In the wee hours of the morning, one tends to find oneself thinking a bit differently.  I currently find myself thinking about my life as it might be told by other people in the future - after some noteworthy success or maybe just after my death.  Beyond the initial considerations of "What would they say?" or "Would anyone care?", I have to wonder what could really make my life a story worth telling?  I've taken class after class learning, unlearning, and relearning what it is that makes a good story, but beyond all the jargon and formulae and observation, I realize that what would really make my story worth telling would be... me.

Don't get me wrong, I believe God's got the story written, but I'm still the one who has to live it.  So how do I live a story worth telling?

Also, don't mistake this for narcissism either; this is a challenge being presented.  If my story is only as good as I make it, then I've got quite a bit of work to do.  How do I make myself a character worth describing - interesting, yet believable; unique, yet universal; unpredictable, yet consistent?  How do I face the events and conflicts in my life fearlessly yet wisely?  How do I interact with my environment in ways that improve the circumstances of and for the environment?  How do I fulfill my responsibilities as a main character?  Do I become a hero? catalyst? anti-hero? villain? what?

What do I become?

What becomes of me?

What happens in my story?

Well, I don't really know.  I don't really have answers.  Then again, there aren't very many specific questions.  The questions just appear moment-by-moment with varying degrees of subtlety.  One moment, you have to answer the question of, "Will I get out of bed this morning?" and the next, you have to answer questions like, "Will I let this young mother have this parking spot?" or "Will I move thousands of miles away to find work?"  You never know.

That seems to be the main drawback to this kind of storytelling - it's live.  There are no edits, there's no proofreading, and there are no real delays.  Your words and actions are permanent.  If you make a mistake, you have no choice but to keep going and make it better as you go along.  On the other hand, that's also the beauty of a story: making things come together as they go along.  Often, the more that things have to come together, the better the story becomes.

So, I guess that's it.  Frankly, I'm too tired right now to wrap things up in a nice conclusion.  Then again, nothing ever really wraps up, and we never get the luxury of concluding with a "happily ever after."  But therein lies the blessing in disguise too.  Every day brings us the chance to make the story better, richer, deeper, more complex, and more satisfying.  Every breath is a new page, and every encounter is a new chapter.  I don't really know where my story is going - heck, I don't even know which act I'm in - but I do know that I've been given the chance to make my part the best it can be.  Privilege or responsibility, this is the best I can do.

The end.

The beginning.

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My dad sends me a lot of emails day-to-day to share thoughts he's had when he invariably wakes up much earlier than he'd like and has nothing better to do.  Today, he sent me some thoughts around the passage in 1 Corinthians where Paul says that he became all things to all people so that he might reach even just some of them for the cause of Christ.  My dad then sent a second email after he read a devotional about Samuel and some of the political turmoil Israel went through when they couldn't be content w/ a theocracy.  This is how he ended the second email, sorta to tie the two emails together (and, I think, to imply certain things about America's political present/future):

"By the death of Solomon (only the 3rd king), there was so much corruption, taxation, and political arrogance that a civil war [broke out].  The rebellious tribes immediately began an abrupt decline into dishonoring and angering God.  Eventually, they were destroyed as a nation.

Paul said, 'I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.'

Does being all things to all men, mean being a Democrat to Democrats and a Republican to Republicans?  Is that an appropriate question?

Talk to me…

I love you!

&"

The email I sent back to him in response ended up feeling very much like a blog as I was writing it, so I decided to put it up on here to see what others think.  As usual, I make no claims to having it all nailed down, but if you don't like reading people's scattered thoughts and opinions, then blogging really isn't for you anyway  Peace.

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My response...

