Yes, I am an a**hole

I've been under a bit of stress lately.  I got hired by a company that gave me very unspecific direction about "blending in" but also "helping to maximize the store" and "winning the hearts" of the staff.  So I've been doing my best to be the perfect employee at this tiny little cafe.  Problem is, it worked, and now, less than a month later, they want to promote me to be the manager at the cafe on Duke's campus.  I'm freaking out.  Inside.

[Side note: The other day I was trying to find Walmart to take back some sh*tty  piece of junk I bought there and I got lost.  And when I get lost, I. GET. LOST.  I was so lost that at one point I had to switch which side of the road I was driving on.  Hyuck. Hyuck.  But seriously, I was lost for about an hour and a half, I went through 6 different cities, and when I finally came back to civilization, I was so frustrated and mad and I just tried to bottle it, but it all came out the next day when I was supposed to meet Julie for *ahem* chapel.]

Julie told me to meet her at the chapel at 11 am.  Easy enough, right?  Wrong.  I get to Duke at 10:50 and can't find a place to park, so I call Julie.  She doesn't answer.  I drive all the way around the school. It is now 11.  I call Julie again, no answer.  Still can't find a place to park, it is now 11:15am.  She calls me, because she only just got out of class, and I'm pissed.  Everything from my expedition to Mars the day before is coming out, and I say something a**hole-like, to the regards of "YOU SAID YOU WERE GOING TO HAVE YOUR PHONE ON.  You disappoint me."  We have a number of miscommunications from here on out, and we get so mad that we don't go to chapel after all.  I would hate to have brought all that negative energy into such a place of peace!

I realized, after about 20 min of self-righteous anger directed at my poor wife (who just wanted to go to chapel with me) that I was completely in the wrong and I was just having a really hard time expressing my frustration at my terrible sense of direction and all of the stress of potentially being a manager had been building up-- and I decided I needed to get her some flowers and QUICK.

It's hard work discovering you're an asshole (sorry, I ran out of **s).  It's much easier to just think that you are always thinking of everyone else's best interests and that you are always good and kind and generous.  But now that I know that when it comes down to it, I still only think of myself- my need to vent and be angry at someone that has nothing to do with why I'm angry--  it's kind of pathetic.  Humbling.  The man I want to be would never have snapped like that. The man I want to be would have felt the boiling frustration early on- would have called it out for what it was, take a deep breath, and then speak to my wife in loving tones.  Sigh.

Thanks for hearing my confession.

Love,
Tim

"Hierarchy is the skeleton of the church"

I don't get the benefit of going to a nice divinity college like Duke because I am not smart enough to hack it.  I barely limped along as a Youth Ministry student at a small struggling Bible school in glorious Redding, CA.  But I DO get the benefit of being married to a brilliant scholar who is currently attending Duke's Divinity program.

Julie said she had a class that discussed the hierarchy of the church as being its "skeleton of love."  The hierarchy helps to focus our love- to retain it from "going out of control."  She gave an example of a time before the canon was formed in which a man who called himself a Christian wanted to scrap the entire Old Testament altogether and leave it out of the Bible.  To be honest, it might be a whole lot less confusing to only have 27 books to read and study instead of 66 (or 73 if you're Catholic?), but I guess I am glad that they punted that guy.  The Old Testament shows so much of the rawness of following God, the way God moves throughout different cultures in different lands, and the way He has stayed by His people despite the numerous times they have betrayed Him.

BUT MY POINT is that some people view a church's hierarchy as being one of gentle, loving, protection against heresy, and I do not find it as such.  Maybe on the sunniest of spring mornings, with the fresh smell of flowers and the angelic sounds of birds chirping in perfect harmony-- perhaps only then could I see a Christian hierarchy fitting that description.  On its more typical days, hierarchy is like a medieval knight of the round table's clunky suit of armor that constricts and limits any sort of true love or discipleship.

Granted, I am a West Coaster- we tend to be a little flighty, a little less distrusting, a little more "follow your heart", yada yada.  But I just can't seem to shake loose those scenes with Christ when people come up to him and try to get him to nail down a pecking order or a system of dogmatics or ANY SORT OF ORGANIZATIONAL THEME and he instead takes their mind for a spin.  Remember James and John's mother trying to get on Jesus' left and right side in heaven (he said no)?  Remember the whole "working on the Sabbath" fiascos (Jesus destroyed the contemporary church leader's rules)?  Remember all of those "The Kingdom of heaven is like ..." that mentioned nothing in the way of Elders or Bishops or overseers?  Or how about in the Old Testament when Israel wanted a religious King to lead them like the other countries nearby and God said, "No, you shouldn't do that" but they wanted it anyway and so God said ok and they elected Saul cuz he was the tallest and he basically turned into a raving lunatic that tried to kill his successor?

