House of cards...

It's a warm Monday evening... and the dark streets are empty but full of peace, excepting the intermittent flash of lights and an ocassional car that passes by at a distance, carrying a weary, third-shift worker or late night visitor. And though I sit at a vacant table, upon a nicely swept sidewalk, I can almost feel the asphalt as it sweats off another long summer day. The city sleeps early tonight...but I am wide awake. I have been unable to fully sleep for weeks now and though my body aches of fatigue and my mind is hardly able to lend itself to the basic function of coherence, I find that I am still far from my bed... still so far from the weaving of dreams.

Though I have been laboring through several books in recent weeks, I cracked open a new one just hours ago and completed it in a single sitting... I was strongly prompted by a friend last night, to read it and to read it with urgency... and I found that once begun, it was difficult to put down. It is one of those rare books that makes everything else in life seem like an interruption and for a time you want to be completely lost, not to emerge again until you have turned the final page.

C.S. Lewis fell in love late in life only to lose her too early... during his mourning he turned to writing in a journal, portions of which were later published as A Grief Observed. I tried to describe the book to a friend tonight, and was at a loss for words... I actually called it "good" and immediately started back peddling, because "good" seemed too lighthearted and inconsequential a term. I think it is profound. Life altering if one is willing... but it is a difficult book...and you will feel your heart break over and over again...that is if you have blood still coursing through your veins...from the foreward and the introduction to the very last word...

At the moment, I feel sad. And while I know that so many of my friends would just like me to feel better because I've been struggling lately... I can't say that I feel any better about anything, but my sorrow is at the least, different now and I think that is a good thing.

Recently, I wrote about faith being tried by fire... and it is something I have been pondering a great deal. Lewis in A Grief..., actually echoes this idea (or rather I echo his) by describing his faith being like a house of cards... Lewis had just buried the love of his life and was struggling immensely. He was actually feeling overwhelmed. And though in the past he had been able to hold strong and steady in his commitment to God at the pain of others, it was now so very different. In a razor sharp moment of vulnerability (as only deep pain affords) he admits that there had been a distancing from the pain of others and though he presumed to sincerely care about their sorrow, nothing was on the line for him personally, but now suddenly all was different. His house was crumbling...and so the elements of their construction were to be questioned...
Lewis writes:

Meanwhile, where is God?... When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be-or so it feels-welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside...

He further adds:

Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about him...

After finishing the book, I met a friend for dinner/dessert and on my drive home I started to wonder about my house of cards...

See, my faith, the faith that I thought I had is being broken now...at least this is how it feels. It has been built upon some truths for sure, but probably as many falsities...built upon my own dreams and ambitions, my hopes and plans to get my share in this life. I've wanted to follow God because I thought it would mean that I could fulfill my wildest dreams and one day find a great wife, a gratifying job and have a wonderful, loving family, but mostly I've wanted to be shielded from the long winters of life, the agony and heartbreak. The truth is, these are all seemingly moral desires, and they seem common among all of humanity, but how soon do they fall to become a barrier in our fallen state? And how soon do they simply fall? Maybe my faith then has been built upon a God reduced to my limited ideas, ideas that made my decision to follow Christ more manageable and easier to swallow, my self-serving savior. The thing is, all of this has been hidden underneath a blanket, and perhaps this blanket has been my pride in the fact that I abstain from the apparent immoralities of the world, in my choosing to accept the truth of the gospel and thereby being a follower of Christ. As a result, the problematic tenants of my faith have gone undetected having been overshadowed by a camoflauged religiosity of sorts.

So the weak foundations of my faith may be my hope for a "good life," one free from too much trauma, in so far as it influences my allegiance to Christ. It is a subtle evil I think, and therefore all the more dangerous because it becomes easy to justify...And I'm not proposing that it's wrong for believers to seek happiness,...rather that we musn't seek happiness on our terms and by our incomplete definitions. Our definitions must be revolutionized, to seek His will above all else, at all costs...but it's so hard, nothing could be more demanding...

