Contentment

I have been spending much of the summer mulling over the nuances between contentment and complacency. The two words seem to be so synonymous in definition that I did not think any difference would matter. But the Bible has two very contrasting uses for the two words. Proverbs 1:32 says, "For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them" but Philippians 4:12 says, "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want." Proverbs frowns upon complacency but Philippians makes contentment seem like a good thing.

When camping out at Glacier National Park I wound up out on the hood of our car as we settled in for the night. Not expecting anything spectacular, Kayla and I watched a meteorite shower begin to animate the sky. At first it was one single meteorite. Then, somewhere miles above us, minerals began scraping against the earth's atmosphere and provided us with a show. My state of contentment switched to a state of privilege. Soon, meteorites were flashing every 45 seconds until we saw something unlike anything; something that surpassed the term "meteorite" and was only worthy of the title "falling star." The star seemed to rip open the black sky and bleed a streak of red and green colors behind it, before tailing off into a vapor of white light.

Coming back from Glacier a day or two after the shower we stopped in a small town at public park. Weary from excessive sitting, I stretched out and took in a firsthand view of small-town Montana. After I got the blood flowing in my legs again I plopped down in the manicured green grass and slipped my hands under my head. I looked to the sky. Sitting there, with my elbows pointed into blue space, a feeling crept up slowly. I could feel summer in the green grass. I began to remember.

As I think back on my past, I remember things not as they were, but as I have chosen to remember them - wrapped up in nostalgia. First, I remember the undisputed arrival of spring. I introduced myself to the mid-day sun and wanted to be best friends. However, sunlight faded and the nights of May brought a fresh bouquet of sounds. I couldn't get enough. The soft cooing of mourning doves as I played in the sand under a big oak tree. Thunder and lightning together made an ensemble greater than any Mozart I had ever heard. I remember how the cricket chorus sung at night as I chased fireflies wildly. Through a forest of green blades my feet ran. A fresh dew seemed to arrive out of nowhere and would dampen my feet in a cool liquid. But, what I remember most is the grass; simple green grass.

Summer out here contains no grass. There are eternal fields of flowers that last for months and there are sage brush flats as far as the eye can see, but there is never grass.

As I laid there in small-town Montana, I began to think how this summer has not been like a summer at all. I spend every day working or playing so hard that I lay down solely to sleep. I never go outside and lay down just to enjoy the presence of summer; something I always did back home.

I have always been a fairly content person, but when I laid in that patch of grass somewhere in Montana, I realized I have lost something in these mountains.

In my attempt to make the most of life out here I ignored the simple joy of enjoying summer's presence and lost my contentment in a tangled confusion of aspirations. I made lists of things I wanted to do and then went about tactics of completing them. I talked to friends and got advice, I studied maps and made my plans, I borrowed cars and woke up early. I was hungry for adventure, but the price I paid was not only my contentment.

Playing soccer last Friday evening I leaned too far on my ankle and felt my knee take the extra pressure. Having torn my ACL last summer I took a moment to regather my strength and assess whether my knee was hurt or not. Limping around for a few seconds and, upon deciding I was fine, I continued to play even though I knew the pressure had made my knee weak. The thought of sitting out for the rest of the game crossed my mind but was quickly silenced by my adrenaline, ambition, and aspiration to keep playing.

Within 15 minutes my knee brought me to the ground. I remember it; I will never forget the suspended animation when my leg gave out. Running and then turning with the weight of my whole body on my right leg, I heard my knee crack. Instantly my strength was gone and I knew at that moment the damage had been done, but before I fell to the ground I floated in the air. Like a cartoon character running off a cliff, I waited before I dropped, suspended in thin air. After I hit the ground it was all over.

When I lost my contentment I had also lost my sense of pacing in a self-told lie that I could do everything. In my haste to do it all I deprived myself of many things, including my ability to walk on my own. Using crutches to get everywhere some people have started calling me Tiny Tim. Today just happens to be Christmas (in the National Parks) and since tonight is the Christmas party I think I shall be content going as Tiny Tim.

"God bless us, every one!"

When I get back, at least I can finally try and spend some time deciphering the difference between complacency and contentment.

Looking Beyond Ourselves

When all else is cast aside, faith remains.

While camping last week a girl asked me if I believed in absolute truth. I didn't give her a straight answer because it is one of those broad and foggy questions where you never quite know what exactly you are talking about (there is also usually a lack of defined terms and ideas). In the long run, I told her I did believe in an absolute truth.

Going about a search for truth is twisted path.
Before attempting to search for absolute truth, most people tend to see things in black and white; there is a defined line between good and bad. As one searches deeper, he or she may begin to find truths that seem contrary to one another. Many people are disillusioned by finding evidence for one truth and then encountering a completely contradictory truth with ample evidence. It can be defeating when a person does not instantly find one thing that speaks on a universal level.

