story

There is a character in every story that is rarely mentioned. I came to this conclusion while reading Tolkien last winter. I had a nagging feeling that there was something or someone moving the Hobbits along. Someone, it seemed to me, was watching out for Frodo and Sam, and this person was more involved than the Fellowship, even more than Gandalf.

The character in the story that I felt but could not identify was Tolkien himself. He was telling the Hobbits where to go. He was the one always rescuing them at the last moment.

This may sound ridiculously obvious to you. A story is a story because it is told. Stories are not random, but ordered. What happens, happens because the author said it was so. But, Anne Lammont has been telling me it is not that easy. Good writing she says, must give freedom to the characters. In her book Bird by Bird she talks about listening to the characters when she writes, as if they were strangers she just met. The goal then is to have coffee with them, to make them your friends by the end of the book.

So in a way, stories tell themselves. Sometimes the author has to pull the pencil away from the paper, though never dropping it, for a character left alone will always write a tragedy.

I agree with Donald Miller when he says, "The closest thing I can liken life to is a book." And also with G.K. Chesterton when he said, "If there is a story, there is a story-teller."

The connection between a story and the story-teller is obvious with M. Night Shyamalan. He makes an appearance in every one of his movies. This always annoyed me until I realized why. When M. Night directs and writes he cannot help but cast himself as a character because he is so emotionally involved in the story. If you love something you cannot leave it alone. I believe M. Night feels deeply connected to the characters, pursues them, and desires to give them glory in the end.

I believe we find ourselves in a story, a story in which the Story-teller has decided to play a part. This Story-teller has entered the story at times to save us, to keep us moving toward a glorious ending. And this brings me to only one conclusion: the Story-teller loves us, and will not leave us alone.

movement

I heard a preacher say recently that life moves along on two legs: choice and destiny. I found this helpfully in explaining pain and confusion. My mind often feels like two legs tangled, tripping over each other.

gathering and disappearing

Not to long ago I was in Portland, Oregon drinking coffee, staring over the top of a book held out in front of my face, pretending to be reading J.D. Salinger's 9 Stories, all the while watching people. This is what I saw:

A little girl slipped her tiny hand from her father's grasp and made for the coffee shop door, her blond hair spinning off the shoulders of her pink shirt, nearly brushing the now empty finger of the panicked man at the counter. He turned in mid-sentence, not finishing his order to see where his daughter had stolen away to. She was at the entrance, leaning into the door with all she was, creating an opening just big enough for her to squeeze through. Once outside she turned around and squished her face against the glass, her nose pushed into her cheek, one eye closed against the door. With a smile of mischief she looked, with one squinted eye, for her daddy's response. With a half grin and raised eyebrows, he tilted his face down and motioned with his finger for her to come back. She waited for moment, and I could see her breath on the glass, gathering and disappearing, gathering and disappearing like the tide of an ocean. She stayed there as long as she could, I think, until she could no longer stand it. Squeaking her hands down the glass she rushed back into the coffee shop, back to her father and flung her arms around his leg.

This is how it works, I think. This is how we love, by gathering and disappearing, then by gathering again and disappearing again. Like breathing, there is a rhythm to relationships. I'm finding the need to create space, to run out the door for a moment. But running out the door is hard because it requires being alone, and being alone is hard if you are not used to it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was right when he said that there is a connection between community and solitude. He said we learn how to live in community by living in solitude, and we learn how to live in solitude by living in community. Inhaling. Exhaling. Stealing away and running back. Love is rhythm.

because they'll grow back

she said its
not enough to keep
the weeds out
you
have to plant something
in their place

peace

"They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore...the wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them" (Hebrew prophets).

chuck taylors and miracles

I love chuck taylors, you know, the classic canvis Converse all-star shoes bearing the name of 1920's basketball player that made them famous. I am collecting them because I am going to be an uncle, and good uncles wear obnoxious high-top sneakers.

Ever since my mom, in nothing short of happy hysteria, told me my sister was going to have a baby, and that she (my mother) was going to turn my dad's computer study into a baby room, I thought I should be prepared as well. So I asked myself, "what do uncles do?"

