A Story

Today a fellow pilgrim in the Training School told us that the skin doctor has found some conspicous spots on her back that ended up being cancerous. She is in the process of waiting to hear how seriousness this cancer will be. It could very well be nothing at all but it also could be a serious game changer in her life. 

I told her this story about when I was in a similar situation: 

Four years ago when I was a Freshmen at Butler I went to the orthopedic doctor that I had grown close to over the years of ACL injuries, broken collarbones, pinkys, toes, etc. For a about a year I had had an aching pain in my knee that I thought must have been something like a torn meniscus. I ignored it for a really long time and the pain would come and go. Eventually it hurt too bad to ignore and I went to see the Doc. He took and x-ray and saw that a pretty good size tumor was making its home on my lower femur bone in the knee the knee joint. Being a good orthopedic doctor and realizing that I was 19 and at the prime age for osteosarcoma he started to bombard me with a ton of questions and worries. I had no idea and my mom (a nurse) wasn't there to explain to me the magnitude of what could possibly be growing in my knee. I felt fine and therefore thought there couldn't be anything significantly wrong with me. I told my mom and played down the seriousness of it but the Doctor said the next step was for me to go to get an MRI. 

A few days later, my mom called me and told me that various radiologist and my doctor believed that the tumor was in fact ostersarcoma and that I needed to move fast to see a specialist, get it removes, and get a biopsy to find out for sure if it was malignant or just a random tumor. Either way, they dropped the bomb on me.... Cancer. I immediately began to realize that if this was cancer that life would be drastically different. That I would probably not be going back to school, that I would go through kemo, lose my hair, maybe lose my leg, and worse case scenario maybe even die. 

There was five days in between this news and going to see a specialist that would give me a better idea of what was going on in my knee. Needless to say it was some of the craziest most bizarre five days of my life. I was scared and didn't want to lose my the grand life I had been living. Yet, I knew that more than anything God was putting this in my life for some divine reason, even though I had no freaking idea what that may be. 

At that point, I had read the scriptures enough to know what Paul's perspective on suffering was. I began to live into this scripture and ponder that maybe instead of dreading this I should be looking forward to the opportunity to grow into a more Christ like person, to suffer like Christ, to show others how much God has done  in me, to the point that I would rejoice and be joyful in my potential sufferings. 

Five days later I went to the doctor with my girlfriend, parents, and uncle with a very bizarre perception. I had become excited and was looking forward to the opportunity to follow Christ more deeply and to become more like Christ through the suffering's that lied ahead. My parents, girlfriend, and uncle were terrified and I was stoic ready to walk down this road the Lord and laid in front of me. 

The specialist looked at the x-ray and MRI and (metahporically) lit the prior report on fire and told me that those other Doctor's were silly and that he was 98 percent sure all that was growing in me was a benign cyst. Everyone else wept tears of joy while I felt extremely disappointed. The only way I could describe the feeling would be similar to what one feels when you have to miss out on a ridiculously awesome part all your best friends will be at. The Lord seriously did so much to me those five days that I couldn't help but look forward to this time of trial and suffering that I would come to know the Lord better. And now I would be getting this experience that would ignite all of these changes. 

For many years, I had no idea why God had done this to me. Then one day, as I was telling this story, it hit me and I realized that I could never have been excited about such immense suffering if I was not connected to God through Jesus. It doesn't make and worldly sense that one would be excited for cancer. Therefore, I was given a sense that God was putting this in my life to reaffirm his connection with me, for him and I to know that I was no longer wandering lost, no longer half way in following Christ, but all the way in and fully committed to his will and narrative for me. 

The Journey I'm On

This year I have embarked on a somewhat crazy and ambiguous journey. I have committed the next nine months to being a part of the Kingdom Living Training School at Common Ground Christian Church (the Church I have worshipped at all four years at Butler.) The training school is impossible to describe but nevertheless here is my attempt that will fall terribly short of encompassing or grasping what the Training School is, has been so far, and will be for the next nine months:

The training school is a commitment to be apart of a community chasing after similar dreams of Christ centered community, of living deeper into our walks with Christ, and desiring to live into our call as a people of mission. Practically this looks like 3 classes every week from 9am to 12 where we sit in a classroom and are taught and lead in conversation by our fearless leader, teacher, madman of a guide Larry. We also take five or so vision trips to places like Toronto, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Tijuana. There is no curriculum only our guide and the direction the spirit leads the community in conversation with each other, with questions, with people we run into on our long walks through the city, with books, and with God.

