Choices

One of my favorite things about music is that it can teach us about life.

A few weeks ago, I took a lesson with a great drum set player named Frank Rosaly. We talked about developing a drum solo (four bars, or indefinitely extended). He told me that he almost always takes at least two beats of silence to let some type of music come to him. This allows the music and your creative instinct to breathe. He then talked about the choices we make as soloists.

In a setting of improvisation, the improviser makes choices (and sacrifices) all the time, consciously and unconsciously. The improviser decides to play something comfortable, or loud, or soft, or out of the box, or a lick, or something new that they've never done before. Sometimes the result of the choice fails miserably, sometimes it works wonderfully. Its success or failure doesn't have to be dependent on its aesthetic appeal to the player/audience, or its ability to teach us something. He said he's seen some pretty beautiful failures, it was greatly artistic because of the choices they made, even if they didn't work. If the improviser makes choices all the time, why not make some consciously and without fear--but with expectancy, and understanding of the possibility--of failure? The music will go on regardless of success or failure (which is too often defined by public's opinion, as opposed to personal best) because you chose for it to do so.

"Our doubts are traitors, / and make us lose the good we might oft win / By fearing to attempt." --Shakespeare

What parallels do you find with this and your life?

Thoughts on Prayer

^"7And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. ⁸Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him."

(NIV)

Why do we pray?

1) We're supposed to. Church and the bible say so.

2) It helps us work out our thoughts; we mentally organize (on a personal level) and we discover, or are enlightened or nudged (from the divine).

3) It's good for the people we pray for.

4) Why not? Ask and you shall receive (Mark 11:24).

Humans developed language as a way to organize our thoughts and emotions, and as a way to share them with others. According to the text in Matthew, we don't need human language to communicate with God--He doesn't need our self made form of communication to understand what we need; He knows before we take the stuff of our souls and organize it into a languaged thought or word. So why do we pray out loud in church? Why do we pray in large groups? Why do people feel empowered by this? Is this the power of prayer? If He knows what we need before we ask, why do we pray at all?

Prayer in this ask and receive (or not) manner, seems one dimensional to me; God must be more.

Dear God, please help Jimmy get better. Amen.

If the Father knows what we need before we ask Him, do we need to say anything to God--or do we need to listen? Hopefully our praying doesn't turn into a to do/wish list, on a personal or selfless and communal level; a conversation that is heavily one sided.

How do you pray? What forms of prayer work well for you?

Kittens and Coke Zero. . . Miracles?

During the prayer requests and praise reports section of the church service, an elderly lady stood from her pew and professed how she had seen God's work in her life during the week. The story was long winded, but as it turns out, she's a cat lady. Her and her husband, having no children living in the house anymore, have taken to the company of cats. Well, one of her cats (or two, or three. . . I may have drifted off) died recently, leaving her and her husband quite sad, maybe even devastated. 

She prefaced this story with a disclaimer: "I know in the scope of all the troubles in the world, this doesn't rate very high, but it was big to us." Oh great, I thought. Here we go. . . 

Since all of their cats were getting older, they decided that when the cats died, they would not invest (emotionally, financially, spiritually) in raising new ones. Shortly after the most recent cat passed away, they discovered a "perfect kitten," just outside their door. After taking all of the precautionary steps to ensure that it was not a lost kitten belonging to some befuddled owner, they decided it was a gift from God. He acted at just the right time and granted them this perfect animal (no really--its hair, personality, coloring, all perfect). 

This story angered me a little bit. And I'm not sure why. But I found myself becoming defensive of a God I was certain did not act this way. What she was describing sounded like a miracle. A perfect kitten with no previous owners, presented from the divine? CS Lewis explains that miracles occur when God intervenes in life to cause something unexplainable to happen. Very rarely, due miracles occur. I agree, in that we deem too many things miracles. Just because we cannot explain how or why something occurs does not mean God is working a miracle. 

In the grand scheme of things, it seems goofy for God to work a miracle by giving an old lady a kitten. Assuming that He did indeed give her a kitten; I wonder if she'd think it was from God if it's unexplainable appearance was suddenly explained by a 6 year old girl turning up, looking for her lost kitty. 

Well, maybe it's not from God then; then again, maybe it is. 

Who am I to say? I was offended by her seeming understanding of how God works, but why? Because she thinks he works in different ways than I think he does. Regardless, I'm just as wrong.