And now I consider with heavy countenance, that after all that I had thought I had learned these years... my "surrender" to God is still so very contingent on the fulfillment of my will, and therefore in fact no surrender at all...for I've come to the altar, but have kept my hands clenched tightly and hidden behind my back and have offered all of myself, all but everything that means anything.

And yet we see no sign of this in Jesus...who was obedient to the very end...

"The problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that is has been found difficult and left untried"- G.K. Chesterton

The truth is, the gospel message is probably about as difficult as it gets. So much so that one day Jesus' disciples asked in wonder, "who then can enter the kingdom?" they were in utter disbelief at His teachings... And Jesus said things like, He had come to bring a sword, and that if we loved our father or mother more than Him we were not worthy of him...and that he was basically blazing a trail for us when he walked the hills of calvary with a heavy cross on his back after having been beaten, later to be nailed to it and hung to die (Matt 10:37-39). He called the road to salvation a narrow path and described two people in a field, that one would be taken and the other left... and said that whoever sought to save his life would lose it, but that whoever lost his life for His sake would find it... therein, 11 of the 12 disciples that He chose, his dearest friends were martyred. I've said all that to say that maybe we shouldn't be too suprised at a really painful life...and if we are, as I often am by trials, then maybe we have a lot of presuppositions about God...(1 Peter 4:12) And I think that is what Lewis is saying in his book. His house of cards, his supposed faith was something of an imagination...as perhaps mine has been...

And so I am at a fork in the road, arrived at by a sober look at life... a life that is in constant tension between joy and pain... and as I journeyed through the words of Lewis' journal I got the sense that perhaps our greatest joys in life lead to the deepest wounds and I think this is painted most poignantly in the example of lovers all of whom must one day be separated by death...
If this should be our cold reality, then I can no longer conform God to my image of Him... it just doesn't make sense...not matter how hard I try...it doesn't seem to fit... and so once again, the walls of my faith must be torn down...to be rebuilt...and again I must lift my eyes up beyond the city skies, beyond the clouds, and stars, to another world, where laughter is not to be followed by tears...

Barrier

I've been staring at a blank "page" for over half an hour. The thing is, I feel this intense need to write and yet have no idea what it is I'd like to express. It's been sometime since I've posted anything (though I have continued to write) and there is no guarantee that these "scribblings" today will find any different end. It's strange to think that technology is changing our language... how "scribbling" and "page" among a number of other words don't directly relate to writing anymore... instead we "type" onto "webpages" or "emails" now.

I have found myself in peculiar moods lately. For the most part I've been pretty numb emotionally. I think maybe I *decided that caring too much and feeling too much is too costly...and so perhaps I've resigned in fear to distancing myself from my experience and the experience of others. I know this isn't the healthiest approach. And maybe "decided" isn't the best word to describe my experience... I didn't exactly sit down one day and resolve to take a new approach to life... it just sort of happened...At the same time I haven't been fighting these inclinations because that takes courage, and courage I don't really have at the moment...and so perhaps my passivity is my voice in the matter...my choice.

I attended club last night only to feel displaced. It was good to see people that I care about and the people that care about me... but I felt this wall of separation...this strange invisible barrier. Maybe because I thought that their lives looked somehow a little nicer, neater or more hopeful than mine...even though I know that is far from the truth. Experience tells me that we are all deeply wounded people... And I'm not sure what to make of all of this. Perhaps I feel somehow tainted because of all my doubts these days... and perhaps I fear that some of this will somehow rub off on their nicely pressed clothes, their nicely pressed lives...

