Following My Calling (Part #3)

May 9, 2012 in General Life, God and Spirituality | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

This is a continuation of a multipart series on my journey involving calling.

For Part #2 of Following My Calling

Although, I gained alot from the speakers at Discovery Weekend, I wouldn’t want you to think that this was one of those conferences where you just sit and listen to someone talk for several hours. One of the most important parts (if not the most important part) of Discovery Weekend comes in participation. Perhaps with the understanding that each of us have different gifts and leanings, at Discovery Weekend, we engaged in exercises giving us the opportunity to explore those things that give us the greatest joy.

Besides hearing the many stories of men and woman following their own calling, we also engaged in our own form of story-telling. Through different exercises, each person attending Discovery Weekend, shared something of their own story with others in a small group setting. First of all, hearing other’s share their own stories is inspiring in itself. There is something sacred about hearing someone share the most significant parts of their life with you. Through the sharing of stories and the feedback received, I was also able to become aware of God’s voice in my own life. I found the common threads of my life.

I’ve actually shared parts of many of my stories on this blog, but through sharing these windows into my life with others at Discovery Weekend I realized the following:

1)      The creative process is important for me.

2)      The most important part of the creative process is not necessarily the outcome, but instead it is the process itself.

Whether it was me taking an art class, developing new programs at work, or giving Bible Study, the creative process has been an important part of my life. Oftentimes, the results were lacking, but that did not lessen the joy or blessing of engaging in the process.

When we focus on things like results and success, it’s easy to get discouraged and bogged down. We sometimes find it hard to even start something, since if the inevitable result is failure, why bother even trying. Anytime we don’t measure up to our idea of “success” we label the result a failure, but does this accurately gauge the value of our experience?

For example, think about prayer. We pray to God and ask for His help. We intercede for others. We pray for a job, for a sick friend, or for a child who is having problems coping in school. Sometimes, there is an answer and we experience a miracle, but something nothing happens. In those moments, even when our prayers have not been answered, we have dared to dream and to ask God for the impossible. We have engaged in a conversation with Jesus. The very nature of faith is that sometimes we do not receive the object of our faith, and yet in trusting and walking with Jesus, we receive something even better. We receive Jesus.

One of direct results of Discovery Weekend is this blog and my own writing.  A little over a year ago, I would never have had the courage to start this blog. Who am I anyway? I am nobody of importance. I am not a pastor. I don’t have a PhD. Where’s this blog headed? What’s the point? What if this blog fails? What if nobody reads my blog? Is this just a vanity project? It would be easy to hear the voices of doubt in my head (see Following My Calling #1)and to never start writing at all, and yet here I am one year later.

I started putting my thoughts into words and into writing on this blog, because after Discovery Weekend, I found something beautiful and valuable in this process.  Through my writing here, I’ve found meaning, healing and even forgiveness. I’ve asked questions. I’ve renewed my relationship with Jesus, and I’ve tried to discover how I might become a better friend, a more attentive father, and a more considerate husband.

After Discovery Weekend, I still wasn’t sure about my calling, but in the midst of it all, I discovered God wanted to redeem my life. I have many regrets, and live with the knowledge of years lost at a church where the gospel was perverted into something grotesque. I was given a puzzle with missing pieces where life seemed limited and distorted. Through it all, it’s comforting to know I have a God who’s capable of redeeming and renaming those shameful parts of my past. I don’t entirely know how this might be accomplished, maybe in small part through my writing, but I look forward to seeing how even the difficult parts of my own life might be used to bless others. As I reflect on Discovery Weekend, I see it as a time, where I could appreciate the puzzle of Life God has given me. There’s so much going on here on this puzzle. It is more than I could ever imagine. It’s a puzzle where beautiful stories are told, where I am presented with a tapestry of possibilities and where I am allowed to dream.

What About You? What’s Your Dream?

This is the third of a multipart series on following my calling. In the next part, I will share about my experience after Discovery Weekend taking me up to the present day.

Following My Calling (Part #2)

May 7, 2012 in General Life, God and Spirituality | Tags: , , , , , , , | 2 comments

In a post last month on following my calling I wrote the following:

Two years ago, I was at a church where people never thought or considered God’s calling for their life. The issue of “calling” only became relevant if you were interested in doing a PhD, going into academia, becoming a pastor, going on missions, doing college ministry or taking part in a church plant. Calling was all about fitting yourself into the narrow mission of the church, or using your career to improve the reputation or standing of the church. . .

During the Spring of 2011 life looked very different for me. I was now at a different church. . .where it seemed as if people liked asking questions about God’s calling for their life and where people liked dreaming about how God might lead them. I was forty-three years old and felt as if I was at the crossroads.

During this season of my life, one of my Lenten prayers was about finding God’s direction for my life. I guess when you pray for something like direction; it’s usually helpful to have something in mind. I had nothing in mind. This wasn’t about me wanting anything in particular. It wasn’t about chasing after a new opportunity, or even about necessarily finding a new career. For many years I had lived with a fixed set of assumptions while letting others make decisions for me. Finally, my life seemed open to new possibilities. I wanted to explore and pray about those possibilities.

For fifteen years of my life, I was presented with a puzzle called “Life” and this puzzle only had twenty pieces. Usually when you do a puzzle, it’s often helpful to have the box, since the box top will have a picture of the completed puzzle. Unfortunately, if you’re missing the box top is missing, all you can do is your best. You find the edges and the corners. You find pieces with the same color scheme. You receive many reassurances from other trusted individuals that this puzzle only has twenty pieces, and yet there is a problem, because no matter how hard you try, this puzzle cannot be completed. It seems as if pieces are missing. There is only one corner piece. Things don’t make any sense. This couldn’t be right and things get frustrating. Anytime you question and ask someone about all the missing pieces, you are berated for your lack of faith. “Why don’t you simply trust that these are all the pieces?” You are berated for your lack of puzzle skills. “Clearly if you can’t put the puzzle together, this is your problem!”

It was only when I left my old church, that I discovered life wasn’t a twenty piece puzzle, instead it was a five hundred piece puzzle. Although at my old church, life was represented as this twenty piece puzzle, I discovered that life with God was much more rich and full then I could ever imagine. I needed a bigger table to hold the puzzle. With a five hundred piece puzzle, I discovered all sorts of things happening on every corner of the puzzle. Things began to make sense and I was able to put pieces in their proper context. Once upon a time, life was all about trying to find some kind of connection between the twenty pieces on my table. When the pieces didn’t fit I tried to force the issue and was met with frustration and bent and broken puzzle pieces. Finally after fifteen years of fruitlessly trying to complete my twenty piece puzzle, I had an epiphany and discovered there were actually five hundred pieces.

If my life with God could be described as a kind of puzzle, through recent events I discovered my little Disney Princess puzzle, was in fact a picture of something as big and wondrous as the Grand Canyon. I also discovered that God, the author of the puzzle, was far more compassionate and loving than I could ever know. He wasn’t limiting me to a narrow vision of faith, instead he was offering me the opportunity to be included in a kind of panorama, where there was rich beauty and an endless horizon.

At the end of the Lenten Season, I seemed no closer to my goal of finding God’s direction for my life, and yet I felt as if my Lenten prayers were not wasted. I had started a dialogue with God, and sometimes, when starting a conversation with someone, the most important thing is to simply start. If He stands at the door and knocks, coming to Him with prayer can be like opening the door and inviting Him in.

On the first weekend of May, the Greater Boston Vineyard hosted a weekend conference, called “Discovery Weekend.”  Led by Scott and Louise Walker, who serve as facilitators and guides, the Weekend is about entering into a dialogue on calling and finding God’s purpose for our lives. (In the months following Discovery Weekend, I would come to know the Walkers more personally. Most of the vision, life and energy of Discovery Weekend come from Scott and Louise). When you attend a conference on finding your calling, I guess it’s natural to wonder what you might gain from the experience.