I thought about how my uncle John used to amaze me as a kid with his stunt paper-airplanes (I still remember how to make them). I thought about how my uncle Rich, who graciously gave me a job at his furniture store after college, let me take time off for road trips in order to postpone the being an adult thing for awhile, even though I occasionally dropped a night stand or put the wrong desk in someone's car. Growing up I was proud when people would talk about how my uncles Rich and Wes were on the volunteer rescue squad. And I thought my uncle Marty was so cool because he used to preach sermons in neon pink chuck taylors and was in a rock band that breathed fire on stage.

I have some pretty good uncles (and aunts for that matter). Aunt Cheryl was my favorite growing up because she worked at a toy store and got me sweet deals on ninja turtles and M.A.S.K. action figures (Anybody watch the Moblie Armored Strike Kommand animated tv show? It was better than G.I. Joe!). And no other kids my age, but me, had an Ewok (the short furry guys from Starwars) telephone.

She stopped selling toys to become a pastor's wife for thirteen years out in the middle of Indiana nowhere. I spent the last two of those years with Marty and Cheryl duct-tapping church kids to walls, raking nieghbors yards, and talking about the way of Jesus. I saw my aunt and uncle being a Eucharist, a "good gift" to the people of Bryant. And I saw the sacrifice it required.

I will not forget that everyone of my aunts and uncles sent me cash when I went to Sri Lanka to aid in the tsunami relief. And I hope I will remember the letters my grandma would share with me that she recieved from my uncle Wes when he went down to help in New Orleans as a medic, immediately after Katrina.

Some of my favorite memories are those of talking about politics and God with my aunt Nancy in Lubbock at the furniture store. And I knew the West was in my heart after I cried on the plane leaving New Mexico, lamenting the fact that I was going back to the MidWest after visiting my uncle John and aunt Tanya the summer after junior high.

This past winter I sat next to my dying grandfather and watched my Aunt Mel massage his swollen, stiff feet, while singing songs to him in his last weeks. Along with my uncle Pete, she is moving my widowed grandmother into thier home, because people are just not meant to live alone.

As my sister's belly grows and a life miraculously begins inside of her, I am looking to the lives of my amazing aunts and uncles, to see how I might make the life of that child good.

Those will be some big shoes to fill.

birthday cake

Rochester's Spring awoke in a hurry, up out of its sleepy bed of winter, as if it had slept through its alarm clock and was late for work. Late it is, but no one is holding a grudge. This town comes alive when the sun comes out, and the snow melts. Everyone takes their table and chairs out onto sidewalks. Doors get propped open. Frisbees get thrown. Women run with two or three dogs on leashes, while pushing their babies. There is movement again, people learn to walk their stiff frozen legs again after a long winter. Everything is new.

I just finished reading Through Painted Deserts by Don Miller. I've read it many times, it just sort of falls off my book shelve when it knows it is time. It is my leaving book, the story that reminds why I move. I have two weeks left in Rochester.

I am not for sure what is next, but I am moving in the direction of Ohio. My sister will be having a baby soon and my best friend is getting married. I want to be around for that.

So here I find myself again saying goodbyes, saying what I need to say to those people I've come to love here in NY, things that I can only say in leaving. Moving reminds that nothing stays the same. It defines what matters and what does not. It shows me what will last.

Yesterday was Larry's birthday. Larry is a regular at Starbucks, I mean he practically lives there. We call him Seville and he takes out the trash for us and we give him free coffee and cream cheese danishes and let him use our phone to his "land lady". He's there everyday, all day. Anyway, all his friends, that are regulars too, bought him a cake and a card and threw him a surprise party at our coffee shop.

He was the happiest guy. And he always is.

While eating a piece of Larry's birthday cake I was reminded that life is about being a "regular" and having some friends that give you a cake and a card for your birthday. That's all, that's all Seville told me he needed on his fifty something birthday. "All I need is friends, Matt. That's it. That's all, you know."

books

Here are few books I just read (or re-read) that I recommend:

The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
Orthodoxy (G.K. Chesterton)
Jonathan Livingston Seagull (Richard Bach)
Through Painted Deserts (Donald Miller)
Traveling Mercies (Anne Lamont)
Sex. God. (Rob Bell)
The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)
East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
A Brief History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson)
Life is So Good (George Lawson)
Velvet Elvis (Rob Bell)

This is my summer reading list:

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Jean-Dominique Bauby)
Every Man's Talmud (Abraham Cohen)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert M. Pirsig)
Watership Down (Richard Adams)
Animal Farm (George Orwell)
Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling)
Church History in Plain Language (Bruce L. Shelley)
Bird by Bird (Anne Lamont)
Irresistible Revolution (Shane Claiborne)


Got any recommendations?

dear rob bell holdouts

People (church people that is) have been talking about this guy named Rob Bell, some short films he has helped make (Nooma), a couple books he's written (Velvit Elvis and Sex. God.), and a church he founded in Grand Rapids (Mars Hill Bible Church).

