Vacation…?

It’s winter break!! I have four weeks off between terms, and I’m spending all of it in Indiana with my family. My introverted self has a bed made up in the kids’ play room, since all the bedrooms are occupied by nine other people (six adults and three children age six and under). Exhausted from a long, hectic fall term, I’ve spent my time here helping Dad finish a house, running errands with Mom, staying up super late with my siblings, playing with the kids, editing a book, and starting a brand new freelance job.

Such great R&R. ;)

I exaggerate, of course. I mean, I have done all those things, but I’ve also slept in, hung out at Barnes & Nobel, and meandered through two great art galleries. I enjoy helping Dad by insulating doorways and painting baseboards. I have a great time hanging out with Mom and staying up late to reminisce and play games. And between my Mom and two sisters-in-law (and their husbands), I haven’t had to cook once! As for my freelance work, the editing is fun and the new gig is exciting.

Still, when I was mentally preparing myself for spending four weeks surrounded by people and activity, I started feeling a bit protective of my “vacation” time. I penciled in short, periodic side trips by myself to other cities. I asked my brother to figure out some kind of locking mechanism for the French doors of my make-shift bedroom. I reminded myself that I would be on vacation, and that I needed this break.

An Introvert's Guide to Event Planning

Perhaps, like me, you’ve started an arts ministry at your church. You’ve had an idea – a Most Wonderful Idea. You shall plan a Grand Event – a special treat – which will be a blessing to Everyone.* Good for you! But now you have to actually plan it and make it happen, and if you’re a hard-core introvert like me, there are a few things you should keep in mind:

1. Booking agents are not introverts.

When I decided to check into bringing Ginny Owens to Portland, I got in touch with her booking agency to see what it would entail. I did this via email. They responded by asking when (not if) I’d like to talk on the phone.

Thankfully, after six years in the Air Force, I know how to pretend Scary Things are no big deal. The phone call was made, followed by a series of calls and emails until a mutual commitment was reached, at which point communications were handed off to Ms. Owens’ management team, which was much more email friendly. Bottom line: when dealing with booking agents, be prepared to speak verbally to an actual human being in real-time.

2. Getting permission will require you to interact with people.

How to Interview a Stranger, Part Two

Previously, on This Blog:

I’m organizing a Ginny Owens concert. As part of my publicity efforts, I thought, “I could interview her! We could talk about the intersection of faith and the arts!”

The day of the interview arrived. I started to get nervous. Would I babble? I pressed the button to start the call.

I got her voicemail.

And now, the conclusion.

I’d never gotten someone’s voicemail on Skype before. I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I leave a message? Would she get it? I hung up.

I fidgeted for a minute, then tried again. Same result. I waited a bit longer and tried again. And again.

Ironically, I started to relax. The unforeseen difficulty completely took my mind off of my nervousness. We would, I figured, at least have something to laugh about.

How To Interview A Stranger, Part One

Ginny Owens is an expert at asking questions - she’s even written a blog about it. Perhaps I should have asked her for tips before I interviewed her.

You see, I’m not a professional question-asker. I didn’t study journalism. The first time I interviewed someone, I sent them a list of questions via email, and they typed up their responses. The second time I interviewed someone, it was my brother. Ginny Owens was my third interview.

What was I thinking?

Joy Instead of Discouragement

Last night was the third meeting of Lake Bible Arts (if you count the first one, which nobody showed up to). We had a very successful event, although it may not seem like it as you read on.

Ekphrastic poetry is poetry written in response to a piece of art, usually a painting. I like the idea of applying that to all the arts, so when I sent the event reminder to my small email list, I asked everyone to bring something they had created, for us to respond to with new work. I myself printed out three of my poems, and brought a variety of other artworks in case anyone showed up without something.

I got to the church early to set up: I planned to give my testimony as an artist, so I put out a circle of chairs for everyone to sit in. I set up a table for the art everyone was supposed to bring. There were two additional tables for creating new work, one covered with a tablecloth for the painters. Both rested on a tarp to protect the carpet. A fourth table held snacks.

