Fear of Depth

Well, Dwain unexpectedly showed up at my church tonight, and our enjoyable (but regrettably brief) conversation motivated me to blog tonight. I've been avoiding le blog lately, for reasons I'll explain below.

Cindy and I honeymooned in Grand Cayman. I have a recommendation for a perfect small, quiet beach inn for not a lot of bucks if you're interested. Our second-favorite activity on the trip was snorkeling. We went every day, and most often we drove to a place on the north-central section of the island called Rum Point. The beach and reef wasn't too overpopulated by partying crazies there, and the snorkeling was spectacular.

I'm not an exceptionally good swimmer, but I love snorkeling. And Grand Cayman's snorkeling is some of the best. Stingrays, myriad colorful tropical fish, and a colossal reef known as The Wall. At Rum Point, The Wall is about 100 yards out from the end of the pier. Inside the reef, the water stays shallow, very clear, and you can see everything around you. Out past the reef, The Wall drops off a mile or more straight down. It's an underwater cliff.



I have a desire to do some scuba diving over the Wall at some point, but when I'm honest with myself I have to admit I think I know what would happen. Swimming over that drop-off would be a vertigo-inducing thrill at first, but I would very quickly begin to imagine all the things that could be eyeing me hungrily from those dark depths. I would look around at the reef and its inhabitants, take some pictures while glancing constantly over my shoulders, and retreat to the safety of the shallower waters as soon as dignity would permit.

My fear of depth is what has kept me from this blog for a few weeks as well. When I started these little inanities, I did it just to exercise the writing muscle a bit and write about anything and nothing. But I always had it in the back of my mind that when something really deep and write-up-worthy came my way, the Proser would come into his own and this page would become something important. Such was the naive pomposity of my thinking.

A couple of weeks ago, a teenage boy named Dustin was killed in a car accident in El Dorado Springs. He came to our youth group fairly regularly until his dad started a new church about six months ago. Some of his best friends are still youth group members. He was in our home several times. He beat me handily at a video game called Halo several times.

I spent last week doing my best to help students, parents, and teachers through this impossible time in any way I could. Here I need to pause and say that I'm humbled and grateful for the incredible amounts of grace, peace, and strength that God provided for so many of the people involved.

I came to this blog in the middle of that process and stared at a blank screen for half an hour or so. I had my deep, important issue to discuss and I found I had no desire to explore it - at least not in this partly public setting.

Why couldn't I write about something this profound? The deep things scare me away, it seems.

There was also this: while there were many people hurting deeply in the process and many others who really rose to the challenge and did their best to help the hurting, I was disappointed and a bit jaded by other people. Some who weren't even that close to Dustin seemed to want to use the occasion to turn the whole world into their own personal therapy session. Others were well-meaning, but incredibly and stupidly insensitive to those who were hurting. Others seemed determined to grab a piece of the hype that weirdly surrounds a tragedy. I found I had no desire to become one of those hype-grabbers.

I've always heard that some of the greatest songs, books, art, and poetry was born from times of tragedy. I'm not destined to create any of that, it seems.

So that's it. That's my skirting-the-issue way of dealing with the deep issue I'm afraid to tackle. If you're looking for something more conclusive on this issue of grief and loss, you might check out some pretty good things Wendie, Chris and Dwain had to say about it here and here.

Words

A couple of interesting links for those of you who are of a literary bent:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo

http://www.100words.net

On the 100words site, look around and figure out what's going on, then go to the 2001 entries and look at the September 11th and 12th posts for several authors. Some are quite good.

(Warning: the 100words site doesn't filter naughty words. However, most of the authors do keep it clean.)

Snow

I love snow. Most people I know talk about snow like it’s some kind of infestation or something. Gotta call the exterminator with the big truck and the plow blade. Spread salt over the parking lot to keep it from growing back.

I know it causes a lot of inconvenience – I had to spend forty-five minutes this morning shoveling it out of my driveway before I could move my car. Then I spent another fifteen minutes shoveling later this afternoon when I got my car stuck in our friend Candace’s still-unshoveled driveway (Candace drives a 4X4 and scoffs at snow shovels like Chuck Norris scoffs at “humane” mousetraps). But I love snow.