It is my humble and boisterous opinion that the hierarchies that Christian men and women have made for themselves have sprung up out of fears of the unknown and desires for control over one another rather than a "loving skeleton."  Love that is based off of a skeleton is just that: DEAD.  Too many good men and women have been trampled by these skeletons of hierarchy.  Too many children have suffered under its veils of secrecy and "don't question the Lord's church!"

The strongest argument against my views is someone who says, "yeah, but you're suggesting total chaos!  There has to be some kind of order!!"  And to that I nod and say, "Okay, here's an order that is approved by Christ: The last is first and the first is last."  The POINT IS THAT IT DOESN'T OFTEN MAKE SENSE, especially when we are focused on the wrong thing.  If we are serving side by side and witnessing the saving, redeeming power of Christ, who needs someone to say, "Yeah, but who is the servant who gets to tell all the other servants what to do?"  or "What happens when somebody doesn't serve as much as the others?  Who is going to tell him to serve more??"  These questions, as silly as they might seem, are very real fears of today's church and I say that they are merely instruments of Satan rather than the whisperings of the Spirit.

Hierarchy may be helpful in times of confusion, but more often than not it is confusing in God's timing and Kingdom.

A quick thought on the addition and subtraction of friends

I wrote this about 2 months ago, but didn't have the courage to post it until now.  Please read with a grain of salt.

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Math has never been a strong point in my life.  I appreciate it's simplicity... it's bold assumptions.  When you take away "This," you are left with "That."  It helps to clarify your situation.  But it never gives the whole picture.

Why did you take "This" away?  What are you supposed to do with "That" now that you have it?  How many new "This's" will you have to add to your "That" before you are healed?  Will you ever have a new "This"?  Will "That" ever change from here on out?  Will you change because of "That"?

I read somewhere from someone that if they ever thought for a moment that God was the one who took away his dearly beloved dead relative from him, than he would never believe in Him again.  I understand that sentiment.  But I don't share it.

Time changes things.  And it honestly doesn't matter who you blame.  Blame God.  Blame Sin.  Blame me, for all I care.  All it does is help you to manage your own feelings.  I get that.  Cuz our feelings (especially when loss is involved) are wild and crazy things.  People kill themselves when their emotions are too unbearable.

But that brings us back to me.  Sorry this has all been so lofty.  I'll try to put us back on the ground.

I'm about ready to say goodbye to some friends.  Jeff and Tracy and leaving for Spain.  Noah and Sara are moving North to Portlandia.  They've been the best friends I've had in a long time.  I couldn't have survived the great DC assassination without them.  But I'm trying to figure out how life will work without them in it.  And I know there's email and Facebook and blogging and the occasional phone call... but that's not relationship.  That's penpalship.  I'm sure there are others out there who can survive on penpalship alone, but I am not one of them.  For me, it will feel like I have only one leg, one hand, one eye for awhile.  And it's common, I know it happens everyday, but I still feel like blaming someone to help me cope.

Time changes things, and I want to be at peace with that.  God help me.  Thank you for this day and this life.

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Dear friends, I miss you terribly!  Please let's stay in touch!

Take me to your leader

So, I read in a New York Times article today (found HERE) that some GOP candidates who are in the process of selecting running mates are looking for someone who gives a "strong conservative presence" since that is their best chance of overcoming a "weak, passive president."  I don't want to get political or partisan, but it made me wonder what men and women in general look for in a leader.

Let's start with strength.  Who among us, when asked "Do you prefer a weak leader?" would say, "Yes, that is what I am looking for.  Someone who crumbles under pressure.  Someone who will just kinda go with the flow.  When there's a tough decision to be made, I want my leader to just pretend that everything is okay and try to distract everybody from the real issue."  No.  People want a leader who can deliver.

However.  Sometimes having an extreme position on an issue appears as strength, but in reality, is just fear with a loudspeaker.  Just because I can rally a crowd by telling them what they want to hear doesn't mean I have the strength to stand upon real values- to resist the urge to sellout or to accept bribes... to stand up for justice, even when it means disagreeing with those who are approving your paycheck.

Some people also are looking for "conservative-ness."  I wonder if this is just the affiliation of being "Conservative" (I believe in blah, blah, and blah), or if this is conservative in behavior.  Dictionary.com defines conservative as: "disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc.,or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change."  Some people like it when their leaders "leave well enough alone."  Don't change things!  Don't tell me how to live my life!  If I want a non-efficient light bulb (see my article HERE), then let me buy one, dammit!  It's my life, and I like it just the way it is. I saw a bumper sticker on the back of a pickup truck that said, "I'll keep my money, guns, and freedom, and you can keep your 'change'!"  Things are great for some people, and they don't need a leader to change that.