Everything was ready with time to spare. While I waited, I helped myself to some snacks and watched a few YouTube videos on my tablet. The time to start came and went.

Nobody showed up.

Learning Curve

We often experience periods of marked growth in various aspects of our lives. When I was in the Air Force, I encountered various stages of learning and experience, from Basic Military Training, to deployment, to being an NCO. Each stage had its own learning curve - some steeper than others – and they’re all standing me in good stead now, especially the program management experience I gained toward the end of my time in service.

It recently came to my attention that I have now been out of the Air Force for two years, and let me tell you: those two years have presented some learning curves of their own. One of the nice things about those periods of growth is all the communication I’ve been seeing from God - it’s pretty much everywhere. There are the usual places; the Bible, sermons at church, RZIM messages, etc. And then there’s the music.

Making Things Up

Remember in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Sallah asks Indy what his plan is, and he says, “I don’t know – I’m making this up as I go?”

Henry Jones, Jr. had goals, but at that point, he had no plan for how to accomplish them.

I can relate.

I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, and haven’t since that fateful day when I became convinced that God was calling me to write, and that he might be asking me to leave my comfortable, secure job to do so. My book, To Do This Right, largely deals with the struggle of someone who dislikes uncertainty (me) coming to terms with not having a plan.

But apparently I’m a glutton for punishment, because I recently started an arts ministry at my church, and I have no clue how to do that, either. I have the vision, sure, but a plan for executing it? Lol.

What's the Point?

I recently started an arts ministry at my church. Our slogan: Creative Community for the Glory of God.

Here's how it came about:

I was talking with my pastor, and I mentioned off-hand that I wished there was some sort of community in the church for artists.* To my surprise, he jumped up and took off, leading me on a tour of the church, rhapsodizing about all the hallways that were perfect for displaying art. He suggested that I might be just the person to start an arts ministry there at the church.

That unexpected idea sat on the back burner of my brain for a few months, and I thought, why not? I spent a few weeks jotting down ideas - turns out I had a lot of them. I wrote up a proposal** and sent it off to the pastor.

Before I knew it, I had an arts ministry, and no idea how to get it up and running.

Our first meeting was a complete bust. No one showed up, and no one was there to unlock the meeting room for me, either. A perfect failure to communicate had occurred.

I’d been praying about this ministry, and I’d gotten nothing but green lights from God and my pastor, but there were, and continue to be, a myriad of tiny little, nobody’s-fault roadblocks.^ That night, as I got into my car to drive home, I was filled with joy in a way I’ve never experienced before and can’t describe – it was definitely from God. I drove home singing, utterly comforted in the face of what should have been a discouraging failure.

Fast-forward a few months. We’ve had our first real meeting, and people actually came. Yesterday I was talking with someone about an upcoming event, and they asked me about the purpose of the activity. As I stuttered out a response, I realized I hadn’t thought about my elevator pitch, and in the face of being unable to express the justification, I began to doubt the validity of the activity, myself. Today, I realized two things about that.

First, I remembered that when I first came up with the idea, I could communicate the reasons behind it very clearly. I'd lost sight of that, but for some reason, as I listened to this Sara Groves song, I remembered.

Subsequently, I was struck by an analogy. I had reasons for proposing this event, and they were good, well-thought-out reasons. But I had spent so much time in the trenches of preparation, I’d lost track of that bigger picture.

This happens in life, too. We Christians have reasons for what we believe, and they are good, sound reasons. But we get so caught up in daily life, or the minutiae of doctrine, that when someone asks us a reason for the hope that is in us, we find ourselves unprepared to give them an answer (1 Peter 3:15). We need to remember the big picture of what we really believe.

But how do we keep what really matters at the forefront of our minds in the midst of all the chaos of living?

As a nearly life-long Christian, I can tell you this: You have to spend time with God.

