The Smell of Raindrops on Rooftops, Black Tops, High Tops

There's something about the smell of fresh bread baking in your oven while it's raining outside that makes it extremely satisfying to be alive.

It's raining in Orange County.

Real rain, like the kind that washed your car for you. Like the kind that makes your socks wet when you misjudge the depth of a puddle in front of the house.

My socks are wet.

It's raining.

I remember that I am now an adult, and that I am supposed to be very serious all the time, now that I can drive a car. I am supposed to watch television and movies to enjoy myself, because they provide a form of escape. I think I won't escape from today. I think that today I missed my cue to exit.

Happy Monday, world. You didn't get the best of me this time.

Intervention

I'm really supposed to be working on prepping my Sunday School lesson right now. I didn't remember that I was teaching until yesterday, and I couldn't pick up the materials from Sasha until this morning, and the first opportunity I have to be home is right now. 1:30 AM.

I've been working for the church for as long as I can remember. Not a bad working environment most of the time, but the hours are crazy and the pay is deferred. "your reward in Heaven is great", I believe it says on my contract.

Could I get just a little of it now?

They say that being an American with a college education gives you a lot of privilege these days, but I don't get why we should feel so privileged. We have all these things, but they don't make us happy.

They make us busy.

They make us forget God.

I don't really know what this post is about, and I really need to get back to work, but I also feel like I'm standing in my own way here. The thing that blocks me from Him

Is me.

How do I get out of my own way?

Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, Seminary

I've been waking up early lately.

I know it doesn't sound all that special, but I'm kind of proud of myself for it. In the past two years, I have had two jobs, neither of which has required me to be awake before 10:00 AM. My pattern has been, stay up until 2, wake up at 10. I guess I'm just not a morning person.

That's a weird phrase.

Morning Person.

Like you have to be a particular type of person to participate in a particular section of the day.

It's weird for me, too. To be up at this particular time in the morning, when I have nowhere to be for a good 3-4 hours.

I wonder how long I'll keep doing this. I mean, I hate to cut into my dream time. My dreams are pretty cool.

It's strange to see the world with so many different color schemes. I'm usually only paying attention at night. Nights are blue, and sometimes grey, and sometimes purple. Daytime is sometimes green , and sometimes white, and sometimes red. Mornings are yellow.

Kind of reminds me of Coldplay, even though I'm only a casual listener.

I'm becoming a casual morning person. Mornings are yellow. I am seeing the world in new colors.

I wonder if God exists in colors I have yet to see...

2938 Barrington Ct.

I'm moving again.

It's my birthday again.

I'm flat broke again.

I'm starting to become a person of tradition, I guess. A revolving door of activities from one year to the next. I'm packing up my things once more, with the hope that this time, this place, these people...

... Somehow life changes you, right?

Is all this stuff really mine? How did I keep all of this?

I think my parents were part squirrel. I think they raised me to store my nuts in the holes around all of the trees I've called home. It's a bigger tree this time, but it's still me that lives in it, and nothing will change me so very much. It's a slow progression, and despite what I would like to think, these last 25 years were not wasted on turning me into something that I will never become. I am, undoubtedly, going to be what I was always becoming. Who I was made to be.

I seriously need to have a garage sale.

The worst part of my identity is how elusive it has been. I think that's why I collect so many things that I don't really need. Or, maybe I do need them. Do I? I don't really know.

I've been collecting things over the last 5 years that I've lived on my own. "Just in case." Just in case I need them just in case I don't know anyone in the future that I can borrow one from, should the need arise, just in case I suddenly decide that my entire life is going to be about something that up until now I only did every once in a while. It's like I can't get rid of anything until I know my entire life story.

This year.

I'm going to figure you out, Stephen. I'm going to search for God, and find you in the process. This year marks the end of me floating by on top of a mess of decisions I never made, "just in case." This is the beginning of becoming.

Welcome 2010. I'm ready for you.

A Moment That Time Skipped By

It’s almost over.

11:00 December 25, 2009.

All of the secrets are unwrapped, and displayed on the inside of the house. I am outside, wondering what has happened to time.

It seems like this year went by so fast. I remember how it started. It was my birthday, as it often is. We were packing boxes up and pretending not to be sad about losing each other. I got a call from someone I thought I was in love with. It is now nearly a year from that day.

I’m not.

And Christmas has come and is nearly gone again. Time does not march.

It races.

All my energy has been spent trying to catch up with it, and now I realize that things must change. Here I am outside the house where I grew up. Outside in the cold. I hope, if it is cold enough, time will stop, and let me catch my breath. Catch it, and watch it pass from me like a vapor. In this small stretch of time we have, I hope that I am seen any bit as clearly. That is all we dare hope for. I couldn't ask for anything better than that.