So many church people have been talking about Rob Bell that some have called it cliche to quote him, show his movies in sunday school, or read his new book.

But I think, that anyone who is serious about doing church (or is just plain sick of church) should turn their attention to Grand Rapids.

Mars Hill Bible Church "exists for the benefit of its non-members." They sit down with thier mayor and ask how they can help make sure every kid in the city has food and shelter and how they can provide the poorest in Grand Rapids with a way to earn a living.

Although the mentioning of Rob Bell may be cliche, the creative, organic, and authentic expression of a Biblical spirituality that has invited many people to reconsider faith in Jesus after the failure of evangelical, coservative, George Bush Christianity, is anything but trite.

I think sometimes when something true is said and a lot of people listen, there is a group of holdouts (I admit, I've been one) who snobbishly discredit the truth by calling it trendy all because they did not say the truth thing themselves.

To me, this is the danger of a closed cannon Bible, that we do not have to take serious real life prophets or prophetic communites (prophet not in the sense of someone who foretells the future or communicates new truths, but prophet in the sense of someone who retells an intrinsic truth forgotten). I think that God still speaks today and that maybe our stories are just as authoritative as Abraham's and Paul's. You may disagree (as will most traditions of Christianity) , but I think people will be suprised by the Bible God reads in Heaven. I think He tells my story and your story up there, right alongside Moses' and King David's. Which, in fact, maybe being going on right now, in this thing we call life. We are a part of a God-inspired book.

I had secretly given up on church and gave my Bible to a local goodwill. Then I started listening to sermons from Mars Hill Bible Church on my ipod. I do not remember the specific teaching I heard one day while walking, but after listening I was nearly taken to my knees by the sound of unadulterated truth. Truth is freeing. Cliches are empty.

No, it was the cliches that failed me. Mars Hill, that brought me back.

the difference between writers and animal doctors

I think the thing that makes writers differant from people who have normal jobs like aeronautical engineering and professional bass fishing, is that writers write things down. Because if you think about it, all of our lives are filled with moments worth writing about, we just don't put them down on paper. Then we forget, so we have to read books about other people's lives to remember our own.

turtle neighbors

A couple weeks ago I was in southern Florida where the royal palms sometimes bend over highways to make natural tunnels. I was visiting my great aunt and uncle who live in a pole barn turned house surrounded by orange trees. This is the kind of place where you need not buy artificial scented orange cleaner. Simply crack the windows, allowing the sweet blooming aroma of valencia to float in.

After visiting their neighbor, an old turtle, I got a tour of Uncle Jim and Aunt Suzie's place and watched tv from thier spiral staircase. What I love the most about the home is the paneling on the walls and the paint spattered ladder they used for the loft guard rail. When I asked my relatives about the bohemian arcitecture, they said the walls where made of salvaged cabinet doors from ramshackle houses they tore down in West Virginia, which were replaced by new structures for those who had no place to stay. And it was for these projects that they used the paint splattered ladder if I remember right.

I thought this beautiful because everyone should have place to call thier own. And if possibe, it should be a house built with recycled materials, and a home made of memories.

talking

There's a pretty girl speaking sign language to a deaf boy and I can't help but eavesdrop. I have no idea what she is saying, but it is beautiful. I think words were meant to be danced, articulated not just with lips and tongues but with arms and faces as well. Like conducting an orchestra. Like directing traffic or beat-boxing.

When I talk it does not feel like dancing. I feel clumsy when I speak. I would rather write. I can take my time. It is easier to erase written words than spoken words.

I think we all have a way of talking. Everyone is trying to translate their thoughts into language. That is what art is. That is what music is. People talking. In fact, everything we do is communication in a way.

But sometimes, it seems, that I just can't find a way to say what is inside. Have you ever tried to speak but could only pronounce silence? Utter nothingness?

My grandfather was ill suddenly and I was far away. I had been far away for sometime, I regret. Being away, however, had made me realize how lucky I was. I just starting to realize that. To comprehend what it meant to be a grandson. To discover that there were generations in my very DNA. That I am, in part, made of other people. I am the blood of my father. I am the blood of my grandfather and so on. Then to realize that there were not only other people in me but good people, that made me proud.