Am I going to quit my job after attending Discovery Weekend? Will God speak to me?  More than give specific answers about life direction, Discovery Weekend was really more of an invitation to consider God’s purpose for our life and consider those things that give us the greatest joy

If Discovery Weekend had a thesis sentence, it would be this quote by Frederick Buechner:

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

One of the highlights of Discovery Weekend was the opportunity to listen to several people share about their own journey and how they came to find direction and calling in their life. A common thread in many of these stories was how each person had not only overcome some kind of adversity, but out of their greatest pain, they found their calling. Their own hurts had given them compassion, and through their past experience, God had lit a kind of fire in their life. You might call it inspiration or redemption as they found God’s purpose.

I found it reassuring and somehow comforting to see how God can redeem our past. He can take those moments of deepest hurt and pain, and from this pain He can make something grow. It’s a kind of grace I cannot even explain, but hearing those different men and woman share from their own experience of how they found their calling and how they were able to use their own pain to bless and love others, I found something that I deeply desired for my own life.

This is the second of a multipart series on following my calling. In the next part, I will share more about my experience at Discovery Weekend and discuss some of what I learned and how I applied to my life.

The Death of a Hero: Reflections on Junior Seau

May 3, 2012 in General Life, God and Spirituality | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 2 comments

Yesterday, future Hall of Famer Junior Seau died in an apparent suicide. What made this particularly hard to understand was Junior Seau did not seem like the kind of person who would commit suicide. As Andy Staples, a journalist with Sports Illustrated stated in a recent article that Seau “didn’t seem like someone who would kill himself.”

Bobby Beathard, the former General Manager of the Chargers remarked of Seau, ”I just can’t imagine this, because I’ve never seen Junior in a down frame of mind. He was always so upbeat and he would keep people up. He practiced the way he played. He made practice fun. He was a coach’s dream. He was an amazing guy as well as a player and a person. This is hard to believe.”

Junior Seau retired only a few short years ago, after playing the last four years of his career with the New England Patriots. As a Pats fan, I will always remember Junior Seau fondly as a member of the 2007 Patriots team. He was an old guy, but someone who played football on that team like a big kid who loved the game.  His death leaves many searching for answers. Was his death the outcome of brain trauma received as a result of concussions during his football career? Was his death because of his inability to make the transition from superstar athlete to being 40+ and retired?

His death leaves me wondering whether Seau received professional help for his problems? Did he feel like as if he had to play the role of “Junior Seau?” He had to be the gregarious loveable football player who called everyone, “Buddy.”

I don’t doubt Junior Seau was a great human being, but even great human beings and heroes are often tragically flawed and have serious problems.  As Shawn Mitchell the San Diego Charger Chaplain remarked, ”All of us can appear to be super, but all of us need to reach out and find support when we’re hurting.”

Why didn’t Junior Seau reach out and find support?

On 93.7 WEEI’s Dennis and Callahan morning show, John Dennis and Jerry Callahan called Seau’s suicide, “selfish,” because of the likely effect of his death on his children.  I suppose the response of sports radio shouldn’t surprise me, since these personalities have turned self righteous judgment into a business. At the same time, I don’t think Dennis and Callahan are unique. Judging others is something we all do, and maybe the fear of judgment is one of the things that prevented Junior Seau from seeking help.

For fifteen years I made my home at a church, where people were never really allowed to be honest with one another. It wasn’t appropriate or edifying to be honest about your troubles, and certainly not about mental illness, or addictions. You didn’t want your friends or your leaders at church to think bad things about you. Everyone was playing a role and was trying to be spiritual.

I will never know what is like to be Junior Seau. I’m not a retired professional football player. To the best of my knowledge I’ve never suffered from a concussion. Although, I know nothing about what it must have been for Junior Seau in life or just before his death, I know what it’s like when you feel unable to share honestly with the people who are closest to you. Trapped in this place, it’s not too hard to imagine how someone, even someone like Junior Seau, could despair and lose hope.

