That Brutal Nonchalance/The Master Rummager

There's a great part in one of my favorite movies, Magnolia, where TJ Mackey (played by Tom Cruise) stares down his accuser.  In the span of an interview with a reporter, TJ Mackey, a Lothario "motivational" speaker who helps men "tame" women.  The veneer is all but lost.  The machismo has been stripped away.  He's left defenseless as his true identity has been revealed.  He finally speaks, "I'm quietly judging you."  There's pain in that statement, deflection too.  there are some tremendous moments in many of director Paul Thomas Anderson's movies.  Camera close-ups that linger.  We've all been in those situations.  Maybe not as cinematic, but it's our drama nonetheless.  That quiet judgment of others.

Of course the topic of judgement came up with our youth group this past week.  Teaching the class that Sunday helped me get myself back on track.  Satan likes to make you feel worthless as it is, especially when your own standards are set high.  Leading by example is more than just a saying, it's a kingdom expectation.  No, I cannot gain any favor for any job that I could perform, and I would never satisfy God.  But to lie helplessly on the ground like a fish out of a bowl is not the plan God has for our life either.  

Researching the lesson brought me to Instagram.  I wanted to make it relevant to our kids who use social media.  The active kids in our youth are great examples of what to post.  They hardly complain, they understand that people read more into a random thought, and they generally seem to care about what they are promoting.  The somewhat active teens are a little more liberal.  And sometimes that comes with the territory.  The active kids have active parents (generally), while those that don't get dropped off with friends or have a grandma bringing them, sometimes raising them.  Their friends are a different story.  Their usernames espouse attitude, a brutal nonchalance.  Under their usernames are typical statuses.  The high school they attend, the year of graduation, emojis that signify personality.  But then the words get more personal.

Build a bridge and get over it.  You only live once so fuck it.  Can't beat it join it.  Listen bitch if u don't like me i'll find u and kick your ass.

So there's me, a teacher, a father with a 20 year old, a youth leader.  Judgement ends up filtering through the lenses of my life.  Do you judge a situation as uncaring by their parents?  Do I judge the mom who knows it and leaves it?  Would I think twice about letting my daughter hang out with a kid with that outlook on life?  When my daughter was in junior high we ran into many parenting obstacles.  Many were attacked with my foot firmly in my mouth.  I had no filter.  When she went on a shopping excursion with a few girls and a mom and brings back thong underwear, your emotions sometimes get the best of you.  Did I judge a few of those girls and her mom?  You betcha.  Another fiasco was my mouth on Myspace where I told the world no way my daughter was hanging out with the mature-looking blonde.  No way I was sending my daughter into that crowd.  Surely I was in the right?  Yeah, foot in mouth.  Call me Judgementor.

Judgment comes in many forms.  Sometimes its the deflections of your own shortcomings.  As the men's ministry grows one class at a time, it's hard sometimes to see a man's excuse as a means to judge his entire life.  As a Christian we're told to "pray" for them, right?  A person asks you for money but they wont take you up on the offer to fill up their gas tank.  Judge.  The person who is so sarcastic they cannot breathe without uttering a joke.  Surely they aren't filled with the same Holy Spirit as me?  Judge.  You put THAT picture on Facebook?  Judge.

Here I am spending so much time helping people pry logs from their eyes, I can't see the planks in my own.

I've always been an observer.  I noticed the woman pulling folded food stamps from her purse with the look on her face if the amount would be enough to cover the four jugs of milk.  The look of a girl who really didn't want to hug that guy friend of hers, rolling her eyes as he pats her back.  That skill eventually became one of the many excuses I had from running from God.  I remember sitting in church and witnessing the congregation.  I could have pointed out the drug addict, the adulterer, the slut.  How could so many contradictions remain under one roof?  How can the priest sanction this behavior?  All this as I was drowning in my own transgressions.

And when I strive to be God's man, that gift of observation becomes ever so prideful.  I catch myself thinking it, confiding to my wife, my share group.  It "goes away" and comes back.  Like any other sin, to extinguish its affects is to break free form its enjoyment, however fleeting.  On the flip side of that, that judgment mixed with love has interesting effects too.

