world that feels like it no longer has the time to make the kind of connections we were making with one another in this experience. And that most of that feeling, I believe, is driven by our time spent chasing money and things, and not the possibilities that rest on the other side of the dead-ends we build into our thinking about one another. I do wonder, do we chase money because we genuinely believe we need it. Or has money become a grand distraction from the difficult work of building connections? The difficult work of setting aside prejudices and assumptions, because chasing money isn't that hard compared to breaking through the dead-ends we build into people's politics and religions and pronouns and social-economic statuses and countries of origin and etc. Oh, we can come to think we know what those various labels tell us about someone. But we don't. Not at all. Not until we stand face to face and reflect together on the images of each other's lives. Not until our shared reflections lure us beyond the dead-ends of our differences and into the possibility of common ground. A common ground built not on the various titles and labels of humanity, but on humanity itself. A humanity created by love for love. We miss that love quite often pursuing a love we were never created for. Today, I am so incredibly grateful, thanks to an incredibly diverse group of people, to say and mean more than ever, "I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love." Because the reality is, in the end, money may be the biggest dead-end of all.
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10/30/2024 0 Comments You are not aloneBefore a training yesterday morning, I took a hike with my friend and workmate Marrin. It was one of the most spectacular visual experiences I've had in a long time, and in turn, one of the most spiritual.
I recently heard Steven Furtick say, "there are some things in your life you need to stop stressing about at a level that assumes you're going to have to do it alone." My eyes heard the echo of Furtick's words in this scene yesterday. My eyes heard God say, "you are not alone." There is a scientific phenomenon known as 'restorative environments.' Essentially what this phenomenon tells us is what we allow our eyes to see can directly influence our mental state, and even our capacity for hope and connectedness. This seems to be especially true of our natural environments. Additional scientific research tells us that filtering positive imagery through our eyes enhances our mental resilience. Intentionally choosing what we focus on, it turns out, can shape our mental health and outlook on life. We also read a lot about this in the bible. In the book of Matthew we read, "the eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light." And in the Psalms we read, "I lift up my eyes to the mountains - where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth." Is it possible life can get to feeling like I'm going at it alone because my eyes are pointed at environments, people, places and things, that are telling me stories of destruction and not restoration? Is it possible life can get to feeling like I'm going at it alone because loneliness can leave my eyes prone to drooping to the ground and not pointing at the beauty of the natural world around me? Is it possible life can get to feeling like I'm going at it alone because I long to see a more hopeful future but I'm filling my eyes with images of a hopeless past? If you're feeling like you're going at it alone today, I would encourage you, consider what you're allowing your eyes to see. And hear. I often say I go into the woods to hear God. People will sometimes look at me a bit skeptical when I say that. They have their doubts, and that's okay. Because when I once again look at this breathtaking image from yesterday, I am left with no doubt what my eyes have heard. Like a beautiful hug they have heard and felt the words I so constantly long to hear. They have heard indeed, you are not alone. I recently found myself wondering, what if life isn't as much about changing as it is about discovering. What if this pursuit I'm on to become who I'm made to be is standing in the way of me discovering the beauty of who I already am.
It's funny, I say it about my boys all the time. I say I have no picture at all of who I want them to become - because I truly don't - I just want them to discover the gifts God has planted in them. I think me pushing them toward something that's in my mind stands in the way of them discovering something that might already be in theirs. The process of me discipling my kids isn't me pointing them toward something OUT there, it's me helping them discover what God's already put IN there. I once had a conversation with a friend about peace. I asked, have you ever felt peace? I asked it because I had. I remember where I was. I remember the trail. In that moment I was overwhelmed by this feeling that I was free to be me. Free to think and say and be all things that were truly me. Free to be things I'd spent a lifetime hiding from, believing those things couldn't possibly be a part of me. I remember saying - in that freedom - this is peace. Maybe that is what peace is. Finally discovering who we have been all along, because God didn't create us for hiding. Remember when Adam tried to hide from God? And God gently called, where are you Adam? A life spent chasing down this person we think we're supposed to be at the expense of resting in the person we already are often looks and feels like turmoil. It looks and feels like writing the story of the world we think we're supposed to see instead of sitting down and writing the story of the world that lives in us. The world out there - it pressures you to write a story about the world. It pressures you to believe the world is the leading role in that story; you are just a supporting actor or actress. The world constantly challenges you to re-write your character description in a way that makes you deserving of a role in the story. Sometimes we simply need to quit re-writing. The story is you. You are already in a leading role. The secret is removing the world from your story long enough to get to know the beautiful character you already are. You don't need to re-write your character description. You just need to discover the description that was written long ago. You are a beautiful story. Take time to read it. *(re-written from an article I wrote in 2021) A broken marriage is a difficult kind of broken to go through. In many ways, it can begin to feel like you're going to go through it forever. Maybe the raw emotions of it fade over time, you don't stay as desperately lost in the feelings of it all, but if you're like me, you can spend a lot of time reflecting on the why?
