Life at 3 miles an Hour

How many times do I get asked that question in an average week ... just minding my own business ... heading in to grab some grocery item ... walking through downtown ... on my way for coffee?  I'm not a fan of that question on a number of levels.  First of all, it implies that the intended interchange is only going to take a minute, when a more honest inquiry might be "Can you spare 10 to 15 minutes".  Secondly, there is a level of guilt imposed when my first reaction is "no, I really can't".  I mean really, am I that busy that I cannot invest 60 seconds out of my daily allotment of 86,400 in the life of another human?  None of us are that busy. Lastly, no where in this interchange is there any indication that what is most likely being sought is some sort of financial investment. "Oh you don't have cash on you, that's no problem, we can take a card or Venmo". Practically speaking, one could say just don't engage.  Just ignore. Just say ...

We all know those people ... some of us are those people... the people who have an answer for everything.  There are a few variations of them.  There is the version that is already out in front of the game and pursues their path and plants their flag in it no matter the reality.  They don't even remotely claim to be interested in the opinion, experience, or outright knowledge of others.  There is the version who will engage with the knowledge of others, but then debate them at every turn.  You know that kid ... the one who always has their hand up during class.  Then there is the version who will feign interest in the advice of others ... sometime even seek it out ... as they acknowledge their own shortcomings. When given advice they will then deflect it with the skill of an NHL goalkeeper ,,, continually and unflinchingly informing you of their own justification for the shortcomings of your solutions.  This is, for me, the most frustrating of all the ...

I picked a great day to return.  Alki point is nearly always the place that the Fall and Winter storms batter the Seattle area shoreline. The winds from the North funnel down the sound for a direct hit on our urban peninsula. From the warmth of my window seat in Starbucks I can feel the waves pounding the promenade.  Even from across the street, while sipping on the first of my holiday season drinks, I can feel the concussions in my feet as they rest on this stool. Its good to be back in more ways than one.   This place, once upon a time, years ago my weekly go to writing home, now seems a vague echo of another life.  To be honest, even writing, especially with any regularity has been nearly forgotten.  It's not that I haven't tried.  I've tried so many times to just sit down and, once again be able to process outwardly the internal workings of my soul.  For years, sifting through my thoughts and pouring them into this space and a few others has b...

I've always been a proponent of cause and effect.  Very simply defined, doing this leads to that … very simple and uncomplicated.  Even though culture and an industry of ambulance chasers resists and seeks to eradicate undesirable effects (insert responsibility here), cause and effect still rule the day... unless you're trying to carry a cup of coffee between your legs while driving.  In the physical realm its fairly easy to predict and measure … in the emotional and spiritual realm its a bit more complicated and nuanced. From a human standpoint, it all comes down to choices, for good or bad.  You choose to breakup over a text, you're a looser … cause and effect.  You choose to go shopping with your significant other rather than golf with a buddy, you're a romantic.  These kinds of decisions may seem small and insignificant, but the results are noticeable and often immediate.  I get those. They are much easier to understand.  What I have diffic...

" If I speak in the tongues [ a ] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal."  For most of the past 6 years my existence has centered around what is arguably the most intense urban renewal project anywhere in the country.  For more than 10 years now this 10 block by 10 square block section of the city has been in a constant build mode that is taking place on the streets, under the streets and upwards of 40 stories above the streets.  It can so many days be such a source of stimulation overload.  The daily game of street roulette to determine which street or sidewalk is open and which ones closed became very old very quickly.  I often am driven from my office to seek sanctuary and silence … or at least a dull roar.   Personally it has driven me, against everything I've always believed about interacting with the world, to spend a good part of my days wearing ear buds or even full on headphones.  So, a...

It's been well over 2 years since my last post here.  It's not that I've not been writing at all … I do have other outlets that are a bit more specific to my current role.  I just haven't been able to write here … in my own personal space, unloading and examining my own personal wrestling with faith and function.  It's not that I haven't tried.  Not a week goes by where I don't remember back to when it felt natural to process my inner thoughts and demons while chasing a cursor across a screen.  So many things have happened these past 28 months that could have, should have, and in other times would have found their way to my screen as a record of my having lived them... and yet they didn't. Some of it I'll attribute to living a certain way for much of your adult life, and then suddenly not … at least not in the same way.  Some of it I'll attribute to what I understand of conventional "writers block".  The rest I'll attribute to a...

For most of my life I would have been considered anything but urban. I've lived in the cornfields of the Midwest.  I've lived among the rural farms of Upstate New York. Some of my fondest memories are still the many days of my life spent in the solitude and wild of the Adirondack mountains.  In many ways I am convinced that those were the days that formed my inner places.  I am an introvert by design. I am a writer of sorts and this place breathed the life and contemplation into my soul necessary for words to then be poured out.  I could feel the very presence of God there. The secret places of the forest seemed to wrap themselves around me and even now, nearly 30 years after last stepping foot on those paths, I can still feel them calling to me.  Especially now. These past 17 years I have chosen to live within the city limits of one of our country's major urban centers.  In fact for these past few years it has been considered the fastest growing urban cen...

