looking back - I can’t fix me

(originally posted September 26, 2007)

Friday night I was sitting at a dinner. The speaker was talking about revival. More specifically, Tim Keller from Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan was talking about the Fulton Street Revival, a(n) (…um…event? movement? process?) thing that started with a guy deciding that he needed to spend lunchtime once a week praying and invited other people to come and pray, too.

As he was talking, Keller said, “The default mode of the human heart is to revert to self-salvation.”

I would love to argue with this. Except I can’t.

This morning I was looking for my shoes. Nancy innocently asked what I was looking for. I was polite, but inside I thought “don’t ask me. I don’t need help. I’ll look myself.”

A month ago, a four-year-old was in my office. There were balloons on the walls because a friend had decided (correctly) that I needed encouragement.  The little one’s dad wanted her to ask me for a balloon. She resisted, was told “no” to taking one without asking, went through a period of tears, calmed down, got down from her dad’s lap, and was told again to ask me for a balloon.

“I don’t need to. I can reach myself.”

We looked at each other, the dad and I, and laughed the kind of laugh that doesn’t show up on the face. We laughed because we recognized the independence of spirit which characterizes humans, showing up clearly in this four-year-old.

Every face I look at, every mirror I see, shows this same fierce commitment to fixing things myself, to fixing myself. Even as I put myself into this picture with my close friend Manhattan, there is a strong sense of me.

So?

Practically, such independence is silly. I cannot save myself, not even from myself. Now, I do have to take care of myself. I am responsible for my actions, for my reactions, for my attitudes, for my attempts to live life in a meaningful way. But I cannot function apart from other people. If I tried, I would die. I can’t grow enough, work enough, whatever enough, to sustain myself.

And if I try, I prove that I’m an ornery cuss. To function as a person, as a social being, I need other people.

Now Keller’s comment wasn’t talking merely about the practical level. His point was that unless we stop trying to save ourselves and acknowledge that God has to do that, we will fail at revival and we will ultimately, eternally, fail.

What is important to understand is that he is talking first to that collective entity of people who call themselves The Church. Keller was saying that The Church, or the little clusters of people who call themselves churches are stuck in this self-salvation too.

We end up saying that if we believe exactly right or if we care for the poor exactly right or if we have the precise kind of worship service services that make me God happy or if we go to church the requisite number of times a day/week/month/year or if we consume the right kinds of music/movies/books or if we do ______ exactly right, then God will be happy with us and love us.

And that is exactly wrong because it puts all the burden for our salvation on us. It makes us responsible for fixing ourselves.

It’s no wonder that people get annoyed with “church”. It’s because we often are helping people get LIKE US rather than helping people get TO God.

I was reading about Jesus a bit ago. He was talking to and healing and touching people who never would have made it into a church. In fact, he was even doing all those things with people who didn’t even, well, didn’t even know whether they believed in him or not. I mean, they saw him, and knew that he was cool, and knew that he healed them, but they didn’t understand any of the theological stuff about him.

All they knew was that what they were doing wasn’t working. So when Jesus talked about good news, they were all (deaf) ears and (blind) eyes and (broken) hearts.

What if the church stopped being so churchy? Maybe there might be evidence that God actually is necessary rather than just our rules.

Or at least that’s what I think.

(oops)

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“Looking Back” is an opportunity to republish posts which have mattered to me. They may matter to you, too.

selections

I show up other places.

In addition to writing here at Levite Chronicles, a couple of other blogs have graciously allowed me to contribute.

This week’s offerings:

At gnmparents.com, I’m in a personal series about affirming words. This week I looked at the power of telling parents about their children, particularly about the success of their children when away from their parents.

Lady, Your Kid Rocks.

Also, in case you missed it, last week I talked about the importance of thanking the people who care well for your children, whatever their ages.

Who Cares for Mine, I Love

At smallbizsurvival.com, I’m trying to figure out a series. This week, I wrote about the Olympics. More accurately, I wondered whether I do anything as devotedly as the athletes are doing their events.

As much as they do

I also wrote there a couple weeks ago about the problem with “just”, as in “I’m just a ….”

More than just another small business

Here at Levite, I gathered the links to my “8 ways” series onto a page of their own. As this is a series that will be continuing, I thought it would be more helpful than listing them all everytime I wrote a new one.

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Thanks for all the visits this week. Have a great weekend.

asking for help

No, I’m not asking you for help. Not now. I don’t think.

I realized today (again) that there is a big gap in my behavior between having the great creative idea and making it happen, between creativity and creation.

What?

Let me tell you what happened.

Our pastor is doing a series of messages about marriage. In particular, he’s talking about ways to shatterproof your marriage.As we talked about images to illustrate a couple, we looked at lots of pictures and decided to use the generic man and woman that show up everywhere. It’s a great, simple, flexible concept.

The next piece of thinking was to decide to put 8-foot versions of the people on the wall in the gymnasium we use. Because the first message is about communication, we decided to have the couple each talking on a cell phone.