The accumulation here last night was about fourteen inches. This made Cindy wildly happy; in the two-and-a-half years she’s lived in El Dorado Springs there has been a total of about 3 inches of snow until last night. Now that she’s a teacher I think she likes snow days even more than she did when she was a student. She was exuberant when they cancelled school.

Also, since I’m a youth pastor, a snow day is a great excuse to get out and go sledding or snowball fighting “to build relationships with the students.” And go sledding we did. There’s a great sledding hill off First Street at the southwestern corner of town. It’s long and steep enough to be fun, but not so long that you’re completely exhausted after hauling your sled back uphill. Alex, one of our youth group guys, took charge of building a snow ramp halfway down the hill. He piled snow, packed it down, piled, and packed. After he’d groomed it for half an hour or so, it was a very cool sledding jump. It actually got a little scary. Some of the people there were afraid to try it at first. It took a little bit to work up the nerve. Then it was off down the hill, and no going back. As long as an intrepid sledder leaned back just before hitting the ramp, he would sail about five or six feet off the ground, pondering just for an instant his own mortality before coming back to earth with a “whump,” a spray of white powder, and a whoop of delight. Invariably this resulted in snow down the collar, in the face, up the pant leg, and anywhere else. But back up the hill we all went, grinning and impatient to try it again. And the best kind of sled to use was the round disc variety – no way to steer, no way to keep from spinning around. Even though it was messy and we were all a bit sore later, we’re doing it again tomorrow!








See Aaron's blog for more pics of this snowfall.

Ha ha.... Tonka...

Since about the middle of spring this year I had been intending to do a brief solo backpacking trip, and I just never did it. Cindy and I had a great trip, about which I've written here. But a couple of weeks ago I finally did it. Nothing too spectacular - there's a state park just over an hour away with a seven-mile backpacking trail, and that's where I went. Part of the reason I chose this location was that the name of the place is Ha Ha Tonka State Park. But when I got there, I found that I had underestimated the place.

I arrived just after dark, picked up a trail map and started hiking. After a bit I turned off my flashlight and decided there was enough moonlight to leave it off. It was dreamy and a bit surreal - and I had one of the coolest prayer times I can remember. I hiked about two miles, found a likely spot just under the crest of a ridge and set up my tent there. It rained slightly and dipped below freezing for a bit during the night, so I had a layer of moisture on my tent in the morning that prevented my seeing much outside the little window. As the sun came up, I could hear rifle shots echoing through a hundred draws and valleys around me - a reminder that youth rifle season started that morning in Missouri. An understandably nervous buck approached my tent snorting; I gave a polite "ahem," and I could hear his hoofbeats retreating. I was glad he chose that course of action instead of one similar to the deer-convertible incident in Tommy Boy. I lay there enjoying the sound of the wind for a while, then got up and unzipped the tent flap. I was astonished at the view. I had unknowingly picked one of the best places on the trail to set up my tent. From my ridge top there was a glimpse of the Lake of the Ozarks in one direction, a corduroy series of increasingly blue ridges in another, and the burnt-out ruins of a nineteenth-century castle (built by an early Kansas City business baron) in another. The rest of the trail was caffeine to the soul as well. It was a gift.

The trip was exactly what I needed for several reasons, most of which are none of your business. (And no, Cindy and I aren't having marital difficulties, for those of you whose nature leads you to fear the worst.) God apparently knew I needed that appointment with Him, too. The counseling issues I've been dealing with since are way over my head, but I haven't drowned yet. I guess in that way you could say the Holy Spirit is a bit like a scuba mask... that's probably not a simile destined for mass publication, eh?

I liked it so much I went back the following weekend with my brother-in-law Kevin Carlson. It was great again. And the next day when we were driving through Camdenton, the local Dairy Queen was having a "customer appreciation day," during which everything was 50% off. We... ate a lot of Dairy Queen food. Kevin wondered aloud if heaven would be like a Dairy Queen on customer appreciation day. I think he might be onto something there, except that heaven will add Henry Weinhard's Root Beer and an extensive steak menu.

In other news, one of the other churches in El Do this week got my weekly "Worst Church Sign in Town" award. Taking the honors was a sign that read, "Be thankful for what you have, not what you don't."

