Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Old Friends

For the past few months this journey has taken me over some rocky ground. Job hunting and rejection on a regular basis is sure fire way to have a usually sunny disposition dampened. So the journey has seemed a little uphill. One becomes hyper-sensitive to slights and perceived slights. It is not a good place to be. My mindset has gotten increasingly moody and morose. Everyday was a little cloudy.

A couple of months ago I had an idea that I ran past my little community of faith. There was some enthusiasm, then a waning of interest, then an opportunity to revisit the idea in a slightly different form, and now the idea has a little bit of momentum. It has to do with our group singing in a public forum, which I haven't done since high school, and it is spiritual songs. So I began to look for a set of discs that I used to listen to all the time that would get my voice back to a certain stage, etc.

Last night I found the discs, stuck under a desk, gathering dust. On the way to Panera this morning I listened to the close, tight, four-part harmony, the really good theology, and realized that I had missed my old friends. They had been my companions on the drives to Abilene for classes, they had helped me study, they had helped drop the theology from my head to my heart. While getting my Masters a few years ago there had not been much encouragement, so the songs of God's love and sacrifice gave me the will to finish.

So I popped one of these old friends in the player in my little Ranger and sang along. It helped me soften the edge of the theology in my head. You see, when theology is all head and no heart it can become strict and unrelenting, judgemental. Music without good theology becomes soft and formless, worthless when the storms rage around. You have to have both, good music and good theology, music for the heart, words for the head.

My old friends are back and as helpful as ever. They put a smile on my face, as old friends always do.

Godspeed out there on the journey, here's hoping the next stage is a little smoother, a little less rocky.
Don

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Times..They are A'Changin'

There are emerging patterns that I am seeing that re enforce my feeling that times are changing in significant ways. Sometimes these things happen and it comes to nothing, sometimes these events/movements/ideas seem insignificant at the time, but with time are understood to be world changers. We will see.

Over the past several months my workspace has been at our kitchen table, at the laptop, with the TV on in the background. As those who know me, this is a troublesome set up. I admit it, I like people, more importantly, I like interaction with people. This monastic work situation does not suit me well. After a couple of hours of quiet I start looking for someone to talk to. Not on the phone, a real person with expressions and body language and those funny little nervous conversational twitches we all have. To talk and share ideas and disagree and laugh fuel my engine. Maggie the dog is not a viable alternative. So I watch CNN and FoxNews. These two channels are sort of the yin and yang of news TV. They don't agree at all. I flip between the two because it fascinates me how a singular event or concept can have such varying opinions. I enjoy FoxNews a little more and spent a little time reflecting why that was so. Am I closet republican? I always considered myself sort of apolitical. Then I realized that FoxNews is just hammering the leadership, and that is what appealed to me. On further reflection it dawned on me that while I don't want to be in charge, I really don't want anyone else in charge either. It makes my bride a little nuts, but it works for me. But this Tea Party deal is great fun to watch develop. I will tell you, neither one of the big political machines like the newcomer. I'm rooting for them. Our nation needs a good old-fashioned dust up. This political landscape is changing, it can only be good. Meanwhile I need the job to start to get me back in the groove.

On another front, I started a little group on Sunday mornings that will look at what God has done, what His methods are, and where all this seems to be going. This journey started about 6 or 7 years ago for me and I am now exporting the concept. At the core of this thought journey is the realization that "church" as we know it does not work. Oh, it will clunk along for a few more decades, but not much longer than that. Why? I think my son-in-law put it best, "we do not see the value in organized church for us or our family." You have to know this man to understand how foundationally shifting this will be. He and my daughter are what churches look for in their young families..conservative, sensible, dedicated, focused. They have taken a long hard look and discovered that "church" will have to happen relationally. Outside the walls. I decided that after this last meeting, it does no good to criticise or fuss about the "church"..it is dead already, it is now a museum from another time. The trick now is to try and help the younger families key in on what God is trying to do.. to help them redefine what "church" really is. Like a wind chime tinkling the first warnings of the tsunami that is on its way, so we must prepare for the new "church."