As a species that prefers closure and sound logic, contrary ideas of truth are upsetting. At this point, some people become apathetic and others just give up and return to a complacent level of ignorance (ignorance is bliss), but those who continue are faced with a choice: to find bits of truth as relevant to each individual or make a commitment to a certain belief that encompasses one path of truth.
The former choice seems to be more attractive to our society. It is an idealized version of eclecticism: picking and choosing bits of truth as relevant to the self. In fact, it even banks on the attractiveness of our consumer culture; we love to collect things so why not collect chunks of truth and toss them in our bag of truth? But with this attractive collection of relativistic truth, we are essentially saying we know what is best for ourselves and ultimately denying that anything out there could be better for us than what we have decided to pick and choose. If not careful, we make ourselves our own god of truth.

However, when we set aside our urge to collect attractive ideas of self-relevant truth for the sake of committing to something beyond ourselves, we can find freedom. We no longer must worry of what truths are relevant to us because we are giving of ourselves and offering up to God, with humility, that we cannot always know what is best. We are acknowledging that there is something beyond us and that truth is something we can never fully understand.

I'm not saying we shouldn't try to understand things beyond us. God has gifted man with logic and reason in order to attempt to understand things. Humans call this science, and we need to strive to find out more. The problem lies when some people get caught up in their own comprehension of science that they forget faith lies at the foundation of Christianity. Its not about science and understanding; its about believing when science is inadequate.

I have been talking with a former pastor who is on our ACMNP support staff. He and his wife take care of a historic cabin just down the road. Lately, I have been able to bask in his wisdom as well as offer up some of my own ideas. We give each other a chance to think about what we talk about. This morning we went for a walk in a flat river bend where river meanders are scattered between patches of wetland. Typically, a diverse array of wildlife congregate in the area to share in the wealth of lush greenery. We saw a moose and every type of winged-creature as we talked. While we watched some birds, he mentioned that our faith is filtered through a lens of experience.

From my experience, I have been amidst a faith that is not centered around me. I do not get to choose bits and pieces of my savior. And yet, I often struggle because of this. Something in the human desire wants to push God away and side with science until science can prove that Jesus lives.

Agnosticism and Christianity have a lot in common: both hold a deep rooted trust in something. Agnosticism stops a step short in leaving it at saying that God and Jesus cannot be proven with our reasoning. In other words, agnosticism holds a trust solely in logic. Christianity takes a step further in choosing to set aside a complete trust in reasoning for a trust in faith.

I have a feeling that we are becoming more and more rutted in a scientific frame of mind. We are becoming so accustomed to having logic behind everything that faith often seems irrelevant. Christianity can use the precious gift of science to find new things out that compliment our faith, but because every answer in science asks another question, there will always be a need for faith.
Christians should take a look beyond themselves and see if they can set aside science when it ultimately comes down to their belief. If science is held foremost, the outcome is agnosticism, but if people are standing on faith then they are taking a step beyond themselves; they are selflessly acknowledging the existence of something beyond us that we can never fully understand. You can call it morality or you can call it absolute truth. Whatever you decide to call it, it requires a trust in something beyond logic, it requires faith.

Word made Flesh

We created language to fulfill a need, a need to communicate. Underlying the need for communication hides a need to connect, understand, and grow.

Lately, I have been thinking about words and their use in language. Language, a systematic method of stringing symbols and words together to create meaning, is often seen as an end-all to every form of communication. However, language is a limited and inadequate attempt to make something naturally intangible become tangible. Language can never become completely synonymous with our thoughts and experiences. So much more is left untouched beyond the grasp of our ability to harness language. I would consider language as more akin to an artistic rendering of thoughts; it is in no way an all encompassing objectivity.

I love to write because I consider it a form of art instead of an objective means of communicating my understanding. My affinity with words stems deeper than a need to fulfill communication. In fact, my love affair with words draws from melody and music. It is often lyrical and it always relies heavily upon the ebb and flow of words artistically building of each other.

But our society puts too much emphasis on language and learning. "In a world where education is predominantly verbal, highly educated people find it all but impossible to pay serious attention to anything but words and notions. There is always money for, there are always doctorates in, the learned foolery of research into what, for scholars, is the all-important problem: Who influenced whom to say what when?" Aldous Huxley raises this statement in his book, The Doors of Perceptions, when he talks of ways to perceive things beyond what our five senses typically let us understand. He argues we can learn so much more through our internal understandings of experience.

Words are sometimes inappropriate but they are almost always inadequate.