Ancillary perambulations

The title of this post is an unabashed ripoff of Dwain's vocabulary-stretching calisthenics. But this blog entry does have something to do with some things I've been doing sorta on the side, and it's all over the map. So the word choice is apt.

First off, Cindy and I went to our first marriage retreat last weekend. (Well, our first SINCE we've been married. We went to one while we were engaged, and that was a bit awkward. We were there to lead the music during the corporate worship times, but between those times when so many of the other couples took their free time to do... whatever, we just wandered around outside and tried to think naive thoughts. They even put us in adjacent hotel rooms for the weekend. Fortunately, I had my band guys calling me all weekend to make sure I was behaving.) The retreat this time around was good through the Friday and Saturday sessions for which we were present, but since we didn't get to stay for the "renewal of vows" ceremony on Sunday (which lots of people said was the best part), we didn't feel like we made any huge breakthroughs or learned any earth-shattering things that will change our marriage forever. But it was good to have a refresher course on all the basics.

Speaking of which, my grandpa is a cool guy. His name is Silas McGehee, and he's been in ministry for about six and a half decades. He was coming down to retirement time, and the Churches of God Holiness asked him to step in as their interim Executive Secretary for World Missions. He's been doing a great job and they've kept him at it now for several years. He's served longer as the interim than some of the full-fledged executive secretaries have. So why did this paragraph begin with "Speaking of which,"? We were, gentle reader, discussing refresher courses. Yes we were. Well, I was anyway... oh, for pete's sake just go back and read it. See? Okay. My grandpa is a walking refresher course on life. One of his biggest strengths in ministry and just in life is his absolutely fearless approach to speaking wisdom into someone's life. He'll just come up to you and say something like, "Jim, that gal you married is a precious treasure. Don't you DARE. EVER. allow anything to start driving a wedge between the two of you. You've got to communicate and you've got to be patient and forgiving and serve her selflessly." And when he disseminates wisdom like that - on topics from marriage to spirituality, from work ethic to woodcutting - he makes. . . inescapable. . . eye contact. I'm not good at eye contact. I blame it on ADD. But I can't look away when Grandpa's kickin the wisdom. And even though most of the time it's stuff I know, it's always a good refresher, and most of the time it comes at exactly the right moment in my life.

Last night my sister Karen, who married a big hairy preacher named Brandon and moved to Mississippi with him, flew to KC. Her best friend Ashlee is getting married this weekend, so she's here all week for the preparations. So my parents, my other sister Lynette and her big hairy husband Joel, and Cindy and I went out to eat to celebrate my mom's birthday. We went to a restaurant called Carrabba's. It's become a national chain over the past few years, and usually I shun national chains in favor of local flavor. But Carrabba's has a meal that is truly fine. Unfortunately, it's a meal I can only afford a couple of times a year, but it's worth the $16 and change plus tip. It's called Sirloin Steak Marsala. It's an Italian way to cook steak, but for those of you whose idea of italian food starts and stops with a can of Spaghetti-O's, you need to know that not all Italian food contains tomato sauce. It's a perfect sirloin steak grilled with Marsala wine sauce. (And for all the teetotalers out there, no, it won't make you drunk. Sheesh.) It is truly the finest steak I've ever had. And I've had steak that cost me $30-50 plus from elite steak houses in Kansas City and Chicago. Every time I order this steak at Carrabba's, with the garlic mashed potatoes that so perfectly accompany the Marsala sauce, I'm a bit nervous that maybe the steak will be a bit tough or the cook won't be quite at the top of his game. But every time I take the first bite of the steak (which I always order medium - don't order a steak cooked more than that because that gives the cook an excuse to use a cut of meat that's been sitting too long and is less juicy and getting tired), it's like an explosion of amazingness. I know that's quite high praise. But believe me, this is the most honorable way I can think of to memorialize the worthy animal who gave its life for your dinner. If there were a heaven for cattle, the beeves who knew that they had died so that a Carrabba's Sirloin Marsala might be bestowed upon a grateful patron of that esteemed establishment would be happy bovine indeed. Oh, and if you're ever lucky enough to be there and order the aforementioned steak, order the lentil and sausage soup if it's available. It's spicy and comforting at the same time.