David gave a message about finding God... he talked about Job and Paul and Abraham and about cutting the foreskins off wieners. But he mentioned these men to point out their unique encounters with God... how they found him under very different circumstances... Job as a righteous man found God through immense suffering, Abraham through deep obedience and trust and Paul in the midst of his rebellion... We had a time of quiet reflection and worship following the message and we were encouraged to consider how we might encounter God... and I looked across the room to see heads bowed, eyes closed...some rocking softly to the rhythm of the guitar..... and then I raised my eyes up above because I wanted to see God...but my eyes were met with the reality of a cold, impenetrable ceiling made of wood and plaster ... this barrier between me and God. People began singing...and it was beautiful...like the sound of angels...and I thought for a moment that it sounded like how I imagine heaven to be... but my eyes remained on the ceiling... carefully studying the design and I'm not sure why... maybe I was looking for a hole or crevice...any flaw that might serve as a sign that this stiff barrier was in some way porous, vulnerable. That I might find even a drop of grace falling through...

Pilgrim's Progress

Along his pilgrimage Christian meets two characters, Timorous and Mistrust.

Timorous and Mistrust reveal that they were also journeying, but had decided to turn back for fear of their very lives...

Timorous: But the farther we go the more danger we meet with; wherefore we turned, and are going back again.

Mistrust: Yes, for just before us lie a couple of lions in the way...

Christian: You make me afraid; but wither shall I flee to be safe? If I go back to my own country, that is prepared for fire and brimstone, and I shall certainly perish there. If I can get to the Celestial city, I am sure to be in safety there. I must venture. To go back is nothing but death; to go forward is fear of death, and life everlasting beyond it: I will yet go forward.

A Burning Man

This morning started with yet another trip to the airport. I know, three trips in the last seven days...and somehow I continue to find myself still in Phoenix.

It's beyond warm today and I wonder how any of us will make it through another long summer. There is nothing redeeming about this season in the desert... and from this day forward, everyone I run into will helplessly talk about how unbearable the weather is and I will of course agree. Here in the valley, with regards to small talk, climate tops the list of most common topics, that and how bad the Cardinals are playing this year. But, everybody really does talk about weather, all the time, everywhere... and now that I pointed it out to you (you fellow Phoenicians), it's likely that you will begin to notice it even more, funny things our brains...

Speaking of brains, I've had a great deal to think about lately. I suppose that was implied in my previous entry...

I am starting to wonder if doubt is so much more than I initially thought it was and what I mean by that is I wonder just how broadly sweeping the consequences of doubt may be. As I wrote in my last entry, I am wrestling with real questions, fundamental ones. And what I'm finding is just how much it changes my interaction with reality. Life just feels so entirely different now, my interactions with other people, the sunset, music, the bible... and I wonder if doubt might actually be a state of being...not simply an emotional or cognitive response... although one might argue that our emotional and cognitive responses do alter our states of being... well, so much for that.

In many ways, I feel as though I am in a surrealist state...everything is dream-like. Not necessarily in that things don't seem real...but rather that nothing seems to make much sense anymore.

I haven't wanted to be alone much and so I've found myself consistently with company since the difficult incident last monday. And I've been with kind hearted believers who have tried to encourage me and be there for me... naturally we talk about God and Christ and attempt to piece things together through a Christian perspective... Very naturally do the ideas and words flow through me...because it has been my life for so many years now...I have been engulfed in this culture with it's theological terms, memory scriptures, and C.S. Lewis quotes. Truthfully though, at the end of a conversation, I feel to a certain extent, insincere...because these days, I'm wondering if God is real...if there ever was a man named Jesus who was crucified... and if it means anything to us.

I visited the Christian bookstore yesterday with my friend Ludlum. We had been there some time browsing the shelves when my companion came across a devotional book for Nascar Dads. No joke. We didn't have time to open it, but I'd be quite suprised if there weren't at least one chapter dedicated to "Pit Stop Prayers." Then we ventured to the clothing section and found an entire line of Christian shirts, belts, jewelry, even shoes...

As I was checking out, the girl at the counter tried to sell me on a presale Third Day cd which included a discounted price and a t-shirt. Ludlum came over to me with a sheepish grin handing me an energy bar labeled "Noah's Nuggets." And I started to think that Christians have this entire subculture, this bubble of sorts... now I'm not knocking Nascar dad's doing quiet time to racing metaphors, or shoes featuring Jesus fish on them or even Noah's delectable nuggets... I just started wondering how much of my Christian faith was real and sincere and how much of it I might hold onto because of it's implications to my identity...