Why? Why am have I jumped into this ambiguous madness of a journey or pilgrimage? To love people better. Not to gain any more wisdom, theological understanding concerning God or community, but to live out what I have been reading and talking about for the past eight years in a very intentional way with others who are also longing to makes dreams a reality and turn theories into praxis.

 I am super excited to see where this river flows and to hang on tight for what is sure to be a crazy ass ride through some dangerous and challenging places.

 

A Reflection, Four Years of Young Life

I have come to understand that in every Christian’s journey there is one fundamental change that we all experience that is more monumental than any other area of growth. This is the move from always wandering what I can get out of church, young life, vocation, and even people to wandering what I can give. Essentially the transformation is from a selfish and narcissistic consumer to a self-less, others focused person who wanders: how can I serve others? what do I have to offer to this group? Rather than only being concerned with what you can consume from church or wandering in what ways others can serve my interests.

For me, Carmel Young Life has been the medium God has used to transform me from a person who was constantly self-focused and concerned with what young life or other people can do for me to a person who finds real and full life in being self-less and serving. For the past four years Young Life and the relationships I have had with Carmel kids have been the most important thing in my life. More important than my own family, college grades, friends, my social life, or internships. As a young life leader you are almost obligatorily forced into being self-less. Otherwise, you are going to be a pretty crappy leader. High school kids deserve consistency and persistence in a way in which is only achieved through them being the number one priority in a leader’s life.

Through this “obligatory selflessness,” these past four years have been monumentally transformative and solidified to me that life is fully lived when we are not concerned about “me,” but consumed with the constant battle to turn away from my own selfishness and find a full and adventurous life loving selflessly. Jesus says in John 15, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Through Carmel Young Life I have actualized this in my life, but I have also realized how I still have a life time of struggle ahead of me to truly embody the selfless love Jesus calls us to.

Gosh! I could go on and on about how my experience in Young Life has transformed me into a more confident person, a better communicator and leader, a more articulate Christian, and even a better future father and husband. What is more important than how I am different is the ways in which God has impacted and transformed lives through me simply just showing up in guy’s lives. I will try to incapsulate in a few sentences how God has transformed a handful of lives through me.

I have spent the past four years building relationships and pouring myself into only a handful of guys. When I started out on this journey my hopes for their lives were simple and few. First, I hoped and prayed that God would move in their hearts so that they might know the truth of the Gospel; that God became man in Jesus to die and rise again so that God might restore our relationship and we could experience eternal life in the next life but mostly in this life.

My second priority was helping them realize following Christ is not only about the personal relationship with God but about taking part in God’s sweeping story to restore and redeem this broken and suffering world. Following Christ in not just about quiet times and going to Church but about taking part in God’s massive restoration project that is this world.

Finally, what I have spent countless hours praying they might realize through conversations is what it means to means to be a “man of God.” One of my favorite moments as a young life leader was at the end of a week of a crazy co-ed Wilderness trip. One of the guys that had been on our trip and that I had been challenging all week to serve and love the girls in our group well, stood up during the part of club when the kids were given an opportunity to share what they had learned after a week on the trail and said, “I have learned this week that men (myself included) are called to love women as Christ loved the Church.” All of the girls awed and the guys sneered while my eyes welled up with the proudest and most joyous tears my eyes have ever produced. To think that a seventeen year only kid would know this monumental and gospel truth at such a young age!

There have been so many other moments like this that have helped realize most of my goals I sat out to accomplish with these guys have come to fruition. Not at all by anything I have done other than showing up consistently and allowing the grace of God to work through me. I share with you these goals only to express to you the ways in which God has worked in the live of a number of Carmel high school kids in the past four years.

My Systematic Theology: Heaven

The modern Christian view of heaven is quite construed. Where is heaven? Is it out beyond the stars in some distant galaxy?

It is highly unlikely that one day an astronomer scanning the universe with a giant telescope will ever come across a distant galaxy full of puffy clouds and the righteous drinking pina coladas in “paradise.” Therefore, if heaven is not a “place” then what is it?

It is my understanding, that heaven is in fact not a place but a state between man and God and creation and God. Sin corrupts the sate of God’s relationship with man and creation causing a broken relationship between both of these with God. It is thus God’s main purpose since the fall of man represented in Genesis to restore his relationship with man and creation. This comes to complete fruition in Revelation when John describes heaven breaking in to our present sinfully laced reality to wipe away tears, end suffering, erase pain, and do away with sin. Thus it is my understanding the heaven is not necessarily a specific place (although I don’t discount this possibility) but a state of perfect union between man and God and God and creation.