And finally, the last shift was personal. After our Sunday morning get together my eldest grandson and I drove to Panera for an early lunch. We were meeting all the rest of the folks in the other car. We talked about this and that..wherever the 7-year-old mind wandered. When we arrived, I scooped him up and slung him over my shoulder and headed toward the restaurant. Over my shoulder I heard him say, "Grandaddy, put me down, this is embarrassing." If words can strike deeper into your heart I'm not sure how. It was one of those moments that is at once sad, and proud. He was saying that this action, while fun and acceptable in the past, no longer fit into his image of himself. He had outgrown it. Internally I wanted to sit and reflect on the moment, to realize the significance of this moment. He was saying that he was not a little boy anymore, but someone who had a self-image that was more mature than I realized. So I had to readjust my mental image of him. I have to respect his image of himself and not my image of him. I'm proud of him and his parents, and I'm sad that this journey moved us to a different, more mature level.

Of course I still have a granddaughter, and two more grandsons who still like to ride on my shoulders and be swooped up into my arms. God is good, all the time. I'm hoping by the time the last one (whomever that might be) decides that this is embarrassing, my back and legs won't take the stress anyway. Years from now.

Godspeed, the shape of the journey is changing as we trudge along. Keep your eyes up and watch your step.
Don

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Here, There, and Everywhere

There are several things that I simply do not understand about this entire "God-thing". It isn't that I am particularly slow, or hard-headed (my bride might argue the point) but it is that I can't seem to get my head around certain ideas. For instance, this "trinity" thing. God is all three? Yet separate? With different roles? Scripture doesn't clear it up much either..God, Son, Spirit all one, yet not all one? It makes my head tired.

While at the weekly assembly a couple of weeks ago, I was asked why I was not at a particular event. I responded that I was performing a wedding at the time of the event, that God was present and all was good. The guy I was talking to said he felt that God was at their event as well...which made my head start ginning out this weird sort of thought string. Was He there? Here? Everywhere?

My mind went to Genesis 3, God came looking for his fractious children, it says he was "walking" in the garden. Okay, located by walking around. At that moment we all know where He was..in the garden..looking for his people. Other scriptures "locate" Him at various times and places. But how does that work? Is the rest of creation being ignored while he traipses around with the most troublesome of his creatures? Is He everywhere at once? So we, each, never get His full attention, but some fraction of it, is that now enough to handle our problems?

Is He nowhere? Has he set this thing adrift with us on it? Is He off spinning up another creation because this one is too much trouble? Which makes me wonder if heaven will only be earthlings...hmm, and we worried about Baptists being there..I can see us getting in and there is a creature that looks like an asparagus stalk named Zortog, great stalk of faith from the planet/star/dimension of Ug. He/she/it sees God as an "octite" (8 beings in one.)

Our ego-centrism sort of demands that He be watching us every moment. I wonder if this is true? This past six months of unencumbrance of employment has taught me that the world keeps spinning without me. Everyone I know has moved on, they are working, they have plans, and if I keep bringing up my need for work (center of my attention right now) they will find a way to not include me in their world. But we sort of demand that God have a deep and personal attachment to my circumstances. Does it work that way? I'm not sure. I feel a great affinity to Peter in John 6, Jesus asks if they are ready to bail out of this entire ministry thing as well.. Peter says, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of life.."

So I don't get it. I may never get it. But where else do I go? Maybe God is in every situation where there is someone who believes He is there. Another head scratcher.

Godspeed, this journey is full of questions for those of us who choose to wonder.
Don

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Old Wounds

In my in-between time in the career journey I decided to straighten up and organize all our papers/bills/tax returns/business papers, etc. and clear out what I could. As I sorted and tossed, it is impossible not to read through the material looking for worth. I work better when I can see everything. So the explosion of paper all over the upstairs was quite impressive.

While working my way through this I came upon all the lesson plans and process development and communication while with the church 4 years ago. The study material and the nice notes were all going into a stack and the calendars and meeting notes were going into the trash. In the midst of all this I came across the final communiques from the leadership and their stern and unbending response to my being there. I would like to say that the anger returned slowly, built to a point, then subsided. Sadly, it mushroomed in my head and heart like all of this had happened yesterday. It seems that I have not progressed much in the past few years. The leadership treated us poorly, subjected both me and my bride to unwarranted grief, and tossed us aside like so much rubbish.

This discovery tempered the rest of my day. It left me angry, morose, and disappointed in myself. To let them have that sort of control over me made the anger even harder to deal with. I spent a few minutes last night with my closest friend and spiritual advisor and he helped me work through it, but it reminded me that the things that make me who I am also create some of the deepest concerns about myself.

