SMITCHing

Desire. One of the basic tenants of a heart-based approach to Christian spiritual formation is this: Desire overcomes desire. For example: Suppose I want to have sex with a girl to whom I'm not married, but I have a holy desire to honor her—and her creator Jesus Christ—because I love Him, and her, more than I desire having illicit sex. As a result, I don't sleep with her. Not because I grit my teeth and decline the physical act despite my desire for her, but because of the stronger and holy desire to honor her and God, my loving Father. Let's consider a more common example. I want to be praised for my brilliance, but because I love—really love God—I want to see Him honored more than I want any glory for myself. Hence, I exhibit a true, heart-motivated humility. Do you see in these examples how holy, God-given desires, or affections, trump the more base and selfish inclinations of the heart? I can imagine some nodding heads at this point. Now comes the tough part. A...

How many times do you say "no"? It's an interesting question. If we start with the premise that something has to die in order for something else to live, then saying "no" is a very creative act. I'll give you an example. If I don't consistently say "no" to work, then I sacrifice realtionship, health, even years of life. I die to those things in order that my career might live and flourish. But what happens if I do say "no"? I accomplish less. I don't get noticed. I don't get promoted. My career suffers, and maybe even dies, but if I wisely invest the time I gain by saying "no" in other things of signifigance, then my relationships thrive, my health is good, and I live more fully outside of work. The "death" of one thing makes space for another. Whenever anybody starts talking about these kinds of issues, the first word that comes up is balance. I think it's a smoke screen. A convenient dodge used by peo...

My daughter's company in SF preforming at Dance West: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nQUEVesWgY

I've been teaching an advanced illustration class at a local art college. Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) is a small school with some very talented faculty and students. My friend, Martin French, is the Illustration Department Chair. He invited me to teach the class. You can check out Martin's work at martinfrench.com. The students are smart, enthusiastic, and fun to be with. They need to be more professional, though. Some of them are already working, but everybody needs more skill. They have to want it more, too. There's a couple stars in the class, and a few who have loads of talent, but no discipline. Teaching is going to be a lot like being “dad”.

A blinking cursor. It'll mock you if you're not careful. It invites you to write something for the sake of writing. Maybe that's okay. Sometimes you just have to write. Like snow melting, it starts slow and unremarkably. Soon the words come a little easier, accelerating in a slippery way. They rush past just a little faster than meaning finds comfortable. They tease, promising ideas that dissolve at the slightest touch of attention. Maybe it was the drugs in my youth. The ubiquitous “They” told me this might happen. Legions of carefully contructed synapses—built with such great industry in the first few years of my life—now lie unplugged, coiled, and discarded by a tiny little molecule: THC. Or was it the speedy acid? The truth? It's fatigue, not drugs. Thinking is hard work. You have to peddle fast to keep up with an active mind, and it's remarkable how a tired body will bind an eager consciousness. Maybe I just need to cowboy-up, and muscle through. Write more. ...

My friend killed himself last night. He'd been battling depression for a while now. It's been years since he'd been the person I first met who was so joyful and uplifting. I'm not being trite. He was a big strong man, and he could've physically lifted me, but what really lifted me up was his spirit. He relished doing life. We became friends not long after we met. I was a naive transplant to the Portland metro area from Southern California. It was the early nineties, and I was at the front of a wave of immigrants from SoCal who were returning the favor for the Oregon population's exodus to the south a hundred and fifty years earlier. My wife and I built a house in a tidy suburb. We had bought a pretty hillside lot, about a half acre full of trash trees, majestic Sugar Maples, and soaring Doug Firs. We kept as many as we could, but the builder still had to fell three or four of the 100 foot giants. It immediately turned me into Paul Bunyon. The contractor suggeste...

I got bitched out tonight. Spiritually anyway, by my 19 year-old daughter. We were going to get some dinner at McMennimen's Pub on the way home from church when she went off. It was righteous anger. The kind that only comes from the deepest desire to see God's people be God's People. The anger wasn't really aimed at me (I was a suitable proxy), but at my church, which I love by the way. But I had to admit that the outward lack of passion for the Lord that cheesed her off does often characterize our fellowship. It's polite. It's safe. It's comfy, and to her tender spirit, it all appeared so, so wrong. I admire the fire in her belly. She had tears in her eyes when she asked how folks could sit in their soft suburban pews singing soft choruses, softly, while other people were dying and going to hell. At first I thought she was being a conveniently pissed, disaffected youth, but the more I listened, the more I became convinced that she really was putting pressu...

We recently spent a weekend in San Francisco. You should've heard the comments. "Oh, you're going THERE. What a pit" "It's the most beautiful city in the world." And just about everything in between. Evangelicals especially seem to be pretty conflicted about the city, placing it somewhere between Sodom and Hell on the moral continuum. I found the city tolerable in the main, much like any other city, and occasionally brilliant.

Affective Theology A friend recently asked me to define Affective Theology, and I felt a little like the Supreme Court Justice who reportedly said, in repsonse to a request to define indecency, the he couldn't, but he knew it when he saw it. I hand off the task to a man of God, much wiser and more articulate than myself, Richard Sibbes, who comments in the following on a number of key categories of Christian spiritual formation from an affective prespective: "But how or by what means doth Christ give his Spirit to us? This Spirit that is so necessary for us, it is given by the ministry of the gospel, which is the ministry of the Spirit. 'Received ye the Holy Ghost by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith preached?' Gal. iii. 2. When the love of God in Christ, and the benefits by Christ, are laid open in the preaching of the gospel to us, God gives his holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. Now God in Christ would save us by a trimphant and abundant love and m...

Downwardly Rich “He’s a success.” “She’s a winner.” “He’s got it all.” These are the words that we most long to hear. Like “I love you.”, they validate, and seduce. There is something deep in each person that longs to be admired by others. How do I know that? Honestly, I’ve only to look in a mirror, or out a window. This desire is in us, and surrounds us. It’s the water we swim in, and like most fish, we don’t really notice until we’re yanked out of it, do we? Then we can't breathe. We're on alien turf. We're not swimming the way we've been taught—up, and to the right. Everything's changed. Maybe we can then move in a new direction, to where the real riches lie. Among the least of these.

The Shortest Trip We’ve all said it. And if we’ve been parents for more than a year or so, we’ve all heard it: “Are we there yet?” My third brother, Scott, held the world’s record for consecutively asking this question during our annual family vacations to Lake George. The trip between our suburban Philadelphia home and the lake lasted about eight hours. Scott’s interrogation ra 7:59:30. Kids are always in some kind of a damn hurry. They’ve got stuff to do, and it’s all out there somewhere beyond the present. Why walk when you can run? Why think when you can just go for it? From launch pad of infinite youthful immortality everything is possible, and nothing has ever happened. Yet. I know. I’ve watched it, and I’m convinced that the shortest distance in the universe is that between toilet training and graduation.

Repost Sunday, March 12, 2006 hurting Current mood: crappy The toughest thing about life isn't hurting. The toughest thing is seeing people you care about hurting. Seeing it and knowing there isn't much of anything you can do about it. God, what I wouldn't give for a magic wand that could take the pain away, but that ain't gonna happen. All that's left is listening and prayer. Not that those are useless. in fact they're more powerful than anything that might feel more actively productive. I need to embrace that. The reality of attentive prayer. Activity, just doing SOMETHING holds such attraction, but it's nothing more than tilting at windmills in the end. It's easier to do than to trust, though. Love's tough.

Repost Tuesday, April 18, 2006 Time Current mood: contemplative Whoa. When did a week start feeling like a day? I've always has a sense that my experience of time was colored by whatever was filling that time. A forty minute lecture that's boring can feel like 3 hours. Assuming you stay awake. A great touch football game after school? Ten minutes, tops. Even if we played for hours. The basic rule? If you're doing something fun, time flies. Boring, stupide stuff. Time goes backwards. So, if I'm experiencing time at such an accelerated pace at this point in my life, it must mean I'm having a blast. Uh oh. This is where the axiom breaks down. Cuz I am not ALWAYS having ...

Repost from Tuesday, June 27, 2006 “New Friends ” Current mood: calm I met five new friends in just a few days. Three are from Texas, and connected with DTS (Dallas Theological Seminary) by way of graduation or enrollment. And the other two are a young writer from Indianapolis and his lovely wife. The couple decided to check out Portland after corresponding with friends of ours. The author's name is Pete Gall (his wife's name is Christine), and he's written a book entitled "Gall" It's a spiritual diary of sorts in the mold of Don Miller and Anne LaMotte. Pete's writing exhibits the witty insights and judicious use of explitives that variously characterize Miller and LaMotte. There's laugh-out-loud funny stuff in his book. And ot...

a new start. A blank white page is a terrifying thing.