A Plan to be Spontaneous

It was Thursday morning and we had both just recently awakened when I started a conversation with my wife that challenged us both and changed the course of our next two days. Due to Dayton's snow hangover, she was on her fourth day off work and I had scheduled myself to take a day away from home to find refreshment after a hectic start to the new semester. That's when we realized that our approaches to free time might actually be counter-productive and in need of evaluation.

It should be noted that the two of us are very different people. Sometimes it's quite humorous, our differences, and sometimes incredibly frustrating...on both our ends. She tends to approach life in a "let's get things done" mentality, where checklists and strategic planning are best friends. Meanwhile, I wouldn't call myself flighty, but I do enjoy the back roads of life and don't mind a good detour if it brings refreshment or helps me cross paths with something interesting. On the contrary, sometimes I seek these outlets. In our conversation, our differences were never more evident. I guess both approaches have their upsides and downsides, and I'm very thankful that she is an "on point" person most of the time. It definitely makes it easier in my worst "head-in-the-clouds" moments.

But Thursday morning we noticed that our recent approaches to life were quite mechanical, and in many ways, compartmentalized...likely a byproduct of our daily attempts to squeeze every ounce of productivity out of each day in order to keep up with the hectic pace that in many ways we have created.

After a long conversation and a decision to put off our "free day" plans until Friday, it was concluded that we needed to try to be somewhat spontaneous with our time, as paradoxical as that sounds. Plans were not totally outlawed, but if anything, we needed to plan to be spontaneous. We wouldn't simply drive to the city, make our scheduled stops for supplies, kill ourselves to be productive and turn around and come back with a completed checklist and exhausted hearts. This trip we would allow for some adventure, some rabbit-trails, some venturing away from the norm. And we did.

 

 

 

We walked in a mall. We looked around stores. We bought cheese and tea. We talked and drove. We slipped across the ice and snow-covered Walnut Street Bridge in freezing temperatures, and when we got to the other side, we got ice cream and coffee at a little shop. The details aren't really important though, because it was an experience that wasn't a sum of its products but rather something much more intangible. And somehow letting go of control for a day was a lot less threatening than you would think.

If each life were a photo album to be viewed surely what you would see would be a lot of haphazard shots, seemingly random moments, interspersed with the occasional "staged" photos that lend order to an otherwise chaotic world. What we noticed Thursday morning was that most of what we saw from our own photo album of memories was a lot of canned group shots spread out over large tracks of time with a lot of nothing in between. There was no doubt that the "in betweens" had happened, but there was little to verify their existence. So "Adventure Day I" was born and will likely have many sequels.

Sometimes life needs to come to you, and you need to just let it happen or you're going to die. At times, you've got to wipe the slate clean of all expectations, take a deep breath, turn off the phone and see what is happening around you without checklists and plans hovering over your shoulder demanding productivity. At least that's what I came away with Friday.

What we need is to allow the unexpected to happen, even walk straight into its path, and potentially let it take our breath away.

19 Thoughts from Thursday

Of late, I have become acutely aware of the vast amount of processing that takes place in my head on a day-to-day basis. Though much of what happens is less than mind-boggling, there are the occasional "earth-shakers" that cause me to either momentarily forget about the world around me or find the nearest diversion to derail my train of thought so that I can mentally find my happy place of numbness.

Not surprisingly, I've realized that I rarely take the time to jot these thoughts down, much less actually work through them. So, as a therapeutic and cathartic exercise, here are some thoughts from today.

1. Why do I typically apply more deodorant to my right underarm than my left when I am right-handed?
2. Does anyone really believe the recorded message that says that their call is important when they are on hold?
3. Why do I seem more apt to journal in cold weather months?
4. Is a 24-minute 5K unreasonable for me?
5. At age 32, am I cooler than my parents were at the same age or did they think the same thing about their parents?
6. When we have dinner guests over, why do we feel obligated to put out spoons and knives at meals that don't require them?
7. How well can a person truly know themselves?
8. What was God thinking when he made the world with less sunshine at different times of the year?
9. If I lived a more transparent life would it change those I come in contact with or simply repulse the majority?
10.  Is it possible to purposely pursue spontaneity?
11.  Who took my copies of "21" and "Rocky 3" and why did it take me so long to notice that they were missing?
12.  How can something so vital to healthy living become so loathed in seemingly no time at all?
13. Am I thinking about Heaven, and if so, am I thinking about it terms of "being safe" or in terms of "being fulfilled"?
14. Am I a magnet for odd people?
15. Am I one of those odd people?
16. Would MLK approve of his holiday, both in its focus and how that focus plays out in American culture?
17. Why does no one seem to notice that saying "I could care less" is not usually getting across the point they are trying to make?
18. If it's true that fashion runs in cycles, could parachute pants be the exemption to the rule?
19. Is it possible to understand this life and who God is apart from how I interpret my life experiences, or put another way, is what I believe about God true or simply what is easiest and most comfortable for me to accept?