Last night, I attended a group bible study and at the conclusion of the message, we broke into smaller sections of 3 or 4. Within these intimate meetings, we shared personal struggles of forgiveness and then offered up prayers for one another... and I did it, and I think I meant what I said...but I just wasn't sure if it was heard by anyone, or worth any more than the change of sound pressure resulting from my larynx... I started thinking that when we pray aloud for others it often sounds like we are actually talking to the people around us, just with our eyes closed and with a more official voice and again I wanted to know what of my faith was real...

Maybe my faith is being "tried by fire," as Peter wrote in his first epistle.

Fire has long been the object of great wonder and beauty; one of the four elements that puzzled the ancient world, a mysterious chemical reaction of energy that provides warmth and light. On a recent camping trip, the guys in my small group filled their cameras with pictures of the camp fire... and though we had all seen dozens of them before, we often found ourselves huddled around the warmth, enamored by the colors and fluid shapes, the crackling of fuel and nostalgic smell of wood burning.

But fire is dichotomous...

The Ancient Greeks defined the element by opposing categories. Fire was creative and associated with many of the gods and goddesses, but it was also destructive like that of Hades. I recall some years ago watching in wonder at the subdued glow of a mountain side that was burning...It was an amazing sight... and the deep orange embers pulsated against the dark of night took my breathe away...but it was also quite devastating.

This fire that Peter alludes to is fierce, wild, searing...and perhaps even all consuming.

And I wonder in this life, if we must all walk through a furnace, if even my severe doubts are a part of something true, but simply beyond my comprehension... and I wonder if I will endure to the end to find that the flames have produced something meaningful and of great worth. I wonder when the heat has settled and the dense pile of cinders washed away, if there will be nothing left or if I will find a tiny grain of gold so pure that it no longer resists the light...





.

Help my unbelief...

I woke up to my phone ringing this morning. I quickly jumped out of bed and my eyes noticed that it was still dark out and so I thought such an untimely call must be urgent. I glanced at the clock and it read 4 a.m. I was anxious and felt my heart pound for a second before I remembered that I had promised to take a friend to the airport this morning. I know, two visit to the airport in one week.

After dropping off the excited traveler I drove around by the airport for a bit, taking pictures of the early dawn as it mixed with the city... I know it's probably unusual for someone to take pictures of a city they've inhabited for 14 years, but I think I just wanted to find something beautiful this morning... if such a thing should exist.

It's been a hellish week and I don't use that term lightly. What is more, I have no idea how things are going to work themselves out or if they even will. I'm just being honest. The very foundations of my faith are being shaken and I'm wondering now if everything that I have held so close and dear to me, everything that I have held as truth and have tried to live has been a falsity, something imagined...

"Take this sinking boat and point it home
we've still got time..." - Glen Hansard

Tracey asked me if I was hurt and angry at the events of this week and I admitted I was...I know that I am deeply distraught. Elliot told me he would be worried if I weren't. But I don't know that my doubts are only rooted in emotion. I wish it were that simple... I am starting to wonder if the reality in the bible is a real representation of the reality in my experience...in all our experiences... This is a real struggle one grounded in reason and I guess that's what scares me the most. To pursue truth is to pursue it with integrity even when it is severely difficult... we must be honest with ourselves even if it should shake the rudiments of our being.

I wonder if this life is really the result of the divine providence a loving God. and I wondering if our prayers do more than echo between four walls...words just blowing in the wind of an apathetic universe... if there is real meaning in everything...if there is hope...

Maybe "life is a bitch and then you die" as Michael Johnson and Tupac once said... and maybe that makes as much sense as anything right now. I'm trying though, trying with what little energy I have at the moment...

"That's me in the corner,
that's me in the spotlight,
I'm losing my religion..." -R.E.M.

Touch and Go.

