Spiritual Disciplines

As I mentioned before, I've been reading a bunch of stuff on Spiritual Disciplines including Celebration of the Disciplines and Spirit of the Disciplines. Dallas Willard defines Spiritual disciplines as "any activity within our power that we engage in to enable us to do what we cannot do by direct effort" or "doing things that help us do the things we can't do". At it's simplest level, it's like the spiritual version of saying a phone number out loud to help you remember it. And just like anything good in life, we rarely just accidentally stumble into greatness.

If I'm going to be a marathon runner, I should probably get off the couch and practice running, read magazines about how to run, think about running and talk to others that run. Seems like common sense, right? When it came to my golf game it wasn't. I wanted to become a decent golfer, so I decided to go out and play a lot more. The problem was, I sucked, and the more I played and sucked, the less I like golf and the less I wanted to play. I would get out on the course and shank the ball just about every time.
Did I practice my putting, driving or irons? Nope.
Did I take lessons or study the techniques of the pros? Nope.
Did I work on perfecting my swing? Nope.

I just expected to go out and play and actually become a golfer without practicing any of the disciplines of a golfer. I wanted to play like Tiger Woods without putting the time and effort that Tiger Woods invests.

The reality is that I do the same thing in my spiritual life. I expect to be able be the kind of person that Jesus describes his followers being without investing myself in the things he expected his followers to invest themselves into. Like my golf-game, there are all sorts of game-time scenarios where I expect to be able to perform, like loving my neighbor or turning the other cheek when I'm not working on the disciplines that make me the kind of person that will perform in those scenarios.

Don't get me wrong on this: God doesn't love us more because we do this stuff. This stuff doesn't change what Jesus did for us on the cross. You can't earn your way into heaven. In my life, too often I've translated that into meaning that I really have to do nothing to become the kind of person Jesus wants me to become. In hindsight, I guess that's kind of silly.

In one of the books I read, the author talks about this path we walk in our spiritual lives with a steep drop-off on each side. On one side you have the cliff of doing nothing at all. On the other side you have the cliff of doing lots of things for the wrong reasons.

I've been trying to apply these disciplines to my life and I've seen some unbelievable results. Results that I've just kind of stumbled upon. I've been memorizing bible verses, studying, journaling, fasting, silence, solitude, simplifying and serving amongst other things. I can remember no other time in my life where I've seen such change in my life. I guess the bigger question is whether or not others see it in terms of the way I love, serve and treat other people.

Anyways, this whole post started because I wanted to talk about the latest disciplines I'm focusing on, which are probably two of the toughest for me: Solitude and Silence. If I look at my life, about the only time where I don't have a cell phone, iPod, radio or computer going is in the shower and during my quiet time in the morning. Even during my quiet time, for most of that I'm either reading or journaling. Very rarely do I just sit with my thoughts and nothing else. I'm trying to figure out how to create more space in my life to think, reflect and listen.

When I drive in my car, I'm either talking on my cellphone, listening to my iPod, listening to the radio, or checking e-mail and texting (Yes, I know this is not safe). For the next couple of weeks, I'm going to keep my radio and iPod off, my cell phone holstered (unless my wife calls) and just be quiet - and of course I'll continue to drive my car. To some of you, this probably sounds very easy. To me, it drives me nuts and I get antsy. I start thinking of all the things I could be doing to make better use of this time, the people I need to call, etc. I'll see how this whole thing works out. Should be interesting.

Kurt Family Birthday Tradition

Today is my birthday. I'm 37. I've received a ton of e-mails, text messages and phone calls already. What a cool thing to have so many people take the time to think of me like that. If you haven't heard of the Kurt family tradition of phone calls, the rules go something like this:

1. Every person in the family (that includes people connected in to the family like Wilaca, but apparently not Sherry because she does not consider herself family) must call the individual on the actual day of the birthday according to the time zone that person is in. Family specific friends are included in this, for instance Brad and the Schultz's must participate, and it must be reciprocated.
   
2. Multiple people can participate in a single call to the birthday person.
   
3. Leaving a message counts, as long as the date/time stamp on that message is within the actual birthday.
4. The words "Happy Birthday" must be either spoke or sung to the person.
5. There are bonus points and bragging rights for being the first person on the day of the birthday to wish a happy birthday. Dan/Kris family were first today. Bob wished me a happy birthday on Sunday, Brad and three others wished me a happy birthday yesterday.
6. If you do not call on the the day of the birthday, you will be shamed to no end by the family.
   

I got a call from my sister and the kids (Kevin still owes me a call) this morning and we started talking about how tradition of birthday phone calls in the Kurt Family begun. Here's the best we can figure:

My Mom used to wake us up on our birthdays reciting lines from a children's book she used to read to us. (My Mom had this uncanny way of memorizing children's books and reciting them verbatim. I guess having 4 kids will do that to you). the line went like this, "Good Morning Birthday Boy. Today is your special day! Your birthday is full of fun and surprises...." She would then tell us what the weather was like on the day she went into the hospital to have us. Somehow the weather was always the same as it was on that exact day.

When we went to college, she and my Dad would call us on our birthday and recite the same thing to us. From there, as we had kids, the tradition grew as we would call our nieces and nephews, we added in singing happy birthday in the most awful way possible. We have honed and refined this to be one of the best parts of our birthdays, even though there are a whole lot of us now.

Birthday Spreadsheet

I received today one of the most creative birthday gifts ever, at least in my geeky view of the world. First, a little background: As I work with companies on building business cases around outsourcing, we often have to use very complex spreadsheet based models that involve bazillions of rows. I've been working for the past year with Bryan on one such model that is huge. Bryan happens to be a ninja with excel, typically creating dumbed-down summaries that I can digest, with lots of pick-boxes so that I can't hose things up too badly.

For my birthday, Bryan (with input from other guys like Kohne) created a birthday spreadsheet that calculates a number of important factors in my life, including the amount of gas I generated, number of CLMs (Career Limiting Moves) and number of times that executives at my company ask themselves ("Did he just say that out loud?"). Click here to view the spreadsheet in Google Docs.

Happy Birthday Sherry (aka Ms. Brainard)

A while back, Cathie left our camera at school in Emily's class. Em's teacher decided that she and another teacher would take a series of themselves odd pictures around the school. I told her the pictures would come back to haunt her, so I came into school this morning and posted these around her classroom. I was busted by the Principal for hanging these on the walls as they do not follow district policy. I asked her why and she lectured me about how out of control things would get if they didn't have policy. I nodded and agreed to cease and desist, telling her it would truly by anarchy if people could post out-of-policy documents on the walls... But not before I had covered Sherry's classroom with the pictures.

Go on, Bite the Big Apple

Cathie flew into New York and I met her at the airport at around 10am. We cabbed it over to our hotel (The Doubletree Times Square). Thanks to Hilton Honors points and my diamond status, we had a suite at the top floor of the hotel. After checking in, we headed out on the town. We went to the infamous Carnegie Deli. The place has sandwiches the size of your head - literally. The best Hot Pastrami in the world. We filled up there and then kept heading North to Central Park. Central Park is this amazing anachronistic little paradise in the middle of this concrete jungle, surrounded by these billion dollar buildings. We hung out in Central Park (the big field where all the concerts are) and people watched for a while.


We headed over to the Apple store afterwards and then stopped over by the NBC Studios where Cathie got a chance to have her picture taken with Matt Lauer. The studio is right there and you can watch them tape the show and get yourself on TV if that's your thing. I'll confess, I've done the "Call your wife and say watch for me on the Today show" thing before.

As we back from the studio, Cathie happened to notice that the doors to St. Patrick's Cathedral were open (across from Rockefeller Center). It's this amazing, pretty famous Catholic Church. When you enter in it takes your breath away. The smell of incense fills the air and the majesty of this place blows you away. The art, the detail, the holiness of the building just quiets you. We walked around and looked at the stained glass and the art. The stations of the cross were these amazing carvings of awesome intricate detail.


That night we headed out to Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill over on 5th ave and 15th street. The food was fantastic. From there we headed back to Broadway to see The Lion King where we had amazing, 8th row seats. I've seen the movie a million times but wasn't really prepared for the musical. The visuals were so crazy and non-technical - I'm not sure how to describe it. It had these very cool tribal sounds and dances throughout with animals represented by actors in a way that really natural. I'm not sure how to describe it. The story was good, but not quite as moving as a Les Miserables, but the visuals and the music made up for it.

We headed back into Times Square as all the shows got out and it was wall to wall people. If you've never been to Times Square, the best way to describe it is over-stimulated energy. It was too claustrophobic to move around too much so we hit one of the bars nearby and hung out for a while before heading to bed.

We slept in the next morning and then did the tourist thing. I like to think that I know NYC pretty well, so I'm embarrassed to say that we did the City Tour bus, which to me seems about as touristy and chessy as it gets. The reality was, we were tourists, and I wanted Cathie to see all of the good tourist spots and this was the best way to do it.


We hit China town and waded through the knock-off purses, watches, sun-glasses, pens and movies. We went through the 9/11 World Trade Center site, headed through the financial district and then went over to Battery Park to see the Statue of Liberty (which was the same height as Cathie suprisingly enough). We headed back up and toured the lower east east side and then heading back to our hotel to take a nice long nap before dinner.


We headed out to dinner at Asia de Cuba in the Murray Hill district. It was a fantastic resturant that exemplified New York City's ambiance and crowd. The place was packed and we were seated overly closely to another couple. Cathie thought I took the idea of family style eating when I offered the couple next to us one of the entrees we had on our plate. We then walked back to our hotel and stopped in at Grand Central Station (partly because I took a wrong turn). I tried to get Cathie to freeze like these guys, but no go.

We then headed up to the Rainbow Room at the top of Rockefeller Center. The drinks were ridiculously expensive, but they were worth it for the view of New York City from the top of the rock.

The next morning we slept in again and waited for it to stop raining. We headed out to tour around (yes, again on the bus tour) to tour upper Manhattan. One of the highlights were the buildings, seconded only by the street truly named after Cathie's truest nature - her klutziness - "Catherine Slip". We saw Bono's apartment, Trump's towers and Yoko Ono's place (Jason Shinn loves Yoko Ono even more than Dave Matthews).

After picking up souvoniers we headed out to the airport at 4 and picked up the kids around 7. It was a great trip, with the best part being able to hang with Cathie and show her the city. Thanks again to my Dad with help from Susan and Kevin and Judy for watching the kids!

You can see the rest of the pictures here.

Little Cathie

When Cathie was little (and through most of high school) she had wild hair and giant glasses. I've seen pictures and she looked like a twin of Em at that age. My sister Sooze apparently dressed the girls up at my Dad's while we were away in NYC and this was the result.

The Raw Shark Texts

I just finished reading a bizarre book that my sister-in-law Beth recommended to me (though she'd never read it, she just knew lots of people that have) called The Raw Shark Texts. It's the most bizarre fiction book I've read in a long time in that I can't bucket it to be like just about any book I've read in the way the story is told. It's a concept like the Matrix but in a completely different context. It's a tough book to explain without telling the story. It reminded me a lot of the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in that you weren't quite sure what was real and what was delusional until the end. It starts out strong and then throws you for a loop, but it's one of those books that you sound nuts just trying to describe what it's all about but ends a very good book.

Lady Liberty

Cathie and I headed out around 10 to tour the city. We headed into lower Manhattan into Chinatown and then over to the financial district where we saw the 9/11 site and then over to Battery Park where we saw the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We're off to SOHO and Greenwich village area before we head to dinner at the trendy Asia de Cuba over in the Garment District.

Cathie's Grandma

Cathie's Grandma (her Dad's Mom) passed away on Thursday. Please pray for her family in this tough time.

Sunny Day in Central Park

Cathie arrived without a hitch and we cabbed it into Times Square and checked in at our hotel. We had andwiches the size of our head at the Carnegie Deli and then headed over to Central Park to people watch and enjoy the sun. We're heading to Mesa Grill for dinner and then to the Lion King tonight.

Odd Conversation

I got a call from one of our sales reps this morning that started like this when I answered the phone:

Jane: "Bears! There are four bears outside!"
Me: "Huh? Bears? Jane?"
Jane: "A Momma Bear and her three babies in a tree."
Me: "Uh... Bears? What? Is everything ok?"

It turns out that she has a family of bears that raid her trash periodically and this started happening right after she called me. I immediately thought of Anchorman: "Well, that's just great. You hear that, Ed? Bears. Now you're putting the whole station in jeopardy."

Fun Facts about Lemurs

Em is doing a school report on Lemurs. We learned two interesting things about Lemurs

Fact #1: When a female finds a suitable tree, she performs a handstand and rubs her rear end against the bark.
Emily's Response: Hysterical laughter when she figured out that "rear end"="butt"

Fact #2: Male lemurs can draw their tales between their wrists, covering the tails with scent. Then, by jerking their tails ove rtheir heads like catapults, the males are able to propel long distance stink bombs at their opponents.
Emily's response: Fell over laughing.

Future Circus Career?

Em's Chair

Emily got a Hannah Montana chair for her birthday and she seemed to really enjoy it - enough to sleep it last night, and again tonight.

Em took a friend to Chuck E Cheeses and they got these cool pencil photos done for the low-low price of a token. Click on them to see them up close. Very cool.

The Spirituality of the Cellphone

This is a wild message called The Spirituality of the Cellphone (you can download the mp3 here). I've heard a lot of messages talk about how the culture and the messages around us impact our spiritual life, but this looks at the spirituality of the medium itself (the communication medium, not the fortune teller kind of medium). The premise of the message is that regardless of the message, the medium is shaping us: The medium is the message.

The speaker is a guest teacher at Mars Hill church by the name of Shane Hips. He used to be in advertising (working the Porshe account) and then went to seminary became a pastor (Mennoite, even, I think) and wrote a book around this stuff. The message goes through the spirituality around the mediums of spoken mediums (oral culture), written mediums (literate culture) and technological mediums (digital culture). Bear with me, this is good stuff.

The big ah-ha moment occured for me as he talked about the impact of connectedness in the technological world. He looks at the mediums of cellphones, texting, IMing, blogging, social networking like facebook and e-mail. At first pass, you would think it makes you more connected, right? I can call someone at any time, text them. I know what's going on in everyone's worlds via facebooks and blogs. The problem is that it gives me the illusion of connectedness. There's this idea of presence that is lost in the technolological connectedness. The reality is that there is still distance is there even though I am virtually connected.

There is a great aspect of our digital media in that it connects us to people outside of my home and geopgrahy. I have a blog that people can read and see a high level view of my life - but it's just that - a high level view that people can see in from a distance. The challange is that people can get this view, get this closeness that previously they could only get by hanging out with us or at the very least talking on the phone. With my blog, I have friends and family who believe they are connected to my family - but that connectedness is missing something. Real presence.

I think this gets at the heart of it:

Our media have an ability to innoculate our need to be together. If I've read about what's going on in your world, why would I need to walk over to your house and catch up on what's going on? It connects us to far off places and separates us from those who are nearest to us. The electronicage then becomes a hybrid or paradox of the previous two eras (oral and literate). If oral culture is tribal, connected and in touch and the literate culture is distant and removed, then what you get in the electronic age in the tribe of individuals isolated electronic nomads glancing around the globe, barely knowing each other. If oral culture is empathic and emotioanlly connected and the literate culture has a distance, an ability to think/judge/react to it, then the electronic age is creating a spirituality of empathy at a distance.

For me, I think this all comes back to the idea of presence. A few weeks ago I was rambling about why the incarnation is such a big deal. The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us! This is what real presence is all about. I'm not sure what to do with my technological world as a result of all of this. Do I stop my blog because it prevents me and my family from having deep connectedness with some people who we want to have that connectedness with? I'm not sure that will fix it. I guess the first thing is awareness. This whole idea may be obvious to everyone else, but it's something that's really struck me as I'm looking around at my circle of friends. I guess it's about starting by finding the balance with myself and how I'm connected to others and going from there. Shane sums it up with this:

I'm not against technology any more than I'm against the wind or the tide. It is a medium. Your technological diet is not unlike your food diet. If your diet consists of cotton candy, you'll be malnourished and flabby. If your relationships are comprised of a disproportionate amount of mediated communication, you will be relationally, spiritually and emotionally malnourished.

Battle of the Bands

Justin Smith has been in my youth group since he was in sixth grade and aside from being about seven feet tall is an awesome kid. He's been in this band Avienne for the past few years and they've had quite a bit of success. It's a pretty amazing band that is pretty big in this ara. Kentaro Roy is also in the band, who plays electric violin in our worship band on Sunday. Their band is in the Detroit News Battle of the Bands. Please take a second and click here to vote for them. You can vote up to ten times.

Em is 7 Today!

Emily is 7 years old today! She is a little ray of sunshine and the baby of our family. She fits the third child role well, following in her Uncle Jon's footsteps she constantly makes us all laugh. Here are a few fun facts about Emily.

1. Em loves animals more than anything in the world. Real ones, stuffed ones, cute ones, ugly ones. She views animals the way God views people - she thinks they are all beautiful and wonderful and she smiles when she thinks about them.
   
2. Em has an odd fashion sense. Rarely matches and could care less about what she wears. Very bohemian. We blame Jess.
3. Em has some of the craziest hair in the world, but it fits in well with #2.
   
4. Em has a very tender heart. She loves to watch animal movies and her "eyes get wet" at the drop of a hat.
5. Emily has the busiest social calendar of any kid I've ever seen. She gets invited to more birthday parties and friends houses to play, and more in-school mail than you can believe.
6. Emily used to call chipmunks Ching-Bonks.
7. Emily has roughly a billion stuffed animals and she knows each one by name. Cathie tried to slowly move some of these out of her room over the course of a month and she noticed each one missing.
8. Like a good third child, Emily can entertain herself better than any of our other kids.
9. Emily is involved in dance and has a big (and expensive) dance recital coming up.
10. Emily is very good at the card came speed. She can beat me. And I'm good. Darn good. She is pretty amazing at the game sequence. She wins more than she looses. Again. I'm good.
    

I think her favorite gift was her gift from Aunt Fish and family. Kris got her an animal aquarium that she is keeping pet frogs in.

Brad is always present

With this cardboard cut out of my friend Brad, I can have him with me always. If only this cardboard version of Brad could apply lotion on my like he's doing for Ted.

