The Balance of Busy

So lately it feels like we've escalated to a new plateau of "busy" in life. It seems to hold true that to do life well you've got to do fewer and fewer things. To live in "right relationship" with the people in the world around you, but also live in the kind of world our culture places us in... often feels impossible. You'll always be late for something, or miss it all together...Perhaps letting this person down while helping that person get on his feet. How many people are we really meant to be able to "connect" with? The thing is though you want to connect with everyone (for the most part ;) ) but that can't happen. We easily find ourselves passing out at the end of every single day because of work, relationships, dishes, and ofcourse the continually baby preparation.
I do think more and more i'm learning how to let go of other people's expectations for my life. We all grow up in the sphere of the expectations of those around us... whether it be teachers or parents or friends or bosses or whoever... Now i'm not saying "I don't care what anyone thinks..." ... like those who wear their gym shorts everywhere... :) Thats just lazy. But I think that all too often we live our every waking moments out of some sort of "fear" of failing... of others expectations over us... instead of living the life God is calling us to right now, today.
Perhaps its one of the Devil's sneakiest tricks to always try and get us to measure ourselves up to the expectations or "virtues" of those around us. When all the while God doesn't want us doing this, always looking toward others for some sort of salvation, He wants us looking at Him. He is Salvation. 

Don't let the expectations of who others think you ought to be, ruin who God wants you to be, today.

Silent Digestions

Just returned from a silence treated at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. This is seriously one of my favorite spots in the world. Every time I go there the environment and the monastic life fosters such a haven for rest and spiritual rekindling. It'd definitely something everyone should experience at sometime.
check it out www.monks.org

Silence is perhaps one of the most simple yet most missed out on disciplines of our day. It literally is amazing what can come out of the silence. It's almost as if it gives opportunity for your soul to catch up with your brain and heart when given the quiet chance. It's something we can practice fairly simply but yet it is such a challenging practice to actually engage in because of our noisy world that lures us. Silence is like digestion, imagine if you never had the chance to digest your food.... this is vital to your life!

This is why I like to read slower. The temptation, especially when you have a good book, is to just blow through it, to suck out all the good information. But there is something about letting the words marinate, letting them affect you, change you. Too often perhaps we just read something and go "hmmm that's cool." and that's it.

Silence is letting your soul marinate in the life that is flying by you at light speed.

At one point on the trip I went for a hike, as I usually do. I love the fact that there are so many trails. And it intrigues me even further to think about Thomas Merton living out there walking those hills and writing. And guys like Henri Nouwen who came there often as-well. What awesome Christians. Not to mention, part of the way I worship best is in nature.

So anyway I hike a different direction than usual and find myself eventually following a path "to the cross..." the sign says. Later a sign reveals it's "cross knob." Well I finally turn a corner through the woods and realize i'm now about to go from easy hiking to serious up-hill Monk version of cliffhanger stuff. At least that's what it felt like when my out-of-shape father-to-be body gets to the top! (that sympathy weight is no joke!)
But when I arrived at the top I realized just how far up I was and the view was magnificent! Up there, sure enough, was a cross. Which apparently used to sit atop the Abbey years earlier.

It is true, life's greatest challenges hold way into greater perspectives and magnificent heights.... if you will see them through to the end.

I'm learning just how sacred each moment really is and the weight of glory that every day carries with it.

What We Talk About When We Talk About God

Recently went to hear Rob Bell speak while he was in town, at Vanderbilt.
For me he is fun guy to be a fan of... simply because he is one of the only people that I really respect that is so controversial. Half the Christians you mention his name around make this facial grimace and the other half have a little spark in their eye.
In any case, he is one of the only speakers I know who could hold a crowd for hours at a time and still at the end you've got to tell everybody "it's over go home." And he's up there talking about... God.
Yet at the same time he's talking about everything else.
That's actually sort of what his new book is about: (from what i've gathered, haven't yet read it) "What we talk about when we talk about God." He's good at taking the stuff of life and pulling back the curtain to see the God behind it all... "the God who is with us, for us, and ahead of us."
Henry Nouwen once wrote, "The Christian leader, minister or priest, is not one who reveals God to his people - who gives something he has to those who have nothing - but one who helps those who are searching to discover reality as the source of their existence." 
This is what Rob does and is what, as Nouwen states, the Christian leader is called to do...

"Then Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that you are extremely religious in every respect. For as I was passing through and observing the objects of your worship, I even found an altar on which was inscribed:

TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.

Therefore, what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you."

Acts 17:22-23 (HCSB)

More thoughts and updates on this book will follow.

Asante sana Squash banana Baby

This past weekend we had our first baby shower... those things are definitely a woman's world. :)

But it was actually a sort of humbling experience. It was held at the church I grew up in where my parents still go. There were lots of women there who have literally known me for almost as long as I've been alive. Some of who were perhaps a part of a shower for my mother when I was born. Now showering me and my wife with gifts for our child. It sort of puts some grander perspective on life.

I've found myself thinking alot lately about age. About how i'm old and having a kid. About how old my  parents were when they had me. About how old my grandparents were when they became grandparents. Wondering when I got this old... daddy age? I wonder if all first time parents feel like this? It's just sort of odd... This is why The Lion King 2 never took off... because Simba is the son not the dad... That's Mufasa's role. Right?

The other night Ems and I just sat in the "baby room" looking at all the things we got from the shower. And it still doesn't feel like we're having a baby! It seems more like some weird hobby we've picked up where we collect baby socks and read prego books... than the reality of having a child.
Only a handful of weeks left though...