I prize loyalty over all else. I give it too easily, and am deeply wounded when it is violated. The leadership team chose to be critics instead of advocates. They did not have the hearts of shepherds, but of controllers. There were/are people still at that located church that we feel close to, people who proved in the subsequent years that they cared more for us, than the job I did. We have not heard from any of the leaders, not one. You would think that they would have a concern for someone that they felt had been led there by the Spirit. They had no loyalty to me or the ministry that I had sacrificed to achieve. You see, loyalty is only expected to be a one-way street, controllers feel no compulsion to reciprocate.

The other thing that really opened the wound again was the knowledge that I was the only one who still cared about this. These leader/controllers have long since forgotten how they treated us. So in some sense they still win. The positive out of all this was the clearly exhibited nature of church leadership as we know it today. This is why I am so adamant about being excluded from the "organizational" church, it is the church that hurts people, and hurts them deeply. It has changed my entire view of what the church is and what it should be doing.

I wonder how many men and families have suffered this same fate? I know of a few, but there has to be thousands over the past few years. Men who are having to find their ministry out of the context of "organizational" church. Men who are having to redefine what it means to be a minister, a missionary. Perhaps we all have to redefine what it means in a culture that has rejected Christianity as a world-view.

The anger has subsided. The cleaning process continues today. The purposes of God continue. The wound is scabbed over a little, hopefully forever. These leader/controllers are simply not worth this amount of angst.

These anger events leave me tired.

Godspeed, never mind my grumbling/mumbling, I'll stop in a little while.

Don

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Going Purple

During this temporary break in my career, I decided to do some things that I don't normally have time to do. One of the things that I thought would be fun would be to spend some time in a vineyard and participate in some aspect of a winery besides tasting and buying. I have that part down cold.

So last Thursday after an email invite to come and help them harvest their grapes, I decided to try my hand at it. Having been raised on a farm and harvesting hay, squash, okra (least favorite) watermelon, sorghum, the list goes on and on, this seemed like it might be nice. You know, get back to the land, do something green, participate in something that is referenced all over the old book with illustrations and miracles and advice. Thursday morning very early I loaded up in my little Ranger and drove almost two hours to the winery.

I arrived at 6:45AM..first one there. It was cool and rainy, and a lovely morning. We were supposed to caravan to another vineyard and help them, but it was decided that we would stay at this winery and harvest their merlot grapes. There is no way to tell what sort of crowd they expected, but at 7:30AM their was a grand total of 4..hmm. Not a big crowd. After some donuts and coffee, a brief lesson in how to harvest the grapes with little handheld shears (without lopping off your fingers) all of which was made easy by the simple rule that we would harvest all the grapes..leave nothing on the vine. We worked in pairs, one on each side of the vine, and clipped our way down one row after another.

The vines were still leafed out, so you had to move them around to find all the bunches. Merlot grapes grow on the vine from shoulder height to about knee height. So you spend the entire time working your way from a squat to standing, bending over for the ones in the middle. You fill a flat, rectangular pan up to a certain level (at the level they indicated the pan would weight about 40 lbs when full) leave that pan when full where it is, get an empty one and start over. I started out with a lady who was handling the vines and the grapes like they were made of glass. The vineyard manager walked by, watched for a moment and told us to not be too careful with the vines or the grapes. The next step for the vines is pruning, the grapes are going to be run through a de-stemmer, then crushed. No need to handle these with kid gloves. Our pace picked up considerably after that, which was probably the manager's intent.

Knees, back, shoulders, and hands all get a pretty good workout after 3 or 4 hours of this. When I got home I realized that my hands were scuffed up in the process, little dings and nicks that I hadn't noticed when harvesting the grapes. At one point I was working across from the vineyard manager and learned more about grapes than I thought possible. She was about 30, a talker, and much more limber than I. Apparently I lucked out picking merlot grapes, cabernet grapes are smaller and grow close to the ground..who knew?
The compensation for this effort was lunch from Chicken Express, all the sparkling wine I could drink, and a bottle of my choice. When we finished I noticed we had ended up with about 12 people. I was going to mention that most of these folks only worked about half as long as I did and they get the same compensation..then I remembered Matthew 20, this may be the first time I have regretted my Masters in Religion..too much knowledge.

