Veteran's Day

“All the believers kept meeting together, and they shared everything with each other. From time to time, they sold their property and other possessions and distributed the money to anyone who needed it. The believers had a single purpose and went to the temple every day. They were joyful and humble as they ate at each other's homes and shared their food.” Acts 2:44-47a (GW)

I don’t often attend Veteran Day ceremonies. I am not one of the veterans who have seen combat nor am I one of the many who stay in the services until they retired. My older brother, Larry, did retire from the military and is serving as a missionary in Germany with the Navigators. My younger brother saw combat and just reenlisted again.

It is days like today that I wish I had spent my time in and retired from it. It is days like today where I realize what is the very essence of community and who does it better than anyone else. The community of veterans; those who served in combat, those who trained for it, those who were stationed in ‘hot’ spots and those who spent their time stateside developing the tools of war….this community takes all who wear the uniform and honors them as brothers and sisters. Today is not just about the fallen, because in this community the fallen are never far from the thoughts of those still alive. Today is about the living, the combat-seasoned and the trained, coming together to have a nation that they served with their honor and with their sacrifices serve homage to them, patriots who tend the tree of freedom.

Today at Concordia University, I was honored to stand next to a WWII veteran, a Vietnam veteran, a Persian Gulf (combat) veteran, a Afghanistan veteran and a Iraq veteran. Most of them from the Navy, but a few Marines to round out the group. We talked about our experiences, whether combat or not, and the camaraderie that existed between us flowed not because of our openness but our understanding of the ‘experience of the uniform’ that we shared….not because we’ve known each other before but because we honor the fellowship of the American military member.

It doesn’t take a gathering like the beautiful ceremony offered by Concordia today for Veterans to nod and shake hands, nor does it take a day to be honored by those who are fellow citizens. All it takes is the knowledge of the membership that is conferred upon each and every military member the moment they take the pledge to serve and step from the world of the civilian into the world of the military. Once crossed, you don’t ever go back.

Oh, you grouse and complain…..you bicker and grunt under the load of the environment of being in the military…you struggle to live in two worlds, one shrouded by the protection gained from the other….you worry in the combat zones of your loved ones at home even as they worry about you in the combat zone…..you aren’t asked to sacrifice, because it was asked of you when you pledged to defend the Constitution, to go where your country sends you and to obey the lawful orders of those in leadership over you……it is expected that you will honor your pledge, and you do.

In the end of it, some serve quietly and silently reabsorb back into the world that continues on even as a new class of military men and women take the pledge to serve…..some come back, broken and bruised, having experienced the worse of combat. No matter where or how, the military member comes home changed, for better or worse and they will never be the same.

Today is the day where the citizens of this nation come together and recognize those who have ever donned the uniform of the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force or Coast Guard…. Active duty or Guard or Reserve. Today the fellowship of the Uniform is recognized under the flag of freedom by those who live under its shadow. Today, today….this nation gives back a little bit of what it took for the service rendered under the green, the blue, the white and the grey.

Today, my fellow Americans, is VETERAN’S DAY!

Uncomfortable mutterings...

“I will remember these things as I pour out my soul: how I used to walk with the crowd and lead it in a procession to God's house. “ Psalm 42:4a (GW)

I went to my blog today to add a blog of the Senior Pastor of Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor, which I’ve interacted with on an occasion of serving the homeless shortly after I had returned from the Bowery Mission in New York with my-then girlfriend and ministry partner, Shannon, who led me to it. It was shortly before I moved to A2 myself with the family and so the city was totally new….but the ministry to the homeless, ingrained by the impact of the Bowery, wasn’t. Things have changed since those days of March.

In many aspects of my life, my faith and my direction.

When I arrived at my blog, there was a ‘unmoderated’ comment by a young woman from Virginia whom came across my blog posting of the Bowery Street Mission in Lower Manhattan, New York. That, in and of itself, is not new…. Somehow in the course of investigating various topics and interests there have been those who have been directed to a comment I’ve made or a blog post I’ve written. I’m not saying that to boast, it’s just the nature of the research engines to bring odd things to the surface as you search….or not, dependent on your engine and your ability/desire to dig. She had experienced the Bowery too, an unique connection that defies age, culture, and location. Once a Bowery-changed person, always a Bowery-changed person.

She left a nice comment and I went to her blog. After reading it, I posted it to my list of blogs and sites (renamed from Sites I visit). I recommend, even if I don’t always agree with what’s posted, these blogs….. we are a vast, unique and wide body within Christ’s family and I believe none of us have everything fully right except for the foundational truths that binds us together as brethren under the blood.

But that’s not the energy that runs through my fingers to write about today…… Not even the Bowery Mission, which is forefront on my mind each day as I sit down at this desk because of the apron displayed with the signatures of the men I met my first time there that my eyes fall upon as I ponder the Word, think about God, and feel for the direction He wants me to take in my humble offering called posts. Anthony Johnson……Marvin Campbell….Cuba Edy….some names written big, some small…..like the Constitution of the United States signature section at the end. A connection to a world that I skirt the edges of each and every day as the unemployment continues.

“I may have glanced in a mirror at the man who walked between those two red doors if I had but known that I would never see him again. Then again, I may have not.”

I think now that I wished I had, glanced in a mirror at the man who walked in the doors of the Bowery so that I could compare him to the one who walked out. I don’t know if I would’ve still willingly, though with some reluctance, walked in those doors because the course of my life was inalienably changed that week and even as I walked away from it with new feelings in regards to those I loved, those I was responsible for and those whom I would’ve counted strangers in the weeks before……I didn’t know the path I would be traveling and the havoc it would play upon my emotions, my feelings and my faith.

