The Things We Loved

When I was 13 and bought the Broadway cast recording of Anything Goes, I didn’t do so because I loved the musical.  I had no idea what the musical was about except that it seemed to take place on a ship.  I bought the tape not because of the musical but because of the lead actress Patti Lupone. 

West Side Story was the first movie/musical that I, as a too-cool-to-cry-teenager, allowed a few tears for.  Grand Hotel was the first musical I saw on Broadway.  But Evita, starring Patti Lupone, was the first musical I fell in love with.  I read and reread the libretto sometime in the car by street light while my mom was out running errands.  I bought books on Eva Peron.  I bought other Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera and Aspects of Love.  I even saw original phantom, Michael Crawford, in concert.  I was a Broadway nerd.

And though I listened to other recordings of Evita, starring Elaine Paige, no one could top Patti Lupone.  She was a classic Broadway belter.  When she sang, you could feel her voice, not just hear it, but feel it rumbling and bouncing around inside your chest. 

And so I bought Anything Goes just so I could hear more of Patti Lupone.

Recently, I’ve rediscovered Anything Goes.  I can’t even remember now what I was searching for on YouTube at the time, but there was Anything Goes, the newest version starring Tony Award winner Sutton Foster.  Now Sutton Foster is not Patti Lupone or even Ethel Merman who originated the role of Reno Sweeney, but what I like about Sutton Foster is the tenderness and vulnerability she brings to the role, something neither Lupone nor Merman have/had in their repertoire. 

I find myself listening to the lyrics now, more than twenty years later and I find myself wonderfully amused by the story.  The main character Reno Sweeney is described as an evangelist turned night club singer.  I love that.  Normally a story would have that as the reverse.  Normally Reno Sweeney would be a reformed night club singer, but no, here she was an evangelist and now is singing for money.

It gives new meaning to me in the song Blow, Gabriel, Blow.  Obviously, I always knew the lyrics had biblical connections, but now when I listen to the music, I can hear and understand that it has all the flavor of an under the big tent revival.

There is no question that we outgrow many of the things we loved as children, but I think what we loved as children says so much about who we are today and we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss those things.  It’s okay to revisit them, not just to be reminded of better times, but to see things with new eyes and incorporate them into who we are now.

The Message of the Dove

When I got home from church this morning I sent Pastor Debbie a text saying that for the first time in probably six months, I made it through a church service with no back pain.  For a whole hour this morning, I stood up and sat down and stood up and sat down and didn’t even have a twinge of pain.  It was beautiful.

As I sit here writing though I can feel the pain returning.  And that’s okay.  I know I still have work to do to get healthy, but, again, for an hour this morning, life was blissfully normal.

The other day I was walking the labyrinth.  It was a warm and sunny December afternoon.  And as I walked all I could think about was how I wished it was summer already.  And then I laughed.  Summer was only six months away.  Where had the last six months gone?  Why did 2011 feel like it had flown by?  And why was I praying to God for something momentous to happen in my life in 2012?  Was finishing the discernment process, becoming a postulant, entering seminary, finishing my first seminary class, having to take an extended sick leave from work not momentous enough for me in 2011?

There is a scene in the movie Total Recall where Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character Douglas Quaid has just arrived on Mars.  He’s being hunted by government officials and when his disguise goes wrong, said officials open fire on him, taking out a window and causing the facility to depressurize.  One soldier is sucked out into the uninviting and unlivable Martian air.  Everyone else hangs on for dear life as suction threatens to tear them from whatever it is they are clinging to.

Even burly Arnold is barely hanging on.

That was how my life felt back in August and September and October this past year, like I was barely hanging on, like the forces of nature were conspiring against me to rip me away from the journey I had undertaken.

Bitter became my favorite word.  I was angry, so angry and hurt that after being given a glimpse of the life God had planned for me, I couldn’t head directly to my destination.  Instead I was seemingly trapped by my health and by my job, kept from the one thing I wanted more than anything in the world, which was to fully devote myself to seminary and a life of following Christ.