One thing I did notice was that I was way under-tattooed compared to my coworkers. All of them had at least one and most had a nice collection. The guy dumping the grapes into the de-stemmer had a big tattoo of a naked woman with a cowboy hat, riding an over sized revolver, waving a Texas flag, on his bicep..which was right at eye level for me. Every time I handed him another pan to dump in, I got a close up view of the tattoo, and we must have had 200 pans or more. He was with his wife/girlfriend/significant other and I kept tyring to get comparative glances from the tattoo to the real life woman. No conclusion. The real life woman didn't look like she would inspire the same dimensions as on the tattoo. Artistic liberties?

After lunch I picked out my wine (a Tempranillo, spanish varietal, a nice deep red) stretched my back one last time and headed home. Reflecting on the turn of events that allowed me to do something as old as scripture, yet new to me. Wine is expensive because it is labor intensive, almost all of it has to be done by hand by people who seem to really enjoy it. I had a good time.

Anyway, Godspeed to all out there who enjoy the vino. The next time you hoist a glass, hold it up to light and look at the color and remember that some slub like me dinged up his hands to pick the grapes, some tattooed guy hoisted them up to get the stems out, someone else pressed them, and all along a winery manager was checking and tasting and keeping an eye on it all.

Don

Friday, September 3, 2010

Re-Orientation

If you are looking for something funny or enlightening or thought-provoking..let me suggest you go someone else's blog. I am going to take few minutes and feel sorry for myself. This is a job we all have to do for ourselves. No one will do it for us.

The past six months have been a study in anticipation followed by terrible disappointment which creates frustration which turns into anger which slowly dissolves into self-doubt.
For six months I have been trying to find the next step (I would like for it to be the last step) in my career. A constant has been the hope that I would work with people of integrity, and people I enjoy. Who knows if this will happen. We almost had deals done only to have investors disappear, money disappear, hope taking a beating. I turned down a couple of job opportunities because I knew the character of the people making the offer and knew that eventually the lack of integrity would attach to me. So I risked the short-term monetary reward on a moral decision. I have put myself and my bride's future at risk to cling to a version of my own integrity. Was it a good decision? I don't know. We have lasted six months because we believe that the merits of spiritual disciplines, particularly frugal living, have garnered us some time. But now the money is running out and very little is appearing on the horizon.

I have discovered some things:
1. I like to work. This has taught me that retirement is not something that I intend to work towards. I like the challenge; mental, physical, emotional of making things happen. It is probably part of my makeup that has driven me forward as long as I can remember.
2. That as a man, this constant rejection is hard to take. It also makes one paranoid. Every non-returned call, email not responded to, delay of decision becomes a statement about my worth. When I am working and being productive it is easy to forgive these slights because I understand the pace of play. But when I am waiting on this end, it is a comment on my worth to society. Then all this bleeds over into all other areas of life, friends and kids and wife all begin to look like they would rather not "return the call" Their lives move on, money is made, decisions are made, the world swirls on, leaving you wondering what happened. The only other one who can't move on is your bride, she is stuck in the same void. So you end up hurting the one you care most about..which does another number on your self-esteem. If I could figure out how to move her out of the line of fire I would do so in a heartbeat. But I have learned that we do not live out our lives in a vacuum, it is lived in the context of others.
3. It is an odd time for a lot of people who are having to "start over" and consider options that only 6 months ago were off the table. Now instead of being the VP of Sales, I need to consider a position that used to fall under my management. The world is reorganizing itself and some us with it. I am not too proud to do this work, it is just that it a step further back than I anticipated. I had a mentor when I was a young man named Charles Pervier. He told me he would do whatever was required as long as he could handle it physically. He said he was not too proud to dig ditches, if his 60-year-old back could hold up. This guy was pretty high up at AT&T. I have taken his words to heart.
4. You have to keep your life as normal as you can. Still go out and see friends, order water instead of wine, split the meal with your bride, let her pick and eat whatever she wants, keep working out, keep your spiritual disciplines in line, try to find ways to help people around you, stay focused on the joys of the moment. This is hard, my bride asked me yesterday if a particular time away helped me forget the frustration of the job search. In a way, yes, but in a very real sense it is never out of my mind, because it has such huge implications for us.

Well we are almost at the end of the pity party. It is time to strap on my pack and get moving again. The best description of me in most tough situations is "dumb and durable" This is simply one of those times when it is best to keep doing what I know will work, take the next step, pack and stow my pride, keep moving.

Godspeed out there. Those who are in the same situation I am should understand that it is not the best and brightest that are still working..but the luckiest.
Don