So today, I'm home. The Spring semester has ended, all of my grades are in, and for the first time, I know that I'm not going back to UNC in the Fall. It worries me. Haha, that's funny. I wasn't even thinking when I wrote that, but yeah, I guess it worries me, and the reason it does is that, sitting here at home, I feel lonely. I miss the closeness and fellowship of the dorm. I miss my friends, because frankly, I'm not sure when I'll see them again or how often.
I'm graduating at the end of August. I have one last class to take before I'm done, Abnormal Psychology, which I'm taking in the space of only two weeks during the month of May. My final exam is May 29th. My flight to Los Angeles takes off on May 30th. My internship begins on June 1st. May 30th I say goodbye to my family. The following Tuesday, my dad gets on a plane back to Greensboro and I say goodbye to him too.
That's a lot of goodbyes. So yeah, I'm worried and I feel lonely... in advance. Weird, huh? And it makes me wonder, why do I feel lonely? What am I worried about? You know, honestly, I don't think I'm that worried about getting a job. I seem strangely optimistic about that. I think I can do it. I really do. I think I'm just worried about being lonely out in Los Angeles. I'm worried about lacking the support of friends and family that I've had here at home and at school.
And ultimately, I think I'm just nervous about taking that next huge step in life. I mean, I'm moving across the country for crying out loud! It's ok to be nervous. But I have to have faith that despite any loneliness that I may feel, God will provide in Los Angeles just like he provided in Chapel Hill. It may not look the same, but He is.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
Baring All?
I happen to be reading a book entitled Writing for Comics with Peter David which just happens to be written by Peter David. Just to provide a brief biography, Peter David is a comic book writer known for his work on The Hulk, Supergirl, X-Factor, and other better or lesser known Marvel and DC comic titles.
May I say that I absolutely love comic books? I don’t care that I’m currently 21 years old and about to move across the country to hunt for work. I grew up on comic books and the myriad of 90’s cartoon spin-offs on the Fox Kids Television Network. But, for me, comics were never just… well, comics. I loved how the characters came alive and leapt off the page. They were very real seeming, and each character seemed to illustrate some aspect of my life or the world around me.
For Example, one of my favorite X-Men characters:
Gambit: A Cajun with a mysterious past in the criminal underworld. He can kinetically charge any object just by touching it and plug it so full of energy that it explodes. Basically, he can make bombs out of anything. Pretty cool, so cool in fact, that he is featured in the upcoming movie, X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The coolest thing about him though was always his nonchalant attitude. He was a man of mystery and confidence. I always wanted to be like that as a child and young teen. I wanted to be that mysterious man, the one who everyone wanted to know more about, but couldn’t pry any more information out of than was allowed. I wanted to be that slightly dangerous, yet good, card wielding Cajun. Call it fantasy or catharsis if you will, but as a child, I empathized with this character. He was an extension of a hidden longing within.
So as I’m reading this book, Peter David goes into a discussion of how to create a character and how to create characters that are compelling for the audience. Here is a quote that particularly struck me:
“Don’t hold back. Writers have to be willing to metaphorically drop their pants and invite the world to take its best shot. If there are aspects of yourself that you really don’t like, be willing to explore them within a fictional construct. Not only might you create a compelling character, but you might find out interesting things about yourself.”
~ Peter David
So here’s the catch, am I brave enough as a writer to expose my inner demons to the world? Is that something I want to risk? I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently, thinking about how this applies to my writing and my future in the film industry (and any storytelling industry, honestly) and I’ve come to the conclusion that this has been what I’ve wanted to do all along. I often say that I want to create stories that reveal things to people which they didn’t know about themselves before, that I want to expose the corners of the room that are currently hidden in shadows. So yes, this is exactly what I want to do as a storyteller. My goal though, is to create characters that can live in dreams and goals and aspirations just like so many Marvel characters did in my childhood. To do that takes time, courage, and self-examination. It may involve going places that I'm not comfortable going or writing difficult characters and situations, but in the end, it's worth it. If I can create characters that I empathize with, then I can create characters that the world empathizes with as well, and in so doing, maybe we can learn a thing or two about ourselves.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
The Corpse Bride
It’s been a while since I’ve posted again, so I thought it was about time.