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Well, just to scratch the surface of that last question (frankly, the easiest to address), this is kinda one of the benefits to being moderate/independent.  People tend to think of being a moderate as being undecided or of being independent as just being stubborn, but for me, I know what I believe on most things, and I know that neither party tends to agree w/ me on all things.  I feel like being a very middle ground kind of person doesn't actually allow me to "become" anything specific to ANY people, but I've found myself able to at least sympathize more readily w/ all people.  For my part, I'd rather not alienate anyone, so I make serious efforts to not get drawn to either pole or extreme if I can help it~shrug~

What does the word "become" really mean in this passage?  If we really tried to become all things to/for all people, we'd be guilty of the wishy-washiness and indecision that moderates and independents are accused of.  Be a Democrat AND a Republican?  I'm not so sure.  But I'm not so sure it's helpful to be a Democrat OR a Republican either.

I think this passage is another good one to indicate the merit of being a holistic person.  I don't go to school, drive my car, do my grocery shopping, etc., and then, come election season, strap on my political beliefs like an ugly Christmas sweater for the holiday season.  I really don't think beliefs, activities, everyday life, etc. are to be so compartmentalized.  It's kinda the whole "Sunday Christian" thing if nothing else.  "Oh, I'm going to church now - put on the ugly Christmas sweater of religiosity." "Oh, I'm going to vote now - put on the ugly Christmas sweater of partisanship." "Oh, I'm going to a bar now - put on the ugly Christmas sweater of the partier."  I'd rather not live like that.  If I'm at a party on a Saturday, I don't think I should have to put that away in its little compartment when I go to church the next day.  Or vice versa, why shouldn't I be able to casually (not just evangelically) throw out a Bible reference when I'm at a bar?  When talking to a right-wing extremist, why shouldn't I be able to say Republicans like to squelch the American dream w/ their immigration policies? or mention to a Democrat that we could potentially have another 20 million people in the work force right now if it weren't for the morally repugnant liberalism of Roe v. Wade?

Dare I suggest it's about tone again?  I mean, I think the necessary sympathy called for in this passage is not one that necessarily has us changing who we are for the sake of the other person, but I think, in a sense, it does call us to change how we act.  It changes our approach.  It puts us - as the person we already are - on the same plain as the person we're talking to.  And if we have to tweak who we are a little bit, it's all for the sake of being able to say, "I know how you feel."  Is that what Paul intended millenia ago?  I'm not sure, but I feel pretty strongly that that's what it needs to mean today.

<><

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I don't know why He bothers.  Every time, occasionally the frequency longer than others, but every time things are rough, spiritually, God throws me a bone.  Or maybe a floatation device would be a more appropriate metaphor.  Anyway, I'm going to skip the part where I verbally flagellate myself for what a wretched sinner I am because - though it'd all be true - it's both too personal and too much of a waste of space to put here.  I want to get to the point.  Ready?

Hope.

Both the sermon I heard this past Sunday and the Mars Hill sermon I downloaded today from two Sundays ago were essentially about hope.  I feel like this is one of the most misunderstood and/or misapplied virtues.  All too often, we use the more christian-sounding word "hope" as something of a sanctified stand-in for the word "wish."  I have to wonder which word is taken less seriously when we do this.  Wishing already has pretty flippant connotations, but it seems there's still at least a sense of humility there in that we know we can't do it alone, and it'd be great if something outside ourselves would help (or do it for us).  Hope would seem to be somewhat more optimistic, but it also seems like we've turned it into a kind of last resort w/ a distinct air of fatalism to it.  In other words, we don't really think the thing can happen, but we wish it would.

During the sermon at my home church yesterday, a quote was used that I consider to be about half true.

"Optimism is the belief that things will get better.  Hope is the faith that, together, we can make things better.  Optimism is a passive virtue; hope, an active one.  It takes no courage to be an optimist, but it takes a great deal of courage to have hope."  (Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations)

My assessment of "half true" is a bit inaccurate and reactionary because the implication I got from this at first was that optimism was supposed to be a bad thing.  It's not, and I don't think this quote is really trying to say it is, but instead, it's trying to point out the more transcendent quality to hope.  Still, when I first read this quote in my dad's bulletin, I immediately underlined the words "It takes no courage to be an optimist" and wrote underneath it, "In today's world, I beg to differ."  I think life is hard enough that to even take that first step of choosing to be optimistic is a courageous one.  But I agree, to go that next step and to hope, that's better.