While we're on food, on Saturday, Chad Pollard and I are organizing the first "God, Guys, and Grub" men's breakfast at church. I love breakfast food. Pancakes, eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy, waffles, french toast, omelettes, oatmeal, cereal, juice and coffee, bacon, all of it. This weekend we're making this:



I'm excited.

By the way, have you noticed that a disproportionately high percentage of my blog entries deal with food in some way? Of course not. You don't read my blog. You aren't even sure why you're reading this sentence, except that despite the fact that the world economy teeters on the brink of frightening recession, you're desperately clutching at something, anything, to do to prevent yourself from actually becoming productive while you sit at your computer. And reading some poor schmo's blog is as legitimate a time waster as any.

Little gasps of joy

Saturday was my birthday. I'm 28 years old. And distant acquaintances, upon learning my age, were once again surprised to find that someone as immature as myself is a day over 16.

Saturday also marked the end of an era of sorts for me. My band, Uncommonsense, played our final show Saturday at an outdoor festival in El Dorado Springs, MO, which is where I live. It went well, and the crowd (especially the ever-loyal local high-school crowd) got into it and made it really fun. It was a good final show. The reason it was our final show is that Victor, our front man, just got a solo record deal - as an R&B/pop singer, no less. He's really good at that kind of thing, but we still make fun of him a bit. The others of us talked it over and decided that we would go our separate ways, instead of trying to get another singer and renaming/restarting.

Chris (my best friend and our bass player) and I realized that since the band was the main reason we ever got together any more, we now have to do something that is very difficult for non-sensitive, non-overly-emotive guys like us: intentionally plan to hang out without a purpose behind it. I pray that works, because I know I need his friendship even though it's a bit embarrassing to even admit that here.

Also on my birthday, I got a ton of chocolate chip cookies, most of which came from my mom, whose cookies were mentioned in a previous post. The food of the gods, that.

Cindy gave me a birthday card that I just loved. It was completely random but somehow sweet. I told Wendie about it because she's completely random too, and it seemed like something she would say. But apparently this card is fairly common and she'd seen it before. The card had a photo of a big ferris wheel on the front, with a cartoon of a little hamster. The text was,

If I had a talking hamster, on his birthday I'd take the little guy to the carnival to see the Big Wheel. Upon seeing it, he'd be speechless, simply letting out little gasps of joy.

May your day be filled with little gasps of joy.

My day wasn't, as it turned out, filled with little gasps of joy, because I was dealing with little crises all through the day at the aforementioned music festival. But Cindy does more than anything else I can think of to fill my life with that sort of joy . Oh, and I did give a little gasp of joy when I walked into my house at day's end and saw all those cookies.

Well, anyway, may your life be filled with little gasps of joy.

Off-roading and stuff

One of my friends is Travis Sayler. He's a former youth pastor who just pulled what we in youth ministry call "the big sellout." That is, he became a senior pastor. But anyway, he shares my tastes in outdoor adventure and quirky humor. So we get along fine. Last week, we were at a pastors' convention, and we cut out one afternoon to go offroading in his X-Terra. My offroading experience previously was restricted to old Toyota Land Cruiser trucks in Brazil and Haiti, and these weren't really offroading in the technical sense; it's just that the roads in question happened to be less passable than your average pond.

So anyway, offroading. We were on a very primitive logging trail in the Missouri hills. There were sharp rocks jutting out trying to spear the tires, and the soil was really loose, crumbly stuff that would send you sliding downhill if you tried to cross a slope at the wrong angle. We got stuck for a bit once, much to the consternation of Travis' wife Daphne. But a good time was had by all. I'm just glad we were in his vehicle and not mine.

Still reading Wild at Heart, and the challenge to my soul is considerable. Incidentally, I think I'm probably "hearing" God more clearly than I ever have in some ways. It's really quite a rush.

Some stuff that scares me a bit

I've been reading John Eldredge's book Wild at Heart. I started reading this book with even more skepticism than is usual in my overly-skeptical, sometimes-cynical life. But I have to confess that I've been won over for the most part.