I’ve had a lot of time the last few months to reflect on that.

And I’m pleased to say that the bitterness and anger has faded and been replaced by contentment.  For a while there I resented teaching because I thought it was keeping me away from my journey to the priesthood, but since I’ve been away from it, I find I miss it more than ever, that teaching is part of the journey.  It’s not a roadblock or a detour, it is something that completes me and fills a place in my heart.  Even when I become a priest, teaching will always be a part of what I do.

I find that I’m slowing down, that I’m comfortable with God taking the wheel, that it’s easier sometimes to let someone else drive as long as you can promise not to become a backseat driver.

Some months ago, I wrote about God speaking through the messages in the Dove chocolate bar wrappers.  And just yesterday this is what I unwrapped … “You are exactly where you are supposed to be.”

That is sometimes a hard, but necessary lesson to learn.

That God has you exactly where you are supposed to be.

And maybe that means you’re like Douglas Quaid in Total Recall, hanging on for dear life, but doing so with a purpose.  Later in the movie, it is Doug, who by just putting his hand on an alien reactor, causes a chain reaction that terraforms Mars, bringing oxygen and life to a dead planet.

As long as we continue the journey God has set before us, even when we have no idea of timelines or even destinations, we are exactly where we are supposed to be … with God—trusting Him.

May you hold strong in your faith in 2012.

Christmastime is Here

There was an article in the paper the other day that said that since Christmas falls on a Sunday this year, many churches are cancelling their Sunday services in expectation of low turnout.

That kind of logic completely baffles me.

When I was a kid and Christmas fell on a Sunday, it didn’t mean we were less likely to go to church, it meant that we most definitely were going to have our behinds in the pew that Sunday. 

But let’s face it, Christmas is an odd time of the year and as the years come and go it seems to only gets stranger. 

People have been complaining about Christmas and materialism for decades beginning, perhaps, with Charlie Brown and one little Christmas tree among dozens of aluminum trees.  (Did they really make such things?)

For many people, Christmas is a sad time of the year.  This year’s Christmas episode of Glee had two characters arguing over whether their Christmas special should be only happy songs.  I, myself, have suffered through some gut-punchingly sad Christmases but also some gloriously happy ones. 

There was that Christmas, my senior year of high school, when I got everything I wanted (for the record, a mechanical kitty cat, a TI-85 calculator and tickets to see The Phantom of the Opera—which I think says everything you ever need to know about me).

The nature of Christmas though is to be both happy and sad.

We celebrate the birth of Jesus.  The sanctuary which had been clothed in blue during Advent is now white and pure.  Red poinsettias decorate the altar and while they are beautiful, an explosion of color, there is, in that juxtaposition of red on white, a reminder of what Jesus was born to do.

He was born to die.  He was born to shed his blood, to sacrifice himself for all who had lived and for all who ever will. 

And so every Christmas there must be conflicting emotions.  There is joy, sheer pleasure and joy at the birth of Christ.  Who among us, even those of us with the hardest hearts, doesn’t feel happiness over the birth of a child?  I like to think of Jesus, the baby, as a giggler, one quick to smile and let out big spit bubbles with each laugh.  I like to think of him, grabbing onto Joseph’s finger with his tiny hand, bonding with his human father.  Was there ever a child so loved?

Or so hated?

Remember Herod’s decree that all boys under the age of two should be killed?

Before Jesus said his first word, he was already hunted and his family on the run.

So it’s okay to feel conflicting emotions at Christmas because, as I said before, Christmas is, at its core, a story of both hope and suffering.  It is perhaps the only holiday that speaks to who we are, our essential selves, because we too are creatures who experience great joy and great heartache. 

That God so loved the world, He sent His only son …

Not just so that we would know Him but so we would know that He knew us.

Do Not Be Afraid!

