The Nature of Fandom

The last six weeks for the Steelers has made me reflect on the nature of fandom.  The Steelers in particular are a top tier team in the NFL in terms of prestige, and therefore have a lot of fair weather fans (which is easy when the weather is often fair for them).  It is these fans who are the ones cursing the team after a loss like last night, calling them bums, and giving up on them.

Coming from Pittsburgh originally, though, I have been a Steeler fan, and with much greater difficulty, a Pirates fan my entire life.  2009 marked the point in which the Steelers proved to be the best NFL franchise of all time with 6 Superbowls, and the Pirates proved themselves to be the worst franchise of all time with 16 consecutive losing seasons.  And yet I root for each team with the same passion, and experience the same heartache with each loss.

Being a real fan is heartbreaking.  You don't have the luxury of turning your allegiance on and off depending on whether your team is a success or not.

A slide like the Steelers have been on these past six weeks is like a kick in the gut.  To simply dismiss the team and turn on them is, to me, not what a fan would do.

You wouldn't do that to a team that a member of your family was on.  That's what these teams feel like to fans.  You have grown up with them, and you don't get to choose whether you like them or not: it's in your blood.


And it hurts more than it should.  It's silly, but you can't help it.

Birth

The world has changed.

Twelve days ago, Adrien gave birth to Elliott Xavier, and we became parents.

I spent many years dreamily musing on the idea of being a father, and nine months of steady preparation, but nothing really prepared me from the instant change in how I see the world.

Now in many ways, everything is more or less the same. The way I see it, however, is somehow different. Not always different enough to be distinct, but different enough to be detectable. It's really too nebulous to try to articulate properly. Everything is the same, but different. Like I am looking through new lenses.

Or this:

Imagine being in a gallery looking at a sculpture for about 30 minutes, but for that entire time, you are seated directly in front of it. After that time, you move your chair over about 45 degrees, so that you are at a diagonal to the statue. In truth that statue is the exact same statue you were looking at before, but a the same time, it is completely new, as you now are seeing it from a new perspective, one that has insight that you might have been lacking before. It causes you to rethink much of what you thought before.

That is what has happened. God has moved my chair slightly to the left of where I was sitting before, and now the world is new.

I have a son.

I am a father.

The world has changed.

Setting my preferences

Adrien & I were talking last night about how much we love our dog, McFly. We've had McFly for about 10 months, and he has his annoying moments, but ultimately, he's an awesome dog. He meets my basic requirements of an awesome dog: he doesn't lick you in the face, he's not big enough to jump up and look you in the eye, and he can catch a frisbee.

Despite our time as dog owners, A & I were both commenting on how we are still cat people. We have three cats. I love McFly, and wouldn't get rid of him for anything, but I still prefer cats to dogs.

It made me think about how distinctly there are key differences that we have about things like that which ultimately don't matter, but can seemingly tell us "a lot about a person."

In light of that, I thought I'd clear some things up, and spell out where I stand on some of histories greatest tipping points.

I prefer Pepsi over Coke (though mainly drink diet now, and am not too discriminant).

I prefer Baseball over Football.

I prefer the Beatles over Elvis.

I prefer Macs over PCs (though currently own a PC cause it's cheaper).

I prefer Guitar Hero to Rock Band.

I prefer Dunkin Donuts coffee to Starbucks.

I prefer Empire to Jedi (or A New Hope).

I prefer Facebook to MySpace.

I prefer The Simpsons to Family Guy.

I prefer Colbert to The Daily Show.

I prefer Sci-Fi to Westerns.

I prefer Fall to Spring, and Winter to Summer.

I prefer a push mower to a riding mower.

I prefer anything to running.

I prefer rap to country.

I prefer function to fashion.

I prefer chocolate to vanilla (accept, ironically, in the case of actual chocolate).

I prefer consequences to guilt (or denial).

I prefer history to math.

I prefer the Harry Potter books to the movies.

I prefer the Lord of the Rings movies to the books.

I prefer community to isolation.

I prefer Burger King to McDonalds.

I prefer Disney World to most everywhere else.

I prefer talking to someone face to face to communicating through technology.

and I prefer cats to dogs.

There.

Perhaps that tells a lot about me. Perhaps it tells very little at all. Many of these are things that I have a preference toward, but am fine with either most days. At any rate... that's all.

Walking on the Moon

This is a blog that I wrote on June 23, 2008:

A few months ago, XM was playing a channel that was all Michael Jackson, all the time, for a month, in honor of Thriller's 25th anniversary. I then went on a Michael Jackson binge for a while, which was recently resurged.

I have realized that every single Michael Jackson song eventually devolves into gibberish. Example: the end of "Black or White" finds MJ singing

Iss Blaa, Is Whii, Iss Blubba doo, yeah yeah yeah.

It is practically inevitable. The best example of this, and perhaps the quickest to take that turn onto the incomprehensible highway is the song "Wanna Be Starting Something." This one goes like this:

Say you wanna be startin somethin'
you got to be startin' somethin'
Say you wanna be startin' somethin'
you got to be startin' something

Too high to get over (yeah yeah!)
Too low to get unda (yeah yeah!)
Ya stuck in the middle
And a remby blemba...

