I didn’t have a chance to watch Friday NIght Lights this past season, so when I heard the DVD of the second season had been released, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it.  Blockbuster had it, so last night, I sat and watched the first few episodes.  My initial fear was that I wouldn’t like it nearly as much as the previous year, but as each episode progressed, I couldn’t help but marvel.  Am I just being snookered by the fact that this is West Texas, not far from my home, and the fact that they get the rhythm of that part of the country so perfect?  Is it just because I like football?  Because I am frankly astonished that this show had not gotten the critical acclaim on a broad scale that it so obviously deserves.  These performances are uncanny in their depth and evenness.  From character to character, there are rarely any false notes.  Even Lila, the former cheerleader who has become a born again Christian, is getting better.  If there’s any stumbling in the writing, its the slightly over-the-top treatment of Lila’s witnessing, but her interaction with the other characters makes it all work far better than you expect.

Kyle Chandler (Coach Taylor) and Connie Britton (Tami Taylor) make marriage look real, easily the most honest treatment of the difficult and beautiful process by which most people have to work to make marriages last on TV.  Britton plays the emotional rollercoaster of a woman struggling to hold  a family together with such range and plasticity…she is heartbreakingly real, holding her newborn while fighting for a relationship with her rebel teenager daughter.  The subtleties of relationship that pass between the younger characters astound me over and over.  Zach Gilford, the quarterback of the Dillon Panthers, nails the halting, stumbling speech of young West Texans with jaw-dropping perfection, and his world crumbles both on and off the field, he reacts with painful beauty.  I could go on an on.

Maybe its just me and football and West Texas.  But someone explain to me why this show hasn’t won major awards?  But I just don’t understand… I mean, House is awesome, but Friday Night Lights is sublime.

Can’t wait to see what happens next…

I don’t know what I was expecting.  In the end, by the time I got to the pulpit, I had left the expectations behind.  Pentecost was here, and we were talking about the Holy Spirit, what had happened in Jerusalem all those many years ago.  I suppose I was secretly hoping for something amazing, something like what Peter and John saw in Acts 3, when the were vessels of healing for a man who had been crippled for 40 years.  Now that I know what its like to live through 40 years, I can only say, wow.  There were no real “wows”, though–at least not like that.  Two people were baptized, and their journey into faith is an amazing thing in itself, a “wow” of a different kind.  And people wanting to “come home” who want a deeper faith and walk with God, who want to know He loves them, want to be obedient, all these people gathered around each other praying for the Holy Spirit to touch their lives in a new way.

I’m one of those.  My disciplines are all aimed, in the end, in hearing Him speak more clearly, trying to follow more closely.  Sometimes I think I get it, most times I think I’m fairly clueless.  But I keep following, reading, studying, serving, trying to do as best I can with what I understand and hear at this moment.  He is faithful, and I have no doubt there are “wows” still to come.  Maybe they’re happening all around me even now, and I just don’t yet seem them.

Change is good, don’t you think?  I have always loved variety, new ways of doing things, new adventures to be on.  It seems that growth is a synonym for change, and while people are saying they want to grow all the time, they rarely want change.   Not me.  I want to grow, and I want change.  So this is the year, especially as I think of rolling into my 50th birthday next year.  It’s a time for new life, new energy, new brain-maps, and new who knows what else.  I’ve thought of journaling it all pretty carefully, just seeing where it leads, where He leads.  We’ll see.  It made a difference in that way I got out of bed this morning.