That's sort of what I wanted to say to my grandpa when I sat beside his bed in the hospital, but I didn't know how. I was stuck. I could not yet articulate it.

I was trying and one morning in Rochester I was thinking about writing a letter to my grandpa, walking down Monroe Avenue scribbling out phrases in my mind, wadding up thought after thought. Nothing seemed to say it right. So I called my mom for inspiration…

The timing and irony of my phone call was amazing horrific. I barely got out, "Hey Mother-deary!" when I was bombarded by tears and screams. My mom's words were hysterical and mangled, but the message was clear: "Grandpa is dying." Within minutes I was in my truck headed West on I90. Six hours separated me from the hospital. I was only to Buffalo when his heart stopped beating. When his blood stopped pumping.

Hearing about the death of a loved one is "like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise."*

Nothing hurts like an unwritten letter. Like words unspoken. Regret is the hardest pain because regret is a lesson learned too late.

It has taken time to be ok with this. To be able to journal this. Because I should have at least tried. Words don't have to dance…dance well, that is. Sometimes they do, but more often they are clumsy. I should have flapped my arms in the air, spat out some words with my tongue tied in a knot and said something, anything. Because dying men needed to know that there life was worth something, anything.

I know my grandfather believed this. That his life was worth something. He even said so. And I heard other people tell him. But I wish I could have added my part. I wish I would have written my letter. But I was slow, I was too slow. And I missed my chance.

We are all dying, in a way, moving toward our inevitable death. And what makes us feel alive are other people who are glad that we are around. We need each others words. They make our hearts beat. So speak. Say anything. Make the phone call. Write the letter. Your chance is right now.


*Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

cover letter

I am delightfully haunted by a place called I Woo and often find myself telling stories about this magical land, stories with wonderfully named characters like Riske and Umfundisi. Now there are some that say college is not real, but as I describe it: a short period of make-believe. They insist that those who pretend it to be anything else will be in for an awful awakening in “the real world.”

I have lived in this real world for two years now and have met the people that make these terrible assertions and have come to believe that they are in fact the silly ones, the ones who are pretending. Where on earth did they get the unbelievable idea that church was supposed to be dull and that you are not suppose to know the people in your pew? Or the idea that you are to stop learning when you are older (unless of course some more education would get you a promotion)? I see it as make-believe to think, as they do, that in real life you must own your own of everything. And that at a certain age adventure is only a memory. Or that answers are more important than questions. Doctrines more important than conversations.

The truth is that the most magical place is the most real place. God is not ordinary, but extraordinary. Can the world He created be anything else? Two years later, I still believe in Indiana Wesleyan. It is not a fairytale, but the most real place in which I have lived, a standard in which I seek to emulate in the neighborhood I find myself now. “Take it with you,” Dr. Judy Huffman told me, speaking of the community I told her I would miss.

When I dream about the possibilities of church, I see a place like Hodson Hall with its nakedly honest community. When I am feeling dull, I know that buying stuff will not make me feel new. Learning and wonder make life new. This I learned from a fiery bearded man some call Stonehouse who had a sleeping bag for a bed and a bulky dictionary under his arm. The adventurer JMak taught me the beautiful nature of mystery, which is not simply a temporary feeling (a truth not yet revealed), but a part of reality (a truth unexplainable). He says has a “box” for mystery in his life, a part of his mind to hold those truths too incredible for understanding. Moreover, there are echoes from I Woo that bounce at me unexpectedly from time to time and I often hear God in the voices of those I knew at Indiana Wesleyan University. “God is after you,” I hear. “Follow your heart,” I am told. “Be here now,” nudges me.

magic

"The grass seemed signalling to me with all its fingers at once; the crowded stars seemed bent upon being understood. The sun would make me see him if he rose a thousand times. The recurrences of the universe rose to the maddening rhythm of an incantation, and I began to see an idea...A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitallity, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, 'Do it again'; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, 'Do it again' to the sun; and every evening, 'Do it again' to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daises alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them...In short, I had always believed that the world involved magic: but now I thought perhaps it involved a magician. And this pointed a profound emotion always present and sub-conscious; that this world of ours has some purpose; and if there is a purpose, there is a person. I had always felt life first as a story; and if there is a story there is a story-teller" (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy).