Restoration

I have been questioning a lot of things about my faith lately. Just what exactly I would respond too if someone asked me to explain the gospel or salvation or redemption or restoration. Just flipping a few things around in my head about God and what is real and what has been fed to me in theology classes and church. Do I really know the gospel in a way that I can communicate it, not only to others but even to myself in times of deep struggle. So the word restoration has been ringing in my head the last few days and when I woke up this morning a story popped into my head. So here it is.
Almost two years ago I went to a week long retreat in Colorado Springs. Part of our journey that week was to be involved with a "triad", which was three people that were not randomly grouped together, as in we were placed together based on our essays. So the first day I met my triad with Jae a forty-ish woman from Colorado by way of Chicago, andCarlyle a forty-ish year old guy from Phoenix that looked just like Jim Carrey. We were only scheduled to meet together for one and a half hours, not one time did we finish in under two and a half. Our goal was to meet and one of us was to share our story, as in life story. The other two were given a different goal every day, like we could only ask curiosity questions or we had to listen to what the Holy Spirit was telling us before we opened our mouths. When Carlyle told his story on day three we spent well over two hours talking through several big stories. One of which had happened at five years old. The story goes that he and a friend of his had received goody bags at Halloween at church, each bad containing a lot of candy, toys and an apple. While waiting for his step-father to pick him up his friend looked into his bag and said "man! my bad doesn't have an apple in it." He said his friend looked so dejected that he grabbed his apple out of his bag and handed it to his buddy. His friend not wanting to take it started to push it away. Just as they started to shove the apple back and forth between them Carlyle's step-father emerges from the hallway to fetch him and immediately jerks the apple away from him and throws it into his friends bag. On the way to the car he is berating Carlyle for being one of the most selfish children he knew, after helping him into the back seat his step-father grabbed the bag of candy and threw it on the front seat between him and Carlyle's mother. All the way home Carlyle had to endure a verbal beating based on something that was not even true. He never got the bag of candy back and after only a minor attempt to salvage his identity, he gave up.
The day he told us this story there were other stories of great sorrow, and much deeper hurts. But on the last day that we met as a triad we were to write each other encouragement letters. By this time in the week we had all shared our stories and felt so cared for and loved by the other two, in fact I still have both letters that I received that day. As a going away present for Carlyle not only did Jae and I read our letters to him but as we sprawled ourselves out on this beautiful patch of grass we gave him a bag of candy with an apple in the bag. We all laughed and laughed. His face beamed. His laughter said so much more, it was a healing laugh. That is possibly one of the best memories of my life.
When I think of restoration I do not think of theology that has been taught to me in so many places, I think of a beautiful laugh between three friends.

It Takes A Thief

I am now in charge of taking out the trash every week and setting it beside the road. I woke up last Wednesday morning made my way to the kitchen where I saw a note on the dry erase board for someone to remember his trash duty. As I read this message I locked the sliding glass door in the kitchen because my roommate had just exited and there is no key, it must be locked from the inside. So I went to the back door to retrieve the trash bins and take them down to the road. As soon as the door slammed shut behind me I realized that in my haste to get the trash to the road I had failed to bring keys with me, and the door that just slammed home behind me was in fact locked, along with all the other doors to the house, and that I was also the only person at the house at the time. Panic set in rather quickly, thinking about spending my whole day perched on the front porch in shorts and shoes without socks, drinking the rain water from the spout. Maybe warming myself on the grill, I could light that if I needed heat. No food though, what a travesty! I decided to break in. I walked back up from the street where I had just placed the glass, it was recycling day. And proceeded to yank out a screen for a kitchen window, slid the window open, and one deft maneuver jumped like a pole vaulter into my kitchen and danced what I now call the "kitchen breaking and entering dance." I then went to school:(

Winning

So today I was in leadership class at MHGS and played a part in a role playing game. One person in the group became a women from a church that had recently lost a husband and dealt with a drug addicted son as result of the death. She had gotten involved in a ministry outside the church that "brainwashed" her, in a sense. Another person in the group agreed to be the pastor now sitting down with the women for a talk, because she had started a commotion in the church because of the radical doctrine.
When it was my turn to play a role I grabbed at the chance to be the pastor. I started out really defensive, arguing about doctrine, when one of my team members stopped me to ask if that is what I really wanted to do. So I just started again and stared into the "her" eyes, she was being played by a man:). Anyway, the second time around was much better. I began to reason where she was. The background said that we had been friends in this church for 20 years so I made a point to talk about our history with each other and the church. I agreed to go to the meetings with her, just to see if this is something "our church" could get behind. I made a strong plea to every direction I thought she was coming from, and succeeded by disarming her. In fact I did such a good job that "she" had to break character and said, "I'm really at a loss for what to say." Immediately what crossed my mind "I won" and a smerk grew on my face.
I admitted this to my team when we finished, we laughed. In all I made a few good points and I am so glad I was able, with the help of my team, to stop and redirect away from a doctrine, because I don't really believe in a situation this complicated with someone this hurt that the issue is truly doctrine anyway. But I am amazed at the realization that I did some of that "heartfelt" pleading with "her" to win. I am not naive enough to really think that I have lived my ministry out over the last few years simply to win. But how many conversations or disagreements have I had where my goal was to win? How many people have I missed? What is my record? I am not being hard on myself I am just using this as a place to voice my concern for myself, and a resolve that I will try to move past winning and loosing when it comes to the lives of other people. My guess is I have a long way to go, but one less step after today.

