The Corner

be part of passion play

yesterday, i took part in a passion play.  

a lark.

a pilgrimage - to a BBQ joint in Luling, Texas.

in the middle of the week, in the middle of a work day when we all could have been doing something productive or efficient.

after 2 hours of eating & talking & laughing, here is what I had to show for it

 

BBQ is something I have a passion for. pop culture is another thing.  music as well.  friendships are a passion I am finally living out

passion is defined by Wordnik as

passion is something I rarely play at.  I harness passion, I tame it, I domesticate.  that ardent love becomes fodder for making stuff happen.

to use a startup term, I monetize my passion.

that feels horrible to type - it looks disgusting to read.

there is a lyric from a william fitzsimmons song that I have been playing on repeat in my head:

i just want a small part in your passion play

do you hear when i call
in the midst of wrong?
do you hear these here words
while i sing this song?
are you caught up in me
like i heard you say?
or just some big cashier
that i'll have to pay

it is a joy to be a small part in people's passion play - my wife and family, my friends, even folks who paths cross mine.  my enthusiasm - no longer only bound, tied to some big cashier.

a passion play.

us is where my faith lives

someone asked me a while back what I really had faith in - what is past all the words and the opinions, what surfaces at moments of exquisite joy or pain that cuts deep. not what I say or what I claim - not all those distractions or battles or false choices.

what do I have faith in is.

us.

it is really that simple.

us is where my faith lives.

in the lovers' caress after some fight or long night.

in a meeting where recovery is reclaimed after a fall.

in a fight or argument where the topic is secondary to the flash that entangles us.

in a lineage that goes back & forward, side to side, raining down from a cloud if witnesses whose experiences & discoveries are a current that carries us along.

in a truly unique work of storytelling - LOST - where the finale reminds us that  "The hero is the community, the living together."

in a community of faith where life weaves us together, an unlikely communion, grace made visible & present in spite of, not because of.

in a family where edges & scars make the mosaic rich & pulsing.

us.

what ever God is, God is the connective membrane, the tether, the path, the root structure.

God does not come into us - God is us, hands held, limbs entangled.

God is the network - we boot to God, not locally - what I know is thrown in with everyone else, in some stew where the smells & tastes are far beyond any one contribution.

God let me trust you.....

here is the deal.  

i have 2 ends to my trust continuum.

none.  or blind.

i either do not trust you or it or them.

or I trust you blindly.

i start with the NO TRUST setting most of the time.

then occasionally, i toggle over to blind trust.

trust is the relational part of faith -  believing people, giving them slack, going with them.

most of the time, I do not trust God.

I want to bound God, tame God, hold God to my definitions & expectations.

i do not trust God in the NOW - instead I stay with my yesterday wrongs or my tomorrow worries.

every once in a while, I let myself realize where this not trusting God gets me - and then I hear these words from Yo Yo Ma deeply in my soul (hat tip to Kester Smith):

Things can fall apart, or threaten to, for many reasons, and then there's got to be a leap of faith. Ultimately, when you're at the edge, you have to go forward or backward; if you go forward, you have to jump together. 

moving from the house of fear to the house of love

we live here.  it's either the 7th or 8th house we've owned - it's probably the 17th house I've lived in during my 46 years.  i like this house - our family & friends have made it a home.

i've have been thinking some about houses, triggered by a quote from Henri Nouwen.  he frames the Jesus story as one that beckons us to move "from the house of fear into the house of love".

i confess I know the house of fear all too well.  it is a place my mind wanders to, that my heart struggles not to make a home in.  there are so many rooms in the house of fear, places that fit within one another like Russian nesting dolls.

i have noticed that my path to this house of fear is well worn - at times, it seems I run there before I even have experienced something.  my instinct to run to this path is almost hard wired - I am constantly pinging my environment in search of fear, almost addicted to the stimulus that fear provides.

this house of fear is not a home - it is a way station to destinations that are often destructive, a bus terminal that directs me to places that offer black/white solutions and fast food sustenance.

moving towards the house of love is not how my brain reacts, it is not how my knowledge moves.  moving towards the house of love demands a shift, an unlearning, a recognition that there is enough, that I am beloved, that we are connected, that today is where life is being born.

there is a U2 song, an obscure one called drowning man that has a lyric that helps me imagine what moving towards the house of love can be like:

take my hand, you know I'll be there if you can, I'll cross the sky for your love and give you what I hold dear

the path to this casa di amore is traveled together, with a friend or lover offering a hand to hold when the instinct to bolt to the house of fear arises.  i yearn to accept this gift, to relearn at my soul level the love that moves me and holds me and nourishes us all.

more than just a weekend

wow - what an incredible weekend. 

our oldest daughter graduated from Occidental College, along with ~400 other seniors. 

our youngest daughter celebrated her 14th birthday, with friends Thurs then with family while we were in LA for her big sister's graduation.

it was a living testament to the family Lisa & I are blessed to be among.

my dad struggled to be present in our family, even before my parents split.  I never asked him why - wish I had - but I can vividly remember the visceral discomfort he had in family settings.  I carry that with me now, as well a bit of confusion about what a Dad does in daily life.