If I want to be close to God, I have to read my Bible, and I have to pray, regularly and sincerely.*^ This is simply a fact, and one I've learned over and over again. As part of my efforts to take my calling to be a Disciple seriously, I recently started memorizing scripture again. I haven't done it in ages, and I found it difficult, just like memorizing a poem for class last year was difficult. Then I remembered that I, like so many others, am great at memorizing words if they're set to music (i.e. songs). So I started making up tunes for the verses I picked. So far, I've learned five verses this way, and I've had fun doing it!

You see, art is great at helping us remember things; it helps us focus our attention on something in a memorable way. And that is what we want to do at Lake Bible Arts. We want to use our gifts to point people to Jesus. We want our creations to remind our brothers and sisters of their great Creator, and we want the beauty of our work to serve as a counterpoint to the darkness of the world. Above all else, we want to present the works of our hands as a pleasing sacrifice to our Lord.

That is the purpose of our arts ministry, and that must be the purpose of every activity we undertake. That is Creative Community for the Glory of God.

*This was actually a really deep-seated longing of my heart.

**I don’t know if I did that because of the organizational genes I got from my dad, or because of the comfort with formality I learned in the Air Force.

^Well, sometimes it's my fault...

*^ People balk at the idea of a daily Bible time, calling it legalism. It’s nothing of the sort. Legalism is believing that in order to go to heaven, you have to do X. Committing to daily time spent in the Word isn’t legalism; it’s logic. How can I expect to know God and live in a way that honors him if I don't know what he’s said to us?

Chasing Squirrels

I am not a person who enjoys uncertainty. In middle school, when my English teacher assigned us an essay with no page length-, margin-, or font requirements, I was that kid who kept saying, “Yes, but how long should it be?”

I recently attended a ladies’ event at my church. There was socializing, singing, desserts, and a guest speaker named Ashley Larkin, who had us fill out a worksheet about how we operate when we lose sight of God. One of the items was how we distract ourselves. I wrote: YouTube videos, being busy, Facebook, Sudoku. And that’s just the start.

I’m pretty good at distracting myself. When I contemplated writing this post, for instance, I suddenly got the urge to play a computer game. Thankfully, God tapped me on the shoulder a few minutes in and pointed out what I was doing.

I don’t know that I lose sight of God so much as I avoid him. He’s right there – I know it, and I can see him just fine, thanks. He’s been making himself quite conspicuous, really. I can also see the spotlight shining on that thing he wants me to do. But I can think of about five million other things I could do between here and there; I’m pretty much the guy who said, “Suffer me first to go and bury my father” (Luke 9:59 KJV).

It’s not that I don’t know what’s expected of me, in a general sense. But I don’t know the particulars of what, and I certainly don’t know the how. To a certain extent, I’ve been wrestling with this self-inflicted tension since God first called me to write in 2013, but it’s been a huge part of my life in 2016.

This is where Ginny Owens comes in.

For the uninitiated, Ginny Owens is a Christian singer/songwriter. I've been listening to her music since 2005, but it was just a few months ago that I went to her website for the first time. I ended up getting into her blog, which is really good. This week, she posted a gem (which explains the title of my post) about how she overcomes distractions in her life. She ends by inviting readers to share their own “creative ways to conquer distraction.”

Cue conviction - I don't have any methods for conquering distraction.

When I first came to terms with my calling, I was very motivated. My life had quite a bit of structure in it, due to a full-time job, so I just started doing the writing in the evenings after work, and with a great deal of discipline. Even after I left my job to pursue writing more seriously, I remained pretty on-task until I finally self-published my poetry book, To Do This Right. That was a huge goal I’d been working toward for over a year, but once I had accomplished it, I didn’t know what to do next. So I sort of didn’t do anything.

That’s an uncomfortable state to be living in, and I’ve been there for a year and a half. But I've finally set off for that spotlight and the thing it's illuminating; I still don't know how to get there or what I'll find, but I'm going.