The first verse goes:

Took my baby to the doctor
wit a hee dimba dumba da he dumb.

This is brilliant. The man has no need for coherency to sell a record. I mean take even the lyrics that are distinguishable, like "Thriller":

Cause this is Thriller!
Thiller night!
Girl, I can scare you more than any ghoul would ever dare try!

What? Why does Michael want to scare girls? Like if it was, "Hey this is scary, but you can cuddle with me," that would be a pop song that makes sense, but this is is a plain enigma! That goes against the very equation of pop!

Why, Michael?

And yet, when we listen to it, why does it make such sense to us?

Here is one more gem:

Beat It! Beat It!
No is the heed a heed it!
Tell them hot hocky
Tell them no bites
It doesn't matter
who's wronga right.

My conclusion is that Michael Jackson hyp-mo-tized us all with his gibbery lyrics and sweet dance moves. I am still not immune to the infectious jammin' on the one grooves of 80's and 90's MJ. I am not afraid to admit it, and I think most if not all of you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Wit a hee dimba dumba da he dumb.

Thanks, Michael.

Devil's Food Cake

I have been thinking a lot about food lately.

Adrien is pregnant, and is doing a great job of eating healthy, not too many cravings for bad things, but obviously eating more than she used to.

In all the predictions of the baby's gender, miscellaneous well wishes, and words of advice, I have been repeatedly told about how I will also gain "sympathy weight."

Sympathy weight sounds great. That sounds like, if I am going to be a good and loving husband, then out of solidarity to Adrien, I need to match her gain pound for pound. It's expected and no one can blame me. After all, it's sympathy weight.

So I have rather subconsciously allowed myself to eat more for the past six months, feeling like it was the inevitability of being an involved and sympathetic father to be. However, as Adrien has been eating fruit and salads, I have been eating cheeseburgers and Chinese food.

The end result is that I am back in the land of the 200 pounders.

Like I said, all of this got me thinking about food. Why we eat so much of it, why we love it when we eat it, but we talk about it with such a sense of shame. We know what food is bad for us. We know what food is good for us. We know when we've had too much. None of that changes our eating habits, though. None of it changes our lifestyle.

Much of my view toward food is a guilt ridden sense of bondage. I bargain and rationalize with myself about how it's okay to eat this food in a way that I know that I shouldn't.

"Christmas is only once a year!"

"You have to have an Easter feast!"

"My friend only comes into town every few years, and we need to eat wings like we used to!"

"It's a graduation party - I need to eat some of their food to show to be a good guest."

"I love Devil’s Food Cake, and nobody makes Devil’s Food Cake like Francis! I have to have some!"

I know that eating the kind of food that I do in the amounts that I do is bad for me. It makes me tired. It makes me feel lousy. It makes me feel out of shape. It makes me have less energy.

And yet I still do it.

The short term thrill of eating things that are bad for me outweighs my clear knowledge of what will happen to me in the long term.

Not only that, but I sometimes get inclined to blame the food for me acting this way.

"What do you mean a Klondike bar is 50% of my total recommended fat intake for the day?!? Why would they do that! They should make that writing bigger!"

Each week, I make a resolution for this to be the day that I start eating right, start exercising, and get better control of my eating habits. Sometimes that lasts for a few days, sometimes only for a few hours.

A few years ago, it lasted for about 9 months. I started eating better, started walking almost every day, and I lost 40 pounds in about 2 months, going from 215 to 175. As soon as I got to 175 (what I was shooting for), I let up a bit, allowing myself treats here and there. I immediately gained 15 pounds back, and eventually working back up to 195. And just last week, I finally jumped back over the edge of 200.

My relationship with my weight is in a lot of ways a parallel to the relationship we have with sin.

We know the things that are bad for us, and yet we still do them.

Food is not inherently bad – it’s inherently good.

Our behavior with it is what leads us to take what is good and twist it to harm us.

Too much food, our misuse and abuse of it, is what leads us to harm.

The same is true of most sins:

Romantic Love is good, but can lead to lust.

Genuine Pride can be good, but can lead to arrogance and self-righteousness

Loyalty is good, but can lead to prejudice and intolerance.

We have our minds set on pleasing ourselves, even when we know that our behavior is hurting us.

Romans 8 says that "there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus," and that the Spirit of God "lives in us."

The Sprit of God lives in us. We are in Christ.

Do we live like we are in Christ though?

What is our response to our freedom from sin, freedom from condemnation?

More sin?

Freedom from sin doesn’t mean that we don’t ever sin anymore. It means that we are free from our bondage to it. We don’t have to live that way anymore.

We have no excuse. We know better.

We know what sin is. We can recognize it clearly. We are set free from it.

Is our response then to live with our minds set on pleasing God or pleasing ourselves?

Do we have the strength to look beyond our own selfish motivations?

Or do we simply want to have another piece of cake?

I knew it.

There were a few months when Conan O'Brien was off the air.  That was a rough spot for me.  I missed him more than I thought I would.  Now he's back and easing into The Tonight Show.  Life is sweet again.