It helps me realize when to post on an Instagram account to a text message instead.  Less eyes.  It helps me speak into the lives of the youth about their grades or the truth about their relationships (one word: overrated).  It gives me patience with my students (and when to back off the pedal when  it comes to motivation).  It allows me to set standards for my kids without calling out the choices of other families.  Pointing fingers never won anyone over to the Kingdom.  My stubby ones surely wont either.

Other thoughts this week too.  At school, God opened up a door in my life I didn't want opened.  Which is the messy truth about letting Him in.  He's the master rummager, the best interior designer of the heart that ever walked the earth.  He moves furniture that is past its due date out for bulk pick-up.  He paints the walls.  He escorts people out the back (or maybe we do, cause Jesus would invite all wouldn't he?) and sells your luxury SUV for something more economical.  There used to be a show called Trading Spaces where couples would redesign a room for one another.  The big reveal was always the show's best moment.  The look on a husband or wife's face when they see their new rooms are typical of our pride.  Sometimes they cry, sometimes they are shocked.  But every once in a while they stand there with that look on their face.  The one that screams, "What happened?"  Or, "you had all this time and you chose THIS?"

We want the prosperity and the blessings and the prayers fulfilled but in the meantime we are wary of the hurt, the change and the sacrifice.  Like the student this week who was transferred into my room.  I judged him as the bad kid, his mother even worse.  Open a door for me Lord and I'll respond, I've prayed before.  In walks in this kid and I'm looking to slam it.  The mom sat in with him for 3 days.  Totally atypical for a classroom observation.  My colleagues whispered to me in the halls, they questioned why, they injected me with visions of revolt.  I had to change the subject so many times I felt like I wasn't being sincere.

You see, I wanted that release of frustration.  I wanted to pound drinks at happy hour and complain on twitter.  I didn't want to be a change agent, but there I was teaching through it, hardly missing a beat.  I think the kid will return without mom next week.  Maybe he leaves to his online destination, maybe he doesn't.  One thing's for certain, to God the time now matters.  Each person in our life is a reason to respond to the love given to us.  Judgment is easy.  Love is hard.

Jesus wants to redesign more than a room.  Trading Spaces.

The Epiphanies No One Sees

I'm going to think twice listening to Christian music when I work out.  Just that sentence alone sounds horrible, so let me set the context.

At Planet Fitness the endless line of cardio machines, ellipticals, sled glider machines, steppers and bikes all point to several 50-inch or more flat screen tv's that offer an stream of news, sound-bites and talking heads.  The major news stations are on, Fox News and CNN, plus the local channels and ESPN.  I typically work out from 5:30-7 on a few given nights which is when the news and entertainment shows are in full swing.  A few weeks back after the MTV Music Awards, Entertainment tonight and its broadcasting cousins aired nothing but Miley Cyrus.  It was close ups of Miley's tongue, close ups of her butt cheeks hanging out of her short shorts.  Shots of her swinging naked on a wrecking ball.  I felt embarrassed to even watch,  Not that I don't sneak a peak at women.  But there's something unseemly about Miley Cyrus, perhaps in the fact she looks like she's 12 but she parades around like the woman you hope to meet in some dark alley (well, I don't hope to meet, but you get my drift).

Most times its the news.  Obama care and his broken promises about keeping your insurance.  Is he dishonest or a liar?  Isn't that one in the same?  The video from the recent biker group that chased a hit and run perpetrator has been plugged a lot recently.  And of course we get the video of the car rolling over a human being.  We get men acting violently, attacking the car and beating the windows with their helmets like fervid zombies.

Today the news in our city involved the beating death of a 4 year old girl.  The girl suffered multiple skull fractures that were delivered by the mom's boyfriend.  The child's grandmother and family were caught by cameras in the courtroom hallways, being asked the types of questions no family should have to ask.  The grandparent is interviewed shortly afterward as he condemns the accused to hell.

On another screen there are other tales of woe.  A man weeps on his porch,  Words from athletes blurted out, redacted for the masses.  I've heard about bullying and harassment so much over the past few years you'd think there were gangs on every street corner waiting to take your lunch money  (In this fantasy, the gangs are always dressed according to their "specialty" like the ones from the 1979 film, The Warriors.  Baseball bats and white painted faces.  The roller-skating, overall gang.  I'm sure there are gangs of bullies running in my mind all wearing camouflage and Duck Dynasty beards).