It’s a simple process: use an overhead projector, trace the figures on bulletin board paper, cut them out, fasten them to black plastic, hang them on the wall.

It’s simple but I got stuck.

For two days I’ve had the pieces and the supplies and the item on my list, but I just couldn’t get moving. Until today when Kim volunteered to help.

I almost told her no. Then I realized that I could describe what I needed and she could work on it. She traced and cut and we pinned and I hung them on the wall. We were done by the middle of the afternoon, each of us doing bits of the project.

As I was 20 feet in the air using a lift, I realized that I was stuck at the point of making the imagined tangible. There was something huge about taking the small step of tracing a figure on a paper. And I realized that I often get stuck there, stuck because I can’t ask for help.

In the interest of doing it myself, of not imposing, of being the creative one, I keep people who know how to do stuff from doing stuff. I waste energy on procrastination, on list making, on telling myself I had to get busy. Meanwhile, Kim had the time, the ability, the creativity, the helpfulness. If I had asked, she would have helped a day ago.

But then I wouldn’t have been able to write about my inability to ask for help. And you wouldn’t have been saved the lesson.

8 ways to encourage a friend.

1. Take a picture (of your friend, of the two of you, of a cow, of a sign). Print it out (snapfish, flickr, walgreens, your own printer). Write a note telling them specifically how they are making a difference in lives. Mail it to them.
2. When they are in the middle of a busy day, send them a text.
3. Remember their birthday (Facebook, your birthday email from last year).
4. Take five minutes and make a mindmap.
   Here’s what that is: Put their name in the middle of a piece of paper. Around it make 5 lists: odd things they do; ways they care about others; objects or activities they love most; things THEY want to do better (NOT what YOU want them to do better); people who speak well of them. Put this paper next to your computer and include items from it in your notes and emails and conversations with them. (It tells them you thought about them).
5. Gossip good about them to a mutual friend.
6. Forgive them (don’t tell them about it, just forgive them).
7. Reply to their emails, even if just to acknowledge receipt.
8. Never assume they know you care.

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For other 8 ways posts, go to the 8 ways page.

Renew what matters.

Several months ago I was thinking through life and jobs. I sat in my office and wrote: “if money didn’t matter, I would spend my time…” It was a great question. I wrote three things. After I wrote them, I realized that they are exactly what I love to do. I end up spending much of my time doing those three things.

Two weeks ago, I was meeting with a friend I’m mentoring. I gave him the same assignment. When we met again this week, he had done the assignment thoughtfully and well. I reminded him of my story and started to list my three things. I discovered that I couldn’t remember the words. I still had the basic concepts, but the words that capture what I’m about, what I most love to do, were not at hand.

Later in the afternoon, I was reading a book on spiritual formation. The author referred to part of the Bible. I thought, “that matters to me a lot…but I forgot about it.”

Twice in the same day, specific things that I say are important, that I say are core to who I am, were not in my brain.

This isn’t a post about failing memory. It isn’t a post about hypocrisy or about the gap between what we say we believe and what we really believe. I mean, I could write those posts easily. But for now, my message is more straightforward:

Renew what matters.

I am aware right now, deeply aware, that I need to consistently, systematically, randomly, deeply, quickly, multisensorily renew what matters.

Stuff evaporates from my attention. I read so much, I talk so much, I listen to so much, I do so much that there is constant erosion. If I don’t go back to my core three things and review them, how am I going to be able to tell them to other people (”Here’s what I’m about. Um, well, something like this anyway.”) In the middle of schedule conflicts, how am I going to sort out the best from among the good and the merely distracting?

Renewing may be as simple as repeating something out loud. It may be blogging about your core every month. It may be taking a retreat–whether for an hour or a week–and going back over your list of what matters. It may be a date with your spouse or child. It may be a pep talk with your staff. It may be what I did one day.

My boss and I had been running on different schedules, seeing each other occasionally, but not for much conversation. After about a month of this, I was struggling with trying to keep keep our staff on task, with knowing what he wanted. One afternoon I said, “come here,” and took him into the auditorium. We sat in the back of the room and I said, “tell me again what you see our passion is.”

Ten minutes later, I was back on track. (and so were the two of us).

Maybe it’s me. Maybe your brain and heart and body remember everything clearly, and can quickly dispense with the irrelevant. However, if you are struggling right now with your elevator pitch, your personal vision, your one thing, your confusing schedule, your chaotic heart, try this:

renew what matters.

Technorati Tags: memory, passion, focus,

Starting new - dad

Charles Swanson died in 1936. Arnold, his fourth son, was 6. He died at home from stomach cancer, I think.

It was the depression. Alma, his widow, took over his postal route. She also took in washing from the nearby CCC camp. There wasn’t much money. There wasn’t much of anything. They lived, the family, in Big Fork, MN for another eight years or so, before moving to Minneapolis for Arnold’s freshman year in high school.

