Sunday Groove

Thick Nawlins Funk.

Saturday morning with Bill Evans and Dora the Explorer

The Missus is leading worship for a Bible Study conference at our church this morning, so I’ve the great privilege of spending Saturday with the little people in my world.

In catching up on my comments this morning (all one of them), I linked to a video of Bill Evans playing Autumn Leaves. When Jack heard the first hint of Evans’ ivories, he all but pushed his little sister off my lap to her demise, so he could peer intently at each muscle twitch behind each musical moment. Tapping his fingers, “air-piano” style, I just watched his smile build and grow; the kind of smile enflamed by sheer soul-joy. When the tune wound down, the ferocity of his head snap and clear intent in his gaze conveyed the clear urgency of the moment we were in, “Dad. Let’s go play music together.”

My sweet little man. The same innocence that causes his little heart to be moved by music, keeps him from being able to rationalize how two things he loves (daddy and music) could be completely mutually exclusive.

Jack, along with the drummer in his head, have since retired to his room to make music together, while Reagan stands rapt before the glowing tube listening in as Dora patiently teaches Benny the Bull that only the top plank is wide enough to build the walls of his house.

The sweet silence in my Saturday morning is sweeter still because it’s not the silence of decibles or solitude, but of gratitude and contentment.

How was your Saturday?

Devotional thought for the day

I don’t often do this. Fortunately for me, not doing it often is altogether different from never doing it, so here goes…

Our lives are a result of what we have become in the depths of our being – what we call our spirit, will, or heart. From there we make choices, break forth into action, and try to change our world That is why the greatest need of collective humanity is the renovation of our heart.

Accordingly, the revolution of Jesus involves the objective of eventually bringing all of human life under the direction of his wisdom, goodness, and power as part of God’s eternal plan for the universe. The revolution of Jesus is one of character, which proceeds by changing people from the inside through an ongoing personal relationship to God in Christ and to one another. It changes their ideas, beliefs, feelings, habits of choice, bodily tendencies, and social relations. From these persons, social structures will naturally be transformed so that “justice roll[s] down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24 NRSV). Such streams cannot flow through corrupted souls.

Spiritual formation for the Christian refers to the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self so that it becomes like the inner being of Christ Himself. To the degree in which spiritual formation in Christ is successful, the outer life of the individual becomes a natural outflow of the character and teachings of Jesus. Christian spiritual formation is focused entirely on Jesus. Its goal is conformity to Christ that arises out of an inner transformation accomplished through purposeful interaction with the grace of God in Christ. Obedience is an essential outcome of Christian spiritual formation (see John 13:34-35; 14:21).

If Christ’s people genuinely enter Christ’s way of the heart, they will find a sure path toward becoming the persons they were meant to be: thoroughly good and godly persons yet purged of arrogance, insensitivity, and self-sufficiency. Christian assemblies will become what they have been in many periods of the past and what the world desperately calls for today: incomparable schools of life – life that is eternal in quality now, as well as unending in quantity.
-Dalllas Willard. Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice. 15-16 emphasis mine.

What I don’t typically do is transcribe an entire section of a book, but this particular entry hit me like a hammer in the cerebellum this morning, mostly because it totally reframes the way I approach passages like Matthew 10. Jesus didn’t send His best friends out with nothing, simply for the sake of a nebulous force or mental state called “faith.” They were sent with nothing to fall back on, because that’s the only way they would ever really know that they were never really falling in the first place. God had already made provision. If they got that, they would never have any reason to worry about falling ever again.

When I experience that God always makes provision, I learn to trust him… first with my physical needs – food, money, clothing, shelter – and then with my emotional needs – love, acceptance, encouragement, comfort. Finally I come to realize that I see and interact differently with the world, simply because I’ve come to truly know Jesus. My heart is renovated entirely, not by facts and precepts, but by love that begins in Him and is manifest through others.

In that light, Louis Armstrong was right.

Exit Question: What kind of heart would you like to have? Dream big. What role do our relationships with each other play in our relationships with Christ? How will what you do today make that dream a reality? Leave your thoughts.
** crossposted at my small group blog, The Barnabas Project.**

An evening with Jack

Legend has it that as Michelangelo stood among the first admirers of his finished sculpture, David, one especially awe-struck onlooker standing near asked, “How did you do this?!” Michelangelo’s amusingly simplistic response… ‘I simply approached the marble and chipped away everything that wasn’t David.”

I spent this evening trimming away everything that wasn’t thriving, shade-giving Crepe Myrtle.

It was two years ago in February when the Missus and I surveyed the property that would soon be home. It was the middle of winter, so I rationalized that the trees in the yard were bare because they were just sleeping soundly, and ALL the yards seemed less than lush so that was probably just the case with mine as well.

The good news is that the trees filled in wonderfully. The bad news is that the absentee owners of the vacant lot near the ditch have made a special point of notifying our home owner’s association that our yard is ridiculous. It’s not that all our grass is too long, it’s that all our grass is growing in someone else’s yard.