I'm inclining on the treadmill seemingly towards the direction of the tv's and it's like that moment in a movie when the music swells and the camera tightly wounds around the face of the protagonist.  The moment of epiphany is about to happen (for a great example, see Magnolia).    The audience's heart begins to beat in unison with the character.  Being witness to the epiphany is cathartic in itself.  The release of tears becomes inevitable.  Cue music swell, the character blinks and the moment is over.  Cut scene.

But I'm at a Fitness center.  All I want to do is drop to my knees (thanks to this song here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_6JQDsbtlM) but the thought of dropping there on the treadmill would send me into the wall which would result in a fireball of embarrassment so intense it would burn like a thousand suns.  So I did what I thought best.  I began to pray.  I prayed for the man to forgive the man who bludgeoned the poor girl to death (all I could think about was my little girl.  Who would beat a little girl like that?  Seeing her little teeth, that smile.  God, that just kills me thinking about it).  I prayed for the family whose son is now behind bars.  Surely this is not the life plan they had in mind when they held him lovingly for the first time.  I prayed for the football player who thought it was just "fun" to say he was going to stick it to a sister of a teammate.  I prayed for the sports newscaster who recently lost a daughter in a car accident.


I came across the parable of the seed from Luke 8. A farmer goes out to scatter his seed.  Some falls along the path, among the rocks, some in good soil and others among thorns.  The seed that grows among thorns  grows, but it ends up being choked by the thorns.  In a worldy view, growing up through thorns would be considered superhuman.  These are the uplifting stories we get from athletes and public figures.  The adversity they faced living in the tough neighborhood, the deaths of family members or close friends.  The close calls that lead to those epiphanies that no one sees.  In the broken world we live in, the thorns are evident in bunches.  Among the 27 students in my 5th grade classroom, they are the seeds growing among thorns.

But I'm not so sure Jesus told us this parable for us to strive for adversity in living a life that's called to seek justice, a call to a life that's bigger than oneself.  It's a cautionary tale.  How many Christians make it through a life that is surrounded by naysayers, doubters and gawkers?  The world wants revenge, the Christian wants forgiveness.  Thorns v supple soil.  Adversity and trials come at a moments notice and we have no idea how to respond.

Like tonight when I turned the van around and drove back home.  I simply had more of my fill of the world.  All I wanted to do was cry.  All I wanted to do was pray.  I think it's okay to do both.

Metallic Grease

Not much good comes from a story that begins in the doctor's office.  But mine is going to start there.  After telling the story to a co-worker earlier this week, it made her feel as if I were somehow terminal.  She later brought me into her office where she closed the door behind me (nothing good happens when you're called into an impromptu office visit, the door closes, and whispering commences) as she began to ask me how "sick" I really was.

I didn't even have a fever.

I had wheezing the afternoon at the doctor's office.  A headache, a dull one.  The day at school had been spent with my voice at nothing really higher than a whisper.  I chose not to call out sick.  Sometimes as a teacher, it's more work to call out than it is just to suck it up and go to work.  I would have still been awake early and driven myself to work to hustle out some simple lesson plans that would not have been followed anyhow.  Depending on the presence of the sub, I would have come back to school to a room full of fires to extinguish.

Before my appointment, the kids received their flu shots and my son had his check-up.  I spent 15 or 20 minutes admiring my kids.  My daughter in her stretchy jeans and boots, my son in his droopy shirt, in need of a haircut and his mind filled with nothing but the adventure of future conquests.  He's small for his age, and his lineage is rote with blunt-legged and squatty rumps.  I think sometimes that as long as he isn't overweight, I can live with anything.  That's my brokenness, I know.

I was about five minutes late to my appointment by the time we were done.  All I wanted to do was nap.  The doctor walks in.  "How you feel?"

"Great," I answered back.  And the doctor seemed to pause and then gave me the type of look that meant to say, "Really?  You're great, you say?  Maybe I should ask again."

Up to that point, it was "S'all good."  It's the epidemic written from The Sleeping Giant, a class I'm having the blessing to lead every Wednesday.