Will Junior

Susan was going through Dan and Kris's old kids clothes and stumbled across some old gems and dressed Bender up Uncle Will style. Quite a while back, Will used to not have the same keen fashion sense that he exhibits today. Susan and Cathie have a theory that cinched-ankle sweats are meant for kicking around the house when you're sick, but not meant for out-and-about wear if you're over the age of five. Unfortunately, most of Will's outdoor attire consisted of sweats and turtlenecks. Being the kind of family that speaks truth through sarcasm and mockery, we decided to do something about this. Will came over after church one Sunday to find Kevin, Susan, Gabe, Cathie, Nate, Maddie and I all dressed in sweats and turtle-necks. Will never wore sweats and turtle-necks in public again.

Happy Birthday and First Communion to You!

We celebrated mine, Emily's and Andrew's birthdays yesterday coupled with Steve-O's first communion. The picture on the left is Drew's birthday gift of an air-soft gun (wow, does he have a cool uncle or what?) along with candy and a book that I thought he'd dig (recommended by Noel who just LOVES Christian fiction, especially about end-times). We hung out at Dan and Kris's, had Sushi (drew's favorite) and ice-cream. We sat around and talked most of the time, doing a ton of laughing while the kids played outside. Dan showed us his new TV and the AT&T U-Verse TV/Internet system which is rather cool. Jon and Beth were in town buying a house in Grand Rapids in preparation for their big move in June but we just missed them as they left around 1.

On top of a book and a giant bag of starbursts, we got Steve-O a number of very wonderful religious icons (from the greatest Dollar Store in the world - Dollar Tree) that he will have forever. You can tell from the look on his face that he far prefers these to any candy or money he might have received. The woman at the dollar store thought these were a wonderful choice, until Nate explained to her that we were getting these things as a joke.

Now that she's got new glasses, Susan has been trying to find her own "look". I'm not sure she's got it yet. The second picture could be one of the best pictures ever of Susan.

You can see the rest of the pictures of the event here.

My Demon Possessed Ice Maker

The ice-maker in our fridge works great until it doesn't. It works fine for a year, stops making ice for some reason that I can't figure out and then suddenly, magically, after the moon is in the seventh house and jupiter aligns with Mars - suddenly starts up again. I have no idea why. Any suggestions?

Justice and Mercy, Part 1

I finished the book The Holy Longing and thought I was done blogging about it until today. The chapter about the Spirituality of Justice and Peacemaking has been rolling around in my brain and the stuff we did today got me thinking more about it. (For the record Jon and Dan, Rolheiser is a Catholic Priest, so you are pretty much obligated to read everything I read and then read the book itself. Dad has read the book and has it on his bookshelf.)

The book starts from the point of God's big requirement that we act justly, love tenderly, and walk humbly with our God. It looks at this idea of social justice and how justice is different from charity and what I am called to do as a follower of Jesus.

Rolheiser tells a story to illustrate the difference around Charity and Social Justice:

Rolheiser tells the story of a town on a river and periodically bodies would float down the river. The townsfolk would rescue the boies when they could, nurse them back to health, place the kids with families and bury those who were dead. It went on for years, and the townsfolk felt a certain pride in their generosity to the victims. Despite all the generosity and effort, during all those years, nobody thought to go up the river beyond the bend and understand why these bodies were floating downt he river.

Basically, Charity is about giving a hungry person some bread, while justice is about trying to change the system so that nobody has excess bread while some have none. He looks at it around the issue of abortion:

...nobody, ultimately, wants abortion and everyone on both sides recognizes that whenever an abortion happens, something is far from ideal. Too often, though, neither side acknowledges the deeper, systemic issues that underlie the problem. Ultimately abortion takes place because something is wrong within the culture, within the system and not simply because this or that particular woman is seeking to end an unwanted pregenancy.... Behind her, helping push her into that clinic and that decision, stands an entire system (economic, political, cultural, mythical and sexual).

I was reading this the same time I re-watched the movie Juno and listened to Obama's view on Abortion at a recent interview on faith between the two democratic candidates. I dug the fact that he acknowledged the moral side (which I've never heard from the Democrats - it always seems to be about the "My Body, My Choice" mantra") and pointed to the morality of it and the larger issue that needs to be dealt with. Here's what Obama said:

Number one, it requires us to acknowledge that there is a moral dimension to abortion, which I think that all too often those of us who are pro-choice have not talked about or tried to tamp down. I think that's a mistake because I think all of us understand that it is a wrenching choice for anybody to think about. The second thing, once we acknowledge that, is to recognize that people of good will can exist on both sides. That nobody wishes to be placed in a circumstance where they are even confronted with the choice of abortion....and if we can acknowledge that much, then we can certainly agree on the fact that we should be doing everything we can to avoid unwanted pregnancies that might even lead somebody to consider having an abortion.

My Mom was someone who exemplified the idea of Justice in a way that I want to someday. My Mom was someone who loved babies. If you knew her, you know this is a ridiculous understatement. It's like saying that Noel likes Apple. My Mom would stop pregnant Moms in the streets to tell them how beautiful they were and how excited she was for them. She would see the new baby of someone she didn't know and would gush over it in a way that was fun to watch. She had this box of creepy plastic babies that she would give out to pregnant women to show them what their baby looked like at only a few weeks (kind of like the girl standing outside the abortion clinic in Juno telling Juno about her babies fingernails).

My Mom loved babies so much that she couldn't stand the idea that any baby would be unwanted and be aborted. My Mom didn't run around condemning women for abortions like many people do. She understood that it was not just an issue of legality, but that we needed to change the reasons around why a woman would get an abortion to begin with. My Mom would lobby politicians, work at pregnancy services clinics folding and organizing baby clothes and helping new Moms to make their pregnancy as positive a thing as possible. She worked to deal with the issue at hand, but went upstream to deal with the issue of why they would happen in the first place. My Mom exemplified this idea of Justice for me but I don't know what it looks like in my world.

So that's the background... As I read the chapter, I had this feeling of helplessness and saddness in trying to wrestle through what it looks like for me. More on this in my next post.

Pizzapopolis Syndrome

I'm at the end of the second week of my commitment to a new exercise routine. So far so good. I've been outside running three times a week, been to Triad twice a week for plyometrics and to Powerhouse to lift twice a week. I needed the change from the monotony of my workout routine, and this has been working great.