But it’s Christmas, and I think I have had plenty of time to ask for things for myself.

My God, the stars.

I know it makes no difference to think, but I wonder what they looked like on the night He was born. I wonder how black the sky, how dark the clouds. Was there a moon?

Of course, there’s always a moon. Even if you can't see it, it's there.

I wonder what those two eyes, so close, and yet so far removed from humanity looked at that night. Did the sky acknowledge him, and welcome, or was he human in that strange way that we all are, where despite being under a canopy of stars, knit together by love, we can see nothing in them but ourselves?

I don’t know, and I think it’s beautiful that I don’t know.

You’re still out there.

You’re holding needle and yarn to this great canopy, and I can only see myself. What parts of me I can find, that is. Just this time, just this once, before you go, before time passes through me at that speed I’ve become so accustomed to, I want to ask you one thing.

Don’t go. I can almost see you.

I know it’s not really the right day, but happy birthday.

Honey Mustard

I performed in a play at my church this last Sunday. I also helped write it, and had to get up early after getting a somewhat less than ideal 4 hours of sleep thanks to my friend Jina's awesome Christmas party, and a gentleman by the name of Jose Cuervo.

Anyway, this play was about Christians who complain too much. One of the characters complained about spending too much time serving at church.

I resonate with that.

Or, at least, I would, if I had time to.

Guys, I seriously spend Soooo much time at church. People are always asking me, "hey, man, when are you going to start dating?" or "when are you going to finally hammer out your career goals and start working on them?" Or even "didn't you tell me about that book you were writing? When Can I see a draft of that?"

"Oh. Um... now's not a good time. I'll get back to you after Easter."

That is how it has always been. I was talking to a good friend of mine last week who does a lot of the same stuff I do. We have some slight differences in what we do and how we feel about that, but one conclusion was reached by the both of us.

Something has to change.

So, lately I've been thinking a lot about what I can get rid of. It seems the natural thing to do, I just can't seem to do it. What should I get rid of? Programing/brainstorming for new series? That's kind of important. The youth group? I don't even know who would step into that role if I wasn't there. Then there's all these new initiatives with the homeless that we're doing. I don't want to quit those. Even the non-church stuff I do (Open Mic Night, film stuff, writing in this blog) seems so important to me. I just can't choose what to abandon.

I think that the problem is that my loves are to varied and specific. For example:

I LOVE Jr high students.

I LOVE the homeless.

I LOVE teaching little kids how to read.

I LOVE encouraging young artists to pursue their craft, and I love providing a platform for them.

I LOVE Teaching/learning from the Bible.

I LOVE making movies (even/especially if they're dumb)

I LOVE writing and performing my poetry.

I LOVE coming up with crazy, off the wall ideas to get my point across.

I LOVE honey mustard sauce.

That last one really is true.

Love it.

Honey mustard sauce got me thinking just now. Love it. The thing about honey mustard is that it is a combination of two things that don't seem like they go very well together.

Honey

sticky, sweet. Used on toast in combination with peanut butter to make an awesome sandwich.

Mustard

Abrasive, bitter. Used in combination with some stuff I don't understand to make a noxious gas.

Hmm.

But it's delicious.

It occurred to me that maybe simplicity is a lot like honey mustard. Maybe it's not about how do I choose what I'm not going to do, but how do I combine the bitter abrasive with the sticky sweet to make some awesome honey mustard?

Let me try one...

What if I have my Jr high students come out to hang with the homeless in the park, and then we could make a movie about what we learned?

How about...

I move to the inner city and start a creative writing program with some of the inner city kids so that they can learn to channel some of their energy into some type of positive thing? They could perform what they've created somewhere for their parents and other people too.

Or, even better...

Maybe I should move Open mic night to the park, where my homeless friends can come to it, then I could invite my Jr Highers to come and help, we could try to engage with the people that come with words from the Bible, as the students are learning to teach it. Somehow I'll have to fit teaching kids to read in there...

Seriously. It think I've got it. Life isn't about just abrasive or sticky sweet.

Life is Honey Mustard.

Throwing Stones, Skipping Stones, Stepping Stones

I had a revelation for Christmas this year.

Funny, that's what I always wanted.

It started during Easter. I was asked by my church to perform spoken word for Easter. I wrote something. I didn't really like it. To be honest, I'm not sure they really liked it either. I'm not sure anymore if my art belongs in a church. By the time I create it, censor it, and wrap it up in a neat little package that "goes with the theme," I hardly recognize it and everything just becomes a little flat. 

I wonder if Isaiah had to do "churchy" versions of his work...

Probably not.