It's what most guys think anytime you ask them how they're doing.  "S'all good!"  Even if it isn't true, men will say otherwise.  I have cracks on the surface of my life.  The piles here among the house, the subtle reminders that things need repair.  Our second vehicle's drive shaft literally ripped off the clutch.  I can't even get it out of park.  It sits there on my driveway.  One day it will certainly have a flattened tire.  The van we drive each day has taillight problems.  Not good to know when you're upon the darkest season of the year.  Fluid built up on the passenger side light.  I repaired it, but perhaps the initial water caused a short because both lights are out.

My personal maintenance needs work too.  Months ago I was supposed to have blood work done.  High blood pressure was on the agenda.  I failed to follow up.  My ongoing affair with obesity continues to mark my life like a ketchup stain on a black shirt.  You can scrape it away but there's still that stain everyone can see, metallic grease.  I didn't follow up with my dentist this summer.  My mind is a constant race of thoughts and agendas once the lights are turned off.  The book I'm leading mentions that one reason men don't enter into Bible studies or church is that the men they view as "saved" are the men that seemingly have it "all together."  Nothing could be further from the truth.  If not for God, I'd be a walking jello--spineless and adrift.

So for all intents and purposes, I felt I answered honestly.

But there's some truth in how we interact with one another.  Jokes are telling sometimes, as they reveal our true nature, those buried feelings that are awkward.  Sarcasm is like that to.  Sighs, blinks, the non-verbal ticks and looks that give away someone's thoughts when you're in a conversation.  Perhaps it was God kicking me in the shins.

You sure about that, brother?

Well, I was.  But now that you mentioned it...

Devotions.  Prayers.  Clean up the house.  Sleep.  Rest.  Get better.  Heal.

It's my RX for the future that lies ahead.

Embedded Glass

This past Tuesday at my weekly humbling soccer game, whereby my coaching credentials get shredded by each opposing goal after goal after goal, I had a player completely meltdown on the field.  We gave up probably our 15th goal in 8 minutes and she turned and just started crying.  Right there on the field.  Huge Old Testament tears.  For the first time in quite a while, in all the games I have coached, I had no idea what to do.  I think deep down she must have felt some kind of disconnect with myself and what was going on in the field.  After about the 5th goal, my typical peppy, encouragement-driven, energy-enthused leadership turned to sighs and inward groaning.  I think at one point I stopped blowing my whistle when the other team scored.  I might have even clapped sarcastically at one point.  Even Reycina looked at me quizzically at one point and I was saddened to see that the seed of the coach-daughter relationship had been planted on shaky ground.  "I should have kicked that ball, right?"  I answered with a, "Duh."

Driving home I felt like I was explaining my behavior to the rear view mirror.

Just because I'm a Christian doesn't mean I don't have bad days.

I can't always be "on."

I know we don't take score, but then don't have a goal.

All were pathetic excuses for the behaviors of a man who simply fell short.   Coaching isn't the only aspect that had  begun to form thorns in my side.  It's those teaching moments when you've spent 30 minutes talking about respect and you find three girls in your class passing a note amongst themselves calling one another "bitches."  It's leaving church and hearing the kids talk about honor and serving one another only to fight five minutes later.

And when those thorns dig other events in your life seem amplified.  My poor wife had this small, stubby bump on her foot this past month which was probably from an embedded glass she had stepped on.  Every time she stepped she felt it.  That's how those moments feel when they happen.  Trivial events when pulled alongside and analyzed.  Forgotten unless they were jotted down in some blog like this.

Like the initial stress of new questions and eyes of wonderment from a new kid coming in 8 weeks after school has started.  The computers freezing at the moment of an observation.  The parent at dismissal who hit a parked car three times but said, "It wasn't my fault."  The back yard that is only 1/3 cut.  Your daughter crying in the morning because she can't find her bookbag.  Like each step feeling that embedded glass.  It stings some but you get over it.  But it's always there.  That nag.

This past Sunday our pastor spoke about having that winning attitude.  He made sports analogies which always resonate easily with men, especially with me.  Being from Houston, I've been witness to sports failures and a culture of losing, from the Oilers to the Rockets and my beloved Astros.  Only someone from Houston really knows the pain of the Warren Moon years, losing that game in Buffalo, choking in the playoffs.  My brother and I reminisce during the Hakeem Olajuwon championship years with the Rockets.  Clutch City.  Rudy T.  Mario Elie's kiss of death.  And then the Astros who have taken losing to a new low.  Swept in 2005 to the White Sox, Brad Lidge's hanging slider to Albert Pujols, the last few years when we've looked like a minor league team.  My dad always joked to my grandpa that he was the "jinx" that kept us from winning.  But that culture of losing had more to do with the futility of our sports team than anything my grandpa did.

But those attitudes of losing permeated throughout the city and into my own life growing up.  You begin to outwardly express yourself in ways of the culture just to overcompensate for all your shortcomings.  Losers complain.  Losers make excuses and losers embed the glass even deeper with every step they take.

So when it came time for me to share my closest to Christ moment (those who have undergone the Emmaus walk know what I am referring to here), I had some digging to do.  It didn't come to me at some epiphinal (sign of a good blog?  Make a new word) moment this week that would have stopped the traffic of my being.  But I found some moments.  Like when the kids and I compared our square-shaped smiles in the rear-view mirror.  Or the laughter I had with my fifth graders listening to "What does the fox say?" at indoor recess.  It's the wonderment of a captured prey mantis in a pickle jar.  It's the synergy of men who wear Star Wars shirts on the same day.

The automatic things we take for granted.  A car starting.  The taste of coffee.  Lights that brighten a room at the flip of a switch.  I wish men's ministry was that easy.  Flip the switch and discard the failures of the past, that losing attitude.  It's stepping in carpeted green fields instead of glass.  The glass you don't see, the glass you don't feel until days later.

The Treasure that Counts

I love me some Indiana Jones.  Besides the cultural impact the films have had on future directors and adventure films (despite the last clunker where Dr. Jones survived an atomic bomb while being hidden in a fridge), the opening night frenzy when it opened forever branded in my brain the era of the blockbuster.  I remember waiting in a long line at Gulfgate Mall (there was a bridge that spanned the freeway, or at least it seemed that way) my mom and dad waited in.  By the time we reached the box office the show had sold out.  Incidentally we say "Lady and the Tramp" instead.  But this blog is about adventure, treasure and what we hold dear.  Talking dogs, while endearing, will have to wait another day.

Dr. Jones went to amazing lengths to secure museum artifacts.  He braved snakes, Kate Capshaw's incessant screaming, Thuggee cultists, eyeball soups, German inquisitors, CGI-created fire ants, a precocious Korean child and even George Lucas.  But one thing remained--Dr. Jones's sense of adventure was the one thing he cherished, the one thing he he treasured.  Those that opposed Dr. Jones were always portrayed as snarling, greedy comic-book inspired villains.  The nefarious Dr. Belloq who was in bed with the Nazi's or Mola Ram, who literally embedded his hand in the hearts of men; treasured their own power and possessions over the integrity of Dr. Jones.  True as well, each artifact that sent Dr. Jones tumbling from a rolling boulder inevitably was followed by henchmen, villagers and scoundrels who valued the riches beyond the relic.  The audience only saw the treasure's importance through Harrison Ford's transfixed gaze.  If my son were holding any of the props now he'd have it buried in a toy box within hours.  Someone on one of those pawn shows would have been haggling over the price in hopes of financing their dream vacation.  A villager would shoot a blow dart in your neck just to get it back.

But treasures are relevant to the user.  How many of us know someone, maybe even ourselves, that hold on to antiques and heirlooms in hopes of breaking the bank one day?  At our Life Group this Friday, we were asked about the one thing we would move heaven and earth to retrieve if were lost.  The obvious answers are our kids, our spouses, but I think what the question really wanted us to admit were the things in our lives that hold hostage our time, the things we stress out over the most.  I confessed that my iPhone and BBQ pit were 2 possessions lately that consumed my time and thought.  Sometimes it's my laptop, other times it's losing my wallet.  Worry seeps in too.  Is it worry that keeps me nervous for the entire 6 hour or longer roasting of meat?  Is it worry that keeps me reaching for my phone, looking for that one "like" of confirmation, that one retweet that will compliment my life?

I know by this time in the blog I'm blessed to have minute, trivial worries.  I am blessed to not be battling sicknesses.  The bills sometimes cause some undue stress and that's also a lesson in my own spending habits. But the dumb things I worry about expose my sin more that ever, and it's apparent that God meant for me to hear them.