One of the reasons why we can share honestly with one another is because we are all flawed and broken in some manner. We suffer disappointments, hurts and sometimes abuse. We each carry a lot of baggage. What can give us the ability to face ourselves is the knowledge that we can face others and that we can face God, and know that far from experiencing condemnation, what we will receive in return is love and compassion. If we are the prodigal son, He is the father who joyfully receives us into His rest.

One of the reasons why I love to blog with you is that this is my opportunity to show you how sometimes the emperor’s wearing no clothes.  I’m a professional and well educated guy, but I’m also fundamentally flawed. I have a lot of self doubt, anger, fear and sometimes I am even prone to depression.  I desperately need God’s grace.

If any good can come from Junior Seau’s death, I hope that this will cause people to seek help, not just from their friends and pastors, but from licensed professionals, because yes even followers of Jesus can suffer from clinical depression. I also hope that Junior Seau’s death might result in more compassion, grace and understanding from the rest of us.

Translating Faith into a Better Story

May 2, 2012 in God and Spirituality, Parenting, Children and Family | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What does it mean to translate faith for our children?

My own daughters are pretty young, but when they complain about faith and church being boring, I’m left considering whether maybe the problem isn’t faith and church, maybe the problem is how I live out faith and church.

In my recent post on heaven I wrote the following:

(M)y idea of heaven often suffers the same fate as my idea of faith. It suffers and is often limited by my own lack of imagination.

In his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Don Miller talks about seeing our lives as a story and about how we can intentionally set out to live a better story. One of the stories he shares is about a friend struggling in his relationship with his daughter. His teenage daughter is rebelling, withdrawing, dating a creepy guy and taking drugs. It would be easy to see this issue as a discipline problem, and not long ago I might have seen it this way.

What did the father do?

He thought about the story his daughter was living and the role she was playing inside that story. He realized he hadn’t provided a better role for his daughter. He hadn’t mapped out a story for his family. And so his daughter had chosen another story, a story in which she was wanted, even if she was only being used. In the absence of a family story, she’d chosen a story in which there was risk and adventure, rebellion and independence. (A Million Miles in a Thousand Years)

Instead of seeing this as a discipline problem and “laying down the law” the father offered his daughter the opportunity to live a better story. He sat his wife and daughter down and told them that they were going to raise money to build an orphanage in Mexico. It would require sacrifice, but it would be sacrifice with meaning and purpose. After the initial shock, his daughter underwent a near miraculous transformation, reengaging with her family, dropping the boyfriend and finding inspiration and purpose in living a better story.

In mapping out a better story for my family and my daughters, this Don Miller story reminds me about the role I play as husband and father.

As a father, I sometimes feel as if I am doing all I can to just react to the situation of the moment.  I have a good job and provide income for my family. I make lunches for my daughters and take them to soccer games and the park. I love to read books to my children. I will give correction and if my girls are having difficulty with one another I will mediate the problem. We take our girls to church and to small group and when the opportunity arises we engage them about faith. I do my best to meet the immediate needs of my family, however, I often wonder how I can more proactively meet the needs of my family.

I am currently reading Richard Rohr’s From Wild Man to Wise Man: Reflections on Male Spirituality and read the following:

I know a number of women who pity their husbands. They cannot admire them because they never do anything to arouse their wives admiration. The men go to work and come home dutifully every day. They take out the garbage and do whatever the wives ask them to do, but that is the extent of their energy.

Please don’t misunderstand my use of this quote. I’m not saying that my wife disrespects or pities me, and yet this quote does reflect my inner dialogue and conversation about whether I should be doing more as a father and a husband. Am I just doing my duty? Can I be mapping out a better story for my family?