In the mean time though, Jimmy Fallon took over Conan's old spot at 12:30.  I gave him a week.  I think I laughed three times during those five shows.  Fallon has two settings: hilarious and super annoying.  It appears that he's stuck in super annoying on his show.  I thought about watching just for The Roots (who are the resident band for the show - not sure how that happened), but Jimmy was just two unfunny.

Then I saw this clip...

I might just have to start watching again... at least until the reunion happens.

And while I'm on 1980's nostalgia, check out this bit of genius.  I may have posted this about a year ago, but if I did, hooray!  Here it is again! - note that Belding connects it all...

Thinking about G-Ma.

My grandmother, Lola Christy, turned 96 on May 16th, in great health. A few days later, she went into the hospital with trouble breathing. The doctors diagnosed her with double pneumonia, and essentially that there wasn't much chance of recouperation from that at her age. She died a few days later, on Sunday May 24th.

In a lot of ways, the realization of Gramma's death has been bittersweet. The fact that she was 96 meant that I have been sort of emotionally preparing for her death for about a decade now. In a lot of ways, that has allowed me to appreciate my time with her more, as it was happening, rather than waiting to appreciate her until after she was gone, as we often do at funerals.

She hasn't really had any big health issues in all the time that I knew her, and never dipped mentally at all. A few years back she had a minor stroke, which made her left hand a bit wonky, and she had to occasionally use a wheel chair. By and large, though, she was with it right up until the end. A few years back, she after she had fallen and given us a scare, she said, "Don't worry, I'm going to live until I'm 96." At the time it seemed like a funny Gram thing to say, but turned out to be right on. Gram always seemed to have a great perspective on things, and, in retrospect, her own death seems no different.

Because of her good heath and acute mind, I have had the constant blessing of still having Grams in my life, long past when most Grammas are around, and still really there, not slipping away mentally. She got to know Adrien incredibly well for the last 11 years (and even liked her a bit better than me, I suspect), she got to see me ordained, and was incredibly excited about our coming baby. The greatest sadness that I have is that she didn't make it to October, so that she could see the baby.

Gramma (who was alternately called - Gramma Christy, Grams, G-Ma, or the tabloid ready G-Lo) was a great grandmother, and one that I appreciated more and more as I got older. All of us cousins (three from my mom, and four from my aunt LoAnn) are in our in or around the 30's (save Addie, who is 19), and so having a Grandmother who is 60 years older than you is a bit of a rarity, allowing for what one would assume is a cultural disconnect. That was never the case, though. We all loved Gramma. Many of us even lived with her for weeks, months, or in my & Addie's case in 1997-98, years at a time.


She was always genuinely interested in us, loved and cared for us, but also made us better people. She never spoiled us with candy or typical "grandma" things, but she taught us how to play Mahjong, how to enjoy a good cup of coffee while looking out the window in the morning, and how to love God. She also loved Duke Basketball and hated when people clapped in church, two passions I have inherited.


She cared so much about our lives, and as she entered her 80's, she got the internet and used it regularly to stay in touch with us, and entering her 90's, she got a cell phone for the same reason. She loved the new people that we brought in. In my case, that was Adrien. One day, when I was a freshman in college, about to hop on a Greyhound bus to go to Baltimore to see Adrien, Gramma, who was dropping me off at the bus stop, mused, "Well, it's a beautiful day, and you are off to see a beautiful girl..."

One of the best things about G-Ma was her dry sense of humor. So dry you could easily miss it. One time when I was about 8, I got yelled at for starting to eat Thanksgiving dinner before we had said the prayer. Gramma, who was sitting by me, nudged me surreptitiously, and quickly opened her mouth to revel that she had a mouthful of food.

She was sharp right up until the last as well. A friend relayed a story of how, after she was taken to the hospital after her birthday, she was constantly short of breath because of the pneumonia, and unable to talk. My mom and our friend Karen were there in the room, trying to console Gram and keep her comfortable. A nurse came in and asked Gram if she was experiencing any pain. Gram nodded. The nurse asked where it hurt. Gram pointed at my mom & Karen.

G-Ma was an amazing person, one who truly lived every day right until the last. I am so blessed to have had her in my life and around for all of my 29 years. I am truly a better person because of her, in every single way. Most of what the "good person" in me was directly fostered and nurtured by her. She taught me things that I never would have learned on my own.

This Friday, we are all getting together for her memorial service in New Wilmington.

It is overwhelming to know how many people my Gramma affected. She is still and will always be an influence in my life, as is my Grandpa, Wayne Christy, who died when I was five. They both illustrated how serving God doesn't mean wearing a neon shirt saying "Look at me serving God!" It means being a listener. Someone who truly cares, who shows love through action and dedication, not simply through grand gestures. She loved God and she showed us how to as well, with her whole life.

Gram was a servant, and that's what I strive to be, too.

Religion is Science, too

http://tinyurl.com/religionisscience

The Woes of Temporary Bachelorhood.

Adrien is gone for two more days.

This is essentially what my time at home is like when she is away.

I'm ready for her to come home.

The Ballad of Tyler's Day Off (or "There and There Again")

Here is what I have done today, my day off:

5:48 am - Awaken to Adrien getting up to feed the dog & cats. The dog usually needs to go out to do his business around this time, and the cats start walking around on our heads, saving us the convenience of setting an alarm to make it happen. We basically take turns getting up to feed them, and apparently today was Adrien's turn. I try to sleep a bit more, returning to my dream where I was shopping for unexciting items at a warehouse-type retail store.

6:58 am - Adrien's internal alarm now wakes her up, she starts getting ready to leave. She is leaving on a week long trip to collect terrapins in South Carolina, (tag them & release them back into the wild), so we are up and going a bit early.

7:06 am - having spent my 45 seconds needed to get ready to walk out the door, I start watching Mythbusters as Adrien continues gathering things & eats her breakfast.

7:32 am - leave for Davidson College, where Adrien works, to drop her off for her trip.

8:03 am - Adrien & I help one of the students from the school (who is also going on the trip) move her belongings from outside of her dorm (which she is technically out of for the year) into the Herpetology Lab for the week (as she cannot get into the summer housing yet).

8:34 am - Kisses & hugs, Adrien is on her way to play with turtles for a week, and I head back to Mooresville.


8:49 am - Stop off at Food Lion to get milk & coffee creamer. Sale on Pepsi - five 12 packs for $11. Jackpot. I go with three Diet Pepsi Limes, a Pepsi Throwback & Mountain Dew Throwback. I also spend an awful lot of time ambling through the aisles in the store. In order to necessitate an easy transport of 5 cases of pop, I have gotten one of those weird little carts, with two baskets on top of one another. I feel silly pushing it around, but it does the job. I decide that I want some breakfast sandwiches, and begin looking for items to make this dream a reality.


9:12 am - Stop at the church to fill out a form that I have to have in before tomorrow. Warm greetings from Nellie, the church secretary, who reminds me it's my day off. Nellie is great.


9:24 am - Stop at the house, take in the groceries, but need to run and drop off our house keys to a friend who is going to feed the animals over the weekend while I'm on a beach trip with the Middle Schoolers.


9:34 am - Dropped off the keys and back at the house. Fix break fast sandwiches, essentially egg McMuffins. The sausage patties that I got come in two packs of four, meaning, if I cook one, I have to cook four. They are also much smaller than I the picture on the box led me to believe they would be. Too small to really cover the ground they need to on the muffin, but too big to really put two patties in one sandwich. I somehow manage to pull it together and just muscle through this dilemma. I make three sammiches, eat them, and immediately think I should have only had two. While I'm cooking, I am listening to the audiobook biography of Walt Disney. They are up to the late 1940's, and are talking about the rival studios in MGM & Warner Bros. I reflect on how much the Warner Bros. animators used the f-word, which is markedly more than I would have guessed.


10:02 am - Sit down on the couch, sleepy from early rise and three heart attack sammiches, and put on the news shows from last night. Schroeder, our mute cat, hops up on my lap, essentially willing me to lay down so that he can sleep on me. His mind control works, and I am trapped under his purring, cotton ball frame. Within minutes, he is in deep sleep, stretched out to his extreme length. I think of how I wish I had put a DVD in before he sat on me, and lament my inability to move out from under this 15 pound animal. For some reason, his mind control is still working on me, as I am unable to make myself disturb his slumber so that I can get up. The phone rings. I can't get to it, for fear that I would disturb sleeping beauty. Everything gets blurry...


12:21 pm - I wake up in a haze. Clearly I have been drugged. The cat has somehow given me me a substance to steal two hours from me. What these two hours will play in his larger master plan, I have yet to deduce, but I'm on to him. In a disoriented funk, I lightly push him off of me and sit up, getting my bearings. I hate naps. They ruin me for the rest of the day. Perhaps Schroeder knew this, and had it in his plan to steal far more than 2 hours of my life. Giving into this notion, I decide to watch Saludos Amigos, a Disney film about South America from 1943. It's not that great, and Adrien really doesn't like it. Having just recently learned some insider info about it from the aforementioned biography I'm reading, I see this as a good time to revisit it.


1:15 pm - The movie is over. Short, at only 43 minutes, I'm not sure that many people would actually call it a movie, it's better than I remembered it, but that's similar to praising the fact that the dog poop you just stepped came off your shoe a lot more easily than you expected.
I enjoy a Pepsi Throwback, being one of only a handful of non-diet pops that I have had in the last few years. It is made with natural sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup (as nearly all pop is nowadays), and even with my dearth in non-diet pops over the last few years, I can instantly sense how good this is. Huzzah.


1:21 pm - On to the internet to check email. Nothing of significance, I am suddenly struck with the idea to look Amy Grant up on Wikipedia. Amy Grant, the Christian musician from the 1980's & 90's. I have no idea why this compulsion came upon me. Perhaps it is an after effect from the drugs the cat gave me. I learn all that there is to know about Amy Grant, moving on to Michael W. Smith & Sandi Patti, completing the 80's CCM trifecta. From there, I fall down the rabbit hole of Wikipedia, leapfrogging from Mormonism to the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School. Thanks a lot, Amy Grant. Look what you have started...


4:49 pm - A phone call from Adrien breaks me of the Wikipedia spell that Schroeder & Amy Grant had cast on me. I go outside and chat with A for a bit, then sit in my back yard for a bit. i watch McFly, our dog, doing dog stuff. I watch the trees doing tree stuff. I get genuinely excited realizing that the yard is ripe for a mowing. I resolve today is a good day to sit outside and read a book.


5:20 pm - I go inside and return with a youth ministry resource book, and after sitting down, tell myself that reading a youth ministry resource book is not what I meant when I decided that I wanted to read a book outside. I sit there for a while longer, watching dog stuff and tree stuff and figure I should probably mow now if I'm going to. I then see that the mean dogs in the backyard adjacent to ours are out. These dogs are fine until you get within 5 feet of the fence, then they become jerks. Mowing is no fun when they are outside, at least the mowing withing 5 feet of the fence. I resolve to wait a bit to mow.


5:38 pm - I reflect on how I haven't blogged in a while, and I am simultaneously astonished and incredulous at how little I have accomplished today. I decide to try and record everything that I have done today in blog form, to see if it looks any better, like less of a waste of a day than I think it has been.


It doesn't.


You win this round, Schroeder.


But I'm on to you...





[FYI - a "Vampire Weekend" channel on Pandora yields glorious dividends. I highly recommend it.]

We're Gonna Have a Party

So now I've got this stuck in my head.

(You only need to watch about the first two minutes).

Things in the Mail.

I get lots of junk in the mail at the church advertising for all sorts of Youth Camps and retreat centers and stuff like that.

I got one today that was advertising their space for retreats.

It had this picture on the front cover:
I don't know where this place is, but I don't ever want to go there.

a thought, briefly

The audience on American Idol is like a Unitarian Church - they love every performance, and only get mad whenever anyone says that someone did something wrong.

I hope the Navy Seals don't go to Pittsburgh...

To put some historical perspective on recent events, I offer this graph to you all.



(Stolen from my friend Val, who in turn stole it from someone else. Try piracy indeed.)

Pretzel Day Thursday

Everyday, my route home from work brings me past both the local high school and middle school. Often times, when I have driven past the middle school, there is a sign out front that says simply, "Pretzel Day Thursday." There is nothing else on the sign.

I first assumed that it was some sort of seasonal fundraiser, and that the following Thursday would be a day when the school would be selling pretzels. However, Thursday passed just like any other day, and the sign disappeared.

Then a few weeks later, the sign was back. Since then, it appears and disappears seemingly at random. Sometimes it is present on Mondays or Tuesdays, sometimes it's there on Fridays. I have yet to find out what Pretzel Day is, and I'm not sure if I want to know.

Today, the Pretzel Day sign was outside of the high school.

In my ten months living in North Carolina, I have rather routinely been presented with large cultural caverns that my southeastern Iowa/southwestern PA upbringing had not prepared me for. Example: "Cotillion" or kids taking classes in being fancy, dancing, and dancing fancy.

Perhaps Pretzel Day is some mystical southern delight that I am not yet privy to.

Or perhaps it's code for predictions of the end of the world.

Or perhaps it's simply a day when they offer pretzels for lunch.

At this point, there is only thing that can be certain about Pretzel Day - it's Thursday.

The Gospel According to V

Adrien & I just returned from a week in Los Angeles. We were visiting our friend Kyle, who goes to Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, but lives in Hollywood.

Throughout the week, we encountered several "celebrities," a partial list of which follows:

• The Hotel Manager from Ghostbusters ("$5000?!? I had no idea it would be that much! I won't pay it!" - he was sitting on a bench drinking a smoothie.
  
• Neil Flynn, The Janitor from Scrubs. We saw him in an improv show, and he then proceeded to hang out in the bar/lobby area for an hour afterward.
• Tony Hale, Buster from Arrested Development. He was at the church that we went to, where Kyle works (Ecclesia - churchinhollywood.com)
• Tim Meadows, from Saturday Night Live
• Jane Kaczmarek, the mom from Malcolm in the Middle
• Larry David & Jeff Garlin, from Curb Your Enthusiasm. They were filming an episode at Zuma Beach, which we watched for about an hour.

Yet the most interesting person on the trip I met one afternoon that we spent on skid row in downtown LA.

Adrien's friend Sarah (who is the co-founder of Faceless International) was leading a trip of students on a mission trip to inner city LA, and we asked if we could join her for the afternoon.

When we showed up, they were working with an organization called The Dream Center to serve lunch to the homeless. There were already several helpers in the food line, so we joined a group to walk around the block and invite people to come to get some food. As we began walking, Kyle sat down on the sidewalk by a man next to a shopping cart filled with bags of cans. The man's name was James. Kyle started talking to him, asking him how he was doing, and James immediately put up the wall, challenging Kyle a bit, and playfully indicating that he's had lots of people come by and try to evangelize to him, that Kyle was nothing new. Adrien & I continued around the block with the rest of the group as Kyle remained back with James, chatting away, not talking about anything in particular, but taking James' playful jabs in stride.

After about 10 minutes, we had looped the block, and I went up to see how Kyle was doing, assuming he may need "saving" from the undoubtedly uncomfortable conversation that he was having with James. When I got up to them, though, they were having a real conversation. Not about God or Jesus - Kyle wasn't selling anything. They were talking about James' life, how he would like to get help from The Dream Center, but he doesn't want to leave his cart, certain that someone would steal his stuff. He talked about how he got $60 a day collecting cans and cooking grease, and how he has a problem with drinking. I sat down on the sidewalk with the Kyle and James, and a third man, who simply introduced himself as "V."

V was, like James, another ragged looking man, well worn, with a scruffy white beard and weathered old hands. He also had a shopping cart filled with bags, and he was drinking a slushy that James had bought him because "he had lost a bet."

V and I started talking about life. Nothing specific, just stuff. We talked about where V was from, and how he got out to Los Angeles. We talked about how Los Angeles was the most accommodating place to live on the streets because it doesn't get that cold, and the city is fairly amicable to it's homeless (unlike cities like Baltimore that was way too cold, or Atlanta that ships the homeless out of town with one-way bus tickets).

V had grown up in West Virginia, but made his way out to LA on freight trains. We never talked about how he had come to live on the street. Instead we talked about football - about how dumb Terrell Owens was, how great the Steelers were, and whether or not they would be able to pull off another championship season next year. We then talked about how terrible the Pittsburgh Pirates are.

At one point, V asked me what I did for a living, and I told him that I was a minister, working with youth. I was afraid that this would change the conversation, that he would sense some sort of ulterior motive in me, but he didn't. And I honestly didn't have one. I was simply sitting on the sidewalk talking with an interesting person.

After a while, a woman walked up to us who lived in the area, looking for her "vodka partner," and visibly a little drunk already. She must have seen Kyle and I talking to these two men, and assumed that we were on an evangelistic mission, trying to save souls to log in our soul saving tally books.

Neither of us at this point were talking about God in any way, we were simply talking, but the perception of two white guys sitting on the sidewalk talking to two men with carts probably usually means proselytizing is afoot.

She plopped down between us, visibly antagonistic, and stammered, "What the f__ are you doing here?"

"Talking," I said.

"But what the f__ for?"

"Just to talk."

She was very confused, especially as I didn't seem to be looking to challenge her. She then started challenging me, trying to pick apart the Bible, the Trinity, and Paul. I responded simply by essentially just nodding and saying, "that's interesting," refuting bits that were a bit too aggressive in their attacks, but not taking the bait for an all out fight. It was clear that the woman didn't want to have any sort of real conversation about faith, but simply wanted to take me apart and catch me on my heels. I didn't give her the opportunity, and she calmed down, said she "loved the Bible" (?), and then went to find her vodka partner again.

There were two interesting things about this encounter. One was that I felt exactly what I imagine most people on the street feel when zealots come at them trying to slam them with the Gospel. I felt attacked and uncomfortable. The last thing I wanted to do was to listen to what this lady had to say. She was not willing to talk, only to preach, and that's rarely the type of encounter people want to be broadsided with.

The other interesting thing was that V stood up for me. By this point, we had been talking for nearly an hour, and V immediately tried to get the woman to leave us alone, saying, "This is a man of God, what are you talking to him like that for??" V and I had clearly bonded to the point that he wasn't going to let me take crap from this lady.

Again, up to that point, outside of letting V know that I was a minister, we hadn't talked about God at all. It hadn't come up, and that wasn't really my goal. We were just two guys talking.

At another point, a film crew came by, filming images of people on the street (though skipping over the four men having conversation) probably for some B-roll on the news about homelessness or for some documentary. It felt surprisingly intrusive, and the crew themselves stepped around us as though we were simply part of the scenery for their dystopian landscape. It was oddly dehumanizing, even for Kyle and I, clearly tourists in this scene. They easily walked past each individual, just as I had easily walked past James and V on the first trip around the block, thinking of them as simply "homeless people" rather than people that I could sit down and talk to for a few hours.

It was V who finally brought up God.

The woman had said that Paul was "clearly gay" (though she used some stronger language) while she was trying to get a rise out of me. A few minutes after she left, V asked me about homosexuality, about what I think that God thinks about the issue. Frankly, that was the last thing I was expecting him to ask me about, but I answered him, ultimately saying that there is nothing that can separate us from God's love, that there is nothing that anyone can do to void our salvation - other than to actively refuse it.

V asked me about the first sermon that I had ever preached.
It was in high school, and it was about The Empire Strikes Back, how we can't really follow Christ if we don't actually believe that he can use us to do incredible things.

The whole point came out of the scene where Luke is trying to raise his X-Wing Fighter from the Degobah swamp. He can't lift it, and yells at Yoda for asking him to do the impossible. Yoda then lifts the ship out with a raise of his hand and sets it on solid ground. Luke says, "I don't believe it!" to which Yoda replies, "that is why you fail." We then talked about how Peter had that such faith in Christ that he did ridiculous things, like walking on water. Eventually, we talked about suffering, about God's presence in the world, and the love that he has for each of us.

Our conversation lasted over two hours, and it was just that - a conversation. It wasn't a sermon, or a chance to "save some souls!" It was two guys, sitting down, talking about sports, life, and faith. I didn't give V a Bible or some sort of religious track (I didn't have any to give even if I had wanted to), but we had one of the best conversations about faith that I have had in a long while.