A Winterized Life

Snow was so much more magical back in 1993 when we survived the "Blizzard of 93." These days the frozen precipitation is far from the enchanting manna it once was back on my 15th birthday in suburban Atlanta.

Time seems to move slower on days like these when winter weather places limitations on plans and normal schedules. The world of white beyond my windows seems to have a personality all its own. Lately, it's felt like a parent shaking a child by the shoulders to gain their attention, though initially it felt like one gently pointing out a fascinating beauty.  

I suppose, like all things do eventually, the interest wore off much too quickly and left me to deal with my self and it's own fickleness.

I'm much more aware of opportunity, it seems, when my options are not as broad as I would like. In some ways, it almost seems that the massive spectrum of possibilities at my disposal on a normal day almost paralyzes me into inactivity or time spent on lesser things. And I only come to this epiphany once certain roads I could normally travel have been taken away.

Maybe this is why the Lord "taketh away", as he did with Job.

Kati asked me today if I knew of a Scripture reference that dealt with time management, and strangely enough, the phrase "evil days" came to mind fairly quickly, which led to Google telling me to look up Ephesians 5:15-16. Strange, I say, because though I'm decent with Internet research, I don't consider myself especially knowledgeable about Bible verses, time management or discipline in general.

"Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil." 

Two months from today I'll enter my 34th year of life, hopefully better off than I was at the beginning of my 33rd. Yet, at the same time, it sometimes takes 6 inches of snow in this small town to strip down the options, eliminate some distractions and show me again that I'm a far cry from a disciplined man, and closer to the image of a rich man squandering his wealth with every step of his life.

And in the end, that's really just another way of saying that I'm a sinner in need of Jesus, I guess.

Happy New Year to you that read...May the Lord bless you and keep you and cause his face to shine upon you and give you his peace in 2011 and beyond.

IKEA

The other day my wife and I made a visit to IKEA in Atlanta, a huge home furnishing type store roughly the size of 21 football fields...or something like that, to purchase a bookcase. For a guy that lives in a small country town, this place borders on culture shock.

IKEA is a wonderfully different store though. It's internationally-based, meaning that you can go to your choice of IKEAs in Belgium, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Malaysia, Kuwait, and around 35 other countries, yet it only has 35 locations in all of the United States. The layout of each store is both elaborate and practical. The second floor houses the showroom of basically everything they offer, already constructed and in cozy arrangements like you'd like to find in your own home, and the first floor is where you'd find all those cozy little lamps and tables and computer cabinets unconstructed and for purchase. It's the ultimate in giving the seller a true vision for what he or she could have, and then, because the store is so huge and there aren't as many store locations to keep up as say a JCPenney or Target, they can offer large quantities of nicer stuff at decent prices.

So it was with great pleasure that we settled on a nice bookcase, that will make our home that much more organized, in a matter of minutes. And then we got to looking at other stuff. You see the store layout is such that to leave the showroom you have to take a short marathon to reach the exits, because the floor has a "start-line, finish-line" design, and if you dare take a "side street" you're likely to get very lost in the abyss of Lazy Susans, kitchen devices, pillows, shelving units, vases, European-style sofas that are 2 inches off the ground, etc.

Some 50 minutes or so later we came near the end of the store, with sore feet, headaches and our pocketbooks relatively unscathed, when we encountered a large bin of inexpensive chair cushions. The price was right, the color was good and we had eight chairs around our kitchen table at home that were not only hard as, well, wood, but also had gotten scratched up a little due to use and a lack of protective covering. After a few moments our conversation went something like this:

"It a good price and who knows when we're going to be down here again."
"It will protect the chairs and...oh but, I wonder if these would be wide enough fit our chairs..."
"Oh, I bet they will. Let's just get out of here and get home."

