not sleeping in the closet

I need to preface this story by saying I should be finishing my sermon for tomorrow morning. I have a few tweaks to make to it but one of my take away points is that children (and others we overlook) are not a burden to our lives. And so my son helped me take to heart this point tonight as I was putting him to bed.

Our oldest son Brighton talks a long time to go to bed...I mean a long time. Every night is another adventure and I'm sure Super Nanny could break him of his tireless habits but we have not been able to.

As it was, I tucked him into bed after he took every last second to go to the bathroom and get a sip of water, then I told him a story.

After this it was back and forth a number of times until I gave him an ultimatum.

I told Brighton, who was sleeping with a stuffed Shamu for comfort, one final time, "If you get out of bed one more time, Shamu is mine and he is going to sleep in the closet."

Brighton replied, "Daddy, you don't sleep in the closet."

Trying not to laugh, I walked out of the room and started writing again.

love you good or bad

The post below is from my wife Amy. Since this blog is dedicated to encountering God in the everyday reality of life and we frequently talk about what God is teaching us through parenting, she will be a regular guest writer on my blog.

A good friend of mine told me about a grocery shopping trip with her little girl, Janie. It was truly a revolutionary story for me, one that changed my whole parenting tone and communication strategy with my kids. Sweet Janie is one of my favorite kids – she was born over a year before our oldest, so she was one of the first babies with whom I had ‘hands on’ time. She also has a very strong and determined personality – so one day when she was in Trader Joe’s with her mama and didn’t get her way, started to throw an EPIC fit. And kept throwing the fit, while my friend (who had her other two kids with them as well) walked up to the front to pay for her groceries firmly holding Janie’s hand. Janie kept trying to throw herself on the ground, wailing and screaming for the entire store to hear. If you are a parent, you’ve probably had those moments before too. If you are not a parent, you’ve probably judged parents having those moments – at least, I know I did before it was my turn.

At the front of the store, my friend got more looks and glares from fellow shoppers and felt herself very, very near the end of the rope. Seriously, what we do in these small moments as parents is so defining! And it’s not always pretty, but what my friend did is one of the reasons I will always look up to her as a mom full of grace. She picked Janie up, hugged her as close as she could, and began to whisper to her, ‘Mama loves you when you’re good and Mama loves you when you’re bad. Mama loves you when you’re good and Mama loves you when you’re bad.’ Over and over, just like that. Janie went limp in her mama’s arms for a minute or two while they paid, silent, contemplating. When they got outside she was back to herself – she cheerfully apologized to her mom and they went home without any more drama.

It’s been months since my friend told me this story and it comes into my head at least once a day. I’ve started saying these words to Brighton when I am feeling frustrated with his behavior – Mama loves you when you’re good and Mama loves you when you’re bad. Some of his behavior is simply not what I would choose (asking me to buy him something over and over after I’ve said ‘no’ ) and some is truly bad (knocking his baby brother’s head into the wall). But either way I repeat these words to him, hoping that he’ll know this unconditional love before he knows my frustration.

And then there are the moments when I have my own temper tantrums – usually over something small, but always something that made me feel small and insignificant. In those moments I have begun to hear God whispering to me that he loves me when I’m good and loves me when I’m bad. I’ve had some of my lowest lows since becoming a parent. The struggle with post partum depression and balancing the needs of small people with my own needs has found me wanting over and over – and at times things have been very out of balance. And in spite of myself, actually even because of myself, God reminds me of his love.

So the story comes full circle. This morning my younger son, Everett, was overly hungry for breakfast and was throwing all of his brother’s toys around, and generally making himself a nuisance. Brighton’s response? He looked his brother in the eye and said, ‘Everett I love you when you’re good and I love you when you’re bad. Let’s get you some breakfast.’ Amen.

seeing God's Kingdom

Jesus spoke and taught a great deal about God's Kingdom. In fact, I would argue that this is what Jesus cared about more than anything else. He described God's Kingdom through story and metaphor and it seems like his followers had a difficult time grasping what it was and how this related to the religious institutions and factions in the first century. I'm not so certain we understand any better than they did what God's Kingdom exactly is and I'm not so sure this was Jesus' point.

I had an incredible opportunity last week to experience something of God's Kingdom; it was not something I exepected. I was invited by a friend to participate in a Leadership Development Program through the Center for Creative Leadership. It was held here at the San Diego office of CCL and people from all over the country joined me in my home town to participate. So 13 strangers from all different walks of life and work engaged in a week long experiment with 2 faculty members.

Before I entered the experience, I had heard from my friend that it would be an incredible experience and I had heard from another former participant to hold my breathe as I received feedback from my boss, co-workers, reports and people from our community of faith. So, I went in open handedly with little expectation of what would transpire. Would this be the best week and exerience of my life? Would it be difficult for me to hear constructive criticism of how people perceive me?

What I encountered in this course were people, as well as myself, who discovered that developing as a leader is not by simply making a few little tweaks but by looking deep at the core of who we are. By looking at the core of who we are, I think I witnessed God's Kingdom breaking into our lives and world whether we recognize it or not. I would love to share the stories of others but I don't yet have permission to do that. Let me share a few pieces of my story.

By looking at the core of who I am, I was reminded that God has created me uniquely and creatively. I am formed in his image and being conformed to his likeness. I realized that I am often living up to other people's expectations of an ET (Extroverted-Thinker) world but I am an NF (Intuitive Feeler). I encountered the question, how do I live with an open heart? Daily, I have opportunities to engage all sorts of people, become more aware of my surroundings, suspend judgement, ask open questions and offer who I am to others from the core of who I am. This, I see as God's Kingdom breaking into my life and world.