Though I have never been as big a fan of the Lord of the Rings as I have of the Narnia series, I suppose I do feel a bit of kinship to Bilbo Baggins, the hero of The Hobbit.  Bilbo is as sensible as they come.  When Gandalf stops by to recruit him for an adventure, Biblo is hesitant.  Actually he flat out turns Gandalf down, but Gandalf being the crafty, manipulative wizard he is, doesn’t take no for an answer.  He plays to Bilbo’s curiosity and his pride.

At one point in the trailer to the new movie version of The Hobbit, Bilbo asks Gandalf, “Can you promise that I will come back?” 

And Gandalf replies, “No—and if you do, you will not be the same.”

Such is the case in every adventure.  We do not know how the adventure will end.  We only know that if we survive it, we will not be the same.  Faced with such knowledge, it may be easier to hole up in a little Hobbit hovel and leave the rest of the world on the other side of the door.  But if we’re willing to take a risk, the rewards could be amazing. 

But fear is our greatest stumbling block.

Fear immobilizes.

I think about the night I had my flat tire on the highway.  It was really such a great story, involving prayer, angels and the presence of God.  But the rest of the story that night was much darker.  While my Road Ranger/Angel got me to class, I still had the long, dark journey home to come.  I was riding on two bald tires with no spare this time.  It was late and when I pulled onto the highway, it began to rain.

I was terrified I would blow a tire.  I was so scared, I almost pulled over.  Now what would pulling over have accomplished?  Well, nothing.  It made no sense to pull over when my tires were still functioning, but the thought of what might happen nearly made me do something completely irrational.  Instead, I prayed without ceasing the entire ride home.

And I made it.

Fear paralyzes.

I’ve written many times this past year and a half about fear.  I’ve written how opening myself to God and agreeing to say “yes,” has allowed me to move past many fears.  I’m doing things I never would have dreamed of.  Someone once asked me if God had taken away the fear.  And I think my answer surprised her.

No, God has not taken away my fear.  If I had no fear, I’d have no need of faith.  I wouldn’t have to depend on God.  So I still fear, but I also listen and I follow when God motions me into the deeper end of the pool.

Why do I do these things?  Why do I roll over fear?  Because like Bilbo, I understand that there is more to life than the four walls that I call home.  There’s something else out there, something that calls to me and encourages me to be more than I could imagine. 

Think of the shepherds watching their flocks that night.  With all due respect to shepherds, they didn’t lead exciting lives.  They minded sheep.  They watched for predators.  Their days were all alike.  Again and again, nothing changed.

And then, that night, angels appeared.

They appeared to the lowest of the low.  They didn’t appear to men and women already looking for them.  They appeared to the Bilbo Baggins’ of the world, good, sensible shepherds.

And what was the first thing they said?  “Do not be afraid—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.  This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” (Luke 2:10-12)

The angels then glorified God and then *poof* were gone.

Now if you’re a shepherd, what do you do?  I can almost see them, staring at the now empty sky with their mouths hanging open.  It’s silent.  No one dares to breathe.  What just happened?

And then one guy says, “We should go check it out.”

What do you do when confronted with angels or mysterious wizards?  What do you do when the challenge is set before you?  How do you ignore the chance to change your life forever even if it means leaving the safety and security of where you are?

You can’t ignore it.  You have to follow no matter where the journey leads you.

Such is life.  It is filled with heartache and bitterness.  It leaves scars and wounds so deep you think you’ll never recover.  It’s nothing that you can hide from.  Agreeing to take the journey is not so much about abandoning fear as it is agreeing to hope.

We take the journey because we hope.

And faith rests in hope.

A Voice in the Wilderness

A few years ago, there was a very popular grammar book (sort of seems like an oxymoron doesn’t it) entitled Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss.  The title itself emphasized the importance of punctuation.  Does the panda on the cover eat shoots and leaves or does he bring a gun to the party, does he eat, shoot and leave?