Like food.  This past week I fell into the old trap of allowing food to dictate my mood.  My wife makes lunch for the both of us every day (one of the perks of working together) and chose a spinach-apple salad for lunch one day.  I wanted meat (which incidentally I had some steak left over anyways) and something more substantial.  I made faces over her homemade sweet, honey-induced dressing.  I threw a tantrum like a married man does, I stomp away and sigh.  Then again during the week I made a comment here or there about what dinner consisted of.  Here's my poor wife, treasuring me and the family by making dinner for us, and me complaining.

But worry is like that.  Even when you presumably have nothing to worry about, it finds a way to seep back into your existence.  I have parents at work worrying about how they're going to feed their kids next week when the government subsidies fold under the weight of this current shutdown.  My friend is one of 2 working at the local airbase while the rest of the group is on furlough.

I believe some of the worry we carry as Americans is from the constant barrage of fear and consumption provided by the media and advertisers.  Culture has placed these new norms on our lives, like a new car, 401K's, retirements in Tuscan villas and you-deserve-it vacations (anyone find it ironic all these Carnival Cruise ship fiascoes seem to be happening more and more?) and credit card purchased rewards.  While our Protestant work ethic has given way to TGIF and I-hate-Monday mantras, the jobs that used to sustain our grandparents are no longer available.  I hear from many Ohioans (Texans were different, but that's probably more cultural than anything) about how their dads retired from jobs they held longer than most marriages.  Those jobs just aren't around anymore.  Thus, the worry of upgrading our homes, the bombardment of bad news from tv and our own self-conscious feelings of inadequacy on all fronts feeds this constant worry.

True as well, men have always valued money.  Greed was alive in well in Jesus' time and our own.  We'll line up at the Gulfgate mall movie lines for hesit movies, gangster flicks, wall street hustle films and stories about addictions.  But living a Kingdom driven life means we should treasure the things God treasures.  Just think about the inception of Adam in the garden.  God spoke all the world in existence.  But for man he chose to mold him from mud.  He breathed life into him.  The birth of Eve is even more breath-taking.  He chose to mold her from a man.  That takes not only precision of a deity but the compassion of a maker.

One of my friends from group asked, "Am I building a fortress around my relationship with God?"  The creator who took his time when he made us, perfectly in one shot, who chose us before we even existed knows our heart better than anyone.  He knows we worry about so many trivial things, the useless belongings and aches of the world.  But he loves us too much to simply let us be.  He nags with love.  He knows that once we find the treasure that counts we'll understand.  I found a glimpse of that in an Oklahoma wheat field.  I am beginning to see that in the glimpse of people I don't even know. Amid the lesson plans, bills, laundry and laziness, the yearn of God's heart beats on.  So, what's there to worry about?

Hijacking the Meatloaf

I think if my students were asked to rate my mental stability they'd rank me a yellow or red on the crazy-o-meter.  I can imagine what they must think when they hear me telling a kid that when he says "I don't care," that I'm going to "care times 10" (like that guy in the Bible, "Jesus, do I forgive them 7 times? Response: 7 x 7!).  You shrug your shoulders, I unshrug mine 10 times.  So I'm walking next my class in the hallway trying to "unshrug" my shoulders while they tried not to laugh.

Or the other day when some of students and others saw, during dismissal, a grandmother "go off" because she was ignorant of our dismissal procedures.  At one point she told me that she was 51 and wasn't going to argue with me, peppered with a few choice words the building crowd of kids surely heard.  Afterwards I claimed that my ten plus years in school allowed me to fire back when parents (and grandma's) get unruly.  I feel like Howard Beale from "Network" ranting on the airwaves: I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

So what am I complaining about?

Perhaps it's the urgency of teaching as we know it.  Or as I have become to know it.  It's 2 hours of Reading, almost 2 hours of math and it's mostly intervention because the kids come so behind.  I had a first grade teacher tell us in exasperation that she gets all her kindergartners on level and where there are supposed to be.  So what happens by the time they reach 5th and they are barely reading above 2nd grade level?  All I keep referring to is that the #1 thing all the kids and parents need is an infusion of the Holy Spirit.

