Too Much Too Late -or- The Conspiracy of All Things at 2:00AM

Maybe I have read too many books. Maybe I have tried to string together too many things and tried too much to make them mean something. When it is quiet and late, and honesty is all there is, I hear the echo of one question; "Why is there something instead of nothing?"

Beauty, intricacy, and feelings are too complicated subjects to be the design of no one, from nowhere, for no reason. A tree, old rocks turned into buildings, some old and cracking and crumbling... they must mean something instead of nothing.

So I sit as honestly as I can and search everything around me trying to find out why; trying to find the truth.

Blood rushing through my veins sounds so loud that I can hear nothing else.

And I can almost hear it. I am paranoid thåt my own bones and cells and the communities of bacteria that I house and give life to know something that I can only say that I believe.

My own lungs burning with air and my own heart beating with persistance are involved in a conspiracy of not giving up what they know.

The pit of my stomach and the lump in my throat sit silently mocking me and my wonder.

Something beats within my chest crying out to be known. Something fills my lungs and burns for to be considered. Some truth resides in the core of my bones that cannot be ignored.

There is something instead of nothing. This all means something. Enjoy this. You are here and you are created. Be. Exist. Live and live well. Try to watch and listen for the subtle whispers that tell the truth of eternity. Do not ignore or try to explain away the complexities. Embrace them. Invite the mystery in for a long talk. Let it work on you and make you wonder.

Because there is something instead of nothing, I have hope.

God whom I believe because I must, help me to listen. Help me to trust what everything inside me cries out. Help me to see the writing of your hand on the environment that surrounds me. Even when it is late at night, let me not ignore you. Let me be awed not by your existence, but by my own. God, be all that is true and that I have hoped for. May this body and this world rest tonight, knowing You. Amen.

A Summary of Life for a Day -or- An Emergency Manual For What You Should Be Doing and What it Should Look Like, respectively.

1) Wake up. Open your eyes and let the blood flow back to the arm deprived of flow and stinging from the weight of your own head. Yawn and let the variety of light from the sun in the morning repaint the walls around you. Here you are. You are in the middle of life. You are alive. And you stink. You need a shower. And your breath tastes bad in your own mouth. You need a toothbrush. And you need to pee. You need a toilet or a tree. Quickly. "Was I holding this all night?"

2) Make your first major moves of the day; dictate your own tone and pace. Be pleased or dissapointed with the things that take shape around you. Spend some time thinking about something that might be considered really irelevant in the scheme of things, because that is more satisfying and interesting than worrying about the "important stuff." Find some time to enjoy the fact that what you are participating in is inconsequential and will not save the world, at least not anytime soon.

3) Then do whatever it is you do. Love it or hate it, try to do it well enough to sleep soundly at night.

4) Allow any functions that might happen out of necessity to happen with little dispute. This might include relationships with other people, eating food and drinking drink, and a variety of bodily functions that should not necessarily be shared publicly.

5) Go somewhere that can feel at least something like a home. Step in the door and breathe deep. Sigh deep sighs and if you must click your tongue and shake your head about some bad hand delt to you, do so vigorously and follow it always with a light laugh, feigned or natural.

6) Strip down naked. Slip into something more comfortable, but not the "something more comfortable" that they talk about in some movies that involves intricate systems of leather or metal rings. Try a "something more comfortable" that requires only basketball shorts and old worn t-shirts.

7) Lay down on something that at least looks comfortable even if it is not. Like a Sunset Continental Collection matress.
Turn out all of the lights and be okay with the temporary loss of any shape or form for the things around you.
Lay your head on your pillow and be okay with who you are and what you've done.

8) Listen to songs until you fall asleep.

9) Wake up and realize that your songs ended long ago, and you should take off the headphones and set aside your ipod in order to make sleep the priority.

10) Fall back to sleep. Sleep hard. Sleep with your mouth open and drool sometmes, but not all the time.

11) Repeat.

*If anything should happen to you outside of this scenario, should anything go exceptionally well for you or particularly bad for you, remind yourself to "stay frosty" and to keep it cool, then refer to step number 10 when the opportunity provides itself.

High Fives, Hand Shakes, and Chest Bumps -or- A Severe Case of the Communitas

"Take our caved-in-on-self energy, and turn it inside out."

This is who I want to be. I am not that yet... but I know that this is the way to be and I have tastes of it here and there. When I am in rhythm with this idea my life is at its best.

How do we turn ourselves inside out? Especially when there is this huge experience within church culture that is about the self? Where songs spew more "me's" and "I's" and "My's" than apple computer products and online friend networks combined. Where the sermons sound more like self-help books and spiritual experiences are most often offered up in single servings.

But then here is Christ-- the supposed center of all of this-- and he says, "Deny yourself."

"Don't worry about your junk so much!" He says. "What good does that do? How much better does that make your life?"

I want my life to be a story about the people around me. Maybe it is my affinity for the concept of "team" or maybe it is my accute awareness that I am not all that I might one day be, that I am broken, and incomplete, and that my story is only half-told. I am tired of me. I'm tired of so much energy pouring into my self. It remains so unsatisfying. If life is somethign that I am committing to doing, I want to do it in community, in relationship, in the context of the give and the take of human connections. I will get hurt. I will give hurt. I will understand and misunderstand. But I will live and laugh and love more than anything, because those things are the "what" that life is all about.

God, turn us inside out. Remind us to gaze outward, away from our own reflection in the mirror. Remind us to share life. May we share all things in community. Help us to carry each other's hurt, and help us to share each other's joys. May we laugh at each other's jokes more, may we listen to each other's stories more, may we look into each other's eyes more, and may we enjoy the rhythms of this life and the lives around us. More late nights of laughter and tables full of food. More glasses raised to toast and more secret hand shakes. More of You wherever You are to be found. Amen.