The biggest surprise to me is how I'm actually enjoying running. I finished work early today and instead of sitting outside and reading, I went out and ran 3 1/2 miles. I like seeing how hard I can push myself into something new like this. My wife refers to it as the "Pizzapopolis Syndrome" and she's probably right. The syndrome can be defined like this:

Anytime I find something new that I enjoy, I like to immerse myself in that. Whether it's a kind of food, a beverage, an artist, an author or an exercise - my theory is that if a little is good, a lot must be great! I'll listen to a song or an artist until I'm sick of it. I'll Mountain biking every day until I got good at it or tired of it. I'll go out of my way to eat certain flavor of DQ Blizzard until I'm ready to hurl, and then there's the pizza....

I got hooked on Pizzapolis Pizza a while back. If you've never had their pizza, it's basically a Chicago-style deep-dish pizza with a few pounds of cheese. I would drive 30 miles each way to get this pizza (and drag Will with me). On the night of Emily's birth, I stopped by and got this pizza on the way home from the hospital and ate it until I made myself pretty sick. Hence the name.

There's another aspect of it - and that's to tell everyone about what I've found - be it a web site, author, artist or food. I'll evangelize the heck out of it until those around me are equally sick of hearing about it.

Anyways, I'm sure there's a better name for it, but it's what I've got for better or for worse. Am I the only one?

Hypothetical Situation

Here's a hypothetical situation:

Let's say you're flying on a small commuter jet. You're a guy with broad shoulders, at least wider than the width of a seat-back on a small commuter jet, which isn't saying much. Let's say you know this and you purposely get yourself a window seat so that every time someone walks down the aisle or a cart is rolled down the aisle (12 inches apart from each other), you don't get run into. A husband and wife are in the two aisle seats in your same aisle and ask you to give up your window seat for a shoulder slamming aisle seat so they can be right to each other. If in hindsight it turns out that these two people never really enjoy each others company in any way, here's my question:

Knowing all that, should you give up your seat to help them out and avoid being "that guy"?

Road Trip

I flew into Tulsa, OK and drove down this morning to Arkansas for meetings with a certain large retailer. As a part of my presentation, I used this slide and shared the role of this retailer at Camp Velocity. They laughed as I talked about junior high kids running through their stores flush with cash and no parental oversight, buying candy, caffeine and weapons (squirt guns and bow-staffs).

On top of being able to have some Chick-fil-a for breakfast, I learned a few fun facts today:

• Wal-Mart generates 980,000 miles of receipt paper every year. That is enough to go from the earth to the sun and back seven times. They are rolling out double-sided printing to drive that amount down.
  
• Tyson farms "harvest" 56,000,000 chickens every week. That's a lot of chicken guts.
  

Pretty sure I have this disorder

A recent article in the Evening Standard introduced a "new, peculiarly 21st century affliction" called nomophobia or "no mobile phobia," which is exactly what it sounds like - the fear of being out of mobile phone contact. Besides citing research that claims up to 53% of mobile phone users feel great anxiety when their phones run out of battery life or have no network coverage, the article also suggests ways to avoid nomophobia, such as carrying a charger at all times or remembering your most important phone numbers.

Flavor Flav

Entertainment Weekly magazine had a section entitled, "Stupid Questions with Flavor Flav", one of my brother Jon's childhood heroes. The interviewer had the guts to ask the question we've all been wondering for the longest time (note to my Dad - you will have no idea what any of this means):

EW: "How do you know when to shout "YEEEAAAHHH BOYEE!" and when to just restate your name at a very loud decibel level?"
FF: "Honestly, it depends on the situation. If it's a situation where i'm arguing with somebody and I prove myself right, I holler, "FLAVOR FLAV!" And when the party is jumpin' and we are thumpin' and bumpin, "YEEAAAHHH BOYEEE!" comes into play.

Saturday Night

Wilaca, Cathie and I met out in Troy for dinner at Maggiano's Italian Restaurant. (Nate reminded me the other day of how my Mom's first question would always be "what did you have to eat?"). We ate family style some of the best food in the world until we literally almost exploded. You pick a bunch of dishes from each category and the beauty of this place is that they will keep bringing you unlimited quantities of anything you've ordered. It was some of the best eats in a while, but I was still full this morning when I woke up. We sat around for about 2 and a half hours laughing, eating and singing various School House Rocks songs.

Tiff and her boyfriend Reagan watched the kids last night, which they all loved. Nate got to play video games with Reagan while Tiff did all sorts of fun stuff with the girls. When we came home, Reagan, who is majoring in Film, was just finishing this collection of stop motion video with Em and a worm using the camera on Tiff's mac laptop.



After the kids went to bed, the four of us sat around talking for the next four hours. Tiff was in my youth group starting back in seventh grade and is now a sophomore in college at Grand Valley and Reagan grew up in my friend Mark Butler's youth group and I've gotten to him (as did Tiff) over the years as our youth groups do camps and retreats together. Tiff's been baby-sitting our kids for the past 6 years or so, ever since she was old enough to do it. She's become an extension of our family and one of only a few baby-sitters that can hang with Nate with boy stuff and still do fun girly, crafty stuff with the girls. She's like a little sister to me, and with that comes the same kind of interview for all of her potential spouses that my siblings had to endure, and my children will have to in the future. Reagan and I hung out together at the Malltease Manhunt as a covert interview, and then I was able to work subtle questions into the conversation to better understand his intentions ("Reagan, on a scale of 1 to 10, how serious are you about marrying Tiffany"). Anyways, it's always a cool thing for me to see the kids from my junior high youth group grow up and continue to be a part of the church and our family.

Em's New Glasses

Following in the footsteps of her big sister, Em got her new glasses today after being diagnosed as near sighted. We've decided not to get Nate tested on the premise that what we don't know won't be really expensive. Holy cow - between Cathie, Maddie and Em getting new glasses this year it looks like we won't have any problem spending the health care flexible spending account money we had left over from Cathie's Lasik debacle.

Em likes her new glasses and her new animal glass case as well.

Exercise

I've been exercising pretty consistently for the past six years or so. I try and exercise between three to five times every week for 30 minutes to an hour. In those six years, probably the longest I've ever gone without working out has been a couple of weeks. Over the past two years it's mostly consisted of me either going to the gym to lift weights or going to Triad to do the 6am workout, which is more a cross-training cardio/weights mix. Over the past 5 months I've been in a bit of a rut, even having a stint where I worked out twice over a five week period of time. My workouts have mostly been lifting weights with zero cardio. I pretty much hate cardio. It's monotonous, dull and takes a long time. Running is pretty much the worst for me.