We see some interesting punctuation placement in the Bible as well.  In Isaiah 40:3: “A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare a way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’”

But in Mark 1:3 the same phrase is rewritten slightly and changes the meaning completely.  “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”

See the difference?  In Isaiah, the voice itself is not in the wilderness.  In Mark, the voice is most definitely residing in the wilderness, which as Biblical scholars will tell you, was an effort to link the passage to John the Baptist who, of course, lived in the wilderness.

Regardless of the changes made in Mark’s gospel, and the reasons for the change, I find the idea of a voice in the wilderness, crying out, to be much more moving.

It’s moving because we all live in the wilderness.  We do not live as John the Baptist did.  We are not dressed in animal skins (well most of us aren’t).  We aren’t hunters and gatherers, living off the land.  But we do live in a metaphorical wilderness, a cold, sometimes desolate, barren and lonely place.  It’s a place of struggle and suffering. 

Imagine a desert as far as the eye can see with the heat rippling in waves off the ground.  This place is our wilderness, a place of hunger and thirst.  And the scary part is that it is a place of mirages, a place to be fooled, a place to wind up like the cartoon characters, drinking sand we think is water.

But then out of this wilderness is a voice crying out, “Prepare the way of the Lord.”

What does this voice tell us?  Oh, many, many things.

It tells us we are not alone.  That has always struck me first about that line “a voice crying out in the wilderness,” that we are not alone.  There is someone else out there, someone who knows something about the world that we do not, a voice that even if the only thing it said was “hello” would still offer us more hope than we could dare to imagine.

But this voice offers something more.  Not only does it tell us we’re not alone.  It tells us that someone is coming.  Please note that the voice doesn’t tell us to go to the Lord, to try and find Him, the voice tells us that He is coming to us in the midst of our suffering and abandonment.  He is coming.

How beautiful.

A voice crying out …

You are not alone.

The Lord is coming.

There's a Snake in my Boot

One of my favorite lines from Toy Story 2 is Woody’s exclamation at discovering all the toys and accessories connected to the Sheriff Woody brand.  He is overjoyed and overwhelmed to discover that the world he thought he knew is so much larger.  Though he loves his owner, Andy and his friends like Buzz Lightyear and Bo Peep, it’s as if Woody has finally found his family.  He has a horse, Bullseye, and a new friend Jessie.

He has a whole world created just for him.  And when he explores that world he finds a toy boot with a spring loaded snake.  And here comes the line, delivered with perfect pausing by Tom Hanks:  “Oh look, there’s a snake … in my boot.”  It’s silly and I don’t know why I love the line so much.  Again I think it’s how Tom Hanks says it.  It’s cute.

I was thinking of that line today when I was walking the labyrinth at church.  I’m used to having things jump out at me or run from me.  I’ve startled my share of rabbits and lizards and birds and they’ve startled me right back.

But today was the first time I had seen a snake.

At first I thought it was a lizard, rising up out of the grass and slinking onto the six inch high fencing that marks the path.  But then I noticed the head was too flat and too round for a lizard and then I noticed the body was way too long.  The snake was only about a foot and a half long.  It was mostly black with a gray mottled head.

It looked harmless, but snakes in Florida scare me, so I kept my distance and just watched it.

It really was a beautiful thing.  At first I wanted there to be some message there.  Here I am walking a path, trying to be there with God and there’s a snake preventing me from getting to the center of the labyrinth.

But the more I watched the snake, the more that connection faded.  The snake was beautiful and lithe.  It rose up, peering up over the fencing and then twisted its way through a Simpson Stopper, hiding for a second before moving on through the path.

Because of the snake’s size and because of the fencing, the snake was really forced to “walk” the labyrinth with me.  It could only move in the same spiral pattern I was moving in.  And I wondered if snakes could think, what this one would be thinking. 

I’m sure the snake didn’t feel trapped, but I’m sure he probably wondered why he seemed only able to move in one direction.  Perhaps that’s why he stopped and climbed the shrub, so he could see just where he was.

And then, of course, I started thinking about perspective.   How are we similar to this poor snake?  Are we trapped by repetitive behavior?  Are we lost in a maze and don’t even realize it?  What does it take to change our behavior when it seems like we’re in rut, when we keep making the same mistakes over and over?