I find myself slouching down in a brown, semi comfy, leather, chair at Sky Harbor Airport. Every several minutes or so my thoughts are interrupted by a muffled announcement over the loudspeaker about TSA regulations. Other than that, it's quiet and I'm starting to feel that dinner time is near. The baggage claim carousels sit as empty as my stomach; the walkways are still and the restaurants and bars abandoned save that of a janitor sweeping the floors. But things will soon change as the next set of planes land... a rush of weary travelers, wheeling heavy luggage will bring this place again to life, and signs will light up, workers will run around and it will feel like a carnival...and then again it will sit
too quiet.

I'm here to pick up a friend who will be flying in from Houston in about an hour. I arrived here early in an attempt to avoid rush hour traffic. But I really don't mind the wait. Airports top my list of places I like to be. I know it's a bit odd, but they make me feel things... I've been this way since I was a child... And some of my fondest memories were in one way or another related to them...

They also make me feel really alone...

In a recent conversation, Elliot shared with me that he found himself to be a "touch and go" person. And I think what he meant by that was that he doesn't really feel like he belongs anywhere, not deeply. By jumping around and not sticking around long enough or often enough he avoids growing roots. And he wasn't talking about geography, necessarily.

I think Airports are very "touch and go." Transitory is a good word for it.

People filter through airports, they don't plan a stay (at least not normally). And though I've met some neat people and held some great conversations over the years in airports, there has always been an entirely unspoken, but mutual understanding that our relationship would last only the length of a flight or layover.

And I think life has been a lot like this for me lately... "touch and go."

We all want to feel rooted somewhere, not imprisoned or chained, but connected to something or someone or else we're just floating along aimlessly. But then again I have started to think that what I am looking for, the type of interconnectedness that I long for to this world, to existence and with other people doesn't actually exist. I mean not for the interim. And I like thinking of life as the interim. A lot of people won't agree with this idea, I'm sure, but I'm not trying to convince anybody. If this life is wonderfully fulfilling for you, then more power to you. I'm just saying that I honestly don't feel that way...

Life to me is an airport, an interim and I'm not denying there is goodness and joy and beauty in it... but it's all very imperfect...like an imperfect version of the deepest longings of my soul. Like a "poor reflection."

Thinking out loud.

I couldn't have asked for a more perfect day in terms of the climate. It's cold, deeply overcast and sprinkling rain. It reminds me of my short time in Seattle and I remember again just how much I loved it there.

I woke up this morning in a strange mood. My initial feelings were that of disbelief. That somehow my ambitions for the career I had set out were really not going to pan out and it put me in a good deal of unrest. I used to dream about being on tour and performing night after night... I even had specific cities and venues in mind... and all of these visualizations started pouring into my mind...only I knew that they were in vain now. I've talked about all this before, so this is nothing too new, but the experience was different somehow.

It's difficult to describe...but I suppose we have all known our share of disappointment in this life. You can love something (or someone) so sincerely, so intensely, but that in no way insures any amount of permanence. Life will shift like the colors of new seasons with or without our permission.

My friend once told me that I was a boxer forced into early retirement... and though I find myself a million miles away from the ring, though my gloves have long ago been hung on the wall to collect cobwebs, I am still a boxer at heart... and I have to imagine God made me this way for a reason. But why...?

At the moment, I'm considering a substantial move, to a foreign country. This morning I imagined what it might be like living abroad, and playing my tired old guitar in coffee shops...filled with strangers, singing my tired old songs. And I thought for a moment that things would be vastly different, not perfect by any means, just different...but I feared at the same time that they might be the same.

If I do leave...this home that I have known for well over a decade what would I be leaving behind? And what exactly would I be going to? It's scary to think about, but maybe that's a good thing. On my recent camping trip, we ascended a mountain that put a real amount of fear in me and my company... but the journey was amazing and reaching the top felt indescribable. And maybe life affords us these opportunities to plunge into the unknown...and we will make of it what we will. We can shrink down and resign in fear or we can face it head on...