I was reading a book by Parker Palmer today. He began talking about a time in his life when he was going through severe depression. He mentioned how the people who were able to get through to him were not the intellectuals or opinionated, but it was those who quietly offered their physical presence without the offering of advice. As people lined up and waited to share their advice on how he could get better, it was a gentle touch that spoke volumes. It was a simple silence that allowed Palmer to acknowledge someone's willingness to just be there with him, nothing more. Most people tried to apply empathy; they tried to apply what they had been through in their lives to his life. The only problem was that no one is ever going to have the same exact experience, so their attempts seemed distant and unhelpful. It was in the silence that humility and acceptance spoke more than words ever could.

When thinking of a simple presence that can speak so greatly I am reminded of a song by David Crowder Band. It is called I Need Words.

I need words
As wide as sky
I need language large as
This longing inside
And I need a voice
Bigger than mine
And I need a song to sing you
That I've yet to find

I need you
I need you
I need you to be here now

The humility of the song cries out for words that enable the artist to speak. However, the song ends with a request for presence. The song ends with a begging for the words to be made flesh. "I need you to be here now."

Blood, Sex, and Violence

Despite a shady gimmick to catch your attention, my title does hold some relevance to my life. In fact, on a typical sunny day in July, I woke up and went into the bathroom expecting to see things as I typically did: a clean and kept bathroom filled with miniature travel soaps and shampoos resting in expected places. Instead, I found a disheveled disarray of confusion. Bottles that once stood tall and proud on the shower walls had now fallen into a pile of hodgepodge hygienics on the tub floor. I washed my hands in the sink and looked left for my towel. I shook the water off my hands as I wondered why both of my towels had disappeared from their respective holders. I decided to further observe the current condition of the bathroom. As I did so, I looked to the floor. On a few of the ceramic tiles I encountered blotches of dried blood that trailed into my neighbor's room. While observing my surroundings, I heard a rustling behind the door to the other room. I blindly asked if anyone was in there. Upon hearing a confirmation I asked what had happened. - Before I explain what was told to me I want to take you back to my experience the night before.

-About midnight I was going to bed when I heard someone in my bathroom sounding upset and hurried. Clunks and bangs from falling plastic interrupted the incessant mumbling. Soon, the faucet began to run as a voice kept saying: "Some people are such idiots." I tried to tune out the voice but it was soon followed by another voice. The voice was of the opposite gender and was questioning "WHY are people such idiots" and "WHAT had happened." I started to feel like I was eavesdropping, so it was at this point I jammed my Mp3 earbuds into my ears in an attempt to drown out the conversation. In the bathroom I heard the water running full-blast, falling into the tub while the voices continued loudly. I tried to shut my mind off but there was an initial urge to understand what could possibly be happening. I soon decided I did not care and hoped that the noise would soon pass. It did not. I laid in my bed for several minutes. Through a filter of music, the voices and noises passed my headphones and into my ears, preventing me from my escape to slumber. Although the noises and voices never did stop, the fatigue from being up at 4 am hit me like a baseball bat across the face and I was able to pass into the blessing of sleep.-

Apparently, after I had gone to sleep, whoever had been in the bathroom had gotten physically hurt by someone else's stupidity. Somehow, that lead to other things and the person eventually ended up "having a good time" in the tub with the other person I had heard.
The description I received from my neighbor was the definition of vague; he was letting my mind fill in the gaps of what actually happened. As I figured it out, I made a quip about the soaps becoming dirty from the events. I laughed in solitude. I guess my neighbor didn't find the joke funny. However, he assured me that the mess would be cleaned up.

Today, as I scrubbed the bathtub I was reminded of these past events. The red cleaner I sprayed on the bathtub walls washed down towards the drain and tore away soap scum in its path. A clean tub now sits in my bathroom, rinsed anew of vile and filthy things. I am reminded of my life and all the things that have been washed away for me by someone else.
As we become situated in our lives, we often go blind to the disgustingness of our thoughts and actions, and, like a mirror, it takes seeing it in someone else to see it in ourselves. Thankfully, even if my title is slightly melodramatic, this was an opportunity for me to recognize how we are all in need of a cleansing.

Chocolate Milkshakes for Everyone!

The weather is changing here in Grand Teton National Park. We watched it snow out on the mountains for the first time in a month or two yesterday. The temperature has been dropping down to the thirties at night lately. Not only is the weather changing but it is unpredictable. Wednesday I finished work and headed to my room as a storm rolled plowed over the mountains. The air was humid and heavy as I crawled into my basement cave of a room and listened to the rain pattering outside. The rain drops landing on the ground was refreshing to hear after being used to an arid climate. Unfortunately, the sound of rain on mud soon changed to the sound of rain on water. It turned into a heavy downpour and the water started pouring into my storm cell window. I watched as the water rose. I shut my window just as the water reached the bottom of my window. Sadly, that did not help. The water kept rising until it was two inches above my window. I quickly noticed that my window is not sealed or any sort of water resistant. The brown water left the storm cell and creeped onto my windowsill. On the water sat a foamy substance that made the liquid look like a milkshake. Miniature rivers began their vertical descent down the side of my wall onto the heater. I watched in disbelief as the brown rivers stained my wall with their incessant meandering. To be honest, I wasn't even mad; the idea of flooding seemed like a novelty to me. I spent at least 18 years of my life living in a marsh and never had to deal with flooding. Here I am, and after thirty minutes of raining, my room is beginning to flood. Luckily, the rain started to hold off after my room began flooding. I called the front desk and maintenance came to my room. We filled a shop vac with enough water to bathe in. The inside of the shop vac was filled with frosty milkshake water. I should have thrown a party. Chocolate milkshakes for everyone!

