architecture

frank lloyd wright said:
"Architecture is born in the heart"

it makes me think of the buildings he has created.
it makes me think of cities and their constructed skylines.
it makes me think of realized dreams that began on a drawing board as the architect pencils the conceptions of a dream...a dream of so many possibilities.

as he speaks of the relationship of the internal and the external in regard to the creation of physical spaces, i was thinking about how grace creates new lives.

this is something i believe.
this is something i believe more real than concrete is hard.
i don't know how many things i know for sure, but this is one of them.

i believe in new creations because something new has happened in the heart.
i believe in resurrection, i believe in newness, i believe all the promise can come true, i believe in his power and presence, i believe in grace.

on my best days i know this is true.
on my worst days i believe, help my unbelief.
the external can be crafted skillfully from morality, evil, and everything in-between...but grace can work something that is seen that comes from the inside out when it happens right.

God may be the only one who knows that interior space well enough to judge what is constructed or seen by the world. he is familiar with the inmost places, that interior place, the heart of things...it becomes a drawing board where things are creatively conceived and come to life. he knows the inside well, he is creative, and it is a little sobering to admit that he can access the external.

on our best days the architecture of our lives is created by a heart that has experienced his grace...

a city on a hill cannot be hidden.

without words

i keep thinking about the experience of being without words - but so full of emotions.

is it saying something about me?
is it saying something about the moment?
is it someone else saying something to me?
is it the moment saying something to me?
is it something familiar?
is it something unfamiliar?
is it one of these things or maybe a couple?
is it possibly all of these things?

i remember toward the end of the book of job, he covers his mouth after spending time offering up question after question. when God shows up job speaks of 'things too wonderful for me to know.' he will be quiet and listen because he has seen and felt, and it brings humility.

as i held my new grandson max in my arms the words began to disappear, my vocabulary thinned out, my syntax vanished, adjectives felt impotent, participles dangled and everything fell into a space too full to understand. the one word i am hanging on with white-knuckles is the word 'humility.'

i don't know of everything that was happening emotionally as i held him, yet at the same time it seems recognizable. i know this...but in a different way. yet even if i could see the shape of things partially, or run my hand along the contoured edge of something, or make out what is focused and unfocused at the same time...i don't know if it can be said in words - even if it seems somehow familiar but also very different, at the same time.

what is the relationship of humility and paradox?
what is the relationship between grandson and grandpa?

i remember holding my own children - it was the first time i had held a baby. there was a part of me that wanted to reserve that space, those moments...so i actually tried not to hold other babies. that sounds odd but it is true. it is a strange preference or unusual conviction to reserve the actual physical space for my own children that mirrored something in my heart - just for them.

now i remember holding my grandchild, a boy named max.
now i anticipate holding my next grandchild who is arriving in september.

now i am struggling with the words as a imagine giving them a space in my arms and in my life...a space reserved just for them that no one else can have.

it seems to be a glorious, magnanimous, undoing in the heart that falls back into itself with such intensity and force and joy...it is all those things and more, more joy than my heart or my arms can hold.

grandpa

i don't know everything it means yet.
i am now a grandpa.
i have been a lot of things but this is a new thing and it looks like it will keep happening.

i held my new grandson max in my arms and i don't know all the words to say that i felt and thought - it was like the language belonged in a new category and there must be a new grandparents dictionary or encyclopedia to purcahse that would fill me in or describe what was going on...pictures would be nice. it seemed surreal. it was a miracle. i cannot really believe it has happened. my wife says something similiar, its something new - strange and beautiful at the same time. should i have taken my shoes off in that place.

i don't know everything it means yet.
i am now a grandpa.
there is another one, a girl arriving in the fall.

maybe it means some things without a doubt. it seems to mean something about my daughter and her husband for sure. it also surely means something about the miracle of new life. it probably means something about the past. it has to mean something about the future. it definitely means there is a young child whom i am now committed to in a way that will take shape for the rest of my days. i don't know everything it means but right now it means a lot even if there is a lot of white space in this new territory i find myself, with my wife off the map, and with this child in my arms at the hospital i am thinking this is an adventure.