But what if that same person who likes things the way they are were to look around and see things that weren't so great for other people?  Warren Buffet is a new hero of mine for doing this exact thing (read his recent article HERE).  He's got tons of money (being a brilliant business man), and the current tax system is helping to protect his fortune with lots of great tax cuts, but he looks around and sees 9% unemployment in the U.S., and that poverty is widespread and that the middle and lower class are getting taxed more severely than him.  He stands up and says, quote: "My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice."  Props.


I don't mean to attack conservatives- I guess I just naturally see a downside to that way of thinking (as I'm sure anyone can find the downside to my thinking).  When I look for a leader to follow, I don't look for someone who will coddle me by trying to appear strong and give me everything I want: I look for a leader who cares about true justice and one who's strength lies within him to stand up for the rights of all people, not just those in his rich circle.

Cowboys and Aliens (in a one-dollar theatre)

Julie and I saw the previously-mentioned movie in the dollar theatre in Raleigh tonight.  Not Daniel Craig's or Harrison Ford's best or even second best, but still a decent flick.  I left feeling a little better about the whole Cowboy/Indian misunderstanding... ("Oh, this was YOUR land?  Oops.  Well, we're already here, so...")  and I also felt a little bit of sympathy for the Aliens.  I mean, sure, they're abducting us to perform experiments to figure out the best way to wipe out our entire civilization just so they can have easier access to our gold, but who wouldn't do that in their position?  We do experiments on mice and rabbits with the justification that there's a lot of them and they don't have as sophisticated brains as we do.  Well, to a brilliant Alien, our minds are quite inferior, and we've overpopulated the planet, anyway, so picking off a few cowboys really won't make too much of a dent.  It's all about comparisons.

In the luxurious theatre that we saw the movie, the seat next to mine was broken, and about 300 people kept asking to sit next to us (the place was packed- cheap bastards, all of us) and we had to tell them the situation.  You know, not one of them thought twice about why there was a broken seat in the movie theatre.  "This seat is broken."  "Oh, okay."  How often does this happen?  What if I had said, "This seat has an invisible man sitting on it."  Would they have still just said, "oh okay"?  Or what if I had said, "This seat sometimes spontaneously combusts into flame"?  "So, is it available?"

My new job is pretty fun, except the espresso machine is TOTAL CRAP and my bosses know it.  I'm going to be PUSHING for a new one very soon.  In the mean time, I have to learn how to stop the damn machine from ruining all my lattes.

-Tim

Leave "well enough" alone?

Hammer.

 MC Hammer.  

I just couldn't help myself.


Julie and I got into a discussion yesterday about our duplex and our role as tenants to ask our landlord to repair the place.  I was bitching about this and the other that didn't work properly and the health hazards attached to that and she (very wisely) said, "Tim, we are only going to be here for a couple years.  Maybe we don't need to upset our landlord."

It took me a second to compose myself.  I was thinking, "But I'm right!  This place needs to be fixed up properly!  It's... the RIGHT thing to do!"  And then I thought a little longer...  I think I ended up giving a bit of a bullshit answer about how if the roof doesn't cave in on us, what if it caves in on the next tenant's little kid and now we're to blame because we didn't have our landlord fix it...  I said that I'm made of stuff a little different than other people.  I told her that other people don't have the guts or stupidity to stand up to their landlords and ask that they do their damn job.  I successfully managed to get some sympathy from my wife.  But, if I were to get off of my soap box for a minute...  I think I missed something important.

Julie understands something that I often overlook: the relationship we have with our landlord is WAY more important than ensuring that our doorknobs turn smoothly, or the banister doesn't fall off.  He's a good man, from what I can tell, and he has been coming over once a week to fix stuff or spray poison ivy, or try to help us get rid of our cockroaches.  He gave us a tour of his fricken electron lab, for crying out loud!

Sometimes when I point to a problem I forget that I'm also pointing at a human being (God has asked that I show love to) who has feelings.  It can be embarrassing to be told, "Hey, this duplex that you own is a piece of shit."  He wants to make it good... and he also wants to save a buck or two if he can by only fixing what is absolutely necessary.  I get that.  I learned that from my dad all growing up.

Plus, I'm overlooking something extremely important.  This is where we are supposed to be, and I'm learning a hell of a lot in how to upkeep a house while we are here (which will be extremely important if we ever own a house someday).  BESIDES, I got nothing else to do today, what am I bitching about?

My next projects are: seal off 3 windows that leak, put new weather stripping on 3 doors, fix the gate so it actually closes properly, fix two old wooden chairs, and find a punching bag and weight set for the basement... those are just as related as you would think.  :)