This week I decided to try and get out of the exercise rut I'm in. I went to Triad on Monday and Tuesday to get into that work out, lifted on Thursday and went running outside today and Wedensday. On Wednesday I ran about 1 1/2 miles in 12 minutes and it was miserable. Today I ran about 3 1/4 miles in about 30 minutes and it wasn't quite as bad (not quite as good as my Nephew). Apparently if you run really hard for a mile and half and you're not in shape, things don't go so well. If you pace yourself, you can go a bit further I guess. It was sunny, I had the right music on and took my brother-in-law Kevin's advice to go into it with a good additude.

Anyways, I'm committing to getting to Triad a minimum of once a week, running once a minimum of once a week and lifting a minimum of once a week. Running actually intrigues me a bit, just because it's something I've never been much good at or enjoyed too much and it's a good place to push myself into something new. I'm going to try this routine until the end of May and see where it gets me. Eventually, I should probably start eating a bit healthier, but I'll wait on that one for a while.

I'm thinking I can somehow turn this into a reason (excuse?) to get the new 3G iPhone and the Nike GPS connector.

The South

I was reading Susan's photo recap of her trip to Memphis when I stumbled across this picture of Jon and his wife Beth. Oh wait, that's not Beth. That's my sister. Odd. Did she get new glasses?

The Incarnation and the church

Painful as it is, this is even more of my continued rambling and thoughts from reading The Holy Longing. I'm in the section on the spirituality of ecclesiology (the church). As Brad shared the other day, he was going to pick this book up again and read it but apparently doesn't have to, since I've basically posted the whole book into my blog.

It's easy to be upset at the church or disenchanted with everything that's wrong about the capital "C" church or your own local church. My church has had it's share of crap and lots of people have been angry with it in their time, myself included. I have friends and family who have had horrible things done to them by the "church" and I read things all the time that embarrass me about the what a church somewhere has done or said. I can relate to St. Augustine's view that:

The Church is a whore, but she's my mother.

Funny and true, but not the whole picture. I like the way Roheiser expounds on St. Augustine:

The church is always God hung between two thieves. Thus, no one should be surprised or shocked at how badly the church has betrayed the gospel and how much it continues to do so today. It have never done very well. Conversely, however, nobody should deny the good the church has done either. It has carried grace, produced saints, morally challenged the planet and made, however imperfectly, a house for God to dwell in on this earth.

To be connected with the church is to be associated with scoundrels, warmongers, fakes, child-molesters, murders, adulterers and hypocrites of every description. It also, at the same time, identifies you with saints and the finest persons of heroic soul within every time country, race and gender. To be a member of the church is to carry the mantle of both the worst sin and the finest heroism of the soul... because the church always looks exactly as it looked at the original crucifixion, God hung among thieves.

If you hang with my family for a while, you'll soon see that there's nothing we can hide from each other and nothing that is too sacred to be mocked or commented on, mostly in a loving way. For example, thirteen years ago I decided I would try and learn to play guitar. After about six months, i put it on hold and my family (mostly Jon) still enjoys bringing that up to me in various contexts along and bringing up other painful memories at inopportune times. I can try and pretend to be all kinds of things, but my family knows me, knows where I've come from and loves to remind me of who I really am. I think the same thing applies to the church. I can claim to be the greatest guy in the world, but I can't fool my family.

One of the things I love about being connected to a church, and in my church to a small group is the view of myself that I get from it. I've got a group of guys (Brad, Bob, Eli, Matt, Will and Mark) that have a pretty complete view of me, have known me for anywhere from 3 - 15 years and keep me honest. They're imperfect guys, just like me, and we can speak hard truth to each other and ask hard questions and also laugh hard and have a great time together.

Roheiser puts it this way:

The churches are compromised, dirty and sinful, but just like our blood families, they are also real. In the presence of people who share life with us regularly, we cannot lie, especially to ourselves and delude ourselves into thinking we are generous and noble. In community the truth emerges and fantasies are dispelled. What is too painful to deal with is not the church's imperfection but my own fantasies about my own goodness which, in the grind of real community, will become painfully obvious. Nobody deflates us more than does our own family. The same is true of the church. Not all of this is bad.

Highest Performance Ever on Idol

I an not ashamed of the fact that I watch American Idol with my family. We have a blast yelling at the judges, critiquing the contestants and debating who we like and dislike.

With that being said, BWE nailed it when they referred to this week's performance by Jason Castro as the Highest Performance Ever on Idol. The dude looks completely stoned.

Last night, during the highly touted Idol Gives Back episode, Castro took to the stage with his trademarked dreadlocks and a tiny guitar — I believe some refer to it as a ukulele — and sang Judy Garland’s gay anthem “Somewhere Over The Rainbow.” You could practically smell his hemp shoes through the screen. And check out that smile!

Em's Note

Em received a note in the school mail from a friend of hers. When she read it, she giggled like crazy:

Dear Emily
I will always chase on the playground and hug you to get the juice out of you!
From Savanna

I read the note and asked her what it meant. It went like this:

Me: "Em, what did Savanna's note mean?"
Em: "That she can't go to Wal-Mart."
Me: "Huh?"
Em: (rolling her eyes in disbelief that I don't get it)
Em: "Dad, Savanna likes Wal-Mart's juice, which I get to drink, but she doesn't so if she squeezes it out of me, then she can have it."
Me: "Oh. Sure. Makes sense."

Em and Idol

We were catching up on American Idol last night and one of the contestants, Kristy Lee Cook, had on a very sparkly tank top shirt. Em's thoughts on that shirt:

Mom, you would look really funny if you wore that shirt to my school to make copies. I never see you get really dressed up, unless it's for weddings.

"Mom, I just threw up..."

Nothing starts your morning quite like having your door open and hearing the phrase, "Mom I just threw up..." At 4AM, Maddie woke us up and Cathie got up to take care of Maddie and clean up the mess. I lay there in bed for a bit trying to figure out which kid it was and feeling pukey myself. I eventually got up (after the puke was cleaned up) to see what I could do to help. My contribution was clearing a bunch of laundry off of our futon so Maddie could be near the bathroom. I'm wide awake now. Yee-haw!