I know what that must sound like to a skeptic reader.  News headline: Teacher confirms Holy Spirit raises tests scores!  But that's what's different about the teaching of today.  Data, short cycle assessments and individualized instructional plans.  I try to get in God as much as I possibly can by just living life in a such a way that's attractive and energetic.  I get fired up over "I don't cares" and ask my fifth grade girls to give me ideas to make their recess more of a safe place instead of the current pack-of-wolves mentality where they feasts on each other's insecurities (They want to play volleyball and board games).  But how much of a positive change can I really make when I can't mention the one difference that lasts a lifetime?

I met a former teacher a few days back and reminisce about the old days.  You can chuckle with any veteran teacher about mission statements, resurrected reading programs, defunct math initiatives and new administrator regimes.  Our new superintendent fits this new breed of thinking.  He sends weekly emails with craft ideas, random thoughts and pump-me-ups.  My old friends remember when the last superintendent came in with fanfare only to retire years later before the idea of change flamed out along with 6-figure a year cronies and failed proposals.  The "good ole days" were somehow these idyllic images of white kids in rows sipping instruction through twisty straws of knowledge.

All I remember from my early days of education were ruler knuckle slaps, bus ride shenanigans and holding my food tray above my head during 2nd grade lunch detention.  If those were the good ole days, I somehow missed the memo.

But that's what we do in most facets of life.  We hark back to some bygone era with fond remembrance and it gives us that distant, far-off look.  I love my memories.  My Uncle Richard and his hairy legs, my cousin's birthday parties where we blasted pinatas and ate a never-ending supply of beans and rice.  My dad working for Ozarka water, that blue uniform of his that made him look like a water mail man.  My mom's dabble with smoking.  Running the neighborhood with Jon Patterson and trick or treating until the homeowners grew too tired to stay up and decided to leave their candy bowls on the front porch with a note.  But in times of change and and upheaval, we cling to the old with such ferocity that we fail to see the advantages coming our way.

Our church is going through some major changes.  New initiatives, a strengthened vision and the dust and new paint smell of reform.  I haven't been in church long enough in my adult life to know any different.  How can I when my son looks for his friend on the "new members" bulletin board in hopes of seeing them for the first time.  But other families have chosen to leave.  Good men, strong families.  One of the reasons I've been just as urgent with the men's study is I want not to lose one more good man to the lure of another church.  Where's the adversity and trial by fire spirit?  We want to be fed by the Holy Spirit but we don't always like to feel the flames of conviction.

It reminds me of serving on team for Emmaus walks.  During the weekly meetings, the scripted details and logistics are spoon fed to us so that the experience for the new pilgrims will be enriching and inspiring.  Inevitably it comes down to standing aside while the Holy Spirit leads.  Then there's the meatloaf.  On each Emmaus walk, because it's a live-in retreat, you're fed like no other church function in the history of food.  The meals are quite legendary, and when any of them are changed, people react.  The meatloaf dinner was a Saturday night staple of each walk, but really only for those team members who were blessed to serve on team.  As far as the pilgrims knew, it was a meatloaf dinner.  To the live-in team, the experienced Christians who were the leaders and conduits of Jesus, the meatloaf was akin to the fond cul-de-sac bike rides of their youth.  Several years ago, the meatloaf went away for some new meal, I think a pork loin.  Someone hijacked the meatloaf.  And Christians, men and women alike, took issue.  Not with doctrine, not with the delivery of the tent poles of faith, but the meaty goodness of a meatloaf that was no longer there.  There became so many rumblings, the leaders finally had to literally remind the live-in team that their longing for the days of the meatloaf were coming off as more of a complaint.

In class tonight, one of the men were studying the sermon notes from our previous pastor almost 19 years ago.  It was his last sermon from the pulpit, and from what I understand, it laid a foundation of changes to come and an inspiration to adhere to.  I wonder if his words were prophetic or lip service.  How many people who listened live 19 years ago are still members now?  How many of them have been awaiting the new changes like songbirds, or have they kicked themselves because the money they tithed is now considered a loan rather than payment.

There's been some serious prayer for direction and discernment towards the men's class and where God is taking me and the men of our church next.  The more I blog and talk about trusting God, God inches me further away from my comfort zone.  The meatloaf was never mine to begin with.  Lucky for me, I like to share.