In the beginning, as I processed that why, I spent a lot of time pointing fingers. It's easier to deal with something so very broken, with such wide-ranging impacts, when you can believe at any level at all that the breaking had nothing to do with you. I don't know what changes that. Maybe for some people that way of looking at it doesn't change. But I've come to understand some of my parts in the breaking. Not all of them. But can one ever truly figure out the whole picture of something like a broken marriage? In pointing some of the fingers at me, I've come to own something significant about my marriage. And that is this. I went into my marriage believing that marriage would change me. I went in believing that marriage would bring a taste of joy to an otherwise miserable life. Trust me, I didn't consciously know that way back then. I could never have articulated it that way when I said, "I do." I could have never owned up to that. But I can now. I married a good person, so I thought that would make ME a good person. I married a responsible person, so I thought that would make ME a responsible person. I married someone fun, so I thought that would make life more fun for ME. I thought a lot of things, all of them centered on ways I figured marriage would make my life better. But here's the question that often gets overlooked at the beginning of marriages, it's a question that gets overlooked in a lot of life decisions really, and that is this: am I in this to make my life better or am I in this to make who I am better? I've come to believe that two people entering a marriage for the primary purpose of having a better life will more often than not achieve the opposite, but two people entering a marriage for the primary purpose of helping each other become better people will almost always achieve it. And also, assuming two are on the same page with that starting point is not a safe or healthy assumption to start with. I believe God created us to become who he imagines we can become and not for us to achieve and have all that we imagine we can have. Sometimes that creates great tension between us and God - between us and the people around us - when we're trying to change the world around us in ways that don't look like the one God is trying to transform within us. In many ways, marriage did accomplish all that I originally set out to accomplish. I am a better person. I am more responsible. I do have more fun these days. I have a long way to go in all of those areas, but I'm moving in the right direction. But obviously, that didn't happen because my marriage got better. It happened because I got better at realizing the real purpose in my life is a transformed me more than a transformed world. God is always trying to change the world we live in by transforming the people who live in it. We often try to work change in reverse - change our situations on the path to changing ourselves, which often leaves us feeling like we and the world are going in the wrong direction. If today your world feels that way, like it's going in the wrong direction, I encourage you, maybe turn some fingers around. Maybe ask, what needs to change in me on my way to living in a world that looks and feels like it's going more in my direction? The path to all things meaningful happens inside out. The world often feels like it's lost its meaning when we lose that inside-out direction. But don't lose heart, as Steven Furtick says, "sometimes when it isn't getting better, you are. It's indeed true, even if it can indeed be a hard lesson to learn. I have heard this declaration a lot lately: "I will never settle."
It's built on the idea that an individual has worth and desires and to settle for anything less than something that matches that worth and desire is to be cheating oneself of life. I get it. But here's the problem. Or maybe the big question? How does one actually know when they have found this match in life that is the answer to 'not settling?' I certainly hear this philosophy a lot when it comes to romantic relationships, this idea of not settling. But I also hear it in job searches and house searches. I hear it when it comes to one settling on pursuing meaningful activities or hobbies or projects in life. I hear it a lot, this idea that I will not invest my time, energy, and commitment to 'this' if I'm not completely sure this is the right 'this'. When I hear people talk about 'not settling', it's usually as they are finding things in whatever they are tempted to settle for that just aren't quite right. Which really comes from some sort of belief that somewhere out there is something that will be a little more exactly right. But does that exist? A partner or house or pursuit that is exactly right? Does one ever get to a point where what they have doesn't leave them with some level of wondering if there is something a little more exactly right out there? I do think it's possible. I believe one can, actually, get to that point. But don't they get there by settling? Robert Goodin says, "You must settle, in a relatively enduring way, upon something that will be the object of your striving, in order for that striving to count as striving." Gooding suggests that living life to its fullest actually requires settling. He suggests that we can refuse to make a situation our ideal situation by continually pursuing a different sort of less-than-ideal situation. I spend two hours every morning reading and writing. For a long time that was very difficult to do. Not because of the time but because of all the other things I always knew I could be doing with that time. I used to run and workout a lot in the mornings. I used to use that quiet time to get a head start on that day's work. Sometimes I'd use that time to sneak in a little extra sleep. So, for the longest time, writing in the mornings was less than ideal because I always wondered if I could be doing something with that time a little more ideal. For the longest time, committing so much to writing felt like I was being cheated out of other areas in life. Well, here's the reality. We are going to live our lives cheated by other areas of life as long as we think about the areas of life we might be missing out on. We will always suffer from a fear of missing out (FOMO) until we discover what Oliver Burkeman calls, the joy of missing out (JOMO). The joy of missing out comes when we settle for something in life and pour our all into it. The joy comes from knowing I am choosing to miss out on everything else because 'this' thing is so worth my time investing in. It's the knowing that I am refusing other choices that makes this choice more meaningful. Joy comes when we stop refusing to settle and make the choice to do just that. Settle. We live in a world with more options than ever. And we can begin to live in a fantasy world, a dream world of sorts, that every option is an option for me. Well, that is simply not true. And we can get to a point in life when we realize we've waited our whole lives for the dream situation instead of settling for the situation that could have best made our dreams come alive. We can spend our whole lives looking for the ideal situation when the ideal situation was there for the choosing all along. I believe there is merit in refusing to settle. But in the end, a content and meaningful life comes when we do exactly that. We settle. I recently heard musical artist Jelly Roll talk about an experience in his dying dad's hospital room. A nurse came in and gave his dad a pill, and instead of swallowing the pill, like most would do, Jelly Roll's dad chewed it up and then swallowed.
Jelly Roll, caught a little off guard, asked him, "that doesn't bother you?" His dad responded, "sometimes when a pill is too hard to swallow you just gotta chew it up." It's interesting. I spent yesterday participating in a community gathering aimed at helping people gain a better understanding of addiction. And if I'm being honest, I can sometimes, often actually, leave these events far more hopeless than hopeful. I leave that way because you leave understanding the rate and destructiveness with which addiction is overwhelming so many communities. You leave know that this destruction is spreading faster than awareness - the awareness these events aim to spread. That hopelessness comes, I think, because I feel the overwhelming pain of a community and my heart longs for an overwhelming cure. An overwhelming healing. I want for a pill a community can swallow and make it all go away. But that is not usually how healing comes about. Healing comes from staying committed to chewing, taking one bite at a time, it comes from staying the course when the pill - the healing - looks too hard to swallow. I think about all of my friends in southwest Virginia and western North Carolina trying to recover from the floods from hurricane Helene. And to them the recovery has to look like a pill too hard to swallow. How can repair ever be made of this? And the answer is, sadly, not in one swallow. It will come from chewing. One bite at a time. I have been there in my years of divorce recovery. Oh how I have looked for a pill to swallow and make it all better, to make life feel like healed instead of what too many days feels like a constant state of anxiously looking for it. But that is usually not how healing comes about. Healing comes from staying committed to chewing, taking one bite at a time, it comes from staying the course when the pill - the healing - looks too hard to swallow. I was reminded yesterday that healing is also always found in people showing up. People showing up at community events. And more importantly, people showing up in the lives of those looking for a pill to swallow. People who show up and remind the hurting that there is no pill to swallow for this one, but there is one to chew. And I am here to help you do the chewing. A lot of people around us are struggling. They couldn't find a pill to swallow and they long ago gave up on chewing one. So we show up and take a couple of bites with them. Maybe even for them. Because in the end that's how healing happens. Chewing. Chewing, one bite at a time. I found this definition of stupid:
Actions driven by impulsiveness, ignorance, or stubbornness - essentially the opposite of wisdom. That particular definition could serve as the biography for large chunks of my life. But increasingly, my biography has become God saying, "let me show you what I can create from stupid." If one were to ask me to list the reasons I have a relationship with God, I wouldn't get far down that list before I got to all the things God has created from my stupidity. In fact, that list might become so all consuming that I'd never get back to the original list. Is it possible that the final destination for all of us in this world is supposed to be wisdom, and that all roads to wisdom run through stupid? Is it possible that God is far more interested in our transformation than our perfection; in our transformation than our happiness? If the answer is yes, then it makes sense why forgiving our mistakes comes so naturally to God. Because while we are spending time beating ourselves up for impulsive or ignorant choices, God has already gone to work creating transformation out of them. I mean, really, if transformation is God's goal, what use are we if we walk around believing we have nothing to transform? Tomorrow, I will deliver the keynote address at a conference in Marion, VA: Reviving Hope in Our Backyard, Addressing Addiction and Trauma. The title of my presentation is, "Unravelling the Roots, The Link Between Childhood Adversity and Addiction." I have spent the better part of the last decade unravelling the roots of so much destruction in my life. And the deeper I unravel, the more I discover God. Because there is only one reasonable explanation, to me anyway, for me standing on a stage with the darkest days of my life not only having meaning, but beauty. It's symbolic, in many ways. Symbolic that I have spent so much of my life giving stupid center stage, accompanied by all the self-hate and shame and guilt that tag along with it, and yet tomorrow there that same stupid will be, center stage, only it will not look or feel like self-hate and shame and guilt, it will look and feel like God. Like transformation. Like wisdom. If you are giving stupid center stage in your life, please know that God is getting ready to steal that stage. While you're beating yourself up, God is creating. While you're imagining the kind of life you would have had without all the stupid, God is creating beauty that couldn't have been created without it. The final destination is wisdom. Wisdom is born out of transformation. And transformation often runs through stupid. The goal is never stupid, it's not our desire, but when we encounter it, it's healing to know stupid is often the beginning, not the end. Thank God and amen. Elliott and Ian were leaving to go home last night. I walked them out. As they got in Elliott's car, I noticed that one of Elliott's tires was low in air. So I told him to stop and put some air in it on the way home.
Elliott got out of the car and came to inspect the tire with me. He said, "I think it's okay." It obviously wasn't, but in that moment, I knew there was a reason Elliott was hesitant to accept that. So I explained where he could get air on the way home, and how the automated air inflation machine works at Wawa. I told him he should check all of his tires while he was there. Then he said words that broke my heart. He said, "I don't know how to do that." You may be thinking those words broke my heart because he didn't know how to put air in his tire. Quite the opposite. My heart broke because I know how hard it is for someone to admit they don't know how to do something to someone who they fear might see them as stupid for not knowing how to do it. I know the kind of bravery required of "I don't know how to do that." I have become much freer with saying those words these days. I've become much freer in owning that in some of the generally accepted - or projected - gender roles of a man, I have very few of them. I'm not a great mechanic. I'm not a great builder. I'm not a great do it yourselfer. My hands do much better at writing with a pen and waving around when I'm speaking than they will ever do fixing anything. In some of the stereotypical corners of the world, I am not a manly man. But in my world these days, I am quite fine with that. That hasn't come easy, I have wrestled with that most of my life. And it's not a wrestling that serves you well in most relationships. Especially in relationships that require you to work on projects together, that sometimes require someone to fix things, and where those projects might leave you feeling exposed as incapable or inept or broken. Sometimes that's because of the stories the person you're with will tell you, directly or implied; or equally often it's the stories you'll tell yourself because they are the stories you've been telling yourself all of your life. So there I was, looking at my kid on the other side of him saying, "I don't know how to do that." And I said, that's okay, follow me. I led him up to the local gas station, to the air machine, and we put air in all of his tires, which were all dreadfully low. I showed him how to use the air machine, (While also showing him the value of having a Ziplock bag full of quarters in your glove compartment 😊). I am grateful this morning for that experience. So grateful. A simple low air experience was an extravagant step into healing on so many levels. A situation that could have at one time left me feeling less than brilliant was a situation that left me feeling like far more than enough. And a situation that I hope helped me assure one of the most important people in my life that what he knows about air has nothing to do with how I feel about him. A situation that I hope helped build into my son's identity a freedom to say "I don't know how to that" without fear of it making him look like less of anything in my eyes, especially less than a man. Because the truth is, I was far more proud of having a son who could say "I don't know how to do that" than I would have been of a son driving off knowing how to put air in his tire. We are all faced with those opportunities from time to time. An opportunity to help someone without spending a lot of time deciding whether or not they should be able to help themselves. It's what I love most about Jesus, I think. How he was always good about showing up to help the helpless without ever shaming them about their inability to help themselves. Jesus always saw that gap between the helpless and the helper as a chance to show love. As I knelt down putting air in Elliott's tire last night, watching him watch the numbers rise to the right spot on that air machine, that's what I felt, love, love like I've rarely experienced. And I think Elliott felt it too. As he got back in his car he said "thank you". It's not like that's the first time he's ever said it but in that moment it felt like it was. In that moment it felt like love. Love without shame. Love. I wrote this a year ago when I'd finished the series Suits. The memory popped up this morning and has me feeling like I need to do Suits again. As if one binge is never enough.
