I have seen it.
There is some disagreement in the middle of the bed, so each in the couple picks their side and retreats there. Where they stay. Until even the tension there, they at their own sides, is too much to bear, at which time they will retreat to their own ends of the house. And then their own ends of the county. Retreat until there is no longer such a thing as a middle. A middle so long forgotten neither would have any idea how to get there even if they had the desire. And so a divide leads to total disappearance. I would suggest that is where most interpersonal relationships end. In the escape from the middle. The escape from the messy and imperfection and tension. But isn't that where transformation happens, in the tension? It makes me wonder, is love the total lack of mess, or the capacity to navigate the nature of the mess - the middle - the tension - together? There is a scene in the bible. In the Christian world the scene is the physical introduction to eternal life. So it's a biggie. In the scene, Jesus dies on the cross and then in three days rises from his grave, bringing all who choose the hope of it all a hope in an earthly life that will never succumb to death. But here is the thing about that cross scene. Jesus is not alone. There is a thief hanging on a cross to Jesus' left, and another on his right. Jesus is in the middle. Why would the author of this scene draw this particular plot detail into the story? This Jesus, not dying alone, but in the middle. On one hand, I guess it was the perfect ending to Jesus' ministry here on earth. A Jesus who was always standing in the middle. In the middle of the lawless and the self-righteous. Between the Zealots and the Herodians. Between the Pharisees and Sadducees. Between the Jews and the Gentiles. Between God and Humanity. It was the perfect ending, I guess. But maybe it was also the perfect beginning. The perfect beginning, an introduction, to how Jesus wanted us to live among one another upon his departure to heaven. Not just unafraid of the middle, but bravely willing to go live there. I am afraid of this great escape from the middle. I am afraid of it in friendships and marriages and in churches and in our society. I am afraid of our instinct to disengage from one another to protect ourselves at the expense of engaging in the middle where healing begins. And ends. Jesus died on a cross. In the middle. Where he always was and where he still stands. In the middle. Calling us all. Maybe in our escape from the middle we no longer hear him, but he is still there. There between you and me. There between you and me and God. There. Calling.
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11/12/2024 0 Comments They are watchingEight years ago, these two boys spent the day at the finish line of the Richmond Marathon waiting for their slow and plodding dad to finish his first marathon.
Boy did they get a lesson in patience that day.... Out there on that course, battling the pains of tackling what was once unimaginable for me, I lost sight of the reality. They are watching. Some days that reality comes with great joy, seeing my marathon finish through their eyes. May what they see lift them to places they have not yet imagined, Lord. They are watching. Yet, there are days, days I come up short of being the man I want those eyes to see, and it is frightening, quite honestly. May their eyes guide them beyond the mistakes they have seen, Lord. They are watching. And yet, here I am, no longer a kid, somewhat like the men my eyes have seen, and in many ways quite the opposite. For it is our hearts and minds and souls that ultimately determine our paths. And our finish lines. But they were there, my kids. They did not quit waiting for a man who did not quit. And they have been here the last several years through some hard times together. And still they have seen, the same, maybe even more, a man who will not quit. And so I don't take it lightly, when I know they are and when I'm completely unaware of it. They are watching. Sometimes us, sometimes our spirit. They are watching. I have been through some hard things in my life.