On the plane ride back, I bought a Coke Zero in Atlanta. After taking several gulps I stowed it into the side pocket of my bag as they called us to board the plane. Having awkwardly scooted to my window seat, I lazily dropped my bag and kicked it under the seat. 30 seconds later, of course, I was ready for another drink. Pulling up my bag I discovered that the side of the bottle was wet. So was the side pocket, and so was the carpet under the seat in front of me. I almost laughed out loud; it was a miracle! Had I not been thirsty at that very moment, I may have allowed my delicious Coke Zero to seep through my side pocket and permeate the fibers of the carpet. After saturating the carpet and underlying material thoroughly, mold and mildew would have set in and in a few weeks, it could have eroded the floor of the plane, maybe even in mid flight at 30,000 feet, resulting in a tragic and catastrophic crash. After this disaster, of course, we would only be able to bring 3 oz sodas on the plane, and they'd have to be in a quart sized plastic bag. 

Excuse my sarcastic hyperbole. What's the difference between the cat lady discovering a brand new kitten on her doorstep and me discovering that my Coke Zero had a leak in it before it leaked too much? They both benefited the individual, and seemed to come at unexplainable or coincidental time. Why can hers be from God and mine can't? Or can it? 

After further consideration of my own thoughts and YOURS, I'd like to post a response in a sort of part two to this blog. Even if you don't have an account with Blogger, you can comment, just leave your name if you please. 

And now, please, what do you think? 

Arvo Part

Arvo Part has a scraggly beard that strings to the bottom of his neck, like a bunch of little twigs; the top of his bald head is surrounded by a coarse curtain of wavy black hair. Though well-dressed, he looks unkempt, troubled and distant. If you were to look at him, you'd guess he wouldn't make eye contact with any one person for very long, though his eyes would continue to twist in their sockets, darting around the room, until they found you.  Then your insides would twist. He looks like a brilliant professor, or a wizard, whose wisdom is far beyond society's. He's 73 now, and arguably one of those most profound composers of our time. His music is hypnotic in its simplicity, intricate in its design, and esoterically distant and complex in its emotional sentiments. In a recent splurge on amazon.com, I purchased his album Tabula Rasa. In the notes found in the booklet, Part tells this story:

"In the Soviet Union once, I spoke with a monk and asked him how, as a composer, one can improve oneself. He answered me by saying that he knew of no solution. I told him that I also wrote prayers, and set prayers and the texts of psalms to music, and that perhaps this would be of help to me as a composer. To this he said, 'No, you are wrong. All the prayers have already been written. You don't need to write any more. Everything has been prepared. Now you have to prepare yourself.' I believe there's a truth in that. We must count on the fact that our music will come to an end one day. Perhaps there will come a moment, even for the greatest artist, when he will no longer want to or have to make art. And perhaps at that very moment we will value his creation even more - because in this instant he will have transcended his work."

This story can transcend its surface topic. The monk says one thing, and Part replies in his language--music. What does this mean to you--in your language? 

My First Sermon

I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to give the message at my home church Albright UMC, down in Phoenix. The pastor was at annual conference and asked if I would like to fill in; I'm very thankful that she gave me this opportunity, it was a wonderful experience. So, yesterday morning at about 10:30 I gave my first sermon. For you LCMers, a lot of this may sound familiar...  Here's the text to what I said on Sunday, hope you enjoy. 

I haven’t been to seminary. I’m not a superstar theologian. I haven’t spent a year in the Peace Corps, and I haven’t endured some great hardship that led me to a grand understanding of the divine. They won’t be making a movie out of my story anytime soon-- though it’s young, so I suppose there’s still time. What I’m going to say today, are some questions I’ve asked, and the conclusions I’ve come to, from reading, talking with my friends and family and of course from prayer. In his book, The Orthodox Heretic, Peter Rollins says: “the more carefully one speaks of one’s own journey, the more universal the message becomes.”

So, here goes.

There’s a little blue building behind the School of Music on campus in Flagstaff that is home for several small churches, one of them is Lutheran Campus Ministries, the church I’ve been attending. Right after one of our services, I signed up for a mission trip to New Orleans for an “alternative Spring Break.” About 30 of us went on the trip and we stayed in a house that was maybe the size of the fellowship hall, had 2 bathrooms. Needless to say, we were cozy and got to know each other pretty well by the end of the trip. I learned how to sheet rock with a team of my peers; I also learned how to listen to a contractor tell us how we had learned to sheet rock incorrectly; Consequentially, I learned how to take down sheet rock; And of course, I learned how to put sheet rock back on correctly—or close enough. We played music for morning chapel and we participated in bible studies at night. It was in New Orleans, among sheet rocking and re-sheet rocking Ms. Barbara’s gutted house and among a community of my peers, that I felt closer to God than at any other point in my life. In this closeness, I found myself asking questions. A few of us stayed up until 2 in the morning with our pastor, having heavy theological discussion, it was great. New Orleans ignited my spiritual curiosity. And when I returned, I was still asking questions.

Where can I find God? What is God calling me to do in this life? Why is it easier to find God in some places and more difficult in others? Why did I feel God’s presence so much more in New Orleans than anywhere else? Where can I find God?

Do you know what I mean by “find God”? Many people find God in nature—the magnitude of the mountains, or the metamorphosis of a butterfly lead them to insist that there must be some great Divine Being behind it all. Perhaps in scripture—when its words offer clarity or solace in a specific time of tribulation. Perhaps in other people—when a friend drops a seemingly meaningless comment that somehow transcends the current conversation and speaks to your heart directly. Perhaps in the “still small voice”—the nudge in your conscience that assures you that talking with that homeless man is a good idea. [GRANDPA STORY-holy spirit and salsa]

The possibilities are numerous. There is a problem with the wording of this conundrum of “finding God”. Finding God, implies that He is lost. And we’ve gone looking to find Him, and see where we can tap Him into life today. This is a rather patronizing view of the Father don’t you think?

I had found God in New Orleans, or at least that’s when and where his presence was most prevalent to me. Why was this? In an effort to understand, I started to quantify and categorize my time with God. When did I feel close to God? When did I feel distant? I’m a very visual person, so my metaphoric image was that of a black and white timeline. Black would represent all my time dedicated to societal obligations—school, friends, family, etc. White would represent all my time dedicated to God (by dedicated to God I mean: reading the bible, going to church, journaling, praying, etc.). Well where I had hoped to have a barcode, I had a black box. Where I had hoped to have a Zebra, I had a black stallion. And where I had hoped to have a shiny baby grand…, I had a sooty piano (sorry Mom).

Well, I’m sure you’ve seen the problem with this already. There were never any truly black sections in my timeline; just because I had so little spiritual awareness in the “black” sections, didn’t mean that God wasn’t there. I wasn’t looking through the correct lens. God has always been there, weaving through our lives, creating a gray timeline. It wasn’t that God wasn’t revealing something to me, or that he wasn’t working in my life, it was that he wasn’t smacking me in the face with what he was doing. But if we use a different lens; instead of how we can get God into our heads and our lives, let’s reverse it: how can we get into God? Instead of trying to grasp Him in understanding, allow ourselves to be grasped.

It’s in this immersion INTO God that we can “find” Him. Frankly, He’s there already, in overwhelming abundance, whether we’re aware of it or not. So how can we be more conscience of his presence and in so doing increase our “grayness”? Maybe we spend more time with God throughout the day; we can do a devotional at breakfast, take short prayer breaks at work and read the bible before we go to bed. In other words, we can drop God into little snippits of our day, when it’s convenient. That just makes the black and white lines thinner. How can we mesh our hectic lives into God, so that our timeline is truly gray?

In a recent interview, Billy Graham said that he wished he hadn’t used the term personal relationship with God. It put too much emphasis on the self, and not enough on the community, he said. We are a social species; it’s built into our very DNA, we need to interact with others. To be immersed in God means that our daily interactions need to be Godly. Now does this mean that we need to evangelize and try to save the planet before judgment day? I don’t think so. It means we need to show His love to others, all the time.

Love, has always been a rather fluffy and unrealistic term for me. We throw around that word a lot: I loved that movie! I love daisies. I loooove that color on you, it brings out the color in your eyes. I love it! I’m talking about the kind of love Jesus came to teach. I can’t be best friends with everyone, and I can’t love everyone I meet. I’m not a radical lover like Jesus; I don’t hang out with the tax collectors or lepers, the poor or the imprisoned. It’s so mushy and sappy and flowery to love everybody, all the time. How the heck can we love others?

Loving people doesn’t have to be sunshine and flowers. It can be more than donating 10% of your income to the church. It can be more than hugs and smiles; it can be more than buying the homeless man a lunch; and it can be more than sheet rocking. So what can we do in our everyday lives to love or better others? Loving is nitty gritty.

Loving can be tolerance for others. It can be refusing to talk about someone behind their back. It can be keeping the sarcastic joke to yourself. It can be saying hello with a smile to that annoying guy at work that just ticks you off. It can be a thoughtful apology. It can be buying the homeless man a lunch, and then eating WITH him. Loving others doesn’t need to be put on a high and mighty and unattainable pedestal; it can, however, be prioritized and infused into everyday life.

[Mat. 25: 35-40]
In the scripture from Matthew, Jesus talks about feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. These are applicable in the literal; these are things we do for our homeless shelters right? But what if we go farther than the literal? Surely, the people that are hungry, can be in need of much more than a lunch. And might the people that are naked need more love than our old clothes?