This past week, I watched a movie on the advice of my best friend, The Corpse Bride. The basic plot is this:
A bumbling but inwardly talented young man, is betrothed by his parents to a woman he’s never met. Fearful of his impending marriage, he realizes upon meeting his fiancé for the first time that here is a woman who, despite all of his fears, he can love and she him. Reassured by this realization, he still can’t get his vows right and goes on a walk deep into the woods to practice. While doing so, he finally manages to repeat his lines while placing the wedding ring on what looks like an exposed root, only to discover that the root is in fact the decaying remnants of a human hand.
Still with me?
What results is a strange visit to the underworld with Victor's new bride, (remember the hand? It belonged to someone) the Corpse Bride, and Victor's desperate attempts to return to his betrothed above.
It’s actually quite a brilliant film in many ways. Unlike many stop motion films which employ clay to create and pose characters, or all too common today CGI assisted animation, Corpse Bride was filmed using expertly crafted models from the UK with a complex gear mechanism within for incredibly subtle motion control.
Plus, Tim Burton’s fingerprints are all over it. It may be bizarre, but it’s bizarre in an incredibly imaginative way. One thing I admire most about Tim Burton’s directing style is that he truly lets his imagination reign free. Plus, if you’ve ever seen him in a “making of” featurette, his hair is crazy! This gives me hope for the future that Hollywood isn’t completely biased against directors with big, curly hair ;)
From a technical perspective, this film is a drool fest (kind of like another model based animation that recently came out aka Coralline).
From an emotional standpoint, The Corpse Bride is even more powerful as it looks at the nature of relationships and romantic endeavors. One particularly touching moment for me was a musical number in which the corpse bride laments the fact that despite her best efforts, Victor will never love her the way she wants him to. It’s such a tremendously sad moment, especially because, in all honesty, there’s no particular reason why Victor and the Corpse Bride wouldn’t be perfect for each other (other than the obvious fact that she’s already dead). They get along well. They share the same sense of humor. They even play piano together beautifully. But he’s in love with someone else, and there’s nothing that she can do to change that fact. Summed up in this one musical number is enough rejection and internal pain to last a person their whole life.
This really just got me thinking about a lot of things, and one thing that crossed my mind was what it must feel like to be someone left at the altar. Just think, you’ve invested so much time and emotional energy into one person, proposed (or conversely been proposed to), intending to spend the rest of your life with them, and then at the very end, they change their mind. What must that feel like? Where do you go from there? Do you just keep going like before and hope that one day they change their mind and decide to marry you? Or do you call it all off completely? How hard that must be.
Today I watched a short propaganda video with my dad which was created by a small Christian ministry. The main purpose of the video was to warn families of the dangers posed by the media based out of Hollywood and the "war on family values" and Christian culture that it represented.
A few things:
1) The piece was incredibly outdated. If you judged by the particular clips used as examples, you'd think that MTV was the only television channel in existence. Given when it was made, I can understand how concerning MTV would be for Christian parents. But today, it's a little unreasonable to base your entire understanding of the media on one television channel which, quite frankly, isn't even top dog any more as far as teen and college interest is concerned.
2) The acting was horrible and even worse than that found in most typical Christian movies. One would think that if you're going to make commentary on films and art, you should actually be good at, say, making films and art. This is one reason why it's so hard to take Christian commentators on the media seriously these days. I understand your points and even agree to a certain extent, but the fact is that you still are unable to present a viable alternative to mainstream media, even with your Christian subculture that you've created.3) The propaganda piece pretty much just strung together as many creepy or bizarre clips as it could in montages without any context or explanation. You had clips ranging from Chucky to the Terminator and Poltergeist. So of course Hollywood and the media are going to look freaky. You're only showing freaky things.
4) As a tie-in with number 3, the movie took the most extreme examples of Hollywood bias against Christianity and biblical morals and presented it without any counter-evidence. Further, it inferred an argument that anything which looks disturbing or may be emotionally disturbing was somehow anti-Christian or anti-biblical. This just simply isn't the case. If you were to take the Bible and turn it into a movie, there is no possible way that it could be made into anything rated below an 'R'. The Bible is not PG-13. Heck, even one of the best crucifixion stories told on film to this date, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" earned an 'R' rating. So this philosophy that only things which are family friendly are worth watching is false.
5) The movie essentially argued that the purpose of art was to present something lovely to its audience (referring to Philippians 4:8). And while this is perfectly acceptable in one's thought life, we live in a world in which human beings require God's convicting on matters of the heart, and art is one tool which the spirit chooses to do so.
For me, personally, I want to create films that do disturb, and disturb in such a way as to provoke my audience to action and change. I want to foster movies which shine as beacons in the room, lighting dark corners and exposing shadows for what they are. I want to uncover those monsters lurking in the closet and under the bed. Because, frankly, I feel like human beings are really good at hiding things from themselves. I know I am. It's up to the artist to show us those things which we don't want to look at ourselves.