Richard Rohr writes further:

Sons especially want their dads to take them into new, different and challenging worlds, not just build picket fences around them

With all respect to Richard Rohr, I would say that it’s not only sons who wish to be taken to different and challenging worlds. As the father of a seven year old who wants to experience adventure, I can tell you that this is something our daughters want in spades. As the father of daughters, if it was within my power, I would probably try to build a picket fence around them, and yet this also would not be modeling faith or meeting the needs of my girls. It’s so easy for me to be content in my safe American middle class suburban life, but as a father I should be speaking to my daughters in a language of adventure and wonder that captures their hearts. Faith in Jesus is anything but boring. I should be inviting them to live a life of faith that is willing to take risks, where we dare to dream and trust God for big things.

At the beginning of this post I posed the question:

What does it mean to translate and model faith for our children? How can I translate and model faith for my girls?

I’ve given you a lot of wonderful words, but words in themselves are abstract things. I find myself wondering what these words mean for my family and wondering about possible answers. In the coming weeks, I hope to share with you some of what is on my mind, about translating and modeling faith, and what it might mean for my family to live a better story.

In closing I’ve posed some questions, but I’m not sure if I’ve offered any answers. Isn’t that frustrating!!?? If you’re so inclined I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thinking of Heaven

April 30, 2012 in God and Spirituality | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I was writing a reply to Jo’s comment on heaven and I realized my short reply was turning into a post. After my last post on translating heaven for our children, Jo wrote:

I sometimes struggle with the same thing your daughter does: will I like heaven? Do I need to make myself into someone that will like heaven? I’m encouraged that heaven will be everything that God wanted for earth- I wonder how that translates for kids? Maybe roller coasters, indeed!

I totally appreciate what Jo’s saying.

Unfortunately, I think that my idea of heaven often suffers the same fate as my idea of faith. It suffers and is often limited by my own lack of imagination.

Although, it’s not a children’s book, C.S. Lewis’ description of heaven in The Great Divorce seems “spot on” in a lot of ways.  He describes heaven as a place where we can be real and solid.

In life, our passions and gifts are often intrinsically linked to our fears and insecurities. We are constantly searching for significance and purpose. Heaven is a place where we can finally be free of our insecurity and fear. As Jo mentioned in her comment, heaven will be everything that God intended for us. There is no need to press, impress or justify. We can let go of the things that hinder us, because God gives us something even better.

“Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly.”

I’m not sure about your feelings on the matter, but I find myself less than satisfied with the perception of heaven as a kind of idyllic Thomas Kinkade painting with a petting zoo.  I understand God may have a throne and angels may or may not have swords, as pictured in the Burpo book, but I also know that Jesus wants to personally engage us and that God will turn our swords into plowshares (Isaiah 2:4). (I actually wonder why Angels would even need swords, but that’s a question for another day)

I understand heaven will be a place where we will praise and worship God, and yet I also believe that worshipping Jesus doesn’t just have to be about simply singing praise songs. In Psalm 148 it talks about the entire universe praising God:

Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean depths,lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding, you mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds

In her book Abide: Keeping Vigil with the Word of God, Macrina Wiederkehr reflects on Psalm 148 and talks about a kind of praise of God that happens when we “practice the art of being as opposed to doing.” She writes:

If the fruit trees, the cedars, and even the hail are to give praise, then it follows that there is a way of praising God in which the spoken word is unnecessary. . .

Everything, in its own way, was praising the Creator of heaven and earth. And thus it became clear to me; we need only to be attentive, to enter nature’s contemplative prayer of praise.

A gardener might grow the most beautiful flowers as an act of praise, and a craftsman might carve a simple but elegant wooden chair as an act of praise. Someone who loves to cook might create yummy gnocchi as an act of praise. Yes, and as Wiederkehr so beautifully expresses, our praise of God may also happen in our complete silence and stillness. In heaven, I imagine a place where we will learn the simplicity of praising God through the expression of our true selves.

The kingdom of heaven is also described as a wedding banquet in Matthew 22. Heaven will be the biggest and best party ever. This won’t be one of those terrible wedding parties with a dorky DJ and wedding chicken, where you pretend to slip away to the bathroom and then leave altogether. This will be a party where the wine will never run out (See John 2) and where we will celebrate grace and mercy, and where I might finally learn to dance.

How do you imagine heaven?

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