I am fortunate  to have 3 great teachers.  There is no parent more extraordinary than Lisa - she loves with every part of her being, she is present and she believes with a determination that is breath-taking.  Though it may sound funny, my best teachers have been our girls - Mary & Katie have taught me so much about what a Dad is and what being in a family is all about.

this weekend was a mile marker - hopes achieved, goals surpassed, strong relationships recognized.  I do not hold these lightly - they are more valuable than any job, more important than any deadline.  Families are a dense series of living roots, ever moving & growing, shifting the ground they are placed in. 

I can not remember a time in my life when I felt luckier than this weekend.

Mary Graduates from Oxy This Sunday !

 

We are headed to Eagle Rock this weekend to celebrate Mary graduating from Occidental College !

#1b1t: in a world with its own sense of logic

 

the Twitter conversation around American Gods continues to be almost more fascinating than re-reading the book.  Neil Gaiman has now gotten into the conversation.

there is a quote in chapter 4 that captures so much of what communities and worlds can be like:

"I feel", Shadow told her, "like I'm in a world with its own sense of logic.  It own set of rules.  Like when you're in a dream, and you know there are rules you mustn't break.  Even if you don't know what they mean."

in search of graceful failure ~ turning towards resiliency & vulnerability

Patrick Meier keeps a spectacular blog called iRevolution.  A few weeks back, he had this great post Failing Gracefully in Complex Systems: A Note on Resilience - that has this quote from the scholar Thomas Homer-Dixon about  "the middle ground between dangerous rigidity and catastrophic collapse":

In our organizations, social and political systems, and individual lives, we need to create the possibility for what computer programmers and disaster planners call ‘graceful’ failure. When a system fails gracefully, damage is limited, and options for recovery are preserved. Also, the part of the system that has been damaged recovers by drawing resources and information from undamaged parts.

Breakdown is probably something that human social systems must go through to adapt successfully to changing conditions over the long term. But if we want to have any control over our direction in breakdown’s aftermath, we must keep breakdown constrained. Reducing as much as we can the force of underlying tectonic stresses helps, as does making our societies more resilient. We have to do other things too, and advance planning for breakdown is undoubtedly the most important.

Our world feels littered with catastrophic collapse - from institutions like the Catholic church to natural disasters to a world economy built on things that ended up being a bit too derivative.

My own interior life has its own share of dangerous rigidity and collapse that feels catastrophic.  I am a pack rat in the house of fear I have built, brick by brick - I have my own failures categorized and filed away so I can find them whenever the mode strikes.  I cling to models of rigid rights & wrongs - I too often mistake silent decay or transition for collapse.

I can see this ability to build resiliency, to weave together into communities, to strive for integration rather than perfect.  No rigid pillars, no collapse that ruins all - rather, a path to a graceful failure, one that does not tear at the fabric of our identity.

I am been sitting with these ideas of graceful failure, of resiliency as I have listened a few time to David Whyte from his talk Being at the Frontier of Your Identity (available as a free podcast on iTunes):

You have to enunciate the exact nature of your exile…

find the ground of your own attentiveness to the rest of the world…

It is frightening to do this because as soon as that true presence makes itself known, enormous parts of you are going to disappear, die, fall away…

But at the same time, everything you are doing or not doing suddenly makes sense, [including an appreciation of] what is standing in the way of your real life…

You must turn towards your vulnerability…

And remember: There is no path that goes all the way.

frum: the mainstream media distinction is dead

In this quote from David Frum (hat tip: Mike Hudak), the shift away from a single gatekeeper to a world of small, loosely connected gates is laid bare.  Frum's context is media & politics - you could just as easily use this to describe mainstream religion, civic organizations, even legacy media.

In many ways, we are in the early early stages of these tectonic shifts, with very few norms or standard conventions.  I suspect the gatekeepers will not go quietly into their night - that we will see an attempt to shove the genie as far back into the bottle as she will fit.

confessions of a workaholic

A workaholic is a defined as

someone who has a compulsive and unrelenting need to work

I have to confess that I have been a workaholic since I was 13.  About 18 months ago, I fell off the wagon.  I thought I could manage my addiction, thought that I could set boundaries and stay within them.

I also thought that I understood what was at the root of this compulsion to see so much of my self-worth in how much money I make and how much I can achieve within a professional setting.  I thought I understood the damage this does to those I love, to myself and to the fabric of the relationships I am part of.

This is I know (again): I am Bob - and I am a workholic.

Mine is a relentless scar, one that that I have tended for so long I can not even imagine what life looks like without it.  It is a steady climb, always up - I am sad to say too often over.

I have hiked the mountain range of sugar cubes - short bursts of esteem and self-definition that never satisfy my hunger, never satiate my need.  There is no peak to my compulsion, though there are deep valleys.  For me, there is only the climb.

Peak from cypheraudio on Vimeo.

I am Bob - and I am a workholic. Today, as best as I can, I'll stay transparent with those I love, stay grounded in being a beloved creature of God, stay connected in the communities I am blessed to be weaved into.