On Saturday, I officiated a wedding at Sunset Cliffs (what an incredible scene to get married). As I began leading the wedding ceremony, I realized that what I had written to share with the couple was not enough. It was a script I wrote and adapted for them in advance but these words were actually not what my heart would say to them. So, I threw out the script and spoke from my heart. I shared with them what my gut was saying (and I don't think it was indigestion).

While I don't think I need to speak off the cuff to live with an open heart, I feel that in this situation, on the cliffs, with this couple and their family and friends gathered around, they needed to hear from my heart. I actually had a difficult time holding it together as I looked into the eyes of the bride and groom and saw the tears of joy welling up in their corners.

God's Kingdom had broken into my life and onto the scene of this wedding. They knew God was there and I saw him at work. We experienced God's Kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven.

Where have you seen God's Kingdom breaking into your life?

engaging the world we live in

Yesterday, I caught up with a friend from Seminary named Shane Hipps who has published a few books both focusing on how media influence and affect our lives and perspectives of lives.

I admit that I haven't read either of his books yet but would love a free moment to do so at some point in the near future. What I find engaging in my conversations with Shane is that he has a remarkable way to engage personally and think deeply. It is always refreshing to engage with him and I remember this back to conversations in seminary. There are just some people that give and bring life to my life and Shane is one of them. Although I haven't read his books, I imagine they are deeply personal and get underneath our assumptions about life and faith. Hope to read one or both in the coming months.

already pondering Christmas

For whatever reason, I don't like Christmas.

I think it has something to do with the over commercialism of Christmas and the reality that I feel like I have to buy things from shopping malls. In the past, I would have pushed back my emotions, stuck my head in the sand and kept going on with the season at full pace but this year is different...I am already preparing myself for something different. I want to fully engage Advent Conspiracy as our community of faith engages it. I have desires to worship God more fully, spend less on things that will eventually be garbage, give more money away to people who need it and love all by contributing to God's work. I want to be creative with the gifts that I give. I want to spend more time with family. I want to make memories. This is my wish list for Christmas.

As I was reading today about Jesus' birth, I encountered some great quotes by Frederick Buechner in The Faces of Jesus that give me hope around the season of Advent and Christmas:

“At Christmas time it is hard even for the unbeliever not to believe in something, if not in everything. Peace on earth, good will to men; a dream of innocence that is good to hold onto even if it is only a dream; the mystery of being a child; the possibility of hope—not even the canned carols piped out over the shopping center parking plaza from Thanksgiving on can drown it out entirely.” (14-15)

“…when the child was born the whole course of human history was changed. That is a truth as unassailable as any truth. Art, music, literature, Western culture itself with all its institutions and Western man’s whole understanding of himself and his world—it is impossible to conceive how differently things would have turned out if that birth had not happened whenever, wherever, however it did. And there is a truth beyond that: For millions of people who have lived since, the birth of Jesus made possible not just a new way of understanding life but a new way of living it." (17)

“For better or worse, it is a truth that, for twenty centuries, there have been untold numbers of men and women who, in untold numbers of ways, have been so grasped by the child who was born, so caught up in the message he taught and the life he lived, that they have found themselves profoundly changed by their relationship with him. And they have gone on proclaiming as the writers of the Gospels proclaimed before them, that through the birth of Jesus a life-giving power was released into the world which to their minds could have been no less than the power of God himself.” (17)

“Like any baby, Jesus as a baby does not judge or exhort or puzzle the world with his teaching. He makes no demands, threatens no punishment, offers no rewards. The world is free to take him or leave him. He does not rule the world from his mother’s lap but, like any child, is himself at the mercy of the world.” (20)

“In trying to say too much, piety always runs the risk of saying too little or saying it wrong, and the great pitfall of Christian art, especially when it tries to portray the birth of Christ, is sentimentalism. The stable becomes a painted backdrop, the floor a carpeted stage, the manger a prop lined with artificial straw. Neither the holiness nor the humanness of the moment is rendered so much as the schmaltz, and the Incarnation becomes merely a Christmas card with all the scandal taken out of it instead of what St. Paul called “a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles,” instead of the proclamation that the Creator of the end of the earth came among us in diapers.” (20-21)

“As long as he stays the babe in the manger, he asks us nothing harder than to love him and accept his love, and the temptation is thus to keep him a babe forever, for our sakes and for his sake too." (23)

If you are like me and don't like Christmas, I hope these reflections by Buechner might lead you to rethink and reenact Christmas differently this year.

Tom Wright with Stephen Colbert

Got to love this clip of two greats.

the myth of a Christian nation

Last year, I bought a book The Myth of A Christian Nation by Greg Boyd and I brought it on a trip to Londrina, Brazil to visit a mission partner. I love Greg and I was planning on reading it while there. The book is based on a six-week sermon series titled "Cross and the Sword" he did with his church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Approximately 1000 people left his church as a result of the viewpoint of this sermon series. He explains in his notes to his book that approximately 700 hundred people left during the sermon series and another 300 left in the fall of 2004 near that time of the election. Boyd is an incredibly gifted speaker and a gutsy (or stupid depending on how you see the situation) pastor.

While in Londrina, Brazil, I found myself in the midst of a conversation with the president of South American Theological Seminary and I discovered that he would enjoy reading this book and would have difficulty finding it, so I gave it to him.

I bought another copy later that year and I just picked it up as I think about our upcoming election. I may write a bit about in the coming weeks...I have only just begun but I thought you might like to wrestle with your view of the church and politics. If you want to see how you approach the interaction of the church with politics, take this quiz. You might just be surprised.