It takes perspective.  It takes focus.  It takes centering ourselves to God and allowing Him to guide us.

In the end that was what both the snake and I were doing, though the snake couldn’t have known.  We were both moving to the center of the labyrinth, searching for God.

Giant Yellow Flashlights

Henry is on an adventure.  We know this not just because he is headed deep into a darkened, abandoned, mine shaft, but because he has brought with him his trusty flashlight and not just any flashlight, but a giant, yellow Eveready, the kind with a battery seemingly large enough to power a small car.

When I was watching this episode of my new favorite show Once Upon a Time a few weeks ago, I felt an immediate kinship to the boy Henry because of that giant, yellow flashlight.  Months ago, I told the children at church during a Kid’s Talk, that I own many, many flashlights and I told them the reason was because I was afraid of the dark.  And while that statement was 100% true, my fascination with flashlights comes from more than just a fear of the dark, it comes from a love of adventure.

Every child is born curious.  Curiosity leads to exploration and while that exploration can sometimes be dangerous, we only grow when we explore, when we test boundaries and see what lies on the other side of the woods.

In Once Upon a Time, Henry doesn’t have to seek adventure; he lives it, unwillingly drawn into a fairy tale that has gone horribly wrong.  While the town he lives in, Storybrooke, Maine, seems like every other small town in America, Henry knows it is very different. His adopted mother is the evil queen from Snow White.  His teacher is Snow White.  His therapist (because really who wouldn’t need one at this point) is Jiminy Cricket.  Every person in the town, with the exception of Henry and his biological mother, is a character from the fairy tales trapped in an enchantment that has caused them to forget who they are.

Henry takes it upon himself to try and free the residents of Storybrooke by reminding them who they really are.  He is relentless, almost obnoxious in this quest.  He will do anything, lie, run away, cry, laugh, smile, and plot to free them.  It’s a difficult task because you can’t just go up to someone and tell them they’re Snow White.  Really.  No really, you’re Snow White—and not be thought crazy.  But Henry doesn’t give up even when the journey takes him to some truly frightening places.

When I was a kid, my thirst for adventure never got much farther than the backyard.  Lucky for me there was an abandoned hotel that sat smack up against our yard.  Those darkened windows, padlocked doors and burnt siding were a siren call for adventuresome children—namely those not named Kendra.  I wanted in the hotel.  I wanted to see what was inside, but I was scared to death of getting in trouble.

So I called my friend (we’ll call him Andrew) and told him I had found a way inside.  That was mostly a lie on my part.  I hadn’t really found a way, but I was sure Andrew would.  And sure enough, about five minutes after arriving at my house, he found a way inside the hotel through the rotted out cellar doors.  He took a candle down into the basement with him and I remember wishing he would take a flashlight, but when it came to adventures, flashlights were my thing and candles were Andrew’s.

He disappeared into the shadows.

A few minutes later, he raced back up the steps screaming.

“What?  What?” I asked him.

He gulped for breath and then started laughing.  “I sat on a frog,” he said.

I never made it inside the hotel, much to my parents’ relief I think.  The hotel was torn down a few years later.  And I had to be content to listening to Andrew’s tales of wonderment.

I wonder if I’ve changed any since childhood.  I think that I still long for adventure, for quests, for discovering new things, but I’m terrified too.  I wonder if I had been alive when Jesus was alive, if I had seen him collecting disciples and followers, would I have dropped everything and followed him or would I have worried about what my family would say, or who would take care of my cat while I was gone.

Quests and adventures come in all sizes from sneaking into spooky old buildings to saving a town from an evil curse.  And we have to weigh the call.   Perhaps trespassing doesn’t past the test, but surely saving thousands of people does.

I have my own giant, yellow, flashlight.  It’s sitting on the desk next to my computer.  It gets so little use it’s more of a decorative object.  It’s also a reminder.

To be ready.