As I have so many times in the life of this blog, I find myself writing in the midst of another life change.  This time, despite a year ago swearing it would not happen again, we are once again moving ... changing residences ... new address, new neighborhood, even a new zipcode this time.  In reality it is only about a dozen blocks away, but I'm also a dozen months older than the last time, which was a dozen older than the time before, and a dozen older than the time before that.  At this point in my life, I can certainly physically feel it.  "I ain't as good once as I once was". This time though, not only is it felt physically, it's being felt emotionally and spiritually, with a weariness that I'm not used to. Someone recently shared with me that it seems as if, quite possibly, the nomadic wandering is a cost, or a curse, of the path that we have chosen, specifically the path of planting a new community of Jesus followers in the core of a city.  Not just a...

In recent weeks I've been blessed with a  challenging personal question, followed a few weeks later by an opportunity for some rest and reflection, where the question kept struggling to the surface.  The question in this instance was what I considered to be my greatest weakness as a practitioner of the pastoral arts.  The way it usually works is that a burning personal question appears in one form or another, followed by some brief attention and then a dive deep back into the next thing, resulting in not only forgetting the response, but eventually also the original question.  Ironic because my answer to this particular question was my difficulty in slowing down, backing off, and resting. For twenty four years I've lived and breathed "church".  Although there are some in the world convinced that I only work 30 minutes a week during my preaching and teaching opportunities, multiplied where multiple weekend services are involved and an occasional wedding or funer...

In my earliest years I never gave it much thought.  I guess that I kind of had a "the world is flat" opinion that never really prompted a consideration for what lie to the West, beyond "the Great river" that split our country.  Sure I read the text books, saw the movies, studied American geography, played "Oregon Trail".  It wasn't until we made our cross country drive 16 years ago to take up residency on the West Coast that this nagging question "Why?" began to dominate my thoughts on travels back and forth on highways birthed from the wagon trails of old. Every time I find myself heading back to the West on these same highways, I imagine life before these asphalt trails  and the unimaginable effort it took to navigate this treacherous and desolate terrain.  I attempt to imagine the unimaginable and it always leads to "Why?" in so many contexts.  Why would you leave the relative comfort of what you knew?  Why risk for something ...

Generally I prefer relaxed in a coffee shop environment.  All I need is a good blend of coffee drawn by competent hands, a comfortable place to sit, some table space and free wifi, and I'm a happy boy.  Usually, it goes without saying, the relaxed part comes with the territory.  It's an unwritten social norm that such an environment is for casual connections or introverted joyous solitude.  However, at least once a week I find myself seated in a Starbucks where this social norm doesn't rule the day.  Like a moth to fluorescent light I'm drawn to ground zero in the heart of the Amazon campus to be enveloped by the intensity of a culture that rarely rests.  It's rarely relaxed. I usually come away from the experience a bit more exhausted and weary, but I keep coming just the same. There is almost never a line of less than a dozen waiting to order and another dozen waiting on orders placed.  Most conversations are animated and elevated to overcome the ...

I wrote a letter the other day.  When I say that "I wrote a letter", I mean I actually wrote it ... with a pen and actual paper.  I'll have to admit that it was a unique experience.  It wasn't a post it or a memo, it was an actual letter with a beginning, middle, and ending ... on paper ... in ink ... with questionable penmanship.   It was void of all the usual trappings that I have become accustomed to.  There was no spell check, and I couldn't just backspace to get rid of my spelling shortcomings.  There was none of that annoying blue underline grammar check begging the question "are you sure you want to construct this phrase this way?".  I tend to ignore those anyway. Possibly more of a challenge though was my entering in to this letter without a clear vision of where I was headed.  There wasn't even a blinking cursor to follow across the pages.  Actually, this lack of direction delayed its writing for several days.  All I had...

I've never been known for my optimism.  People might even be quick to label me a pessimist, but I would have to disagree.  I consider myself a realist.  In my definition of these terms, and since I'm writing, I get to define them, a pessimist is someone who often or always thinks the worst based on nothing in particular.  A realist is someone who thinks the worst based on past history.  See the difference? For example, I happen to be someone who is very time sensitive.  Some might say anal I suppose ... whatever ... the point is that I live amongst a people who aren't ... time sensitive I mean.  A pessimist would assume that everyone would be late for everything.  I only assume this of people who have proven this to be so.  For the others I cling to my optimism and try not to look at the clock.  It seems to me, in my corner of the world, that we as a culture are far more pessimistic than I remember us being.  What's more alarming...

