Life at 3 miles an Hour

Back again at my home by the sea...ok so it's only a temporary home enjoyed periodically and it's not technically by the sea...but it is salt water all the same. Officially, in all honesty, which is a good trait for a pastoral artist to have, I am once again situating myself down at alki beach, in the great city of Seattle, on the shores of puget sound. The last time that I posted from here was in early February. I found myself in survival mode from grad school and life. The good news is that I survived. The bad news... Well guess what? There is no bad news. Part of the reason for my sabbatical from here is that I was becoming far too cynical for even my own good. When that happens, it begins to be reflected in my outlets...those being either my teaching or my writing. Since the teaching/preaching thing is a paying gig, I needed to focus on that and then let the other go. At the time I didn't even know if I would ever come back. I will tell you that it's been ...

While many of the rest of you are still wrestling with wind chill, snow blowers and shovels, I’m enjoying the view near the fireplace as the sun peaks over the skyline and gleams rose colored on the mountains across the water. It’s a pretty exceptional day for a place rumored to be the gloom and gray capital of the world. Te ferries are making their trek to the islands and the cargo ships are heading north towards open water. It’s a fairly normal day here on the beach, with The Civil Wars playing in my headphones and people lined up for their morning fix. I just finished another round of grad school discussions online and now I need to begin to put my mind into the realm of my paying gig, that of being pastoral artist to a wonderful community o’ faith. Wednesday morning is my transition point. I’m off on Mondays and I enjoy spending the day with my princess Lily. Tuesdays are a sort of admin, make sense of my office, day. Wednesday I transition into what is really going to b...

One of the things that I most appreciate about life is that it is different every day. Don’t misunderstand… some days just suck. The promising thing though is that there is always another that might suck less. It also could be magnificent, beyond anything you could have imagined. It could happen. This day is hardly the latter, but it could pass for one that sucks less. In the life of a pastoral artist, you look for inspiration and promise wherever you can find it. I’ll let you in on a few trade secrets. Some days in the life of one attempting to be a follower of Jesus, it’s not all Joel Osteen. My own personal opinion…with a smile like that, either he’s not really a pastoral type or he has Rembrandt for a tattoo artist. Here’s some insight into reality. Some days it’s hard to find Jesus. Some days the last people I want to be around are other people who claim to follow Jesus. Some days the sermons are just terrible. It’s not a reflection on the message…strictly the messen...

Did you ever have one of those moments that forced you to question the real value of all of your efforts? What I’m talking about is a moment that draws deep into your motives and methods and causes you to ask the underlying, “why do I (we) do all of this anyway”? It is a profound “What’s the point of this exercise” reality check that helps one look deep into Alice’s mirror and wrestle with what is real and what is not, what matters and what doesn’t. Let me just say this; if you haven’t then you need to, everyone does. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the ones that we need to have do not happen with our choosing. They are thrust upon us unexpectedly. They are often induced by tragedy, either our own or others who might be close to us. For me, in my position as pastoral artist of a vibrant community o’ faith, it often comes as I witness it in the lives of the people I serve beside. My problem is that I am a planner. I live in the future and I’m always planning on how we’ll all ...

Holy crap I am out of sorts this morning….how’s that for a way to start a reflection for the day? One thing that speaks for itself is that it is Friday and I am just getting to sit down and write. I’ve made attempts the past 3 days to keep myself in a balanced equilibrium and to maintain the holy grail of my schedule, but here we are. This week, as school has begun along with some critical points of life in my community o’ faith, I have felt like the voice track in a Godzilla movie. I always seem to be one phrase off of real time. Just in case you were wondering, it doesn’t work well for a driven, perfectionist type of individual like myself. Just as I thought that perhaps all was lost for this week, I opened my class site and God delivered once again in the form of conviction…not that I needed any more conviction, really. It’s just the way He chose to deliver it. In the opening of my section of journaling, a quote jumped out at me from Parker Palmer’s work Let Your Life Spea...

It’s dark down here this morning although there is also an unusually large number of people for a Wednesday morning. It’s generally an older crowd which now, unfortunately, I’ll have to admit to belonging to. Some days it still seems as if we’d just moved here, which would mean I was still in my 30’s. Other days, like this day, it seems as if that were a whole lifetime ago. Pink Floyd is in my headphones and I’m realizing that it’s now considered an “oldie”. Whatever….. It’s a new year and another year in which I can still live and work circles around my former age group. Joanne and I celebrated the entrance of a new year by treating ourselves to a trip to Victoria, BC on Vancouver Island. It was actually our traditional Christmas gift of an experience that we began last year during our Advent Conspiracy campaign within our community o’ faith. Instead of shooting the moon with relatively short lived gifts, we treat ourselves to a memory building experience and then give the r...

Back down at the beach after a week away. The last week that I was here nearly did me in so I needed the break, but I did live to fight another day. School marches on with this one last semester in my sights. The end is near, crawl if you have to. At the end of another year I’m still having a hard time looking backwards on it. It’s a fatal flaw that I seem to have, not looking back I mean. It’s the main reason that none of you received a Christmas letter from us. It was my job to initiate the first draft. There is a rumor that it might become a New Years letter, but don’t look for it before the 1st as I’m still straining to see what’s back while avoiding the auld langsyne. I still don’t know what that even means. It’s not that this was a bad year by any means. In many ways it was, as my wife would put it, a fabulous year. We watched a daughter walk down the aisle. We watched a granddaughter taking her first steps. We watched a village in a jungle see the first clean water...