The better part of a year has passed since I began my involvement in a ministry here. Something relatively minor, leading a small group and I have seen God working through it. What he has done is nothing short of a miracle, in fact...but somehow I feel at a loss now. I wonder if this is really what I am meant to be doing...I guess my doubts come in because I feel displaced and probably more alone than I have ever felt. Maybe that is ok or all just a part of it...but maybe not?

I find myself in a bit of a bind... longing to be a part of something meaningful and real, something that will make real use of the way God has designed me before he laid the foundations of this world... I want to feel God and celebrate the destiny he has imagined... and maybe I'm doing that in differing ways now...I don't know.

I know that I don't want to runaway from anything...

I do dream of a community...a community that I have not found here so far. Of people who are intense about changing the world. People who aren't content with simply enjoying their lives and carrying about business as usual... I want to live side by side and co labor with people who want to fulfill the call in Isaiah to "loosen the chains of social injustice and to set the oppressed free" to watch over "oprhans and widows" as the book of James defines authentic faith. And I want to be inspired...challenged by the dreams of others...

But I'm starting to question whether I will find that here... and I don't mean to be critical and I realize that I haven't met even the majority of people here... but when sociologists, psychologists, doctors and statisticians conduct surveys they use a sample to represent the populous... could that apply here...for surely it isn't possible for me to meet everyone in town. Based on my sample, the general attitude among most people here is to live a good life. Get married, raise a family, get a job that affords you to live comfortably, furnish your house with IKEA and go to church on Sunday mornings...and I'm not saying there's anything immoral or intrinsically wrong with those ambitions...but it just doesn't tug at my soul as an imperative. I find no amount of passion or deep desire for that way of life.

Last night, my small group went through the 1st epistle from Peter. And we talked about how Peter says "The end of all things is near." This was in the first century, I think like 77 A.D. He felt an urgency as did Paul and James, and John... we are nearly 2000 years removed now...and I wonder if it shows in our general attitudes...

I guess people are people where ever I go... and this is more a problem with modern man...not Phoenicians or Americans... and so I need to be reasonable about this. It is a problem within my own heart too... but at times I feel the slow, calm pace of Arizona starting to wear on me... and I find it easier to resign to this way...Arizona is like peacefully floating down the Salt river on an inner tube on a warm summer day.... but I think I might be looking to face wild, feral rapids...to fear for my life and experience sheer reverence... I think I may be looking for more.

Fighting for dear life.

As I type this I sit outside on the verge of shivering from the cold. Spring had taken over as summer eagerly loomed....but late winter lashed out a final chilly breathe so as not to be forgotten quite yet.

It rained today in splotches, just enough to dirty our windows and fill the air with that smell...the smell of wet dirt and asphalt...that isn't necessarily pleasant, but still well received because of what it means to people living in a barren land.

And now it's cooled off dramatically, but I find less joy in the experience than I'd like, but I"m unsure why.

It's a quiet night where I'm stationed... and I watch little rabbits scurrying through an empty field...a small plot of sonoran desert sandwiched between a newly renovated business plaza and a suburban community. Industrialization is a strange thing when you consider it... We plow over acres of God's beautiful land to build odd looking structures in their stead (and everyone has to have a piece of their own) only then we recreate an artificial, manageable version of what once was to decorate a front and backyard... and then we retreat often times to the mountains, forests, the ocean...again to the natural, the natural we keep wiping away.

I've been trying to keep my head above water and the weeks have been quite difficult... and over and over again I find that I continue to forget the rudiments of my faith.

And I passively allow the world to convince me that I am incomplete, or inadequate or missing out on some portion of life... And it's pretty silly when you think about it...to allow this upside down world that much influence.

I think if the devil ever decided on a career change he might do well to seriously consider a job in marketing. The lies, the poison is all so cleverly packaged... so are the assaults. And that is one thing I've come to learn. That I have to be vigilant at protecting myself from these, at protecting truth.