Two Dreams Diverged in a Mind

So few months ago I was going through a difficult time, like that is unusual for Mars Hill Grad School students. But there was one night in particular that I had two amazing dreams in the same night. I can't quite get them out of my mind so without further explanation.
Dream 1 So it is a bright and sunny day, so I know that the geographical place was not in Seattle(hahahaha), and I am driving my blue 1997 Nissan Altima. The same car that has broken down on me three times since leaving North Carolina and once the week before I left. So I am driving along and there is someone next to me in the passenger seat. I feel like this person is friendly but I don't remember who it is. And we come to a giant hill. So big immediately my whole body goes into an adrenaline rush and not a good one. Pure unadulterated fear. I could feel it in every fiber of my being. The question, am I going to make it up this hill. As we begin to go up the hill the fear starts to overcome me, and finally I just let out all the fear and punch the gas. The car throws me and my passengers head back and feels like the front of the car is coming off the ground. I am gripping the wheel so hard and my heart is racing as we crest the top of the hill, and there is a sudden let down as I realize there is another hill. I punch the car again, the whole time fully expecting the car to blow up. We crest the top of the hill and all of a sudden I realize that all of the stress has caused the car to overheat. I pull the car off the side of the road underneath a big oak tree in the shade, and pop the hood to let it cool. Eventually I am surrounded by a bunch of men, older men that just like the passenger are familiar to me but not anyone I can identify today. Watching that scene in my head there is a mixed sense of "I know what I am doing, and man I am just a little kid surrounded by all of these men" That is the end of dream number one. I remembered that dream the moment I woke up in the morning and thought about it all day while delivering flowers until about 4:30 in the afternoon when I suddenly remembered dream #2 from that night.
Dream 2 I am walking down what appears to be a street of some sort. It is dark and it seems like the surroundings don't matter much. Lots of gray and even though the scene is on a street it feels like we are inside, almost like being on a set of a movie. But I am surrounded by women, no one I know but I feel comfortable. I look over to the right and I see a giant hulking man, meaning about my size, and this man is wearing all black leather and spikes, like a cartoonish biker dude. Now what gets everyones attention, I can hear all of the women gasp as they see, this man has a choke chain leash. The leash is around a little boys throat. By the way, no one in this dream has a face, just blank heads. So the women gasp as the man in leather has a choke chain leash around the boys throat. Inside of me, I rise up and just wait for him to use it. Knowing that when he does I am going to put a world of hurt on him. No problem within seconds he uses it and chokes the little boy, everyone in the gathering gasps. I throw people out of my way and tackle the beast. I then beat the living hell out of this guy. All the adrenalin in my body shooting out with each violent blast from my knuckles into this guys skull. That is simply where the dream ends. It was a release like I have rarely felt.
Anyway there you have two dreams from the same night. No interpretation would do this justice, but it makes me scratch my head. Maybe I'll never know

Blueberry Pie

I had never eaten while sitting on the floor before. I knew sitting surrounded by boxes that something big was about to happen. My family sat on the floor in the same dinning room but now there was no table and there was a strange darkness hanging over the room. It might be that my father had just told me that my dog, Peanut, had run away, and we would not be able to find him before we left in the morning. I guess my parents wanted to cheer me up after giving me such news, so they told us as we gathered around each other on the floor that we were only having pie for dinner.
It was blueberry pie. The best blueberry pie I have ever tasted in my life. I was only a few months past four years old but there is still a memory of that deep, dark, sweet, and gooey berry taste all these years later. I think by the point my parents gave me a second piece my fear of the unknown place where we were about to move, and loss of my best friend, the tan cocker spaniel that had shared so many of my early childhood memories, had begun to wain. It was so odd even at this young age to see things change so quickly.
New Jersey was the only place I had known. My earliest memories are of this house. I can even recall taking naps in my crib as a young boy and remembering my mom putting the blue blanket over the crib when it was really bright out and being surrounded in such a different color. Playing with my sisters in the basement, it was so open I could ride my tricycle from one side to the other and terrorize them playing with their barbie dolls. Now things would be different. Sitting on the floor where the dinning room table had always been looking up at my father the only one in a chair and eating pie for dinner. Even at four years old, I knew that things would never be the same. Somehow the pie was a comfort.
I do not particularly care for blueberries now. Only one time have I tasted a piece of blueberry pie that even reminded me of that sour/sweet taste from so many years ago. Never in the course of my childhood did my family ever skip a proper dinner as we did that night. And as a family we moved eleven more times in the next thirteen years. Home is a different word for me than it is for most other people. "Home is where I hang my hat" is a phrase I have learned to embrace in my own life. I think even as an adult there is a part of me that is still sitting on that floor looking up at my father, mother, and two sisters in a dark, table-less dinning room, that longs for a safe place to lay my head, with bright colors in the day and a beautiful tan cocker spaniel that longs to lick my grungy four year old face, and another piece of blueberry pie.