As someone who has been given a certain mechanical aptitude along with the accompanying joy of building things, living in this neighborhood can sometimes be a virtual playground for my imagination.  In the midst of the expected annoyance of noise, dust, and traffic diversions rises a sense of wonder and amazement of watching buildings from 7 to 40 stories high rise on nearly every corner of my neighborhood ... many at the same time.  Living here and daily walking these streets I have had the privilege of watching these steel and glass giants rise from deep holes formed by concrete and rebar.  Like a time-lapse video, this process spans the course of months until, before you realize what you're really seeing, the finishing touches are being put on and those who have crawled over, under, and inside these structures pack their lunch and tool boxes and move on to another corner and another reclamation of abandoned space.  In recent days, a...

So it's Monday, and as easy as it might be to stand here as if in a hole looking up at at some insurmountable summit, I'd like to see this day instead as the beginning of a new journey.  Even as these words appear on my screen, I cannot believe that they have originated from my fingers ... Or better yet, from my mind to my fingers.  I've been programmed to curse Monday ... to see it as an interruption in the recreational pursuits of a weekend ... or the abrupt return to reality.  We act as if we ourselves were the recipients of the first walking papers that ushered Adam and Eve out of paradise and into the world of toil and unreasonable bosses.  We put our heads down and trudge up Sisyphus' hill ... knowing it's only a matter of time before the rock we are pushing flattens us.   So I ask myself, probably because no one else cares to wonder about such things, where did this all originate? Who was the first to climb out of a warm comfy bed and mutter "ugh, Monday...

We are moving again this week.  It was only a year ago that I said "not again".  It was only a year before that that I said "not again".  We haven't even moved our boxes yet and I am once again saying "not again".  And yet I know this is probably not true.  We did go 11 years in the same house a few years back before our nomadic tendencies have kicked back in.  It seems to be getting worse instead of better.  Last year we moved one block.  This year we moved one building.  Next year I anticipate taking over our next door neighbors I guess.  Walking down through my neighborhood this morning it all hit me square in between the eyes.  Passing new apartment complexes rising right before my eyes, I thought back to these past few months.  Here is the summation of our recent experiences.  We signed on to move into a bigger unit with some much desired outdoor space.  Our faith community is looking for new space in anticipati...

This past weekend I had the privilege of being present for a memorial service honoring a fine lady who passed away recently.  She lived into her 90's and I have had the joy of knowing her these past 15.  Hers wasn't a traumatic death, it wasn't unexpected, and if anyone knew what promise lay before her in the afterlife, she certainly did.  Let's just say that I wasn't attending her service expecting to experience anything particularly profound... And yet I did. For many years my wife and I shared this community of faith where she brought people together for one last occasion.  As I sat there, watching pictures of her life float by, high above the service, and heard stories of her life,  being close to so many who shared life and faith with her, I felt a voice.  Not the big booming, James Earl Jones voice of God ... Rather the still small voice of the Spirit ... I think. I'd love to say after so long in the pastoral arts that I can recognize it, but I'm sti...

If you haven't gained this from any previous posts, you should know that I live in an area of constant transition.  Literally nothing has stayed the same for more than a month at a time on any block in my neighborhood.  It's a constant state of flowing into or out of existence.  I can guarantee you that Google earth will be of little value here.  Less than a year ago we were excited about a partnership with a local non-profit that gave us our first home here as we try to set roots down for a new faith community.  We might as well be trying to settle in to quicksand.  The sign to left here gives you an indication on how long lasting that development was.  Don't get me wrong, I knew this area well enough to know that this was going to be temporary.  It's just that temporary gets so much shorter in this part of the world.  So once again, we look for a foothold to grab onto. It does seem illustrative of the nature of what we are ultimately try...

So a month ago I mused about life that was coming up and decisions on the how's and when's of navigating the path.  A month in, I find myself in the midst of it.  Most of us understand that life can be planned to a degree and then ultimately it has a way of just happening regardless of plans.  When you give over control, it can get even more interesting. My journey of pastoral artistry has taken me down some "I'll never go down that one" paths.  My illusion of where I'd be in the latter years of pastoral artistry has become just that, an illusion.  The latest "never" to become reality is the "never" of graveyard shifts.  I have always valued sleep too much to do anything other than truly admire those who watch over us and work for us in the darkness.  When my story is done it will now include a chapter of working in a family homeless shelter.  I have no idea who thought that this was a necessary side stop along the road to establishing a...

So my last post probably indicated a level of exasperation when it comes to wrestling with God through the medium of prayer.  For the weak of heart it may have seemed a bit jaded ... And I'm sure to some degree that it was, and in fact continues to be.  However, I choose to view it as real and honest, raw and certainly uncomfortable.  It mirrors my journey to a degree. You'll never mistake me for Joel Osteen, I can assure you of that.  Since the last post, not coincidentally I believe, I've engaged in another wrestling match with God that has left me grasping, wondering, grateful and frustrated, mostly all at the same time.  I've found that sharing with others the journey and the wrestling can help,that is of course  until it doesn't.  I've found that waiting on God, meditating patiently, and proceeding cautiously helps, until it doesn't.  I've seen where putting out the fleece of "just one more confirmation" can help, until it doesn't.  I ...