The next day I was told that I was getting a new roommate. Not everyone knew my room had flooded so as soon as the Residence Director found out, he decided to relocate my roommate to another room. I don't blame him because my room was a festering forest of mold and mildew, not to mention it smelled like a wet sock. Now, because of the flooding, I am alone and must call the wet sock my home for now. Oh well, I will be going up to Glacier National Park for the next week. Hopefully, the nastiness will have evaporated by the time I return. If not, lapping up some milkshake from the carpet will definitely cheer me up.

A Counter-Cultural Church

The main problem we have as Americans is that we think we have to do everything.

As Christians, God calls us to live uncomfortable lives because it keeps us humble. Yet, in our culture so many Christians are working hard to fill their lives with comfort. The more time they spend working, the more of a financial cushion there is for them to sit on.

My mentor at Calvin College asked me, "when did Christianity get so enmeshed with patriotism; when did the two become synonymous?" He showed me a bulletin with the American flag and eagle etched into cover art as well as an advertisement for an upcoming speech by a NASCAR driver. Churches like this better watch their footing carefully. In fact, churches like this are already starting to slip.
There is a man whom I work with here who is a Christian but refuses to be a member of the institutional church because of things like this. I am different from him in that I believe the church is in constant need of reform. The church needs to be continually changing to be aware of how things like culture are affecting the church and its believers.

I am not saying the church is in a stagnant standstill, but I do think the church in America has to watch how its believers are being affected by culture. Of course, there are obvious things that the church will always openly and explicitly warn about, but what about the things that slowly slip in? We are influential beings. Things that surround us daily tend to infiltrate us, no matter how aware we are. The devil likes to act in subtle ways that we are less aware of. These things that we are unaware of slip in on an undetected level.

When I think of things influencing us on an undetected level I, like my mentor, have a question to ask: When did efficiency become so closely associated with Christianity? Efficiency may not be directly endorsed by the church but so many people accept efficiency from American culture as complimentary to their faith. Just because Jesus tells us not to be lazy, doesn't mean we have to join in worship with our society over the idol of efficiency.

Compared to every other culture in the world, Americans are raised to believe work is the reason to live. Maybe it stems out of the Industrial Revolution or the Great Depression, but Christians in America today are foolishly consenting to the over-inflated importance of work. One area I have seen the truth of this is with vacation and travel. Americans only have an average of two weeks of vacation per year, whereas other countries have several weeks more. Also, many capable Americans never leave this country because of insufficient vacation time or reason (it is true, God blessed this country with a vast array of beautiful landscapes, but for the most part, the culture is universal from coast to coast). There are things we can learn from other cultures; things that will help us see ourselves and where we are going.

I was reading a novel this summer and came across a quote that said: "America doesn't export tourists, it exports culture." In other affluent countries, it is typical for people to travel to other countries. When surrounded by other cultures, you begin to look at things in a new way. If we continue to cut ourselves off from other cultures, we will become ignorant of where we are heading.

In the same way, if we fail to watch how the church is changing and being affected by culture, the church is going to be blind to see the direction it is heading. If the church does not see where it is going, history may attempt to repeat itself and the world will need another Martin Luther.

When we look at our own lives, we notice it is hard to be content with what God has blessed us with when we are so busily involved in our culture. However, Paul hints to us that we can be content with something simple: faith. He says: "I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength."

The main problem we have as Americans is that we think we have to do everything. We think everything requires a certain amount of work that needs to be done. It can be exhausting. Christianity is attractive and yet repulsive because we must let go of some of our control. We must acknowledge that it is God doing the work through us; it is God in control. So, even if we have uncomfortable lives by the measure of our society, holding a faith in Jesus that influences everything we do teaches us to give up our control so we can be content with what He has blessed us with.

Someone once told me that Christianity is counter-cultural. If that is so, maybe God is telling you to disregard that old adage, "Early to bed, early to rise..." for the sake of something simple, like having a conversation with someone; a conversation that God may use to change a life. Trust that He will do the work and trust that all you must do is be a vessel through which He can speak.