It’s a start…

My sweet sister sent me a new lens for my birthday.  Nikon AF Micro Nikkor 60mm.  Fun, fun.   It’ll take me a while to figure it out, but I love the possibilities.  Just a few shots from around the house…

Thanks, Jody…

49 years old now, and everyone should have the privilege of being an interim preacher preaching on a Birthday Sunday. First service they sang Happy Birthday, second service they sang Happy Birthday (especially cool because the children brought balloons to me and led the singing), my life group sang Happy Birthday, and finally, the Elders sang Happy Birthday at the Elders’ meeting. During the worship service, I couldn’t help but think of how much I wanted the church to sing to other people as well. I mean, it was great, and in some ways, I consider it an answer to a prayer of mine that had nothing to do with my birthday, but still…my wish was for everyone in the church to feel as appreciated and loved as I did in that moment. The fact that I’m in that very public role is a skewing factor, because the fact is we’re all loved by God in just that way, and wouldn’t it be cool if we all greeted each other with a song and a balloon every day? A bit impractical, but you get what I mean.

I am blessed, but maybe the heart of God is growing inside, because I mostly think of those whose birthdays will passed unnoticed, or undervalued, or maliciously ignored. Much of the world struggles to survive the day, even on a birthday. And then there’s the whole notion of being “born again” and what that kind of birthday implies.

Pentecost is coming…

Ann McMurray dumping weeds, working hard.

I spent the morning working at Kellogg Middle School in Shoreline. Mostly weeding, shoveling bark, talking theology with new and old friends, and shooting some photography of the event as we went. I was a little surprised by how fun it was to simply be out in the rain with friends working for no real reward other to spread some goodwill in the community. I also figured out about an hour into it that what we were really working on was beauty, both aesthetically and relationally.

My back is paying the price, and rolling into my 49th birthday, it seems appropriate that I spent the day doing work that dated me, or at least reminded me of my limitations. But I’ve been saying for a year that I would be in the best shape of my life when I crossed the 50 mark, so I’ve got one year to go. We’ll see.

There were about 20 of us that showed up at one time or another to help out. A few of the teens were there, and some folks a good bit older than me and all ranges in between. A church group helping out a local school because we care, because we want to be good neighbors, and because we need to learn as a body of people what it means to be out there giving where there is need. The Northwest Church is a giving church–always has been–but there is much to learn as God moves us forward.

Great times in the rain…

Pete Wilson did a great job heading up the day

Scott Jackson pulling weeds.

Not many people came to the Taize service, but those who did got the rare treat of sitting quietly, the rushing world having stopped for a while. Candles, simple music, simple scripture, an old, old prayer, and then silence. During the spot labeled “long silence” in the program, I’d hoped to go as long as ten minutes, but nope…silence has a force that is easy to cave in to. I’ve spent a lot of time in silence over the past decade, and yet with people in the same room, I could only last four minutes before moving on to the next thing. Next time, we’re going ten minutes if it kills me.

Still, the quiet was pervasive. Sounds of cars going by and the occasional unwelcome popping sound of the sound system. No cell phone went off, though, and there was perhaps two coughs during the whole hour. I heard that there were a couple of moments when people entered the lobby, heard the quiet and assumed no one was here, and turned around and left. (We need to station someone in the lobby to direct people.) It was a time of thought and meditation. I reflected on lots of things: the war, the nation and its sins, what leadership requires, what God is wanting to do among the people at Northwest, the sheer joy of praising Him laced with the joy of music, the nearness of the God who holds the universe in His hand, and on and on the thoughts came.

On Sunday, we talked of emptying our vessels in order to be filled. Quiet is like that. To encounter silence is to enter into a battle as the cares and tensions of our particular stress rises up to take center stage. It takes time to let them have their due and then tell them to sit down or talk a walk. As the hour progresses, finally a calm can enter and new thoughts, new images, new feelings, new “emptinesses” arrive. God sometimes pours in, but most of the time its more like seeping. It takes the attention artists bring to the making of intricate lines, or the attention we pay when a loved one announces a piece of news that changes our whole life. Attention must be paid, and the reward is the deep comfort of a near and present God.

If you missed Taize, no big deal. We’ll do it again. But if you miss quiet altogether, that’s another story.