Anyway, just a few thoughts. More to come.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Lessons From Little Miss Sunsine
I was fortunate enough this past year that my best friend showed me the film, “Little Miss Sunshine” at her house one night after dinner. I was struck by one particular scene, one of the many poignant, sincere scenes in the film, when Dwayne Hoover learns on the journey to the Little Miss Sunshine Pageant that he is color blind. To give a little background, Dwayne’s dream is to become a pilot. He yearns for it and aches for it and it’s become a part of who he is, so much so in fact, that he has taken a vow of silence until he achieves his goal. Yet, with so much sacrificed for his dream, he learns unexpectedly that he is color blind, and is therefore unable to become a pilot. The result is a scene of such sincere and heart-wrenching anguish that Dwayne’s pain becomes your own.
Recently, I’ve been reminded of this scene in my own life. I too have my “pilot” dreams, but have learned to my lament that I also have my own form of “colorblindness”. And just like Dwayne, it’s heart-wrenching.
My first instinct is to give up and find solitude in defeat. It would be really easy to whine and sulk and let depression set in, but I’ve seen that part of the countryside before and I’m done with it. It’s time to take a different road, and I’m not quite sure what it will look like. It’ll be an adventure, that’s for sure. And the good thing about this is that I’m not doomed to “colorblindness”. There is grace. There is transformation. And there is love. And where Dwayne can’t overcome his own deficits, if God so wills it, I will.
I don’t know why I’m writing this, but I feel like I should. I guess I just needed cathartic release, but what I really need is belief. I need people to believe in me, because I believe in me. I’m just waiting for the rest of the world see me the way I see myself, and in the process, I want to learn and grow better from them as well. Just don’t write me off, world. Whatever you do, don’t write me off.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
I’ve come to realize that you can forget Love.
For the first time in a long time, I picked up my guitar tonight and I began to play, and I remembered just how much I love music and how much I love playing guitar. I had forgotten that love. Music draws me. It fuels my creativity. When I was young, I used to hum to myself on the swing set and literally watch as entire story lines unfolded before my eyes, set to my own original score. Music makes me think. It takes me out of myself and takes me to a place where I can perceive the world differently than I normally do in this soundtrack-less world. Sometimes, listening to the lyrics and the melody and the harmony interacting with one another, I realize that the words themselves express my feelings better than I can express them myself. Sometimes I need music for self-realization and self-understanding. And to think, I’ve deprived myself of it for so long. I’ve forgotten that love. I love to sing, and I love to write music. I’m good at neither, but it is a creative means of expression that I adore. When I write words and set them to music, they have a different kind of life and a different kind of meaning than the words that I fashion into poetic stanzas or narrative prose. It means something different when I sing what I’m feeling versus when I just state my feelings. That doesn’t mean my songwriting is any more important than my screenwriting or my prose writing or my poetry. It only means that each has its own unique purpose in my life, and I love it! I can’t believe that I had forgotten that love.
I love to write poetry. I haven’t written poetry in a long time either, and for the first time in a good while, I wrote a poem. Poems are harder for me to write than fiction, mainly because they tend to be more intimate for me. I can just sit down and start writing a story, and something will come out. Not so with poetry. I have to be inspired. Inspiration usually comes from close to my heart, from the parts of me and the parts of my life that I don’t usually reveal to people. My poetry makes me vulnerable, and that is what makes it so hard to write. But I have also learned that sometimes, you have to let yourself be vulnerable if you want to grow. So I write poetry, and I love it. Another love that I had forgotten.
Revelation 2:4 – “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.”
This verse rings true to me in so many ways. I feel like I’ve lost track of so many things over the course of this semester, and reawakening to them in the past day or so has been beautifully refreshing.
Like the sweet, tangy juice of a fresh tangerine ;)
One love I never want to forsake is Jesus. Over this semester, my time with him has vacillated between large amounts of reading his words in scripture and hardly any at all. Lately, I’ve been absolutely fascinated with what Jesus actually says in the gospels – his very words seem both familiar yet foreign. After long periods of not reading scripture, I would return and realize that Jesus sounded like a stranger to me. I never want him to sound like a stranger again. I want to be so familiar with him that whenever I want to know what Jesus would say or how Jesus would act when faced with life’s tough situations, I would already know it.
Like Shane Claiborne discusses in the Irresistible Revolution: I want to be a lover of God.