when i held him i tried to hold him near my heart the way i held my children. there was a moment at the hospital when i whispered to him that i loved him the way i have always tried to tell my own children. i tried to imagine his future the way i did my own children. i am thinking there is a difference between being the grandparent and the parent - but some of these things are things that a grandpa needs to do. i will be glad to hold him, care for him, teach him to play basketball, read stories to him, wrestle with him, talk about faith with him, model a life before him - be the best grandpa i can be.

i don't know everything it means...yet.

i asked his parents if i could pray for him before i left to fly home. it was important to me to do this, something i do for others who are not even my family. i asked to God to bless him and when i said that i meant it the same way that Jesus blessed the children - asking intentionally for God's favor upon him. nothing less. i am asking for everything that grace can give, nothing less. i could not hardly talk out loud as the lump grew in my throat...and i hoped with everything i am, i was, or will be that he will be blessed...and that my heart spoke loud enough among the others, that it screamed as i grappled with words that i could not speak. in those prayerful spaces, in those pauses between my measured words and the difficult broken sentences, have no doubt that i demanded and begged the very best for my grandson with a furious hope accompanied by tears.

i have never been a grandpa before but i think these are important grandpa things to do.
i am looking forward to whatever is next max.

a new adventure

so right now i am sitting at my desk - a new desk, a new office, a new place to live, a new job, a new adventure.

it seems like i should be saying something about sidewalks and freeways...

we have arrived in so-cal for me to be the lead pastor of pasadena covenant church. this is our latest assignment and my newest job. we had hoped to be here in this place and do whatever needs to be done to make the kingdom happen. i am not sure of all the reasons this seemed like a good idea to God but when you throw together passions and gifts into a context it seemed it might be a good idea...though i am curious as to what it might end up being.

people say certain things about me and my work over the years and i am wondering what it means coming to this place. i never guarantee 'success' but i do work hard at trying to discern and make things happen. but it always seems like obedience - being wherever he wants me to be, being who i am created to be, doing what i do and whatever needs to be done. how does he want to use me here? what will that look like? how will faithfulness to a calling come to pass? what will i learn about him and about myself in the process? how can i share this with my wife? does our life here look familiar or completely new and different? can this become our home and we stay for awhile? can i be faithful no matter what happens?

over the years there are a number of things i know in my heart that are a part of who i am: a passion for people and reaching as many as possible with the gospel, a passion for integrity and refusing to compromise the uncompromising, a passion for learning and becoming more like him, a passion for creativity and innovation in methodology, a passion for leading and mentoring others, a passion for communicating and telling the truth, and a passion for my family that i will never minimize or be distracted from.

so i am sitting here at my new desk.
we now live in l.a. specifically pasadena...i have always loved southern california since i was a kid...now we are trying to call it home.

it is the smallest church i have led and i am wondering if my leadership is a good fit for what it is now or what it will be. it is the first lead pastor role in the evangelical covenant church denomination and i am wondering what that means after being non-denominational all these years. it is a church that has seen some better days and i am wondering if they really want to be more than they are now. it is a church connected to seminaries and bearing advanced degrees and i am wondering if they can become like children in the kingdom. it is a church that once capitalized on methodology that can remove barriers and i am wondering if it would take those risks again to do whatever to advance the kingdom. it is a church that we felt led to come to and i am wondering what is God up to and how can i be a part of it...

moltmann's theology of hope

i am finally getting to a book, actually the first of three books, by theologian jurgen moltmann...

a professor i enjoyed in seminary had studied with him in europe and there were different things that he mentioned that i found intriguing. years ago i made a promise to myself and i am finally getting around to 'really' reading 'theology of hope' but just for fun - no assignment or papers due...i have done the 'cliff notes' approach in the past but now i am going to dive deep.

in addition to the actual book i have been trying to read some biographical information mostly online and am enjoying how the life of the theologian and his writing are complimentary, contextual realities shaping the interest inside the text...the bio helps discern the angles of the theology - angles that i think i understand in my own experiences:

"In the Scottish labour camp, together with some other astonished prisoners, I was for the first time given a Bible by a well-meaning army chaplain...I read it without much comprehension, until I stumbled on the psalms of lament: '...I was dumb with silence...my lifetime is as nothing in thy sight...for I am a stranger...' They were the words of my own heart and they called my soul to God. Then I came to the story of the passion, and when I read Jesus' death cry, 'My God, why have you forsaken me?' I knew with certainty: this is someone who understands you...the divine brother in distress, who takes the prisoners with him on his way to resurrection. I began to summon up the courage to live again, seized by a great hope...This early fellowship with Jesus, the brother in suffering and the redeemer from guilt, has never left me since."

one writer geiko muller-fahrenholz says that moltmanns theology is born out of the question, "My God, where are you?...and remains a questioning theology, a theology of curiosity."

now indulge me a little or give me some space to go on with the writers summary as it continues...