I like the wording in the last two categories. “I was sick and you visited me.” Not I was sick and you came to heal me; or, I was sick and you came to tell me that getting sick is God’s way of trying to teach me a lesson. But you visited me.

“I was in prison and you came to Me.” Not I was in prison and you brought me some cookies and explained that the justice system is indeed just and I am doing the righteous thing by serving my time here. But you came to me.

These are somewhat passive words—visit me and came to me; the message in action is offering your presence to one in need. It heavily stresses personal interaction. Loving others can be sitting with someone who is sick and just listening to them; it can be sitting with the man in prison and listening to him. Don’t get me wrong, the homeless and the sick need material goods for their benefit, but what if we gave them the personal interaction they might need too—our love. God’s love.

If the hospitals and prisons give you the heebie-jeebies, surely this message can transcend the literal words of its text. There are people in our everyday lives that are “sick” or in “prison”. Sick with loneliness or imprisoned by addiction. We aren’t always called to heal them or break them free; we are called to love them; often, this means just being there.

[1 Cor. 13: 1-3]
The scripture from Corinthians can be paraphrased very succinctly: It doesn’t matter what you do, if it’s without love, it doesn’t matter. We can give 12 million dollars to charity, but if it’s without love, it doesn’t matter. We can make a gazillion cookies for the inmates, but if it’s without love, it doesn’t matter. We can be the smartest person in the world! But if it’s without love, it doesn’t matter. By giving ourselves and our love to others, we strive to answer the work for which God is calling us, and in so doing, we increase our Grayness with God. Giving ourselves in love helps others with their problems and helps us become closer with God—increasing the gray in our timeline. If it’s without love, it doesn’t matter.

I’d like to close with a parable from Peter Rollins’ book, The Orthodox Heretic… [Chapter 1-No Conviction]

So, what would your sentence be?

A Case for Something...

I watched What The Bleep Do We Know? last week. The movie blew my mind in several ways, but here's something I found particularly interesting. 

Did you know that our eyes see more than our brains allow us to perceive? Our eyes are a tool, like the lens on a camera, and our brain is like the film. Except our brains have preconceived judgments, meaning, based on our past experiences we determine (at a sub-conscience level) what we put on our film, or what we perceive as reality. When Columbus and his ships approached America, the natives were unable to see his ships on the horizon because they had never seen, imagined or fathomed anything that looked like them. Even when the ships had approached the coast, it's said that the natives saw the ripples of the ship breaking the water, but still they could not see the ships. It wasn't until the chief was able to see and then describe what he saw to the rest of the tribe that they were able to see too. 

So have aliens been walking around earth for years and we haven't been able to see them!? I doubt it. It makes you wonder though, doesn't it? What would we be seeing if we could wipe away the gunk of our preconceived judgments and the limitations of our imagination? 

There's a Fly in My Perfume

The following is a stream of consciousness, considering emotionalism. 

Being aware of my emotions (what they are, where they came from and why they're there) is much different than allowing my thoughts and actions to be born through them. Just because a seemingly inherent form of jealousy bubbles up inside of me, doesn't mean it's a justifiable feeling, right? I try to suppress that; jealousy can be gross. So what if a seemingly inherent form of happiness bubbles up inside of me? Is it justifiable that because something shoots happy neurons, and since we enjoy it, we gobble up those electrical charge and accept them as right, justifiable, comforting, reliable? 

This is from a book I'm reading by John Wooden:

"If you can't control your emotions, your emotions will control you. And when emotions are running the show, you will lose. I distrust emotion and fear emotionalism. The former leads easily to the latter--out-of-control feelings that diminish your effectiveness. An emotional leader is apt to lose clear thinking. When this occurs, you are helping the competition--making its job easier. Emotionalism can be a fatal flaw. I place the greatest value on intensity. It's the difference between a welder's arc and a forest fire."

Okay, so he's talking about basketball. It's a little different, but a lot the same. 

This is from a book I'm reading that is possibly by King Solomon:

"Dead flies make a perfumer's oil stink, so a little foolishness is weightier than wisdom and honor. A wise man's heart directs him toward the right, but the foolish man's heart directs him toward the left." (Ecclesiastes 10:1-2)

So my fly sized idiocy can ruin an entire vat of sweet smelling wisdom and honor. 

I think.

And a man who is foolish, may truly believe that his heart is telling him to go one way, do one thing, say one thing. But he's an idiot! Since his heart is directing him, he thinks he should follow it. Which would be fine, if he weren't inherently stupid. So follow your heart, unless you're an idiot.

I don't know if this is the correct or popular interpretation of these verses, but I like it. It's hilariously brutal in increasing my awareness. 

What do you think?