So I’m especially proud of our trees and choose to focus on them. On Thursday evenings, while the Missus is at worship practice, after I tuck my sweet princess away for the evening, my little man and I engage in any number of manly things. Eating too much pizza qualifies. Watching Braveheart qualifies (the episode of Wonderpets where they go to Scotland to look for Nessie will do in a pinch). Salads of every stripe are summarily dismissed and expressly verboten. If, while channel surfing for manly entertainment, I should happen (God forbid, and may it never be so) to hesitate for even a moment on the Hallmark channel, well, let’s just not speak of such a thing.

Tonight our adventure involved an 8-foot long stick with a very sharp saw on the end of it. My goal… to trim away everything that is not a beautiful, mature, shade-giving Crepe Myrtle. Mostly, I walked around the tree and cut off what was already dead, and watched Jackson’s eyes flash with the brilliance of boyish wonder as he took in each display of his father’s dominion over creation.

By the time it was over, the back yard brush pile was longer and deeper than when we started. I escaped major injury and enjoyed an hour or so with my favorite man. Only the Missus, however, can speak finally on the quality of my pole-saw skill and native-shrubbery craftsmanship.

I’m convinced in my heart that everything is spiritual (Rob Bell helped me say what I like to think I thought before), so I try to pay attention while doing things like sculpting trees and teaching my son to be a man (the fact that saws on sticks are fully capable or removing human extremities is also reason for me to pay attention). I was struck today by how much dead and misshapen wood was hidden in among the fresh new growth busting out all over. From a distance, the whole tree looked healthy, if not fluffy with overgrowth. On the interior, however, the dry sticks stood out from strong green branches: the dead and decaying along side the living and growing.

I don’t remember the moment when it dawned on me that each time Jack blinked at the loud crack of dead wood falling, we were sharing the experience of intentionally removing death from places where only life should stand. It made perfect sense. It was the natural thing to do, because what we were taking out… THAT was the part that wasn’t Crepe Myrtle.

My trees are far more gracious than I am when it comes to being sculpted, despite the fact that I’m far less practiced and infinitely less loving than the one who breaks away all the dead wood that he instinctively knows isn’t really me at all.

I’m grateful for my Thursday evenings, and I’m thankful for my trees. Now if I could just get some of my freaking grass to come back!

61 Days

Facebook.

I’m really amazed by some of the people who I’ve run across in my Facebook adventures. In many ways, it’s been a great tool of redemption. As time fades the still frames of yesterdays memories to golden shades of sepia, I all too often wish that those images could be hidden, put away, or simply set ablaze in the furnace of the forgotten. Facebook helps me do that, or it helps me remember differently, and for that I’m grateful.

I guess it’s a natural part of growing older to realize that who I used to be isn’t who I wished I’d have been. Every day I realize that my son is on a light-speed collision course with a social circle that mommy and daddy can’t control, and we can simply do our best and hope he’s better prepared to be a better man than I was. I’m already mourning all the young men like me who will have to give their lives for looking at my precious little angel.

Growing up is a beautiful part of life and I’m grateful for the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met. I also hope that my son in High School is a very different young man than I was, and I pray with all my heart that Reagan never crosses paths with someone like me. Again, it’s not that I WANT to kill them…

Facebook, however, has allayed some of my guilt and angst at the person that I was in the years gone by. I’ve had great conversations with people who I wasn’t emotionally secure or intelligent enough to care for way back then.

It’s been such a positive social experience that you’d be hard pressed to find the 20 minute period in my day when I’m not checking or updating or commenting. The beauty of social networking, however, is not without cost. At first blush, my wife and children would seem to be the primary casualties of my plugged-in-ness, but I’m not so sure…

I’ve recently walked through one of the most intense spiritual and emotional seasons of my life. Fret, fear, anxiety, hope, despair, elation, wonder, and the full willingness to examine everything in every aspect of every corner of my life isn’t easily conveyed in 140 characters or less. If you know me, you know I can’t say my name in fewer than 140 characters, much less process the fire-forging my soul into the shape and form of divinity.

So when my soul hungers, and it seems that tumors develop on my psyche, it’s time to stand down and allow the moments that forge deep waters and strong roots. To that end, I’m pursuing 61 days away from social networking. My hope is to come here and share my journey. My hope is that you will weigh in and travel with me as I go. Your encouragement and advice are invaluable. This isn’t an experiment in technical monasticism. That experiment has been done, and being alone isn’t the goal. This is a deliberate moment of stepping away for the singular purpose of hearing the whisper of God above the din of white cultural noise.

My curriculum during these 61 days will be Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice by Dallas Willard (there are 61 daily reading chapters, hence, 61 days). If you’ve read it or would like to read it, I’d love to have you along for the journey. If you haven’t read or don’t care to read the book, I’d still love to hear your feedback.

Thanks for coming along for the journey. May the next 61 days surprise you and I both with the grace and glory of a God who renovates, redeems, restores, and remakes us better than we could ever hope to be.