One thing the Mars Hill sermon I downloaded pointed out is that we shouldn't put our hope in our limited perspective on circumstances.  When our hope rests solely in something we think must happen in the future, we narrow the playing field dangerously and we set ourselves up for disappointment.  While I believe faith, hope, and love - all of the key virtues - have a certain component of risk to them, I think our hope, in particular, can be less "blind" and, in a sense, less risky than we tend to believe.  Like being a Christian in general, we have to give up ourselves, but we're giving ourselves TO something.  We invest ourselves and our hope in someONE who wants to give back infinitely more than we could ever imagine.  Whatever limitations we put in place when we hope only in specific circumstances are limitations that God wants to blow wide open.  Sure, we might not always get what we hope for, but from God's perspective, that's because what we typically hope for is way too small.  If nothing else, look at it like "give a man a fish/teach a man to fish" - we might hope for our circumstances to improve, but God wants to improve us so that we can help Him make circumstances better.  At that point, hope becomes more than optimism or a wish, and it becomes what the original languages of the Bible describe as anticipation or expectation.  At that point, we can have confidence (we can expect) that w/ God, things have been, can, and will be made better.

One of the major parts of the service at my home church (and one of the main reasons I was up there in the first place) was the dedication of my 14-month-old cousin Mia.  This is a beautiful baby girl who's the joy of her parents, grandparents, and every other relative/person who comes into contact w/ her.  The main passage used in her dedication was a psalm that mentions the immediate (unmediated; unintentional) praise that children are capable of giving to God and the general finitude (though, at a dedication, you might use the word fragility) of mankind.  Now, I love my little cousins, but I'm only so good w/ kids.  In other words, I'm only good w/ so many kids, and I'm only good w/ them for so long.  I digress, but my point is, kids are all sorts of screwed up just like we "big people" are, but they can hope for things like there's no tomorrow!  Someone recently commented to me how everything seems so important when you're little, and that's true, but I think a lot of why that's true is because children suffer from far less disillusionment (or what you might call "adult-eration") than we do.  When it comes to things they want/need, their hope - their anticipatory, expectant hope can be all-consuming.  They might be well aware that they have no power to getting what they want, but regardless of the difficulty in getting it, they want it anyway.  They keep hoping.  Obviously, we've all seen this cause problems, but one of the things I love about children is that they start w/ this blessed assumption that life can always get better.  This is why I think it's not children who should be thought less of for their lack of "disillusionment," it's the rest of us who think we've got life all sussed out as utterly stark, pragmatic, and ultimately, hopeless.

So, now what?  If God is for us, why shouldn't we have hope?  He wants the absolute best possible for us, and sure, we might not get exactly the circumstances we thought were best, but He's committed to helping us work toward making all things the best they can be.  He brings our limited, future-circumstance-based view of hope into a full-blown present-tense affair based on the Almighty's plan for the redemption of all things.  Through God, our hope goes from "Maybe someday..." and becomes "Maybe today!"

God wants to see our hope become our reality.  Don't be afraid to help.  Our world is full of terror and pessimism, and optimism takes courage, "but the bravest thing of all is always hope."

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P.S. - We all at least cognitively concede that God works in mysterious ways.  One of the things that often "works" for me is music, and this was one of those (many) times where music was part of my coping process.  I owe the last line of this post and much of the inspiration for the rest of it to a Christian band that doesn't suck, and I owe my introduction to that band's music to my former roommate, Adam Richard.  So, on the extraordinarily slim chance you're reading this (I sound like a producer who knows his ratings have dropped lol), many thanks, my friend.