One of the thoughts this book has germinated is the concept that a man has a need to be a warrior. And God created us that way. (And if I were you, gentle reader, I'd be a bit skeptical right now. But I won't take the time to try to argue away your skepticism - just get the book yourself and you'll figure out that it does make sense.) And the thought that has stuck with me over the past week or so is that, as Eldredge says, "...a warrior has a vision, he has a transcendence to his life; a cause greater than self-preservation... This isn't just about being willing to die for Christ; it's much more daily than that."

I recently finished reading a book called Brave Men by WWII correspondent Ernie Pyle. It was published shortly after the Normandy invasion, before the end of the European war. It chronicles the author's time attached to various military units from the early North African campaign, through the invasions of Sicily and Italy, up to just after the Battle of the Bulge. He talks about many different aspects of the war, but one of the most compelling chapters is about the front-line infantry units. The troops are uniformly haggard, unsmiling, and exhausted. They have lost all idealistic notions about the war. They no longer fight for the glory of truth, justice, and the American Way. They have seen too much death for that. And yet, despite this jaded, seemingly pessimistic outlook; they consistently, continually perform acts of astounding heroism. Why? They're unable to answer, except to say things like, "It just made me mad that all those other fellows were pinned down and getting picked off," or, "It just seemed like it might get us home quicker," or, "I knew any of these boys would have done the same for me," or, "It had to be done, and I was the one in a position to do it." I wonder what those warriors would have said a few years later if asked the same question. I suspect that the more introspective would have said something to the effect that, "Deep down, I knew it was right, it was proper, it was good. I knew that ultimately what we were doing there was worthwhile."

Back to Eldredge for a quote that hit me center mass:

"For years all my daily energy was spent trying to beat the trials in my life and arrange for a little pleasure. My weeks were wasted away either striving or indulging. I was a mercenary. A mercenary fights for pay, for his own benefit; his life is devoted to himself. 'The quality of a true warrior,' says Bly, 'is that he is in service to a purpose greater than himself; that is, to a transcendent cause.' ...That is the secret of the warrior-heart of Jesus."

That scares me a bit because I believe that God is calling me to step out and take some risks. My nature is to be one of the many soldiers who die with a fully loaded rifle, who never fire a shot, who hunker down and freeze, who play it "safe" until the enemy finds them and takes them out. In my ministry I tend to just do enough to keep the church board, the pastor, and the parents happy, while making sure the students under my ministry have a good enough time to keep coming back. What scares me is that I know God is calling me to more than that. So much of the time I feel like a cowardly hobbit, but God wants me to be Aragorn.

I don't have this all figured out yet. It's occupying much of my prayer and thought right now. I'll let you know when I get there.

In other news, my mom's cookies are this amazing:


And I'm having some tonight.

Allergies, quack remedies, and high-calorie religious TV

One of the things for which I'm afraid my family is famous is our food allergy. My dad and I and, to some extent, my sisters, are allergic to tree nuts (not peanuts, though - thank God!), bananas, and the melon family (watermelon, honeydew, canteloupe, etc.). We also have athsma.

I had a chiropractor recently tell me he could fix that. I was a bit skeptical, but excited. To make a long story short, he didn't fix it. And I got pretty sick. (At this point in the story, Aaron and Tim, my former roommates, are laughing uproariously. They used to put nuts in my food on purpose so they could watch me run to the back door and spit. Sadists.) Chiropractors are great for fixing the odd aches and pains, but the wonderful results others have had with "holistic" medicine fixing chronic breathing disorders and allergies have yet to be seen by me.

Cindy and I were listening to the radio while driving across the Mojave Desert in June. There was a Christian station that was airing a talk show. On this show were several "holistic medicine" doctors who were just complete wackos. They said it was a "well-documented fact" that acetimenophen (Tylenol) killed more people than any other commonly taken medicine. They said you shouldn't take Tylenol or aspirin or ibuprofen. They seemed to class these, together with all other drugs made by the pharmaceutical industry, as heinous poisons. And they were trying to equate their "holistic" medicine with Christianity somehow, while associating Tylenol, etc. with the liberal humanistic establishment.

It was a perfect example of how religious media often tries to subvert Christianity to serve its own special pet interests.

And while we're slamming religious media (the easy way out for a cynical person like myself, I admit), read this about how women who watch religious programming are more obese.

Next post will be something more cheerful, with a bit about cookies. I promise.