So have you. The biggest risk of those hard things, for me at least, isn't the impact they might have on my future, the biggest risk of them is how easy it can become to forget that God has shown up in the middle of every one of them. I can get so focused on how hard life is that I forget how frequently God has shown up in the hardest parts of my life. Which is every time. There's a story in the bible. The disciples are fretting among themselves about forgetting to bring bread along on a trip. And they start worrying that Jesus might be upset about this. Jesus, overhearing this, says: "You of little faith, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread? Do you still not understand? Don’t you remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered?" I wonder how many times God says that to me, "do you still not understand?" I wonder how many times I get so focused on just how hard life is that I forget there's no explanation for me being here experiencing my current hard times outside of Jesus showing up in every hard time before this one. I wonder how many of my hard times are hard for that reason alone, that I've forgotten Jesus. Hard times can make us anxious about what's going to happen next. Maybe that's because hard times can make us forget we already know the answer to that. Five loaves fed five thousand. Seven loaves fed four thousand. Divorce resulted in financial hardship; God showed up with financial opportunities. Alcohol nearly destroyed my life; God showed up and showed me the path to talking to people about the destructive nature of alcohol. Relationships have been challenging and at times destructive in my life; God showed up and opened my eyes to his healing centered design for relationships. The disciples thought, oh no, we forgot the bread. That made them anxious. But for them the real problem wasn't that they forgot the bread, the problem was they forgot Jesus. If your like me, you're prone to that same forgetfulness. Maybe this week if you get anxious, like surely I will, we can encourage each other to ask, am I anxious about what is about to occur or anxious because I've forgotten who has always shown up in what's already occurred. Jesus said, "do you still not understand?" Help me Lord, this week, more often than I am prone to saying it, say yes Lord, I understand. At the foot of the cross, as Jesus breathed his final breaths, there were two very distinct groups of people.
There was the group celebrating his death. We have won, they thought. We have forever shut the mouth of the one who came to rob us of our voice. And then there was a group mourning. Crying at the mere sight of the end. How did we get this so wrong, they wondered. We were sure he was the one who had come to give us a voice. Three days later, Jesus rose from his grave. It turns out, in the moment of the cross, both groups were wrong. Maybe there is no greater kind of being wrong than to ever get to a place of believing I fully know what God is up to. I am grateful to know that God is always up to SOMETHING in my life, but to ever proclaim I know exactly what that is, well that would be to rob God of his beautiful mystery. It would in many ways be declaring, I AM God. The story of my life is the mysterious direction of God, a direction that has quiet often worked in the opposite direction of what I was sure God was doing in my life. Or maybe even more, what God was doing in spite of my accusation that God had disappeared. There is something scary about not knowing what God is up to. But I have lived on the other side of that fear long enough to know now that there is also something very beautiful about it. God's direction is almost always clouded by mystery. It is much scarier for me these days to even get close to a place of believing I know exactly what God is up to, that I know exactly what God's intentions are, that I know exactly the plot God has written inside the plot that I am living. The crowd watched Jesus die on a cross. The emotions were all over the place. Everyone in the crowd believed they knew exactly what was happening. No one did. Maybe that is why, when Jesus was alive, before and AFTER the cross, Jesus always stressed, just love everyone. If you really need to know the direction, that is it. Just love everyone. Maybe God has thought, if they ever fully know the details of where we are going, how we will get there and when we will arrive, they will forget the most important part of the journey. The part for which God has left absolutely no mystery. Just love everyone. Just love everyone, that doesn't always sound like a direction. Or a destination. It can begin to feel like a philosophical approach, a clinging of faith, to an ideal that helps us deal with the mystery. But what if it is a place? What if it is the final destination, this just love everyone. What if we can get so absolutely certain about what God is doing in the events of our lives that we come to forget, dismiss, the most certain thing God as ever told us about them? Just love everyone. The crowd watched Jesus die on a cross. The emotions were all over the place. Everyone in the crowd believed they knew exactly what was happening. No one did. There's a story in the bible in the book of Mark. The disciples are in a boat with Jesus when a furious storm breaks out, waves roll over the boat, nearly swamping it.