Back to that ladies’ event at church: I happened to start writing a poem that night, before I even knew what Ashley would be speaking about. I got two stanzas down, and I’ve been working on it here and there in the intervening days. I finally finished it as I wrote this blog. It starts like this:

      I’ve been obsessed with the silliest dreams –

           the stupidest schemes

           the most harmful things.

So you can see how it’s related. Perhaps I never would have been able to finish it if I hadn’t logged off my computer game and sat down to write this post:

      I’ve finally started to step out in blindness –

           the absence of silence

           reveals lovingkindess.

Here I go stumblin’…

I am not a person who enjoys uncertainty. In middle school, when my English teacher assigned us an essay with no page length-, margin-, or font requirements, I was that kid who kept saying, “Yes, but how long should it be?”

I recently attended a ladies’ event at my church. There was socializing, singing, desserts, and a guest speaker named Ashley Larkin, who had us fill out a worksheet about how we operate when we lose sight of God. One of the items was how we distract ourselves. I wrote: YouTube videos, being busy, Facebook, Sudoku. And that’s just the start.
I’m pretty good at distracting myself. When I contemplated writing this post, for instance, I suddenly got the urge to play a computer game. Thankfully, God tapped me on the shoulder a few minutes in and pointed out what I was doing.

I don’t know that I lose sight of God so much as I avoid him. He’s right there – I know it, and I can see him just fine, thanks. He’s been making himself quite conspicuous, really. I can also see the spotlight shining on that thing he wants me to do. But I can think of about five million other things I could do between here and there; I’m pretty much the guy who said, “Suffer me first to go and bury my father” (Luke 9:59 KJV).
It’s not that I don’t know what’s expected of me, in a general sense. But I don’t know the particulars of what, and I certainly don’t know the how. To a certain extent, I’ve been wrestling with this self-inflicted tension since God first called me to write in 2013, but it’s been a huge part of my life in 2016.
This is where Ginny Owens comes in.

For the uninitiated, Ginny Owens is a Christian singer/songwriter. I've been listening to her music since 2005, but it was just a few months ago that I went to her website for the first time. I ended up getting into her blog, which is really good. This week, she posted a gem (which explains the title of my post) about how she overcomes distractions in her life. She ends by inviting readers to share their own “creative ways to conquer distraction.”
Cue conviction - I don't have any methods for conquering distraction.

When I first came to terms with my calling, I was very motivated. My life had quite a bit of structure in it, due to a full-time job, so I just started doing the writing in the evenings after work, and with a great deal of discipline. Even after I left my job to pursue writing more seriously, I remained pretty on-task until I finally self-published my poetry book, To Do This Right. That was a huge goal I’d been working toward for over a year, but once I had accomplished it, I didn’t know what to do next. So I sort of didn’t do anything.
That’s an uncomfortable state to be living in, and I’ve been there for a year and a half. But I've finally set off for that spotlight and the thing it's illuminating; I still don't know how to get there or what I'll find, but I'm going.

Back to that ladies’ event at church: I happened to start writing a poem that night, before I even knew what Ashley would be speaking about. I got two stanzas down, and I’ve been working on it here and there in the intervening days. I finally finished it as I wrote this blog. It starts like this:
             I’ve been obsessed with the silliest dreams –
                       the stupidest schemes
                       the most harmful things.
So you can see how it’s related. Perhaps I never would have been able to finish it if I hadn’t logged off my computer game and sat down to write this post:
             I’ve finally started to step out in blindness –
                       the absence of silence
                       reveals lovingkindess.

Here I go stumblin’…

Wednesday Review: Christian Excellence

I've read some excellent books recently, including C. S. Lewis' Perelandra. Right now I'm reading Life Together, my first Deitrich Bonhoeffer text.* In between, I read my pastor's book, A Life Worth Dying For. Pretty heady company, but this book holds its own.