Arnold grew up without a dad, grew up without much stuff, grew up pretty early.

While in the hospital after being wounded during his time in Korea, he decided that what he had heard about God was true. He decided to become a minister.

He ended up, however, not working in a church. Instead, he worked with an organization that worked with boys in a way similar to scouts. He used to say, “the only thing you can make a man out of is a boy.” He always believed that it wasn’t a program for boys, it was a program for men who worked with boys. He always believed that you should influence people however you could.

It’s interesting that sometimes people are identified by their pain. Sometimes people are identified by the ways they changed the world so others wouldn’t have to suffer the same pain they did. Because Arnold decided to do the latter, there are a few thousand families across North America that are stronger, that have dads that have cared about their families.

Including his.

What did I miss?

On Friday, television programming was full of mourning for Tim Russert. He died suddenly of a heart attack. People spoke well of him. Coworkers and competitors, politicians and the public, friends and followers.

As I watched, I heard over and over of outstanding integrity, his work ethic, his family and his faith. His laughter drew me to him. his concern for his dad and his son.

One thing that people consistently talked about was the impact of “Meet the Press” on the political landscape. It was, as some people said, “appointment television”. It was a must-see program for people who wanted to understand significant political issues.

As I watched all of these comments, I wished that I knew him, knew him better, knew more of him. He seems to have been a passionate, caring, thoughtful, brilliant person.

But I never saw him on “Meet the Press.”

In fact, as best I can remember, I have never seen “Meet the Press” or “Face the Nation”. When Charles Kuralt was doing “Sunday Morning” and then Charles Osgood, I seldom saw them, either.

For my whole life, I have had another appointment on Sunday mornings. I’ve been in church buildings for nearly three hours for 95% of the nearly 50 years of Sundays I’ve known.

I’m not lamenting that time allocation.

I am aware, however, that many people who could benefit from having a richer understanding of our political environment have seen a scheduling issue as a spiritual issue (”we have to give up some things for our faith.”) No wonder we are accused of being unaware, at best, those of us who are in Sunday morning groups.

And as I watched the coverage, I wondered what I had missed by not getting to know, at least by television, this thoughtful human being.

looking back - pass it on

(First published May 31, 2007)

Today Chris was talking about the importance of teaching, of taking what we know and passing it on. His point is affirming and challenging and frustrating to me. At times I hear my response to that point: “I don’t know much. No one needs what I know. I don’t have the time.” In fact, as Nancy and I were walking last night (keeping a purpose set in December), we were talking about our neighbor who has done quite well as an academic author and I said, “I don’t know anything that well.”

However, the more I thought, the more I realized that I better pass on the advice I gave someone recently. This person, who has children and loves them and is loved by them, is having a difficult time praying. Somehow the words aren’t tracking right. Somehow it feels like the intention isn’t quite right or that God must be questioning how the praying is happening or maybe God is saying, “I gave you everything you need, what are you waiting for?” This is a person near the edge.

So I said “Spend the next few days listening to how your children talk to you and your spouse. Listen to what is requested. Listen to the talking for talking sake. Listen to inflection and urgency and desire to be with you and hear you and love you. And then talk to God the same way.”

We get so stuck in formality, in pleasing, in rituals that we forget completely that we are talking to Dad. At least that’s what I read.

I’m praying that it helps this person. And maybe you.

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“Looking Back” is an opportunity to republish posts which have mattered to me. They may matter to you, too.

the basics: remixed

It’s a commodity. It’s so basic that we don’t even think about looking at the label. We know what’s in the bottle, we dump it on, we move up.

And then a chain decided to relabel the bottle.

It doesn’t make you use it any differently. But a ketchup bottle with a sense of humor makes us smile, makes us think that this place cares enough about the customer experience to consider the basics.

It makes me think about basics. Do I think about them? Do I pay attention to them? Do I look at even the smallest details and give them life?

While watching something recently, I heard the John Wooden story about meeting with his teams at the beginning of each season and saying, “This is a basketball.” Whether the story is true or not, there a place for starting with the basics and spending time on them, making them matter.

Today, for awhile, go back to whatever is at the core of your life, that thing which is now second nature and look at it. Let it recharge your weekend.

And tell us what happens.

outside the window

It’s the end of the week. For me, anyway.

I take Fridays off and so when I walk out of my office, it will be the weekend. (I have this Sunday opportunity/responsibility which guides my schedule).

I’ve been working until 5:30 or 6:30 in the evening, depending on what time I get in and what is happening during the evening. When I talked with Nancy a bit ago, I said I would leave at 5:15. A little early.

Except.

I started this day at 6:30 am. I haven’t seen her awake yet today.

So I’m out of here. That’s her waiting. Outside the window.

Who invites you to leave early, waiting patiently always, understanding always, but probably ready to see you?

What spouse or child or parent or friend? Or God?

I’m out of here.