This is my aim over the next few days, the next few weeks, months, and years of my life. It’s pretty simple. I want to love. Not simple at all really, but worth the effort.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
It's About Time
So here I am, back at it again after an extended absence. During the summer, I planned on writing often on here, but that plan seemed to have taken a detour. Now I'm back, trying to make amends, and restart with a fresh new post. I apologize if it's scatterbrained, there was a lot of material over the summer that I planned on posting but never did. Eventually, hopefully, over the course of the next couple of days, I'll post most of it.
This summer I worked as a waiter at a pizza restaurant. It was a completely new experience for me in many ways. First of all, I got to see things from a waiter's perspective and learned all of the little annoying things that we, as ignorant consumers, often overlook about the ways in which we behave around servers and the ways in which we treat them. Second, I got to learn a lot about build community with coworkers who are very different from you in upbringing, lifestyle, and habits. This was a chance for me to leap out of my comfort zone and befriend new people. Again, it was a terrific experience. Finally, I got to see ways in which the church interacts with the surrounding community by, in a sense, going "undercover".
Oftentimes when we're at church, we treat one another certain ways in a "churchy" fashion. We assume that if you're at church, you must be a Christian, or you must be "searching" so we put on our best guises and treat everyone very nicely and politely, even if you don't like someone. It's the same when you go on a mission trip or a church-sponsored road trip or event. Everyone puts on their "Christian" mask and that's the face they must show everyone they encounter. After all, they're representing the church.
The weird thing, working as a waiter, is that I found myself in this innocuous position of being a Christian in a place where Christians don't generally assume that there are other Christians around. Not that I'm saying Christians don't believe other Christians work at restaurants, but I was a waiter. I'm the guy that brings out your bread, refills your drink, and tries not to make a nuisance of myself when you're having your argument about who gets to use the car the next day. I'm a server. Servers don't get noticed very often.
So here I was, a server, and I got to see what a lot of "Churchy" types said and talked about and did when they weren't necessarily in a Church atmosphere. Sunday morning would come around and our restaurant would get slammed. Large families and church bible studies would come in and sit down and talk about Church politics or the sermon or any number of religious topics while they were eating. And then... they would fight with me over the bill. Nitpicky things like a 20 cent charge for mushrooms, peppers, and onions on a Philly Cheese Steak sub. Or they wouldn't tip. A party of seven or eight would leave their table, and the only tip remaining would be two dollars and some change, for a $50 or $60 meal. Or they would be obnoxious, treating me like they owned me for the hour or so that they sat in my section.
Now imagine what this felt like to me, seeing my brothers and sisters in Christ acting like jerks, just because they didn't really think to consider whether the person serving them, or any of the other people in the restaurant for that matter, were also brothers or sisters.
And this leads to my next question: Why should we only act nice when there are Christians around or there are people around who we would like to convert? Shouldn't we love all the time? Isn't that what Jesus commanded us to do? And if we act one way when we're at church and one way when we're in a restaurant with "those people who work on Sunday mornings", what does that say about the way we act at church? Doesn't that imply that we're faking it?
I think there's a challenge for all believers here. We are not to act one way at church and another in the presence of unbelievers. More so, we are not to give preferential treatment to Christians. I have to wonder if my tables would have acted differently if my restaurant was a church's dinner theater or if they knew I was also a Christian. Would they have been more considerate? Would they have tipped like restaurant etiquette mandates? And if so, what does that say about us as a culture? I don't believe this is what Jesus had in mind when he said to go out into all the world.
Finally, something really interesting happened while I was this undercover Christian at Elizabeth's Pizza. Two people witnessed to me in two separate instances. I say "witnessed" because it is a technical term that my Christian readership will understand, since we've invented all of these churchy words that only Christians know. But if anyone else is reading this, it means that two people evangelized to me, proselytized to an extent. Shared a glimpse of their faith in a purposeful way.
From these two encounters, I learned something. There is a right way to evangelize and there is a wrong way.
The first group was a table of three, two men and a woman. The entire time they were in my section, they made themselves a pain. The food wasn't good enough. They argued with the bill. They made things very difficult for me, and with four other tables all clamoring for attention, they demanded to be first.
When I returned their credit card ticket, the woman leaned forward and said," Do you know that God has a plan for your life?"
I replied, "Yes." And then I left.
That encounter left me angry, bitter, resentful, and rebellious. If I hadn't already been a believer, I wouldn't have wanted to become one after that. Not only did this table treat me like dirt, they then had the audacity to say something dogmatically and with such matter-of-fact that it was as if they were patting themselves on the back for their own self-confidence. More so, the timing was off. I was swamped with tables. Food was up. Drinks needed refilling. I didn't have time to stop and have a one-sided theological discussion with a table that already didn't like me to begin with. The result was that this sort of "evangelism" meant nothing. It did nothing but made me angry.
And then they left a bad tip. The end of story 1.
The second encounter I had really made an impression on me. Two men came in for lunch, and when I brought out their food, they immediately said, "Excuse me, son, what's your name?" And I replied, "Kris."
"Well, Kris, we're going to pray for our food, but we were wondering if there was anything we could pray for you about as well?"
"Um, school I guess."
"School? Neat. Where do you go to school?"
"UNC."
"UNC... Is that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill?"
"Yeah, it is."
"Wow, that's a good school. What are you studying?"
"History, Media Production, and Creative Writing."
"Well, we'll definitely be praying for you as you get ready to go back to school. Thank you, Kris."
I left to go tend to my other tables. When this table finished, they thanked me for my time, and they left me one of their cards and a bible verse on their bill tray. That was it. No heavy handed, "God has a plan for you." Just "Can I pray for you?" The first encounter angered me. The second really impacted me. These two men inquired into the life of a complete stranger. They could not have known that I was already a brother in Christ. They couldn't have known that it would mean a lot to me if someone asked to pray for me out of the blue. They were kind, they were generous, they were thoughtful, and they loved. Unlike the first table, they seemed to actually care about the fact that I wasn't just their waiter but a real, live person. That made all the difference. I wouldn't have cared if they left me nothing as a tip. They loved.
This is what I learned: There is a right way and a wrong way to represent Christ to your community. The wrong way doesn't care about people as people, it doesn't care about treating you well, and it throws around slogans that your pastor at church has told you that you need to tell people as often as possible. The right way cares about people, it loves people, it inquires of people, and it invests in people. The right way lives in such a manner that you are drawn by sheer wonder and curiosity to know more.
I e-mailed the man who left me his card. I thanked him for his act of kindness and his prayer. It meant the world to me, and he never knew. And not knowing, he still acted. That is love.
This summer I worked as a waiter at a pizza restaurant. It was a completely new experience for me in many ways. First of all, I got to see things from a waiter's perspective and learned all of the little annoying things that we, as ignorant consumers, often overlook about the ways in which we behave around servers and the ways in which we treat them. Second, I got to learn a lot about build community with coworkers who are very different from you in upbringing, lifestyle, and habits. This was a chance for me to leap out of my comfort zone and befriend new people. Again, it was a terrific experience. Finally, I got to see ways in which the church interacts with the surrounding community by, in a sense, going "undercover".
Oftentimes when we're at church, we treat one another certain ways in a "churchy" fashion. We assume that if you're at church, you must be a Christian, or you must be "searching" so we put on our best guises and treat everyone very nicely and politely, even if you don't like someone. It's the same when you go on a mission trip or a church-sponsored road trip or event. Everyone puts on their "Christian" mask and that's the face they must show everyone they encounter. After all, they're representing the church.
The weird thing, working as a waiter, is that I found myself in this innocuous position of being a Christian in a place where Christians don't generally assume that there are other Christians around. Not that I'm saying Christians don't believe other Christians work at restaurants, but I was a waiter. I'm the guy that brings out your bread, refills your drink, and tries not to make a nuisance of myself when you're having your argument about who gets to use the car the next day. I'm a server. Servers don't get noticed very often.
So here I was, a server, and I got to see what a lot of "Churchy" types said and talked about and did when they weren't necessarily in a Church atmosphere. Sunday morning would come around and our restaurant would get slammed. Large families and church bible studies would come in and sit down and talk about Church politics or the sermon or any number of religious topics while they were eating. And then... they would fight with me over the bill. Nitpicky things like a 20 cent charge for mushrooms, peppers, and onions on a Philly Cheese Steak sub. Or they wouldn't tip. A party of seven or eight would leave their table, and the only tip remaining would be two dollars and some change, for a $50 or $60 meal. Or they would be obnoxious, treating me like they owned me for the hour or so that they sat in my section.
Now imagine what this felt like to me, seeing my brothers and sisters in Christ acting like jerks, just because they didn't really think to consider whether the person serving them, or any of the other people in the restaurant for that matter, were also brothers or sisters.