You see, through a bible study, a church service, a scripture or the latest best-selling Christian literature I may experience profound moments of epiphany... and it feels like a veil has suddenly been lifted, the truth resonates deeply within and I get excited and intensely hopeful all at once... but through the course of days, weeks and months...before I have realized it...the rich truth has been snuffed out and bartered for a cheap falsity. And I can't even pin down exactly when I went wrong...or how... it just sort of happens... and I find myself again going about things as before... replacing God with the hopes
of finding a mate or a successful career or what have you... my demigods.

And so I feel that we must guard our hearts as the Proverbs advise, above all else.... For truth is ever sacred, but so easy to lose especially in a world of smoke and mirrors...

Flying or Free Fallin' ?

I'm equal parts terrified, anxious, scared, uncertain, excited and free...I have no idea where life will take me now...could be anywhere, could be anything... I feel a swirl in the pit of my stomach and moisture on my palms...at the thought, but it's also exhilarating. I'm standing at the edge of an enormous cliff... the canyon below so profound, that it knocks the wind out of me...and I peer off the edge every scrupulously... I'm throwing little pebbles down to see if I can hear them hit against a surface any surface, but nothing...

Here's to a new chapter, where everything is different.

Learning to Fly by Tom Petty

Well I started out down a dirty road,
Started out all alone.
And the sun went down as I crossed the hill.
The town lit up, the world got still.

I'm learning to fly, but I aint got wings,
Comin down is the hardest thing.

Well the good old days may not return,
And the rocks might melt, and the sea may burn.

I'm learning to fly, but I aint got wings
Comin down is the hardest thing.

Well some say life will beat you down,
Break your heart, steal your crown.
So I started out- for God knows where?
But I guess I'll know when I get there.

I'm learning to fly around the clouds,
But what goes up must come down.

I'm learning to fly, but I aint got wings.
Comin down is the hardest thing.
I'm learning to fly around the clouds,
But what goes up must come down.

Im learning to fly
Im learning to fly...

Is this what it means?

Somedays, Life hurts, plain and simple. And this Christian lifestyle, this attempt to know and follow God seems insurmounable. To add insult to injury, we have an enemy who wants nothing more than to see our ruin... Walking by faith, holding to the unseen, well, it ain't no walk in the park. It's hard, really hard.

In all honesty, at the moment, I feel like I'm ready to let the tide overwhelm me... I want to give up...

It appears to me like i've been walking in lonely circles...having to learn and relearn, change and again change... only to change some more...only to find that what I've had is not enough...I'm walking a desolate trail, and finding the floor is full of thorns... and my shoes, well I lost them somewhere along the way... Last night, a friend sat with me on a cold, cement parking block and he echoed this sentiment. Not only did he feel like he was outlining a desert, he was doing so by night and being blindsided by obstacles... as he spoke these words, I stared into the late evening...into the abyss, searching desperately for the stars...or a satellite...anything that might reflect even a flicker of light...

Some days you feel on top of the world... like anything is possible. And you see God working...He seems close and real...He even speaks to you. And you feel His love in the sunset, in the rain, in His word and expressed through those around you...All of creation seems to shout of His presence...His relevance and goodness.

Other times God seems abstract, like a distant star, an idea...or loose concept...maybe even a fable... You feel alone and empty and like you just don't have what it takes to endure...at least for the long haul. You begin to question everything, even the progress you thought you'd made, it all seems pointless... and a strong impulse to runaway, to find a quiet place to hide overtakes you...

But perhaps this is what it means to be a Christian... this is the conflict, the grind. And it's not always pretty, or beautiful, but often messy and tumultuous. And our voices not only made for pleasant songs, but shouts in darkness...desperate cries for help. Perhaps our faith has to be tried by fire...and thus not always expressed in extravagant ways... perhaps sometimes, faith and hope are expressed in this:

That we come home...

After a long night of wandering the streets...

and though our hearts are broken, countenances burdened, prayers weak... through the thick haze of doubt, the shroud of heartache...we somehow manage to muster up enough syllables to call to the one, who saves.


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