I remember back about ten years ago when Cathie was gone on a weekend retreat. Nate was almost two and Maddie was a newborn. The kids were in bed and Will had came over to watch a movie with me (the one where a giant meteor is going to destroy the planet). The next thing I hear is Nate throwing up and then crying. I run in and find him covered in puke. I grab him and throw him in the bath tub while Will takes his sheets and throws them in the wash downstairs. I got Nate cleaned up, Will got new sheets on the bed and the next thing you know he's doing it all over again - every 30 minutes for the rest of the weekend. That was my first trial-by-fire as a single Dad with two small kids. I was really ready for Cathie to come home and even more appreciative of her as a Mom afterward.

Getting into Cathie's Pants

When I woke up this morning, everyone was still sleeping and the house was dark. I grabbed a pair of pants, threw on a shirt and headed downstairs. I left the house early and when I came back after lunch, Cathie looked at me and asked, "Are those my pants you're wearing?" I laughed and explained that they were the new pants I'd gotten from Costco the other day. She checked the tag, and sure enough, they were her pants. Looking back, I thought the pants were riding a little odd on my hips and I didn't remember it having the weird clasp in front - but hey, it was early. I felt a little prettier all day, but just wrote it off to my new shampoo.

The Incarnation and Community

Disclaimer: My brother Jon loves these long, rambling theological postings so much so that he skip over them. You should probably do the same. This post continues on where I'm stuck and what I'm learning about the incarnation and what it's doing to me.

The part I've been reading in the book The Holy Longing about community is affirming something I've felt in my gut for a while:

The fact that God has human flesh has some hard consequences regarding spirituality and community. Spirituality, at least Christian spirituality, is never something you do alone. Community is a constitutive part of the very essence of Christianity and thus of spirituality. God calls us to walk in discipleship, not alone but in a group.

The author goes on to look at how Jesus went from such great popularity to pissing everyone off enough that they wanted to kill him, particularly with respect to Jesus' teaching that "unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will not have life in you" Without digging into the original Greek, these words go way beyond cannibalism or describing Jesus' sinless body or a communion wafer:

What we're being asked "to eat" is that other part of his body, the community, the flawed body of believers here on earth. In essence, Jesus is saying: "You cannot deal with a perfect, all-loving, all-forgiving, all-understanding God in heaven, if you cannot deal with a less-than-perfect, less-than-forgiving, and less-than-understanding community here on earth. You cannot pretend to be dealing with an invisible God if you refuse to deal with a visible family.

There's a part of me that wants to write off my Christian spirituality is always as being between me and God - which I guess goes back to that idea of being a Thiest vs. a Christian. It turns out it is as much about dealing with others as it is about dealing with God and my looking back, my life reflects that reality. When I look at the where I've grown and been stretched in my world, at least half of those times have been in the context of a larger community. Sometimes it's learning about being loved unconditionally, sometimes it's been about offering forgiveness or learning to receive it, giving grace as well as accepting it. Doing my faith between me and my God that I can't see can seem way too theoretical. Dealing with others puts a whole new spin on things.

I love the idea of community, to a point. I love having close friends and family, celebrating and being celebrated, being a part of a small church where I know others and I'm known by them. I love community until it becomes uncomfortable, until conflict happens, and then there's a part of me that wants to bolt.

There is a part of me likes to deal with conflict until I reach a point, at which time something clicks in me and I make the mental decision to write off that person and cut them out of my world. I had some recent conflict with a friend of 12 years where I'd reached the point where rather than pursue closure and reconciliation, I'd decided to cut him out of my world and told him point blank where I was at. My friend Joe was sitting at the table with both of us and reminded me that community doesn't work that way, that it's about "eating" Christ's body - all of it - the good, the bad and the ugly.

Cathie and I have been a part of Crossroads Church for 12 years. In that time we've become deeply connected, been deeply hurt and grown through all of it. By being a part of a small, local church - we know others and are known by them. People are no longer just "them' but real people who I get to know, like, dislike, agree and disagree with on things - most of which shapes me for the better.

I've seen hundreds of people leave the church for various reasons, and I wonder how that fits into this idea of the incarnation. How do you grow if you change churches every time you disagree with something? Are there good reasons to leave a church? Sure. Is conflict the right reason? Mostly no. I have the same question for those who connect loosely to a church, or purposely go to a huge church anonymously for a long time. By this definition, they almost live their faith as Deists in this respect.

I guess one of the reasons I love the church and my group of friends so much is that part of the very essence of Christianity is to be together in a concrete community, with all the real human faults that are there and the tensions we live in the middle of.

The bottom line around community and the incarnation is this:

We cannot bypass a flawed family on earth to try to relate to a non-flawed God in heaven. Concrete community is a nonnegotiable element within the spiritual quest because, precisely, we are Christians, not simply theists. God is not just in heaven. God is also on earth.

The Incarnation and Prayer

I'm still stuck on this idea of the incarnation and what it's doing to how I pray. The first idea I learned was the difference between a theist and a Christian.

A theist believes in a God in heaven whereas a Christian believes in a God in heaven who is also physically present on this earth inside of human beings. The theistic God is transcendent and, if not wholly so, present in matter only as some vague ground of being. The Christian God is also transcendent, is also the ground of being, but has a physical body on earth. The Christian God can bee seen, heard, felt, tasted and smelled through the senses. The Christian God has some skin.

So why is this impacting how I pray? Let me start by quoting this part of The Holy Longing:

As Christians, we pray to God "through Christ" and in trying to answer that prayer, God respects the incarnation, namely, that God's power is now partially dependent upon human action (on us). In prayer when we pray "In Jesus's name", not only are we petitioning God to act, but we are charging ourselves, as part of the Body of Christ, with some responsibility for answering the prayer. To pray as a Christian demands concrete involvement in trying to bring about what is pleaded for in the prayer.

Again, I'm probably the only one who didn't get the significance of this and this will probably sound obvious to everyone but me. When I pray, it's so easy for me to ask God to do things - to change people, to change circumstances, to comfort people, etc. God answers prayers, and I've always gotten that piece - sometimes too much. My propensity has been to ask for things as opposed to having the balance of asking for the previously mentioned things AND understanding how I can be used in the situation.

For example - for me to sit and pray for a friend to get better, but do not drive them to the doctor when they need it, I pray as a theist, not as a Christian. If I have a friend who is having a crappy day and pray for her, but don't speak to them, then I am praying like a theist, not a Christian. How is God supposed to console them? It is my voice and my compassion that is called for since I part of the Body of Christ.