And this leads to my next question: Why should we only act nice when there are Christians around or there are people around who we would like to convert? Shouldn't we love all the time? Isn't that what Jesus commanded us to do? And if we act one way when we're at church and one way when we're in a restaurant with "those people who work on Sunday mornings", what does that say about the way we act at church? Doesn't that imply that we're faking it?
I think there's a challenge for all believers here. We are not to act one way at church and another in the presence of unbelievers. More so, we are not to give preferential treatment to Christians. I have to wonder if my tables would have acted differently if my restaurant was a church's dinner theater or if they knew I was also a Christian. Would they have been more considerate? Would they have tipped like restaurant etiquette mandates? And if so, what does that say about us as a culture? I don't believe this is what Jesus had in mind when he said to go out into all the world.
Finally, something really interesting happened while I was this undercover Christian at Elizabeth's Pizza. Two people witnessed to me in two separate instances. I say "witnessed" because it is a technical term that my Christian readership will understand, since we've invented all of these churchy words that only Christians know. But if anyone else is reading this, it means that two people evangelized to me, proselytized to an extent. Shared a glimpse of their faith in a purposeful way.
From these two encounters, I learned something. There is a right way to evangelize and there is a wrong way.
The first group was a table of three, two men and a woman. The entire time they were in my section, they made themselves a pain. The food wasn't good enough. They argued with the bill. They made things very difficult for me, and with four other tables all clamoring for attention, they demanded to be first.
When I returned their credit card ticket, the woman leaned forward and said," Do you know that God has a plan for your life?"
I replied, "Yes." And then I left.
That encounter left me angry, bitter, resentful, and rebellious. If I hadn't already been a believer, I wouldn't have wanted to become one after that. Not only did this table treat me like dirt, they then had the audacity to say something dogmatically and with such matter-of-fact that it was as if they were patting themselves on the back for their own self-confidence. More so, the timing was off. I was swamped with tables. Food was up. Drinks needed refilling. I didn't have time to stop and have a one-sided theological discussion with a table that already didn't like me to begin with. The result was that this sort of "evangelism" meant nothing. It did nothing but made me angry.
And then they left a bad tip. The end of story 1.
The second encounter I had really made an impression on me. Two men came in for lunch, and when I brought out their food, they immediately said, "Excuse me, son, what's your name?" And I replied, "Kris."
"Well, Kris, we're going to pray for our food, but we were wondering if there was anything we could pray for you about as well?"
"Um, school I guess."
"School? Neat. Where do you go to school?"
"UNC."
"UNC... Is that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill?"
"Yeah, it is."
"Wow, that's a good school. What are you studying?"
"History, Media Production, and Creative Writing."
"Well, we'll definitely be praying for you as you get ready to go back to school. Thank you, Kris."
I left to go tend to my other tables. When this table finished, they thanked me for my time, and they left me one of their cards and a bible verse on their bill tray. That was it. No heavy handed, "God has a plan for you." Just "Can I pray for you?" The first encounter angered me. The second really impacted me. These two men inquired into the life of a complete stranger. They could not have known that I was already a brother in Christ. They couldn't have known that it would mean a lot to me if someone asked to pray for me out of the blue. They were kind, they were generous, they were thoughtful, and they loved. Unlike the first table, they seemed to actually care about the fact that I wasn't just their waiter but a real, live person. That made all the difference. I wouldn't have cared if they left me nothing as a tip. They loved.
This is what I learned: There is a right way and a wrong way to represent Christ to your community. The wrong way doesn't care about people as people, it doesn't care about treating you well, and it throws around slogans that your pastor at church has told you that you need to tell people as often as possible. The right way cares about people, it loves people, it inquires of people, and it invests in people. The right way lives in such a manner that you are drawn by sheer wonder and curiosity to know more.
I e-mailed the man who left me his card. I thanked him for his act of kindness and his prayer. It meant the world to me, and he never knew. And not knowing, he still acted. That is love.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Reality Check
Have you ever thought to yourself, "Yes. Look at me. I'm going strong. Take off the training wheels dad, I don't need them any more." For a while, I felt something akin to that attitude. I thought that I'd shored up my weak points, sealed in the cracks in the walls, refortified and resupplied my resolute fortress. During the school year, I got so busy with class and CPG projects and Cellar Door editing and the whole slew of things I was doing that my quiet time fell to pieces. It was never all to regular to start off with, and by the end of the semester, it was pretty non-existent. During the summer however, I resolved to re-ignite my time with Jesus, and for this past month of May, I've seen marked improvement. No, I can't say that I had my quiet time every day, but I can say that it was back to a semi-regularly occurrence. I was actively thinking about Jesus, concerned with his plans and goals for my life, and because of this, I was forced by necessity to turn back to the source of everything I know about him: the B-I-B-L-E. I was doing better in other areas too. I was learning self-control. Discernment. Gaining wisdom. I was even improving on my relationship with my family, knowing that the transition from University life to home life is always difficult.