We were so blessed through the shower and didn't expect to get half of the stuff we did. This baby has more socks than I do now! So much stuff I think we could have three babies and be alright... except if we had three babies we would definitely not be alright...

So is the circle of life.

But... I still hold that "showers" are for women..  :)
I will say that the cake was pretty bangin' though!

Expecting Dads Need Big Little Debbies

So I think I've decided that I want to dedicate more time specifically to documenting my experience as a dad-to-be right now. I figure this is probably the most exciting and unique thing that is really happening, a once in a life time kind of deal! You know! You're only a first time dad once, right?

My take is that expecting fathers are way too ignored. Seriously! It's hard being us expecting dads... All the attention goes to the mom and the baby... well, let's not forget how that baby got here!  ;)
The biggest change for moms-to-be are obviously their big bellies with a baby inside. All sorts of changes happen to them, physically, emotionally and so on. But the biggest changes for us dads are the moms. Being a dad-to-be is a huge responsibility. It's like being a one man emergency support team on call 24/7. Always caring disaster relief food and water, handling the belly-touching paparazzi, and waking up multiple times each night to retrieve ... chapstick, tums, or granola bars. And on top of that there are the weird cravings that may make us break into a local bakery just so she can have her bagel at ungodly hours...

Yeah us dad-to-be's are probably just under-appreciated superheroes of our time. Just saying. Recently Ems has been working on a mobile to hang over the baby bed. She just finished it and it looks great! Now for the first time in days I can walk through the living room without hearing the words "Don't Step on the Mobile!" :) "Yes dear"

In all seriousness though, its such a fun time of life and such a real pleasure to be able to serve my wife in real ways right now. A person who is usually pretty independent.... now actually needing you even more is kind of nice. You can easily begin to see how God created this whole Me, Her, Baby thing to work.


In other news! My world was just rocked as of a couple minutes ago!
I ripped open my freshly purchased box of Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies... and they're smaller than ever! Unreal.
I've noticed over the years how they've gotten smaller and smaller... (granted I grew up on the convenient store size... which are now smaller as-well)... and these ones are the smallest I have ever seen!
It is litterally redonculous.
As a life-long Little Debbie fan and supporter I've been shot in the heart. These things aren't much bigger than a silver-dollar!

                                                            What's the world coming to?

Pour-over What is Real

So there's this new coffee shop in my area of Nashville called Roast on 8th. It's got pretty bangin' coffee I have to say. They apparently travel themselves  to far away lands to hand pick their coffee (so the man told me) and have a fun "do it yourself" pour-over bar. (that is if you want to do it yourself... I usually would rather someone else do it... since i'm paying them and all :) In any case they've just done a great job with this old building and turned it into a nice place to get great coffee. Though coffee at a place like this can get a little pricey these days... perhaps for something of such quality, taste, and values to top... it's worth it. Maybe coffee should be more of something special rather than something that is 97 cents at the Circle K...

Isn't if funny though? Funny that we call both the fair-trade Brazilian pour-over for $4 and the large cup of "The World's Best" from 7-Eleven for $1.19 ... Coffee?
How can both of these things be called by the same name? If you taste tested them there would be an unreal difference! Yet supposedly both are of the same bean.

Our American culture is notorious for this sort of thing. For literally, watering down, a product that should normally be so good! All in the name of trade. Only the trade isn't fair.

Sometimes I wonder what is more appalling... That we are ok with the fact of getting ripped off deep within our pockets on what isn't even real coffee!? And we just go along with it...
Or... That we are getting ripped off our health and taste-buds by eating and drinking what is fake! Over and over again...

This week at Kaleo we've been discussing fasting.
If there is a spiritual discipline i'd rather just avoid.. its fasting. :)

But there really is something about fasting that separates the Real from the Fake. Fasting essentially pulls back the curtain and blows away the clouds to help us see what really sustains us...

Out of all the things we consume on a daily basis... What is it that really keeps us going? That fills us? That is sustaining?

Jesus said, "I'm the real stuff."

(see John 6)
________________________________________________________________________________

If your in the Nashville Area definitely check out Humphreys Street Coffee Company for some local goodness with a rockin' cause!

Craigslist Church?

Craigslist is dangerous.
Don't let it fool you, it looks fun at first... but then you just get sucked in! It seems like every other day lately we've been selling or buying something off of Craigslist! Finally the other night on the way home from yet another pick up from a Craigslist purchase I look over to my wife and say, "that's it... no more Craigslisting until well after the baby is born! Okay!? That's it! We're done." ... It was funny. But it was Serious.
Well the next evening as Emily and I are making dinner together she starts to tell me how she just happened to look at Craigslist today and just so happened that there was the perfect baby bassinet that we've been looking for!
Shocked... but not surprised.

I have to admit it's a great idea. Craigslist that is. We are a culture of people who desire good platforms.
Raised in a world where things are given to us, made for us, told to us, shown the correct way to do, we are a group of people hungry for a good platform to do it our way! And over the past several years there have been a ridiculous number of these sorts of things to come our way.... ex. Facebook, Twitter, Google... Blogger :) But on top of those there are hundreds that are more "practical" for whatever field of life you are in. We love our platforms.

Personally, I this has been a sort of "platform/soapbox" for me and the church.
Growing up in a time and place where we've said "This is what church is and this is how you do it"... has always rubbed me the wrong way. And over time I've realized that while many of the things we do are "legit" many are not.  Church in its very nature is not something we "Do" but who we "are." It's time for the church to begin to have the "platform" conversation. How can we as the Church create platforms for life to happen... for the people to get together and share their faith... their gifts... their ideas... their hearts...

To do this perhaps we've got to move beyond the pews (so to speak) and get everyone on stage...