In the midst of the storm, Jesus was nowhere to be found. The disciples eventually find Jesus asleep on a cushion in the stern of the boat. The disciples wake him and ask, "teacher, do you not care that we're all about to drown?" Jesus got up. Stretched. Took a look around and then said, "Quiet! Be still!" The storm immediately subsided; the seas became perfectly calm. Jesus said to the disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” The disciples were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” The bible tells us the disciples were afraid of the storm, but they were even more terrified of the answer to the storm. Yesterday, I had a bit of a meltdown. It's been a long week of travel, I'm fighting an illness, there have been some challenging relational struggles the past week, and then yesterday, the crowning blow, the online narratives about the election results, of which there was no shortage. Those are not meltdown excuses, but for my own wellness I've gotten better at trying to understand my meltdowns. The triggering event was definitely the election narratives that directly or indirectly spoke to the idea that God had sent a human to take back our country and to restore hope in individuals struggling to find it. I am always leery of folks who seem to know which events and which people God is and is not using to fulfill his story of salvation and hope; I'm leery of people who can see God fulfilling his story in circumstances they agree with, but somehow spend their time looking for God to reappear, to take reclaim goodness from circumstances they don't agree with. The disciples woke Jesus in the storm looking for a human answer. Can you do something with this boat to protect us from the storm, they begged? But Jesus woke up and gave them a Godly answer. Jesus skipped boat repair and went right to the storm. The disciples were merely afraid of the human answer. The Godly answer on the other hand, the one that proved to be THE answer - well that answer terrified them. As I processed my meltdown yesterday, as I re-read my words, I recognized my own hypocrisy. Which, by the way, I am never afraid to find my own hypocrisies; they often point me in directions pretending I'm not a hypocrite would never take me. It is true. I don't find God in one political party more than the other. I can't begin to reduce God to that. The minute I put God in a box, God is suddenly not much bigger than me. And that's a scary notion for any God followers. I truly believe one of the great surprises of humans who enter heaven will be discovering just how little attention God pays to CNN and Fox. Just how little God understands our electoral college. I think we will be shocked to find how much time God has spent campaigning for us to lovingly elect our neighbors while we've been obsessed with electing the right presidents. Yet, there are many areas in my life outside of politics where I look for human answers to solve divine problems. There are many areas in my life where I feel much more comfortable waking Jesus up and asking him, are you not going to do something about this, yet remain terrified of the power and control he wants me to yield to him in my storms. Yesterday, in the midst of my meltdown, my human instinct was to abandon a very human social media platform. In my mind, the human commotion emerging from that platform was making a mockery of the divine God who has done miraculously divine things in my life. But then, as I had friends respond, many of whom I have never met in real life, reminding me that the words I have spoken into their lives have had meaning, words that are never mine but words God has always willingly and divinely put on my heart, I heard God clearly ask me, who is doing the mocking now? I heard God ask, who is feeling compelled to lean on their own human responses to a divine challenge, now? Who is fearfully trying to wake Jesus up for assistance with the boat, yet terrified of fully trusting what the wide awake Jesus wants to do with and through your own storms. Who is trying to divert the divine path already put before them in favor of a human path that feels less terrifying. Because that is what makes the divine path so terrifying some days, it doesn't feel as simple to embrace as the human path. I had a friend whom, as I was writing this, unexpectedly reached out with a message that said: "I don't just read your words and move on to the next thing. I suspect I'm not alone. I take them to heart. I look for how I can apply them, and you have made a real difference in my life. The way I see and feel things." Those words were from a dear friend whom I have never met. But more, they were from a wide awake Jesus, rising from his sleep, walking right past me and my fears and my meltdowns, walking right into the storm of my life and saying, "Quite. Be Still." Jesus is not interested in fixing the boats in our lives. Jesus is focused on calming the storms. Rarely, if ever, do our human systems and human responses have the power to calm the storms; they are almost always focused on the boats. I'm not suggesting we don't have a need for boat fixers. We sure do need them. But when we go all in on boat fixers and run terrified from the calmer of the storms, we are always more at risk of a meltdown. We are always more at risk of drowning. Many days I see the value and opportunity in social media. Many days I do not. Many days I see the opposite. Today is one of those days.