Anyway, one way that we had decided to spice up my lacking spoken word piece was to add a vocalist. So, Carolyn (one of our vocalists at the time), Cindy (then director of creative arts ministries) and myself made a list of hymns that would be acceptable to sing snippets of in between my readings. One of the ones I liked was "Come, Thou FOunt of Every Blessing." I sent Cindy the lyrics and she sent me back a message.

Cindy: "Yeah, that's fine, just take the second verse out. You know, the one that talks about ebenezer. No one knows what that means."

Just take it out huh? NO one knows what that means? It kind of frustrates me when we have to dumb down literature or good music because the audience's literacy level has slipped below what it was at when the work was created. That's why we keep having to have new translations of the Bible. They don't make "more modern" versions of, say Moby Dick, or War and Peace. 

It seems like everyone wants church to be really easy. 

Insert Commodores reference here.

No, I'm not going to explain that to you. If you don't know, look it up.

Point being, I got all self righteous and huffy, talking about the decline of western civilization, and how we should all know what ebenezer means... blah blah blah, we ended up picking another song.

8 months later, I realize that I still don't know what ebenezer means. I think it has something to do with Christmas 

Insert Charles Dickens reference here (you had better know what that means)

So, I looked it up. Funny that no one in church knows what that means. It's actually a biblical reference.

btw, those of you that use wikipedia to look things up will note that Ebenezer may refer to an abandoned water park in DuPage County, Illinois. 

It doesn't.

You can find the reference to this in 1 Samuel 7:12. Basically, the Israelites had lost the Ark of the Covenant. Again. It seems like the Israelites treated the Ark of the Covenant like I treat my car keys. Everyone was in this big panic to get it back, and they actually did get it back, but there was no room in its normal place in Shiloh, because of all the monuments to other gods. At this time the army of the Philistines rose up against the Israelites. These guys were huge. I always imagine Dwayne Johnson (the Rock) up against Woody Allen (Jewish). Things were not looking good for Woody. Samuel, speaking on behalf of God, mentioned that some help could be had if the people of Israel would just get rid of all that extra stuff they had in storage for those other gods, and start worshiping their God, like the old times. They decided to try it, and the people of Israel had a spring cleaning day. wiped the floors clean of unholy sacrifices, ceased to burn grain to the wrong gods, and hauled some serious ass scooting false idols out of the temple. Right when they did this, God sent a huge thunderstorm, which scared Dwayne and all his friends out of their minds. I must have been one hell of a storm. Basically, Woody and crew went in there and cleaned up really fast, and that was the end of the war.

Simple, right? Ebenezer.

Okay, obviously, there's more.

Afterwards, Samuel erected a stone monument to God, and he called it "ebenezer," which means "stone of help." (If you had looked up the verse I mentioned earlier, you wouldn't have had to read anything up to this point. You see how research helps us?) It is a reminder that God will help us, if we would only ask, and obey what he tells us.

Stone of help! At long last. That is what it means. 

Christmas.

This revelation has changed my interpretation of A Christmas Carol. Scrooge's first name is Ebenezer. He is defined by help. That sounds soooo weird to me. He doesn't begin the story as someone helpful*. There are things that make him stone, like his demeanor, his heart, or the stubborn will he has to be so grouchy. I think maybe he has rocks in his head. But stone of help? Why would Dickens name him that?

I think he was trying to draw our attention to something.

The thing about the original ebenezer, from the book of Samuel, is that, before Samuel assigned that value to it, it really was just a rock. Rocks can be used for everything and anything. You can skip them across a lake. You can throw them (unless you live in a glass house, or are not without sin). You can even trip over them. They become something great when you assign a value to them. Even some of our greatest works of art were once just rocks. If you look at Michaelangelo's David in its original form, I doubt you would be impressed.

I think that's the way I look at Scrooge. It's probably even the way I look at myself.

So, anyway, that's what Dickens did. He assigned a value to Scrooge before anyone else could see it. He was just a regular stone. He could have been a stumbling block, a block head, another heart of stone, but he became a stone of help. That seems really deep to me. 

There are a lot a parallels to the scripture as well. The Israelites were worshiping false gods. Scrooge only cared about his money (the false god of choice in the western world). He (like the Israelites) had to be broken down. Faced with his eminent death, he realized that the things he cared about were absolutely meaningless, so he needed to find something that was meaningful. Scrooge found it in using his money to care for other people. By helping. By becoming a stone of help.

Dickens (like Someone Else I know) could see a person in his story as not who they were, but who they were becoming. And, I think, all the things that do not make sense about all people will one day be made clear. I wait for that day, and this Christmas, I celebrate one of the many ways that act of becoming is being made more clear to me

*If you don't know the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, just watch TV a LOT for the next 2 weeks or so. You'll find it somewhere.