In this light, Jesus' confusing and seemingly paradoxical claims in the Gospel about heaven and the coming the kingdom makes sense. Jesus says in the Gospels that heaven is now, I am heaven, and that heaven is yet to come at the end of times. Because of Jesus’ work on the cross and the grace one receives through faith, one can experience heaven (as I have described it) on earth, before, death in this present reality. Yet, as long as sin persists in this reality one can never fully experience an unadulterated relationship with God. That is why heaven is also yet to come.

It is my understanding of the Biblical text that at the “end of times” God will enact a process in which “heaven” or the New Jerusalem will break into our present evil and sinful world to fully restore creation and man to God. Everyone that has professed faith in Jesus Christ (including the dead, that are in some state that I do not fully understand) will rise from the dead and experience this new reality, free of sin, evil, and suffering. A new reality that is in fact the heaven we have been longing for and trying to figure out how to describe.

The Modernist

The following poem I wrote for my creative writing class is inspired by my modern poetry class.

The Modernist

Poetry is the highest form of

everything.

How could one understand the world any other way?

Only poetry.

Religion?

What nonsense.

While, I have respect for the spiritual

and even the mystical in this world,

look around!

and see nothing.

Nothing except

tears and blood

Surely you can see

that there is nothing to see.

Nothing is at hand.

Nothing is to come.

Fine, not religion

but science is supreme you say?

My friend,

Not everything can be reduced to:

Data

facts

hypothesis

trends

studies

cases

statistics

analysis

knowledge.

Poetry is supreme.

Knowledge is endless.

It lives in a realm that data

and statistics fail to encapsulate.

Imagination by definition is endless.

Science cannot study the imagination with

data, facts, and analysis

that eventually stop.

Poetry,

the only form that can present the endless.

Becoming Gardeners, N.T. Wright

Here is an exert from a recent N.T. Wright book I read. I love that God never really provides answers about how to follow him. He just says, "Follow me." For example, we are left to find some sort of balance between spiritual discipline and knowing the God is the only force that can transform us to be more like Christ.

"The key is this: the "fruit of the spirit" does not grow automatically. The nine varieties of fruit do not suddenly appear just because some one has believed in Jesus, has prayed for God's spirit, and has then sat back and waited for "fruit" to arrive. Oh, there may well be strong and sudden initial signs that fruit is on the way. Many new Christians, particularly when sudden conversion has meant a dramatic turning away from a lifestyle full of the "works of the flesh," report their own astonishment at the desire that springs up within them to love, to forgive, to be gentle, to be pure. Where you ask, has all this come from? I didn't use to be like this. That is a wonderful thing, a sure sign of the Spirit's working.
But this doesn't mean it's all downhill from there. These are the blossoms; to get the fruit you have to learn to be a gardener. You have to discover how to tend and prune, how to irrigate the field, how to keep birds and squirrels away. you have to watch for blight and mold, cut away ivy and other parasites that suck the life out of the tree, and make sure the young trunk can stand firm in strong winds. Only then will fruity.

and then later...
"Christian, virtue is the gift of God and the result of the person of faith making conscious decisions to cultivate this way of life and these habits of heart and mind. In technical language, these things are both "infused" and "acquired," though the way we "acquire" them is itself, in that same language, "infused.' We are here, as so often theology, at the borders of language, because we are trying to talk at the same time about "something God does" and "something humans do" as if God were simply another character like ourselves."

-N.T. Wright, After you Believe

Leather Man

I cant remember how I came across this on the internet but I did.

The leatherman was a famous vagabond that was known for his handmade suits made of leather. The identity of this man along with why he lived the way he did remains a mystery. He traveled a 365 mile circuit between Connectuit and the Hudson river living in caves and whatever else he could find along the way. He stopped into towns that he was passing through and as you can imagine the legend grew. So odd right? There is now an effort to dig up his grave and examine the body in the hopes of unearthing the mystery behind this man. Also there is an effort to thwart the attempts to dig up the leather man. Read more here: http://leavetheleathermanalone.com/ Also in general just check out wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leatherman_(vagabond)

For whatever reason I was so intrigued by this man and was inspired to write this poem for my creative writing class:

Leather Man

Off the road amongst the Connecticut trees

A rusty old man sits in a dripping cave.

Fragments of his life and travels

tattooed on the cave’s walls

the emotions of such fragments

chiseled into his heart.

drip...drip.......drip

He hammered his eyes open and shut; hoping,

praying when he opened up his eyes he might be somewhere

warmer, drier, but most of all

somewhere more forgiving.

drip...drip......drip