"It comes into being in the night of an immediate and cruel proximity to death, and therefore in the end it is never about learned intellectual games but about questions of life and death. It does not arise out of the peaceful and cheerful awareness of an unshakeable certainty in God but out of the abysmal experience of the remoteness of God. Therefore it does not have any apologetic interest either, and does not assert that it should or could develop something like a closed 'system' of learning about God. No 'Dogmatics' has come from Moltmann's pen, no 'Summa' of theology."

if you are still reading - one last thing he said of himself (that explains his theological work that has been somewhat experimental, incomplete, existential, and in its contribution has been both significant and fragmentary):

"For me, from the start theology has been an adventure with an uncertain outcome, a voyage of discovery into an inviting mystery. My theological virtue has not been humility, but only curiosity and imagination for the kingdom of God."

i really like that part about curiosity and imagination for the kingdom...

thank you dr. james strauss for the introduction years ago, your teaching was like a large jumbo jet landing in my backyard and now i am finally reading the work of one of your mentors.

so back to something i mentioned earlier - that relationship between a biography and a theology is something i find fascinating and as i reflect on my own life it is illuminating...especially as i think about my sermons and the things that i get most passionate about...

ann lamott defines grace

a. lamott is always good on grace.

she defines grace this way: "Grace means you're in a different universe from where you had been stuck, when you had absolutely no way to get there on your own."

the older i get the more grace means to me. i liken it to seeing more clearly amid distractions. there are plenty of distractions inside me and outside me that hide the truth. the truth about grace needs to be experienced. a definition needs to become a description. a dogma needs to be translated into biography. theology must become experience or it is just a rumor.

there may be too many rumors and not enough stories being written.

there may be too many things we don't really know that someone else seems to know.

are we living too vicariously?

we are unstuck by the gospel.

we have a new universe to inhabit.

we are given a gift.

? a sign

noah saw a rainbow.

moses encountered a burning bush.

abraham packed his bags after a promise.

hannah discovered peace.

gideon keeps bargaining with fleece.

mary treasured the gift in her heart.

paul was knocked off his horse, blinded, with dust in his mouth.

and i saw tom waits...

i don't know if it was a 'sign' but it had been a point of laughter between my son and i. sometimes when we would talk about seeing the local rock icon, in the back of my head i quipped and laughed it would be a 'sign.' i was in the mood for one. who wouldn't like a sign from heaven when wrestling with a decision?

much to my chagrin during the christmas holidays we were out doing some gift buying and i looked up and within a few feet - there he was. our eyes met. as he passed i looked back at my son and my wife, and my son saw him also. he looked at me in disbelief. it had happened. we saw together at practically the same time something completely unexpected, even if we had laughed about it several times. we looped around, now following my wife, to see him again.

what did it mean?

was it a sign?

i have been preoccupied of late with discernment, and even more with direction. we have been wanting to know what to do next in our lives. i have gazed at rainbows, searched for bushes on fire, reread promises, coveted peace, tried some fleece, wondered what to carry in my heart, and have been hoping a message could come that would knock me off my horse. i am captivated by transcendence and immanence at the same time. a 'sign' would be nice.

can i be one of those people?

why can't i get a 'sign' that would inspire?

so we spend almost a year laughing and talking about seeing waits and finding him in sonoma county - the way the character waldo is found in the books i used to sit down with my kids. where's waldo? there he is. where's tom? there he is. and when i saw him i tried so hard to remain calm and still as if it were common to practically run into or over a legend while out shopping for the holidays.

did it mean anything?

do i want it to mean something?

i cannot believe it...i saw an icon.