Pause. Listen. Play

Sometimes we think listening for God means we must listen for some omniscient booming voice, a cross between an echo and Marlon Brando in Superman.  Some people do have some great stories.  Mine have always been the indirect kind, the right song getting into the car after share group, meeting that certain person, good conversations and being convicted at church.  It can even come from books we are reading and movies we see.  It's also being more intentional and being open to listen.  I don't want my moment with God to be on the downward spiral of some benign event.  I want them to come in the mundane, the ritual, the part of life you least expect.

God spoke to me in the form of 4 fifth grade boys who were destined to be separated due to their past year's behavior.  Each time one of them morphs their face into some ball of pouty immaturity, He speaks.  Or when one steals a homework, erases the name and enters his own in hopes of getting credit, He speaks.  Or when they perform outside of their expected zone of failure, He speaks.

God spoke to me at the gym last week, when some random stranger with chiseled arms stepped out of his way to give me a hi-five as I lumbered through a set in the circuit.  It's been in the form of text messages from friends.  It was in the voice of my mom. He lies in the heart of my sister.

Tonight He spoke to us in a movie.  My son and I have been pausing through segments from "Life of Pi" over the past week.  The kids ask so many questions when we are watching something at home I'm pausing to get through it all.  Eventually we get to the meat of the intro, when Pi begins to find his foundations in God.  His mother is a Hindu and he's shown sneaking through a comic book like adaptation of Krishna.  Later, he meets Christ through a series of encounters with a priest.  He cannot understand how God loves the world of sinners but he finds himself enamored with this Jesus character.  Later, he finds the ritualistic prayers in the Arabic tongue to his liking and begins to incorporate Muslim practices into his daily life as well.

During dinner, his scientific father and disapproving brother chastise him over his juvenile theology.  Cruz chimes in, "They should just leave him alone."  He sounds a little like the boys' mother from the film.  Cruz, of course, sees everything through a Jesus prism.  He does not know about the world's other religions that will surely try to contradict his views.  But he hears "God" and knows it to be His.  One in the same.  Clear cut.

So the movie gets paused.  I give an elementary synopsis of Hinduism and Cruz jumps into asking me if I was always a Christian.  i love these questions.  I tell him I knew God existed, I knew what Jesus did in only a definitive verb-like sense, but not what it meant to me personally.  This past summer he accepted Jesus into his heart at summer camp.  I told him it was something like this that occurred some years back for me.  You can't just know of God.  You have to bring him into your heart.  You have to want to be like Jesus.  (Meanwhile, my little girl is telling the entire house she is definitely a Christian because she wants to be like Jesus everyday.)

I don't even know the segueway from one conversation to the next.  But my wife came in next from the kitchen after being asked the same questions I had been answering.  I know that in her faith walk there was a time of acceptance and a time of doubt.  Much of that doubt stemmed from a suicide in her family.  It would be disrespectful to bridge that sentence with that story.  It's not mine to tell, but I can reflect on the impact the story had on my children.  Reycina, to her, all is black and white.

That's just stupid.

My son is the questioner.  He has to see the logic in the actions.  He cannot go from point A to B without all the connections making sense.  I know the leap from what drove his deceased Uncle Terry to take his own life will not be understood by a 4th grader considering the family that loved him undeniably still wrestles with that question.  But the topic brought forward more conversation about the words we choose and the feelings we generate sometimes conflict with God's overall plan.

Doubt.  Just one seed grows like a mustard tree.  Unlike faith, doubt can course through your veins like some disease only a filmmaker could fathom.  Scanners.  In the end battle between good and evil, the Scanners, from an old science fiction film I loved by David Cronenberg, literally stood before one another trying to melt one another's minds using nothing but glances and sound effects.  Doubt battles faith each and everyday.  I'm a true believer of it.  It sometimes festers in me.  I prune one seed of doubt and the devil plants another.  Jesus pulls me free from the vines and I go and step into the briar patch once again.  Doubt about which direction.  Another movie comes to mind.  Tom Hanks at the end of Castaway.  In a movie full of great moments and grand decisions, he can't realize figure out if he should follow the girl of his dreams.  Seriously?  That's Jesus looking at my movie.  He's released it from the pause button and shaking his head and wondering why i'm still in the same place.  Seriously?  When does this movie ever begin?

I know my life's greatest hits are in his Netflix queue.