Sitting alone, paying attention…

So today the nation prays. May 1, the National Day of Prayer, according to some. We are joining in at Northwest, though I’m sure our prayer time will be somewhat different than most. We’re doing another Taize service, as we did on Good Friday. Quiet, dark, candles, repetitive, meditative music, and one pretty spectacular prayer being read from George Washington’s prayer journals.  (7:00 p.m. at the Northwest Church in Shoreline.)

It is to be a day of repentance. The one thing almost everyone agrees on is that the country needs to repent. It’s just that we differ on what should be repented of, what the chief sins are.

Of course, what is a “sin” if there is no God? Holiness is so far from our minds as to be near-laughable. We are about expression and authenticity, claiming freedom and grace as the catalysts for both, and I am thrilled we live in such understanding these days. But freedom and grace are in taut tension with holiness and responsibility, especially when Jesus calls us over and over to “pick up our cross ” daily. Self-denial seems antithetical to freedom, and how our “freedom” can be imprisonment is beyond us. There are freedoms to do things, and there are freedoms to refrain from things. In all areas of expertise (been saying this for years, yet heeding it far too little), discipline is the only path to freedom. In the acquisition of any skill, to do just what you want is the path to chaos and ignorance, while yielding to the master and the knowledge of the field leads to ever-increasing freedom in the use of the skills and expertise.

Repentance. How is life to be lived? I will yield a bit more to the Master today, hoping to take another step to freedom. “Glory to glory” Paul called it. Old glory, indeed.

He is King of the Nations…

I’ve got words all over my room, my thoughts about values plastered here and there, asking in the deep-gut way what kinds of qualities in life are most important to me.  We are so bombarded with messages telling us what we should value.  Sometimes the shoulds ride on top in our consciousness so that we confuse what we should value with what we actually value.  Wikipedia says ” A value is an assumption upon which implementation can be extrapolated.”  The assumption part of that is interesting because it suggests that what we value is always operative in determining our action, even if that value is operating below the surface of consciousness.

So what do you value?

There are so many things vying for attention, but in no particular order, these are the words on my walls: truth, beauty, awe, grace, peace, creation, freedom, mystery, wisdom, word, people, love, service, knowledge, glory, image, right, good, Bible, mission, community, friends, family.  There’s more, but these are things that weave together to make my life.  What’s not on the list are a few other things my actions proclaim that I value, but I don’t like to them that way.  Maybe they are closer to core values than I’d like to admit.   Quiet.  Comfort.  Sensory stimulation.  Distraction.  Indulgence.  Wealth.  Ease.  Intellectual stimulation.  Admiration.  Praise.

I’m thinking about this because I’m praying and thinking about what our church values.  There are many things churches should value, and then there are the things churches actually value.  Truthfully, it seems that it doesn’t much matter what churches (or individuals) say they value–what they do with the minutes and hours of the day will tell everything needed to be known about values.  To play with Paul’s image of the church as the body, we are often like hands who know we should value picking up stuff and making stuff and helping out, but what we really value is rest and idleness and adornment and strength for the mirror’s sake.

But think about the differences among people, and the differences among hands.  Some hands like tools of machinery, other hands value tools of artistry, other hands value tools of gardening.  When I think of my values, I think of things that are core to who I am that others may or may not share.  Beauty and mystery are the two easiest to put here, because so many people don’t think about beauty and lots of people just flat out dislike mystery.

When it comes to churches, it seems what makes any body of people unique are not only the things they value (or care about), but they shared ways in which they value them.  Any church is a unique work of the Holy Spirit in a given time-space reality, impacted by culture, by generational understanding, and by the specific work of God in a given place.

Does your church have a list of shared values that reflect what they actually value?  Or does your church have one of those church lists that says what any church anywhere ought to value, but by their actions, clearly don’t.  Another to way to ask it is this:  do declarations of values reflect current reality, or call us to a new and different reality, shaping us by reaching toward the “ought”?

Valuing conversation…

A couple that moves across country with two children to a small apartment in a world where they know no one, admitting that loneliness kills. A different young couple in the first month of their marriage, checking out a church because they saw a sign on the road. A third young couple, unmarried, with a new child, the parents both admitting to and fighting addictions. A guitar player who has played in years, fighting to get his life back after a long struggle against meth. A woman with AIDS who smiles and talks to me about a film we both adore, as well as her struggle to find the housing she needs. A second man with AIDS who eats at my house every Sunday, eats like there is no tomorrow, and shuffles off at the end our life groups’ couple of hours together, headed for his weekly movie outing with his late-blooming Christ-following father. An artist who harbors various bitternesses about church of years past, but who graces us with his work and his joyful comedy and cynicism. A man sitting in my living room, quietly ruminating over the possibility of finding new meaning in his painting. A young filmmaker and his crew of brooding creatives working together to explore what love means, and what might happen if you fell in love with a pixie. Two women who meet on a business trip in Seattle and stumble into church looking for a service and landing in the middle of a church calling the Holy Spirit to come. The older woman who I adore who urges me to keep going, and the other older woman who brings me newspaper articles and tells me coffee is killing me, and to go get a concoction of something I can’t remember to replace what the coffee is robbing me of.

Churches aren’t buildings. They are collections of people. Great, real people who amble into a big box on a given Sunday hoping for something, wanting something, wanting magic, maybe, for the Spirit to zap them with something maybe, or maybe they just hope for a kind word, a touch of a compassionate look, a chance to plan a get-together later in the week, a cup of tea or coffee with the person who is their lifeline, without whom their lives might go plunging off a cliff of despair. Maybe they want to be left alone so they can meet with God, drag their shame to Him alone, not wanting anybody else to see it. And to be able to speak a word that says there is somewhere in the universe, in that maelstrom of reality both seen and unseen, somewhere out there is a being that loves beyond our imaginative capacity…what sheer joy, madness, difficulty, and grace.  But they sit there, and I can see it cross their faces so often, these questions that haunt them: how can I be loved? How is it possible after all of this, all the muck I’ve made of things, all the wounds and blood lying in the wake of who and what I’ve been? How is it possible that I’m loved, after all…. Is there forgiveness of my wreck of a time?  Redemption?  Life, indeed?

I love these people.

I love the God who chases them.

Come be a part…

Words like “spirit”, “energy”, “intention”, “living water”–all these are rolling around in my head this morning.  Can you tell I’ve been prepping for a series of sermons on the Holy Spirit?  Who can tell all that goes into the creation of a mood, or a way of being on a particular day?  Is it all just chemicals floating around, lack of sun, lack of good news, or conversely, the appearance of new circumstances and hope, and we go trotting off down the lane with renewed vigor?

Even non-religious types know what we mean when we talk about inner battles, battles of heart and spirit, or head vs. heart sorts of struggles.  We know in our bones (and spirits) that we are a divided lot, tempted both toward bad and good, though “tempt” doesn’t work as well with “good.”  Maybe we should use the word “invited” or “nudged” when we think of those impulses that suggest doing good things we might not normally do.  But for those of us who are believers, we know that in the unseen world of our spirits, there is more going on than meets the eye.

This morning, I am clear-eyed, energized, and excited about what the day holds in a manner that seems wacky, frankly.   I can only say that certain spiritual disciplines seem to pay off in moments.  There’s no real direct one-to-one correspondence, but obedience does seem to lead to more life.  “Rivers of living water” is how John has Jesus describe the life in the Spirit, and though I’m pretty sure we can’t always tell when those waters are flowing with speed, there are days like today when there is little question that waters are in motion that were not yesterday.  There is no formula, but the practice of awareness, self-denial, obedience…these things seem to lead in just the direction scripture suggests.  “He who loses his life for my sake will find it.”

I am thankful, and will proceed as if God is involved in the day, partnering with me in figuring out just what He has in mind for the words I will speak on Sunday, as well as the direction He’s pointing for all my life.

How about you?