Of course when we got home we discovered that not only were the cushions a tad too small for the chairs but they also made sitting in the chairs that much more uncomfortable. My wife and I just looked at each other with "we just got screwed" looks on our faces. The cushions only strap from the back of the chair, meaning that the front of the cushions are in a perpetual state of crookedness, like sitting with a monster wedge, and the area of the seat not covered makes your legs feel pinched. Not surprisingly, we removed the cushions from the chairs less than a day later (except for one that I guess we were too lazy to take care of), but only after removing all the tags from four of them, so they're with us forever or at least until we won't feel awful for getting rid of something we never used. The other four may never make it back to be returned either, since it's about a 360-mile round trip to IKEA and the store has a 90-day return policy.

And I find it funny that something that seemingly promised to make our lives more comfortable at an affordable price is doing quite the opposite. We're now four (or eight...time will tell) chair cushions richer and $40-something poorer and our butts are still semi-sore if we sit for too long. We're also short of space in this two-bedroom apartment, so now we also have the question of what do we do with these...things? Yes, the bookcase is nice, but the experience is tainted somewhat by our being taken by a bin of cushions. In my mind now it's sort of equivalent to training arduously for a marathon, running the first 26 miles like a champion and then taking a stop to gorge on a mammoth ice cream sundae before running the final 385 yards.

And it's silly to think that something so small as chair cushions diverted my attention and broke my heart, but there are far smaller things that distract me every day. Things that I'd be embarrassed to tell you about.

I John 2:15 says, "Do not love the world or anything in the world..."

We're not only given a command in this verse, but there's also an strong implication that our hearts will be tempted and toyed with. The world is a big store where we can seemingly get whatever our hearts desire. We will be promised comfort and security and friends and love, but the sad truth of the matter is that those promises are nothing more than houses built on sand. And they'll look really good.

What things are you distracted by right now?

Trick Question

It was once asked of me by a good friend, "how competent spiritually do you have to be to adequately lead others?"

Ah, a trick question, I could tell from the start. I knew that human adequacy had little to do with the answer, yet still, I wasn't quite sure how to answer. You see, the problem is that despite our deepest understandings of the Scriptures and our highest aspirations to godliness, we'll never actually attain adequacy, spiritually speaking.

I was reading today in 2 Corinthians, 3:5-6 to be exact, which says, "Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life."

Each summer I look forward to a time of refreshment, of perspective on life and what lies ahead. I expect a word from the Lord that will focus my heart and strengthen me to serve and lead the other nine months of the year, something that will rebuild my confidence in myself and my abilities to provide sound wisdom and guidance and direct someone to jump off a cliff. And oddly, I came to an understanding recently that the time of refreshment is nearing an end, and if anything, I feel less adequate to lead young men into another season.

I suppose somewhere in my thought process I had an idea that getting married and being responsible for the spiritual, as well as physical, well-being of my wife would pave the way to greater things on the road to discipling my guys. But the truth is that marriage just confirms that each day is a battle to be won or lost, and the next day you start all over again, making mistakes and learning from them.

What I'm finding out is that human competency is probably more of an enemy that a helper in the pursuit of adequacy, because the more competent or adequate I feel to lead, the less likely I am to keep up my guard and depend on the Spirit's working. In our attempts to attain adequacy through our own means we fail to recognize that we're taking the dead end path of the Law.

And that's easy to see from 2 Corinthians 3:5-6, but what's difficult to understand and keep focus on daily is what it means to live by the Spirit. Until we understand what that means and live it out consistently, our feelings of adequacy are nothing more than paper houses.

The Weather Channel

I love the weather channel. I can't get enough of it. It's probably my favorite channel after ESPN and whatever is showing re-runs of Law & Order.

There something about the combination of comfortable, lazy music serving as the background for complete unpredictability that creates a humorous and strangely appealing experience for me. Sweet sax music dances euphorically from my tv's speakers, while menacing dark clouds hang on a golden sun for Tuesday, and sharp pointy lines shoot off the same golden sun on Wednesday. It's almost like their trying to trance me into being comfortable with the thought of torrential downpours and hellish heat jerking me back and forth. And let's face it, they never really know what they're talking about.

I wish I could be humored by my own attempts to create calm from chaos. While mankind has dominated most of our planet through the ages, interestingly enough he cannot control himself, nor the fact that he has no true control over the events of his day. When it all comes down to it, we're all on a level playing field. And we're no closer to successfully prognosticating our days than we are at laying eggs.