V could sense that God loved him, that God was at work in the world, but it seemed as if he wasn't sure if he had faith in himself enough to trust in that with his life. James was much the same way. Both men were tied to their possessions. They seemed to be the primary excuse that each of them had for not seeking help, to get them off the streets. LA has a great system of programs to help the homeless, but leaving their possessions involved the risk, the very real likelihood that it would involve losing everything that they owned.

Most all the programs offered beds and meals and help getting employment, but also required that participants remain sober and celibate in the process. The risk was that, if they lose everything that they had worked to salvage, all of which could fit into a grocery cart, and they didn't have the personal strength to remain accountable to the program, then they would be back on the streets, but this time without anything.

It was quite a revelation to see how much the human need for things, that we are tied to our stuff, was so apparent even in these two men who seem to have nothing. We most often point to the upper class - with all their extravagance - as the prime examples of materialism, of worshiping what they own. Yet here it was, on the streets of LA, two men who hadn't enough faith to risk what they had for the promise of something better.

It made me think of how much I am like V. All too often, I'm holding on to my possessions, my cart filled with garbage, letting it distract me from the promise set before me. I think most of us struggle with this. We want to be comfortable, but we don't want to risk losing our stuff, regardless of what that stuff is. We may believe the promise, that our life can be so much better if we are willing to let go of what is holding us back, but we still don't have the faith in ourselves to stay true to it if we were to actually follow it.

Sometimes we can convince ourselves that we are fine where we are, being motivated by what we have to lose rather than what we have to gain. We blind ourselves from seeing that we are capable of helping ourselves and of helping others because we are afraid of what we might loose.

In the end, when the time came for us to leave, I said thank you to V for a great conversation and asked if I could pray with him (the first really proactive thing that I did all afternoon), and he said yes.

I prayed for courage and discernment, and for an awareness of God's presence in our lives, even in the midst of overwhelming suffering and lack of faith. I prayed for myself as much as for V, and he prayed right along with me. I offered him the rest of my coffee (he had turned down some coffee earlier, but accepted this time), and we went on our way.

My conversation with V was one of the best that I can remember. It was a conversation with no agenda, but ended up exactly where it was meant to.

I don't know what will happen with V.

Hopefully he will one day find the courage to take that step of faith that gets him help.

All in all, though, V is no different than any of us. We're scared to take the first step, scared of what we might lose.

God has made us a promise not to harm us, but to prosper us, never to leave us, but to walk with us. Sometimes, though, our own doubts in ourselves, and the comfort of our carts full of stuff make it hard for us to take that step.

God + Bad Things = Huh?

Musings from the west coast (I'm with Adrien visiting our friend Kyle in Hollywood):

I have been thinking a lot recently about two specific questions that we have been looking at in our youth group. They are two questions all of us will continue to ask at various points throughout the rest of their lives:

"Why does God let bad stuff happen?"
&
"Do the things we do actually matter?"

These are two of the central questions of faith, and dramatically effect the way in which we understand God, and our relationship with him.

The prime mover in both of those questions is that God is in control.

We may not always understand it, but when we look back, we can see God moving even in the midst of tragedy. God's will is always what happens. God's desire is for there to be no suffering and for the world to be perfect (what will ultimately be achieved).

The discrepancy between the two is free will combined with our broken human nature. God's love for us gives us "free will," and sin uses that freedom in ways that cause suffering. While God doesn't desire us to suffer, it is still within God's will (what he allows to happen).

Essentially, you can't have broken humans executing their own free will and not have it lead to suffering. Likewise, you cannot really have love without some sense of free will.

It's similar to parents teaching kids to ride a bike: their desire is that the child learn to ride the bike and to not get hurt. Their will, however, is what they allow to happen, and we understand that in order to ride a bike, everyone has to fall. While that is not the parents' desire, it is still their will, in order to achieve the end result. Yes, the parent could simply push the child around all the time, ensuring that they are never hurt, but that wouldn't involve any action from the child, and ultimately, the child would never grow from that.

God is in control.
All the time.
Even when it seems like he's the most out of control.
Look at the Passion.
The greatest suffering and chaos of all time, especially to those who experienced it. Followers of Jesus watch him die like a criminal, and they have no idea that he is coming back. They are scared, lost, and disillusioned. They fear for their lives. Their whole understanding of the world has failed them. Or so they thought.
As we can see it now, the Passion was one of the times that God is most active in all of history.
God was in complete control, doing exactly what needed to be done to save us.
Yet to the disciples and followers of Jesus, they felt about as alone as ever.

God was in control then.

God is in control now.

Glasses.

(The Poindexters, 1997-2009)

Glasses are weird. I have had them since I was in seventh grade, and ever since then, it's odd for me to think that there are people who wake up in the morning and see everything perfectly. I feel like glasses (or contacts) are something that everyone should need, that eyes aren't designed to be perfect. Clearly that's not true, but nearly all of my closest friends and relatives wear corrective lenses in some way.

Glasses are also weird in how much they represent who you are, and how much we immediately discern about someone's personality and character based on the frames that they have.