Introduction: A Life Worth Dying For was written by Pastor Jim Andrews of Lake Bible Church in Lake Oswego, Oregon. It is a compact book about Christian excellence meant for the average Christian - this is not a heavy theological text, although there's plenty of theology in it. Andrews divides the book into ten chapters. The first couple lay the groundwork for a discussion of the concept of Christian excellence; the rest address the issues involved, ranging from the problem of mediocrity,** to a caution against unchecked perfectionism.


My Review: I read this book very quickly. It started as a commuter book - reading for the bus ride to and from school. This worked for a few days. Then I just sat down and charged through what was left, which should be your second indication that this was an excellent book (the first being the fact that I've chosen to review it on my blog).

Because it's difficult to highlight on a bumpy bus ride, I dog-eared pages that had particularly good bits. There are quite a lot of dog-eared pages.^ Because there are quite a lot of particularly good bits.

Now, I may be biased, since the topic of the book speaks to a lot of things I've been dealing with (hence my decision to read it), but let me tell you - there is a lot of good stuff in this book. Written in the same intelligent, plain-spoken style in which he preaches, Andrews has a lot to say about excellence and the lack of it in our lives as Christians. Lest you think the book is about working harder or what-not, it really isn't; it's about drawing nearer to God, and being faithful. "Traditional excellence," he says, "is nothing more than Christians excelling at things they do; the signature of Christian excellence, however, is excelling at what we are" (pg 64). Exploring what that looks like is the focus of the text.

There are a lot of things I like about this book. I like that it's directed toward the average Christian. I like how Andrews breaks down the elements of Christian excellence in chapter nine.*^ I like the difference he draws between what he calls 'traditional excellence' and 'Christian excellence'. I like his choice of examples and quotes. I like how everything is connected to the Bible and our relationship with God. Etc.

Good stuff.

I need to read it again, because there's a lot there, but I can tell you that the first reading was engaging and inspiring, and that I highly recommend it.


Statistics:
Copyright: 2013
Publisher: Self-Published
Length: 166 pages

My Rating: 4.5 Stars


(Yes, I know I'm technically posting this on Thursday... We're none of us perfect.)



*I thought I'd start with something small.

**Particularly in the Church.

^Like, a lot. And the last couple chapters are very highlighted.

*^Give me a how-to any time.

Time Crunch

My friends, loyal readers, patrons and peasants. Sometimes there truly are not enough hours in a day.

Such was the situation I found myself in yesterday. I had four goals for the day:

1.* Get new tires for my car.

2. Finish and submit an application.

3. Re-write an article.

4. Finish my Book Design Software homework.


Alas, I only accomplished one of those things in its entirety,** and if my writing style feels a bit stylized, it's only because in my attempt at total victory all four arenas, I may have lost a small amount of sleep last night.


Now, those of you who know me are familiar with my night owl tendencies. But sometimes things get too late even for me.

So although I multi-tasked by working on my application while the TARDIS^ was outfitted with new wheels, I did not submit it until this evening.

And although I laid all the groundwork,^* I was not able to finish the article re-write, either. That one will have to keep until tomorrow.

Finally, although I completed the main portion of my homework, I decided I'd better leave writing my project summary until this morning. Which I did.


And that, dear Reader, is simply the reality of living by the 24-hour clock. Sometimes you must expand into the next 24. (And the next.)



So if you've been wondering where I've been...




*Remember my love of lists from my early posts?

**The tires.

^It's rectangular, it's blue, it fits more than it looks like it should, and if you think about it, it does take me through time and space...

^*Including a re-interview.

Valentine's Day Flashback

Hey everybody!

Someone recently posted a comic strip on Facebook about how we give our friends little Valentine's Day cards when we're in elementary school (at least, we do in the US), but we don't do it as adults. This reminded me of something that happened when I was deployed.

My friend Bridget got a fantastic little package in the mail at the end of February. Her mom teaches 3rd grade, and she had all her kids make little Valentines to send us. The box was full of them, and I have to say, this was one of the absolute best pieces of mail any of us ever got. Little notes from little kids? Priceless.