My friend Jason once came to a startling conclusion while writing a script for a short film that would hopefully jumpstart his career as a filmmaker. The film was about a young aspiring screenwriter, so caught up in writing his own stories of heroes and damsels in distress that he didn't realize that he was taking too much creative liberty and making himself the hero in the story that was playing out in his own life. The only problem was that his actions in the movie were not heroic...they were heinous. Yet, in the main character's mind, what he was doing was righteous, probably because it fed a desire that he had for himself. A desire to do what he wanted ultimately.

So, Jason's conclusion? "It all comes down to control." It seemed every situation always came back to this same realization for Jason for the next three or four months, and quite rightly, I often would mock his epiphany after growing tired of hearing it once again. It didn't matter what we were talking about, it all came back to the issue of control. I think I eventually countered that it was less about control and more about selfishness...and I'm not sure that there's a whole lot of difference, but the important thing is that I gave Jason something else to think about.

I've grown more attached to this thought over the years, this control or selfishness issue, and more so now as a married man. Marriage breaks down most of the walls that shield us from seeing our true selves, and in most cases, yields a most unpleasant view of a selfish person. And I fight this knowledge, almost longly for some sweet jazz music to be played in the moments when life is not easy, when either I or my wife or both of us are living for ourselves.

This is an earthly life...enduring through the discomfort of change and the certainty of uncertainty for a life incorruptible and whole. May we embrace the music, enjoy the moments and see less of the bent toward self every day.

Oh, and Jason...it doesn't all come down to control.

The Dark Knight

Dark Knight is, well, dark, for lack of better term and to be concise. And I'm fine with that. It's what makes this movie one of the best films I've ever seen. If it wasn't for some untimely car issues, I would have gone to see it a second time today. The storyline, while complex and jam-packed, is well-thought and crisp, and the character development (with the exception of Bruce Wayne) is so much richer than Batman Begins, which was a goldmine in its own right. I really hope that Dent shows up in the next film, because there's so much there to work with, and of course, we have Heath Ledger's Joker.

Let me say too, that The Joker was far more interesting a character than Bruce Wayne/Batman in this film. Christian Bale's performance dominated Batman Begins, and rightly so, but I was disappointed that Nolan didn't focus more on Wayne this time around. Still, there was plenty of righteousness on display through most every other major character in the film, making for what I believe is a typical, though extreme, "problem of evil" film by director Christopher Nolan.

Okay, on to The Joker.

I'm not sure that I've ever been more disturbed by an evil on film. In my opinion, Ledger stole "The Joker" title away from Jack Nicholson within the movie's first 30 minutes.

Ledger did an incredible job at portraying an evil that hasn't been seen much in film. I think what made his portrayal so disturbing was the fact that he was just a human. There are no superpowers or "alien-like" nature about the Joker, yet he seems so other-worldly. I kept thinking to myself throughout the movie "how could a human being be so void of a figment of humanity?" How could he be so human, yet not need even the common things that mankind normally lies, cheats, steals and kills to get? He fed off of chaos. In many ways, I see Nolan's Joker more as a portrayal of Satan than of a fallen man entangled in sin.

And while Ledger's performance was great (I'm not going to jump on the posthumous award bandwagon), I really don't think the movie theatre was bursting at the seams with highly-thoughtful film critics making mental notes of Ledger's quirkiness and cackling and responding with laughter and applause.

Shortly after Rachel Dawes had been killed and half of Dent's face had been blown off (by the way, two of the film's characters fighting against evil) we see a scene where The Joker "visits" Dent in the hospital. He's wearing a wig and a nurses uniform...aaaaaaaaaaaaand people were laughing and clapping in the theatre where I saw the movie...yes, kudos to Ledger for freaking the snot out of me with his flippant behavior in the midst of his killing spree, but I find it hardly worth applause (who are we applauding anyway...I didn't see Ledger or Nolan there) and definitely not worthy of a laugh.

I think that some, perhaps many, of the responses were a result of pure discomfort from the evil portrayed and the true darkness of The Dark Knight, which is a shame because I think to truly appreciate a film you have to let yourself become part of it and sift through the feelings later. But I also know that we live in a cynical world that worships anti-heroes because they don't believe true righteousness exists. Sin is way more fun, and I think that was quite evident in my theatre. The sad thing is that Ledger's Joker isn't even an anti-hero. He's not a Danny Ocean from Ocean's 11 or a John Creasy from Man On Fire...he's completely void of anything remotely redeeming on a human level. Which makes me question what was so attractive about him to the audience in which I sat?

Don't worry, I'm not becoming a "doom and gloom/hellfire and damnation" preacher, but we live in dark times. Maybe "Dark Knight" speaks more to our time that people want to believe.