Sometimes it's not. *** I watched the final episode of the show Suits last night. For a bit I felt sad that it was over, but I eventually settled into the hope the stories told over the 138 episodes. What captivates someone like me to a show like Suits, captivates me to the point that I feel intense sadness when the final credits roll? I suppose if I'm real, it's the non-fiction I find in the fiction. It's the parts of my world that I see in their worlds. Without giving details, I'll sum up the show Suits: it's a collection of characters working together to overcome their childhoods on the way to resilient futures. And they are largely doing it without knowing that's exactly what's going on. In the background, the writers give us glimpses into the character's pasts so that WE know that's what's going on. The characters go about their days wrestling with the implications of it all, battling their pasts while assuming they are battling the circumstances in the moment. But they are not. Their pasts are center stage in the tension of almost every circumstance they face. Beauty happens when people wrestle out loud with the stories of their past. Because I assure you, whether you are doing it out loud or stuffed somewhere deep inside, that is what we all wrestle with most. Our pasts. And often our distant pasts. I suppose that's at the heart of my love for the show Suits. As they all got to know each other on a deeper level, as they all got more comfortable wrestling out loud, together, with the stories of their pasts, the greatest power these powerhouse lawyers had was helping each other overcome the demons of their pasts. To the point that the battles in the courtrooms were no longer the main story. I wonder if that's life? A constant call for us all to help each other overcome the demons of our pasts. Helping each other to the point that the fights that most days take center stage in the world are no longer the main stories at all. Because in the end, the main stories on Suits became compassion. Acceptance. Understanding. Friendship. Loyalty. In the end, the main story became love. Love is really what we find in the present when we're willing to wrestle out loud with one another's pasts. I'm going to miss you Suits. But I'm more hopeful than ever in victory. I am more hopeful than ever in love On my drive home from Christiansburg yesterday I spent some time thinking about heaven. And one main thought I had, a wish of sorts, was that heaven would have a lot of story telling time.
Stories that go on forever. No end. During a break in my training yesterday, I struck up a conversation with the school librarian. The break was only eight minutes so it wasn't a lengthy conversation. But when you're curious, you can get a lot out of eight minutes. I found out this wonderful lady had been this school's librarian for 22 years. Same school, same library, 22 years. She told me about her love for reading, and the joy she gets watching her student's find that same love. She also told me she'd likely be retiring in two years. Then in what felt like an instant, I was back to the training. So much there left to be curious about. I found myself wondering, how hard will life be NOT being a school librarian two years from now after so much of her life was indeed that library. Are there fears? Are there adventurous plans that were born in that library? What exactly made her want to become a librarian in the first place? That is often the nature of my life these days. Desperately curious about people's stories only to be left feeling like l somehow only got the once upon a time. Heaven, I wondered, is heaven where we will spend eternity hearing the rest of the stories that got cut off way too soon? Oh how I hope so. It's a beautiful thing - people's stories. I've spent most of my life missing out on that truth, and I suppose in many ways I'm trying to make up for lost time. Or maybe I've just been set on fire by the discovery of that truth. Because I've spent most of my adult life hiding from my own story, which has landed me in relationships where comfort was found being afraid of exploring one another's stories. When you don't spend time exploring one another's stories, one another's fears and struggles and hopes and dreams, when time isn't spent exploring those stories, the default setting is to simply respond to the stories life creates for you. The stories life throws at you to fill the gaps of the stories you aren't writing from the mutual curiosity that can be found in togetherness. Even if it's only eight minutes of togetherness. Because I walked into a library I'd never been in yesterday. In a school Siri had to help me find. Then I stood at a counter dividing me and a librarian I'd never met. And curiosity broke the divide. Yes, I walked away with an incomplete story that I hope one day heaven will complete. Yet, I also walked away with a story that helped shape the way I see and do life. A story well worth writing about. There are so many beautiful stories in this world. We miss many of them. We miss them because we are waiting for the stories to come to us when quite often, the stories are found standing at a counter. They are found in curiosity not information. Curiosity, even if for only eight minutes. |
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
November 2024
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