We all loved it. Bridget had them in a common area and we all went through them laughing about the spelling or the handwriting or the pictures they'd drawn; so great. Because Bridget is awesome, she let us pick some out for ourselves. I still have the one I chose, although I couldn't find it in time for this post. I did find my description of it in my journal, though:

"I took one w/a drawing of planes on the front (two labeled "enimy" [sic], and an undecipherable drawing on the back. :)"

It was pretty awesome.


So happy Valentine's Day, no matter where you are in the world.

Beauty

Well, I'm back! That was a nice hiatus, but it's been long enough, I think.

I'm altering the blog again (I know, I know - it's a learning process, folks); I will not be posting every Wednesday according to a set schedule of topics. I will simply post whenever I have something to talk about.


Today's topic: Beauty


No, I'm not talking about celebrities.


Beauty is a topic I've been thinking about (in conjunction with art) for quite some time. In college, it bugged me that the English department was in the ugliest building on campus. A few years ago, I took a page from my brother Ben's book and started collecting works of art as souvenirs whenever I traveled. Two of my favorite Sara Groves songs are about beauty.*

Yesterday I took a walk at sunset. It was a beautiful day; sunny, nearly cloudless, warm for February. I live part-way up a hill and if I go to the top and round a corner, this is what I see on nice evenings:

Yeah, it's tough living in the Pacific Northwest.

I have always been a fan of the beauty of nature, and particularly of mountains and fast-moving rivers. Growing up, this was pretty much the only beauty I cared about. These days, I also appreciate the beauty of the visual arts, the performance arts, music, and the written word. I am attracted to the beauty of the Gospel more and more.

I have also found myself more attracted to liturgy in recent years. I've considered getting Advent candles for the last two Christmases, and I'm observing Lent** this year for the first time ever (apparently it started today).

Today was also Ash Wednesday. I have never been to an Ash Wednesday service; I hardly know what it is, but I was disappointed when I discovered that although the church up the road has an Ash Wednesday service, I was not going to be available to attend. I don't know what goes on in an Ash Wednesday service, but if it's anything like Maundy Thursday, I'd like to find out.

I had never even heard of Maundy Thursday until 2007. I was attending Park Street Church in Boston, and they held a special service. My brother Steven was going, and I figured I ought to, as well, though I will admit I wasn't super excited. It turned out to be the most moving service I had ever experienced. Unfortunately, Park Street remains the only church I have ever been to that observed Maundy Thursday. I miss it every year.

There can be great beauty in liturgy.


The same church up the road that has an Ash Wednesday service (Calvin Presbyterian) is one that I pass quite often. I drive past it on my way to work and church, and although I have a variety of walking routes, most of them start out passing this building. And yet, somehow I never noticed the stained glass windows.

I'd seen them, of course, but I'd never thought about them at all until yesterday. The windows are small, so I stopped to take a closer look. When I did so, I realized that I had been overlooking a small treasure. Not only are there seven beautiful displays in stained glass, there is a whole courtyard, complete with garden plants, a couple of sitting areas with benches, and a simple water feature with a Bible verse.

I looked around for a bit, then continued on my way. I got about twenty steps and turned around to go back. I sat and contemplated the windows from a bench by the water feature. I took in the beauty of the courtyard, feeling quite content. I stayed several minutes, just enjoying my surroundings. When I went home, it was still in my head - I grabbed my notebook and headed back again. It was lovely, and I even wrote a pretty terrible poem^ about it while I sat there.

I will be going back whenever I can. I feel very fond of this church for its courtyard; just a pretty little nook, welcoming me in.


Beauty in its various forms is a wonderful thing. A refreshment for the soul, a counterpoint to the darkness in the world, and a gift from God. We need more of it in our lives.



*Add to the Beauty and Why It Matters.

**Albeit in ignorance. All I know about Lent is giving something up for the duration. I am abstaining from chocolate. This is a big deal.

^But, hey - I wrote. Not every poem turns out.