For a while, it seemed like it was smooth sailing. And maybe that's the first place I went wrong. I think I started to coast. I think I started to rely more on my imagined "forward progress" than on my Lord and Savior. No, my life wasn't perfect and I certainly didn't become a perfect Christian or anything close to it, but at times, perceptively, it appeared to me to be so much better than what it was. Thinking this, I let go of Jesus hand, like Peter when he looked down as he walked out to Jesus from the boat. Peter's feet began to sink, and frankly, mine have been sinking for at least a couple of weeks and I never even realized it. And now I sit here writing with drenched clothing, a drowned rat.
Several things have led me to this conclusion:
1) My girlfriend has been telling me about some of the things she's learned from reading a book entitled The Irresistible Revolution. It deals heavily with things such as justice and love in the way that Jesus talked about by his words and deeds, things which we're often uncomfortable with when we sit behind the fence that is White American Christianity like stoic observers. The author explores some of the irresistible consequences of our faith in Christ, how we ought to love one another and how that ought to manifest itself in some way in our communities, not just within the Church. Love is more than just a covered dish dinner and a fellowship meeting. It's making change in the world, causing ripples, because our love for everyone in the world mimics the overawing love our savior showed us on the cross. I haven't read this book yet. I don' t know what the author says specifically, and I may not agree with everything he says. Who knows? Regardless, I will read this book, because just hearing about it secondhand has already made me think about how I'm living out my faith.
2) Falling: At Rockbridge this year, Alex Kirk once spoke about how if the only thing that causes us to come to God is failure, then that is what God will send our way, because he wants us to come to him and not rely on ourselves. Lesson learned, Alex. I think this statement could be the theme of my struggle with sin. I fight this battle not to sin, and then when I don't, I pull away from God just as much as when I do. I try to take off the training wheels and do things on my own, relying on my own will power not to sin and using God's grace as a crutch "just in case I do". Seriously, WTF! When am I going to learn that I can't just rely on God when I'm crawling on my hands and knees? Jesus is my Lord when I'm humbled low and when I'm walking with my head held high. My life should reflect this, and yet it doesn't. And when I try to do things on my own, when I try to coast as I mentioned before, this inevitably leads to another hard hitting fall. It's like I'm the captain of a ship coming into port during a stormy night and I radio ahead to the lighthouse technicians asking them to turn off the power to the beacon. It shouldn't be any surprise that when I try to sail in, I smash up against the rocks. And I begin to wonder how many scars a man can accumulate from the rocks before the damage is permanent. I know Jesus is full of grace and mercy, but I also know full well that sin is sin, and that when I sin, I sin against my Lord. That wrenches at my gut, how I've wronged the one I love. I need to learn to lean on You, even when I think the sea is calm and I've finally gotten rid of my land legs.
3) My quiet time has dwindled to hardly anything. I was reading through Philippians, but when I finished it, for some reason I never thought to start reading through something else. Another symptom of coasting.
4) An argument with my mom, the first real argument we've had since I got back from school. It was a case of miscommunication on both of our parts, a little bit of an authority issue on my side, and some lack of empathy on hers. We were both in the wrong, but one thing it did was to give me a reality check. You can't just sit around and wait for your relationship with your family to magically heal itself. You have to actively seek to do that. In other words, I need to go out of my way to try to repair my relationship with my mother, even if that means humbling myself in ways that are uncomfortable for me. And most of all, I need to show grace towards my family, patience, and love. This isn't something I can coast with. I have to actively choose to do so.
And I think that's the lesson from all of this. Whatever I'm coasting in, whatever you're coasting in, the solution to coasting is always a choice to act. You have to take the initiative and realize that this isn't just something that comes of its own accord. You have to take the first step, and then the second step, and then the third... It has to be a conscious decision, every time, just like I need to decide to rely on Jesus when I'm tempted to rely on my own will power. Just like I'm tempted to let my relationship slide with my family, assuming that things are just fine as they are. Just as I'm tempted to just stop when I've finished reading through Philippians rather than choosing a new book to read through. The key is knowing that there is a choice to be made (a fact we often overlook, to our own detriment) and then making that choice.
Just some thoughts, late at night. Hope they make sense. This late at night, it's hard to keep track of my train of thought all the way through , so my apologies for anything that seems to not fit or flow.
For a while, it seemed like it was smooth sailing. And maybe that's the first place I went wrong. I think I started to coast. I think I started to rely more on my imagined "forward progress" than on my Lord and Savior. No, my life wasn't perfect and I certainly didn't become a perfect Christian or anything close to it, but at times, perceptively, it appeared to me to be so much better than what it was. Thinking this, I let go of Jesus hand, like Peter when he looked down as he walked out to Jesus from the boat. Peter's feet began to sink, and frankly, mine have been sinking for at least a couple of weeks and I never even realized it. And now I sit here writing with drenched clothing, a drowned rat.
Several things have led me to this conclusion:
1) My girlfriend has been telling me about some of the things she's learned from reading a book entitled The Irresistible Revolution. It deals heavily with things such as justice and love in the way that Jesus talked about by his words and deeds, things which we're often uncomfortable with when we sit behind the fence that is White American Christianity like stoic observers. The author explores some of the irresistible consequences of our faith in Christ, how we ought to love one another and how that ought to manifest itself in some way in our communities, not just within the Church. Love is more than just a covered dish dinner and a fellowship meeting. It's making change in the world, causing ripples, because our love for everyone in the world mimics the overawing love our savior showed us on the cross. I haven't read this book yet. I don' t know what the author says specifically, and I may not agree with everything he says. Who knows? Regardless, I will read this book, because just hearing about it secondhand has already made me think about how I'm living out my faith.
2) Falling: At Rockbridge this year, Alex Kirk once spoke about how if the only thing that causes us to come to God is failure, then that is what God will send our way, because he wants us to come to him and not rely on ourselves. Lesson learned, Alex. I think this statement could be the theme of my struggle with sin. I fight this battle not to sin, and then when I don't, I pull away from God just as much as when I do. I try to take off the training wheels and do things on my own, relying on my own will power not to sin and using God's grace as a crutch "just in case I do". Seriously, WTF! When am I going to learn that I can't just rely on God when I'm crawling on my hands and knees? Jesus is my Lord when I'm humbled low and when I'm walking with my head held high. My life should reflect this, and yet it doesn't. And when I try to do things on my own, when I try to coast as I mentioned before, this inevitably leads to another hard hitting fall. It's like I'm the captain of a ship coming into port during a stormy night and I radio ahead to the lighthouse technicians asking them to turn off the power to the beacon. It shouldn't be any surprise that when I try to sail in, I smash up against the rocks. And I begin to wonder how many scars a man can accumulate from the rocks before the damage is permanent. I know Jesus is full of grace and mercy, but I also know full well that sin is sin, and that when I sin, I sin against my Lord. That wrenches at my gut, how I've wronged the one I love. I need to learn to lean on You, even when I think the sea is calm and I've finally gotten rid of my land legs.
3) My quiet time has dwindled to hardly anything. I was reading through Philippians, but when I finished it, for some reason I never thought to start reading through something else. Another symptom of coasting.
4) An argument with my mom, the first real argument we've had since I got back from school. It was a case of miscommunication on both of our parts, a little bit of an authority issue on my side, and some lack of empathy on hers. We were both in the wrong, but one thing it did was to give me a reality check. You can't just sit around and wait for your relationship with your family to magically heal itself. You have to actively seek to do that. In other words, I need to go out of my way to try to repair my relationship with my mother, even if that means humbling myself in ways that are uncomfortable for me. And most of all, I need to show grace towards my family, patience, and love. This isn't something I can coast with. I have to actively choose to do so.
And I think that's the lesson from all of this. Whatever I'm coasting in, whatever you're coasting in, the solution to coasting is always a choice to act. You have to take the initiative and realize that this isn't just something that comes of its own accord. You have to take the first step, and then the second step, and then the third... It has to be a conscious decision, every time, just like I need to decide to rely on Jesus when I'm tempted to rely on my own will power. Just like I'm tempted to let my relationship slide with my family, assuming that things are just fine as they are. Just as I'm tempted to just stop when I've finished reading through Philippians rather than choosing a new book to read through. The key is knowing that there is a choice to be made (a fact we often overlook, to our own detriment) and then making that choice.
Just some thoughts, late at night. Hope they make sense. This late at night, it's hard to keep track of my train of thought all the way through , so my apologies for anything that seems to not fit or flow.
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