I recently had to retire my trusted pair of glasses that I have had for the last 12 years. I was quite a fan of these glasses. They saw me through the good times and the bad, and helped me to see a lot of things differently. I had an older thinner pair of wire-rims that I also wore intermittently as well, but it was the black rims, which I shall refer to as "the Poindexter" that truly felt like my glasses. Once, when I was having the lenses replaced on them, the glasses technician who actually said, "Don't ever get rid of those glasses!" I'm not sure they are that special, but I really liked them.

A few years back, two things happened: the wire-rims snapped in half, and Adrien hit me in the side of the head with a ball during a youth group game, cracking the arm of the Poindexter glasses. It was then that I knew that I would soon need to find some new glasses.

I was able to get the wire-rims hastily "repaired" to give them another year or so of life, but the clock had started. The Poindexters were still alright as well, definitely wearable, but the crack was enough that it was clear I would soon have to retire them or watch them die.

I have spent the past year or so looking for something as close to the Poindexters as I could find, but to no avail. During that time, the wire-rims cracked again (vaya con Dios, wire-rims), and each time I put on the Poindexters, I was afraid that it would be the last.

Then, in January, I stumbled on a site that seemed like a scam (in fact, I'm still rather surprised that it isn't). From this site, I purchased three pairs of glasses, for $35.

Not three frames for $35. Three pairs of glasses (perscription lenses & frames) for $35.
Not three pairs of glasses for $35 each. Three pairs for $35 TOTAL (shipping included).

I chose the opportunity to therefore try some new looks, and came up with some winners:

The Invisaline Glasses.
These are invisible feather weight frames that are so light to the touch that you can barely feel them. They do however require you to wear contact lenses and are not actually real.
Cost: $free

The "Almost Poindexters"
This was the closest that I could find. They are a bit rounder than I was looking for, but the price was right.
Cost: $8


The Coffee Shop
What better way to say "I might be pretentious and kind of a jerk" than with glasses like these. When wearing these, I begin to think that Smart Cars are just that, and that perhaps I haven't seen enough movies by Ingmar Bergman, and that I need to read more of the writings of David Eggers.
Cost $8

The Dungeon Masters
These frames have a million hit points and maximum charisma. With these babies I can program in C++ and see nuances in the movie Tron that I never quite grasped before. Clearly frames designed for those who have nothing to prove to anyone.
Cost: $10

I'm not sure that these three frames fill the hole in my heart left by the Poindexters, but the cheapness makes me feel like a genius.

I also would like to note that I have no regrets about dropping the extra $2 for The Dungeon Masters. They are great to wear when you want to tell people, "I have all the friends that I need, thank you very much," but don't want to sound like a jerk about it. They also provide you with added authority when called upon to settle matters of random trivia disputes (especially in the realm of comic books, sci-fi, and sci-fa).

Cat Horror.

I got this from my friend Lori's blog, but it is perhaps one of the more hilarious and terrifying things that I have seen online in a while, resulting in literal laughs out loud.

Check it.

The Crowd

Today, I led a Bible study on Mark 15:1-15. The passage tells of Jesus going before Pilate, having been condemned by the chief priests in a secret meeting the night before, and now put before Pilate as an enemy of the state, a treasonous threat to Caesar's authority.

The passage deals with Pilate's reluctance to convict Jesus, and with his attempts to allow Jesus to go free. He appeals to the crowd, having the usual custom of releasing a prisoner in honor of the Passover feast, encouraging them to let him release Jesus to them. The crowd resists, instead asking for Barabbas, the murderer who had just been involved in an insurrection against Rome.

This whole scene made me think of a number of things (the amazement that Pilate has toward Jesus' demeanor, the envy that the chief priest show toward Jesus), but the one that stuck out the most was the crowd's flip flop. Just a few days earlier, they were praising Jesus, and honoring his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, placing their outer garments on the road his donkey was walking on, so that even the donkey would not be made dirty. Yet only a few days later, they are calling for his death.

We often shake our heads at the crowd there, lamenting their fickle hearts, seeing them as mindless ogres of history, that killed Christ. In reality, though, I don't think they are all that different than us.

Jesus was a hot religious figure. He blazed onto the scene and attracted big number quickly. People wanted to be part of this movement. They were attracted to the bigness of it, if not the truth of it. However, when Jesus is presented before them by Pilate, this is not the same conquering hero that they had welcomed into Jerusalem a few days earlier. This man was instead a man who was dirty and ragged. He had been up all night being cursed and beaten. He was bound like a criminal, and was now on a public trial before them all, again, not as a hero, but as a criminal. In this context, it becomes a bit easier to see the crowd's anger. They feel like they have been fooled by this guy. He came in and preached all of these glorious things, but here he was not presented as a criminal.

Think of how much we revel in the times that our celebrities fall. When you see a mugshot of someone, we see them as broken liars who deserve punishment, not as the heroes that we had once hailed them as. Even more so when that figure is a religious leader. We as a culture seem to love to see religious leaders fall. Many times, even the accusation of wrong doing is enough for us to condemn them.

Why is that?

I wish it was harder to relate to this crowd than it actually is. I wish that crowds weren't so easy to follow, even when we know that they are wrong...