I'm still trying to figure out the balance here in terms of not thinking that I'm the only way God can work in this world, but on the flip side I need to understand that my role as part of the incarnation is not just to sit on my butt and wait for God to change things. I realize that God can work without me and that I can't save the world on my own. In all of my prayers, I'm asking myself if I'm praying as a theist or a Christian.

Note from Em

Cathie received a note from Em yesterday morning. It was a piece of paper folded in half with a giant "To Mom, I Love You" on the outside and the inside had this note:

I love you so much BUT can you turn the heat up please? It's freezing.

The Incarnation

The book The Holy Longing just keeps blowing me away. I'm in the middle of reading about the incarnation - the fact that "The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood." (John 1:9-14). If you've grown up in the church like me, you've heard that before and you've become a bit numb to the idea that Jesus was born, lived for 33 years, died and rose again.

What has been sinking in as I read this book is the immensity and the consequences of the the incarnation. The huge idea for me is that the incarnation isn't just about Jesus' 33 year son earth, but about something that is still going on and is just as real as when Jesus walked the earth. This is huge to me: The Word didn't just become flesh and dwell among us for a while - it became flesh and continues to dwell among us. The book talks about the idea that when we say "We the body of Christ" is not an exaggeration or a metaphor. The bible never tells us that the body of believers replaces Christ's body, nor that it represents Christ's body, nor that it is Christ's mystical body. It says simply: "We are Christ's body."

Bear with me. I'm know I'm not going to do a good job summarizing my jumbled thoughts around 80 pages into a few paragraphs. I think this says it well:

If it is true that we are the Body of Christ, and it is, then God's presence in the world today depends very much upon us. We have to keep God present in the world in the same way as Jesus did. We have to become God's physical hands, feet, mouthpiece and heart in this world.....As God once acted through Christ, so he now acts through those who are conformed to the image of his Son and whose behavior pattern is in imitation of his.

Bear with me if I'm the only person who doesn't get it. There might even have been a time in my life where I understood all of this. I'm re-learning it now.

Garbage Day

Ignoring my wife's advice, I decided to wait until this morning to put my trash out. I got back from my workout at 7:30 and found that the trash man had already come and I was left with the possibility of a week's worth of rotten garbage in my garage. When the kids were leaving for school, my kids spotted him on another block in the neighborhood, so I ran over and talked to him. I told him that I'd screwed up and ignored my wife's wise council and asked if as a fellow man he could save me from my own mistake, to which he agreed.

I went home, took a bottle of wine, put it in a gift bag and wrote a quick thank you note to the guy and put it out by my trash. When I returned my trash was gone and so was the wine. Hopefully he didn't toss it with the rest of the stuff.

Spring is in the air

What a great weekend. Spring was here. Em spent the night at a friends on Friday night and Nate and Maddie had friends spend the night on Saturday evening. It was a weekend of grilling and having the windows open as the kids played outside. They went on bike rides, hung out in the hot tub, played hockey, volleyball and ran around until they were whooped.

I spent the day outside getting our yard cleaned up - cleaning off the deck, clean out the flower beds and cleaning up 5 months worth of previously snow covered dog poop. I was truly amazed at the amount of dog poop there was in our yard. Why doesn't this stuff just disinegrate?

I used my innate lawn and garden skills to diagnose a really bad case of grubs. The good news with the grubs is for the animals in the woods behind us. They raccoons, possums and moles are having a blast shredding my lawn. I put grub stuff down every year and apparently it does squat.

Eli, Brad and I were going to go to Riverview to see Noel teach today, but it fell through, mostly because I'd forgotten about our church building's grand opening today. We had our grand opening at church to a packed house, with some old faces coming by, which was cool to see. I'm sure it's in the bible that God wants them to kick in some retro-active tithe action to pay for the building we're now it. I'll have to ask Noel to help me proof-text that one as part of his money series.

Whittling Man

Nate receive a knife from his Uncle Will and we've been working on how to use it safely. Nate's friend Austin got a knife as well and the two of them have been using them to whittle a bunch of very sharp sticks. I've advised Nate not to follow Will's advice on bringing his knife to school with him to deal with any bullies he sees.

One Thing, cont.

I remember a while back Shinn and I taught a message together at church. In one of Jason's parts of the message he talked about the disciples and some of their boneheaded moves as they followed Jesus. Jay talked about how even in the midst of their mistakes, they got the idea of the One Thing more often than not. They followed Jesus through thick and thin. Shinn used the lyrics of the song One Thing by Finger Eleven to accentuate the point. Every time I hear this song, I remember the message, the disciples, and their one thing:

If I traded it all
If I gave it all away for one thing
Just for one thing
If I sorted it out
If I knew all about this one thing
Wouldn't that be something

When Emily is 100 years old

Emily brought home an school assignment called When I am 100 years old. I love her emphasis on spending time with her family, her grandchildren... and brownies. Here's what she says she'll do:

I would still have blue oceany eyes.
I would still like chips and salsa
I would still like my family
I would take care of my grandchildren
I would take them to a movie and let them get toys. I would take them out to dinner and lunch and I would care for my grandchildren when I am taking care of them.
I would like jewelry and clothes
I would let my grandchildren stay up late and watch a movie
I would watch my grandchildren and make supper.
My favorite dessert will still be brownies.

One Thing

I'm re-reading the book The Holy Longing which looks at the question "What is Spirituality?", a question I think many Christians would disagree on the answer. The first chapter talks about Soren Kierkegaard's definition of being a saint as someone who can will the one thing. It looks at Janis Joplin's life - a woman who had this amazing energy, but she willed many things, which eventually led to excess, tiredness and death.The author then contrasts it with Mother Teresa, a woman who had the same kind of amazing energy, but channeled it into God and the poor.

The book goes onto talking about one of my biggest struggles - the result of having a completely overextended "one thing":

Most of us are quite like Mother Teresa in that we want to will God and the poor. We do will them. The problem is we will everything else as well. Thus, we want to be a saint, but we also want to feel every sensation experienced by sinners; we want to be innocent and pure, but we also want to be experienced and taste all of life; we want to serve the poor and have a simple lifestyle, but we also want all the comforts of the rich; we want to have the depth afforded by solitude, but we also do not want to miss anything; we want to pray, but we also want to watch television, read, talk to friends, and go out. Small wonder life is often a trying enterprise and we are often tired and pathologically overextended.