Maybe today will finally be my last day here. I honestly can understand how yesterday's election results feel like an assault to some groups and the way they want to live their lives. And I honestly can understand how yesterday's election results feel like a gift to some groups and the way they want to live their lives. But the heartbreak to me, the challenge, the strong pull away from here that makes me feel like I no longer belong, is the story being told by many Christians about this election result. Not all, certainly, but my many. It's especially heartbreaking to me because at the heart of why I show up here every day is to point people to the hope that has buoyed me though some of the most agonizingly hopeless moments of my life, and that is Jesus. The Jesus who has literally saved my life. So to hear many suggest that God showed up yesterday to save our country, to me that minimizes the day that God showed up and once and for all saved us all. No election result has ever or will ever add to or take away from the nails, from the suffering, from the excruciating torture Jesus took on for every person and every country so they would never have to worry about being saved again. Oh, how I bet Jesus wishes saving a country would have been so simple as an election. And on that cross, Jesus promised there will never again be an ebb and flow of hope. I get why people who don't follow or depend on Jesus feel more or less hopeful today, I do. But I do not understand at all the narrative that suggests, from Christians, that today is a day to be more hopeful than yesterday. Jesus is no more or less dying on a cross today. And it breaks my heart that we, as Christians, knowingly or unknowingly, directly or indirectly, send the message to the hopeless looking for a story of hope they can lean on, be sustained by, can trust, that there are life experiences or events that bring a hope to them today that was not available yesterday. On the cross. The hope of Jesus is never dependent on the outcomes of this world. The hope of Jesus is never dependent on the outcome of an election. The hope of Jesus never has the time or interest to differentiate between any of the ways we ourselves differentiate each other as we hand out hope. And so if I never come here again, which feels entirely possible, I want to leave you with this pointing to the hope that is available to you any day, any time. It's the hope that died on a cross, to save you and me and every country and municipality once and for all, a hope that rose from the dead so that we would never be fooled again by what the true nature of hope really is - the power to overcome everything that looks and feels like death in our lives. No election has that power. Nor does any human. They never have and they never will. Yours will be the only name that matters to me The only one whose favor I seek The only name that matters to me Yours will be The friendship and affection I need To feel my Father smiling on me The only name that matters to me And Yours is the name the name that has saved me Mercy and grace, the power that forgave me And Your love is all I’ve ever needed ~Big Daddy Weave Yesterday morning, I spoke to a group of school counselors in Salem, VA. To be honest, I didn't want to be there. I'd spent 12 hours the day before driving and watching lacrosse. The whole clock-turn-back thing was messing with me as well. I just didn't feel on my game. And when you're speaking, a great starting place is never not feeling on your game.
I arrived at the event early. Early enough to sit in on a team meeting. I was going over my presentation, not paying much attention to the conversation, when a particular story one of the counselors started sharing sucked me in. It was the story about a group of students with various challenges that the staff took to an equestrian facility. And as the counselor told the story, she focused on one young man who bonded with a horse. The boy's mom noticed a difference in the young man that evening. He told her about the horse. She was a bit confused by this; she'd bought the boy a dog for that very purpose - bonding, but that bond never seemed to materialize. When exploring why the difference, the boy told her " I loved the horse because the horse promised to keep my secrets." I have a friend who has this kind of relationship with horses. I've never understood it, really, until recently. But she has a way of connecting people and horses in this sort of therapeutic way. She is convinced that horses can sense things in us that people often cannot. Like the need to tell our secrets. I found it interesting that when pressed about the nature of the bond, the boy didn't hesitate to define it as an avenue to share secrets. An avenue to tell things likely never told. A place to feel safe enough to say, this is me, all of me. The nature of the bond wasn't defined by human or animal or object, it was defined by this freedom to express without fear of what might become of the expression. Without fear of being turned on with shame and guilt and hostility. In a world experiencing what is often the unrelenting pain of living without bondedness, maybe we fail to heal much of that pain because we've decided what a bond should look like and not what a bond most should be, an invitation to come as we are. I have come to believe that horses are good at that invitation. My friend says she loves horses so much because at the end of the day, no matter what, they always still choose her. Don't we all, no matter what the secrets, just want a place that still chooses us? No matter what. I am thankful this boy found the horse. I am hopeful that horses are not just great at invitations, but maybe they also serve as great teachers. Because there are not enough horses to fill the voids of those longing for invitations, but there are enough of us if we'll follow the horse's lead. Wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where everyone had someone they could turn to and say, I love you, because no matter what, you still choose me. We come into the world looking to be chosen. The search never ends. Well, maybe, that is, until a boy finds his horse. 11/4/2024 0 Comments The Greatest Gift Of All, WisdomI was standing with Ian yesterday morning wishing him a happy 16th birthday. I asked him, because you know 16 is a BIG one, do you feel any different?
Ian said, "no, it feels a lot like 15 felt." To which I told him, or maybe advised him, "just give it a few decades, birthdays will feel different." I barely remember being 16. But I know this about that birthday, no part of me was looking forward to turning sixty. In fact, in spite of being surrounded by sixty-somethings and older in my life, I'm pretty sure I denied that sixty was even something teens could catch. But here I am. Sixty. Teens indeed can catch it. As I walked away from Ian, I had to ponder, would I trade sixty for 16? The answer came to me surprisingly quick. No way! For me it boils down to a couple of simple questions: Would I trade the wisdom I have today for the physical attributes I had back then. And, would I trade the years I've had for the possibility of years to come? I guess those questions are why the answer came so quickly and emphatically. Because I value nothing more today than wisdom, and wisdom could not have been gained without all the years and experiences between 16 and sixty. It is a double edged sword, time. Youth holds the gift of unawareness, free from the weight of knowing all that life demands, while age brings the treasure of wisdom and a sense of capability hard-won through all of those very demands. For me, none of the physical attributes of my youth turned out to be much good to me. Not that I'm not thankful for them, but they didn't protect me from a lot of destruction. Wisdom would have. But then I have to wonder, would I have that wisdom to protect me from destruction if not for destruction? Would I trade away the destruction to be without the depths of my wisdom? No. I would not. So, I do hope my 16 year old gets to see sixty. Not to prove that it exists, but mainly so he will have the chance to know about life things he never dreamt of knowing. There is a gift in not having to know, for sure, but for me it will never compare to the gift of knowing. But for now, soak up 16 little buddy. Wisdom will arrive soon enough 😊. I used to hate me. A lot. Way more than I can still come to hate myself at times today. At the heart of that hate was choices I'd made in my life.
Despicable and destructive choices, some would likely call them. I was a thief. A master manipulator. An abuser and a drunk and a keeper of many other secret compulsions that I'm not proud of. So if you have any confusion how one could feel such hatred toward oneself, maybe you are fortunate enough to have escaped some of the labels I've lived with in my life. Labels, I own, that were created by my own choices. Or, at least, mostly my own choices. I've done a lot of work on my life the last then years. What I've discovered most is choices aren't made in a vacuum. Often, choices are a reflection of our past as much as, if not more than, a snapshot of our present. I've discovered the abused are more likely to abuse. The hurting are more likely to seek relief wherever they can get it, and they will steal from friends and family to support that relief if necessary. Some will say I am making excuses for my choices. I understand that, but I can't afford to look at it that way. Because learning to love myself has come not from finding good excuses for my choices, but through having compassion for the stories beneath them. That has also been the pathway to learning to love others the way I so deeply long to love others. We are in a political season defined by an opposite set of choices. We can be led to believe that by aligning with and supporting our side of the choices, we are ineligible to feel compassion and understanding for the other side. That is a myth in my world. This is not the first political divide of the ages. Not even close to the most divisive. The chosen leader of my life, Jesus, the one I long to live like and love like and offer compassion like, he got caught up in a political battle. It got so fierce that the other side of his battle made the divisive choice to crucify him. I am sure Jesus was not supportive of the Roman choices, especially as he endured the final hours of the excruciating pain of the nails in his hands and in his feet. Yet, with some of his final breaths, with his final words, Jesus forced out, "father forgive them, for they know not what they do." With his final words, Jesus offered understanding and compassion for the other side. With his final words, Jesus showed us an example of how to have a very different opinion with a very different kind of love. With his final words, Jesus offered me a reminder I lean into often. A reminder that he is always looking upon me, upon choices that might disgust others and myself, but a disgust Jesus breezes through undeterred with love and understanding and compassion. Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. Compassion. Understanding. Love. I have voted for Kamala Harris. I am proud of that choice. And at the same time, I can't bring myself to feel the least bit of disgust or hatred or callousness toward those who have or will vote differently than me. And more than being just proud of that, those words brings me to tears. Because that is not a choice. That is not a decision. That is not a following of a commandment. That is instinct built on years of chasing a desire to instinctually love myself and others like Jesus loves me, which is truly the only meaningful goal I have left in this life. An instinct that has been harder than hell to accept most of my life. Father forgive him, for he knows not what he does. I am not there yet. I have a long way to go, but I'm getting there. I am getting there under the direction of the king I elected into my life some 40 years ago. No other election, no other king or queen, no other external pressure will ever take precedence over that. I understand others haven't chosen that same leadership, and even some that have see that leadership differently than I do. I am not trying to talk anyone out of or redirect any emotions anyone has in this very emotional season. But for those who may get to feeling guilty or misplaced because their love for one side doesn't translate to a disdain for the other, I see you. I see you and honor the difficulty of that instinct. Oliver Burkeman says, "worry, at its core, is the repetitious experience of a mind attempting to generate a feeling of security about the future, failing, then trying again and again and again - as if the very effort of worrying might somehow forestall the disaster."
We are rapidly approaching election day. Both sides are getting louder and more desperate with their warnings; disaster waits with a vote for the other side. Here is what I know about this election. Two sides are equally worried about what happens if the other side wins. Here is what I also know about this election. Once one side wins, the victors will immediately go to worrying for four years about keeping what they've won, the other side will get to worrying for four years about how to dismantle that before the next election. This isn't a prediction, this is history. This is the 14th election I've been eligible to vote in. I won't swear that I've voted in every election; I believe I have. But this I will swear to, that I've seen both sides win over the course of those 14 elections, and never once did it result in a country no longer worried. It's the nature of elections. And our politicians know it. If you look at the campaign ads from both sides, they all attempt to drive home what we have most to worry about if the other side is elected. Winning elections has always been built on convincing us the other side winning should scare us to death, making the logical vote the one that makes us believe we have nothing to worry about at all. Only, that has never been the result. In fact, because we have so many platforms from which to fuel worry, and so many additional loud voices willing to preach worry from those platforms, the spin cycle of worry has only intensified. Politicians are getting much better at stoking fear than alleviating it, because sadly, stoking has proven to be a more successful campaign and re-election strategy than alleviating. So what is the answer? I really don't have one other than the one I use to alleviate my own personal worries. I look to the book of Matthew in the bible. In it you will read: Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life ? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Interesting that over 2000 years ago Jesus was addressing the laborious and self-destructive spin cycle of worry. And offering guidance. His guidance is to put our focus on that which isn't elected in our lives every four years. Look up at the birds as a reminder we have a higher power in our lives constantly watching over us and guiding us; look to the flowers as a reminder that if we are rooted in the soil of that which has a heart for growing us and not stoking the fear in us, we have no need to worry. For me, that focus is my God and creator. Maybe for others that isn't the case, but maybe they can find alleviating in family and friends, nature itself, a higher power in their lives that isn't necessarily God. That's a choice left for us all to make. I just know, based on history, if we are looking for our grandest fears to be alleviated by our election cycles, chances are you will find only more and more worry. Because more and more, that's the goal of politics. Worry. It seems to be a winning strategy. For politicians. As for us, well, that's clearly up to you. |
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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