I walked in the doors of the Bowery uncomfortable because of the painful connection it had, even in its total newness to me, to my life that lay in devastation behind me……. I walked away from the Bowery uncomfortable in the perceived direction and emotions that lay exposed in my life….. and as I sit here in Ann Arbor, I realize in this moment as I think again and again of the past year that I have been unemployed, that I have never been comfortable since.

And I fought against it like a horse against the reins or a child against the rules. Which made me more uncomfortable, which made me more uncertain and which made me sit at the campfire in the darkness of this journey far too long because I didn’t want to answer the questions posed by the stirring of my uncomfortableness or listen to the only Truth that such questioning could bring. God has ebbed and flowed in this place, much like a faithful friend who coaxes you from the safe and the comfortable by walking away and comes back when such efforts don’t seem to move you. My beliefs have cried out for untapped boundaries even as my faith quails in failure to support such reaching….. I have been driven both by my human fear of the unknown impossibilities of God and my spiritual fear of God, the push and pull of the tide of my beliefs bringing me to the point of drowning in the immensity of God because the lifesaver of my faith fails to support the dead weight of my body.

I don’t believe I was meant to be single, but singleness is the only seemingly constant in my life……….

I believe I was meant to preach, but the inadequacies and impossibilities of such an endeavor seem to be insurmountable…..

God has called me to impossible heights of His glory and grace even as I realize that I am not worthy (and never will be) of such elevation……..

I want to be comfortable in the environs and community of the Family of God; to be respected, to be loved, to be a powerful force of truth and change even as I am changed by association. I want to be everything that I am supposed to be within His purposes and His kingdom………..the talents lay in my hands, the gift of my Master as He departs for home to prepare for His return…….

To invest those talents means to live on the edge constantly and forever uncomfortable even in comfort, joyful even in sorrow and loving even in the painfulness of community.

I remember those times when the world would wander away and God was real and present with me at the campfire……those times when the gifts given were used for Him in the immense uncomfortableness of doing what He has called and purposed me to do……..

In the duality of living for the King…….uncomfortable in the comfortableness of His embrace, working alongside Him as He prepares the world for His coming.

Bailing.....

“I will look to the LORD. I will wait for God to save me. I will wait for my God to listen to me.” Micah 7:7 [GW]

It grows closer and closer; not just for me, but for the wealth of America’s workforce that has been idled by the economic downturn that started years ago (whether you believe it was during the Bush era or started earlier with the Democratic demand of mortgage funding of high-risk is immaterial.) My year of UIA funds cease on the 13^th of November and the future is as uncertain as the political landscape anymore. Many, frustrated with the big government and the politicians who promised ‘change we could live with’ failed in their attempt to convince us that their answers didn’t work. Now, many ‘non-traditional’ political candidates have gained entry into the political machine that has ground the future of this country into depravity. Whether they can redeem the system or become it’s victims remains to be seen but the American people for the first time in years, voted their displeasure at the typical political campaign of self-protected and demanded representation from the elected. There are those who, so disappointed with the process that they claimed ‘its broken’ and did not vote, that led to the victories of those who do believe and brought themselves to the booths.

The pundits say that the vote was made in anger; I would say it was made part in declaration and part in fear. Fear that those who are hanging in the job market and struggling to meet the increased demands in their positions because they fear unemployment will come knocking on their cubicle. Fear to become like those like me, struggling day to day to be a provider to their family and the frustrations of slowly sinking despite the bailing.

We demand from our politicians and our American way of life the assurance of being ‘entitled’ to the right to provide for our families in the manner we want to. We should be able to go to a job that makes the money that is necessary to provide the funds that pay for the utilities, the mortgage and the car with enough left over for the ‘fun’ things, the ‘development’ things for our kids and the ‘professional improvement’ for the job so that we can increase our material wealth to be on the ‘next tier’ of the tax bracket.

And we demand that from God also.

When such things aren’t provided, we reject that which hasn’t brought our ‘salvation’ from such depths of despair and seek to embrace the promise that is dangled by those who want [whether honestly or not] to give it back to us. We leave God on the sidelines when we do that, because sometimes the requirements of God don’t fit in with the rest of the package that comes with the ‘change.’

I know that I used to; clawing through the electronic ‘want ads’ and running around filling paper after paper for the employer of the moment. Discarding the dream of Seminary and getting that hard to obtain waiver for the pursuit of a Master of Divinity degree and/or pursuing some degree program at a college to get those ‘high-end’ jobs. Applying, as I have for the last six months, to anything and everything that comes close to what I know I can do, think I’ll be able to learn quickly to do, and some that I don’t even fully understand how to do. Bailing even as the water comes up to my neck, bailing because that is all I can do.

Except my mouth moves in rhythmic waves; speech they call it in the higher realms of the academic world. Prayer, sometimes desperate….sometimes joyful…..sometimes angry…….sometimes broken; prayer bubbling from my lips sometimes without conscious thought, communication to a God I believe in and have found my faith desperate inadequate to trust in even as the ocean laps against my chin and my shoulders ache from the constant bailing.

There is no illusion sustainable here.

The reality of the cold wetness of the water and the shivering of my body from the absent of warmth……the visual sight of the deck beneath the waves and the mast slack from the lack of air to move the sails. Nothing here speaks of a future, nothing here speaks of continuing. My mind locks into the rhythm of ‘stop, it’s useless to continue’ that wars with my heart’s declaration that God is here, He is on the horizon and He is even in the waves and I cannot give up because He’s promised me so much more of a future than this, promised me things to do to bring Him glory and has a plan for me which He has the authority and the power to deliver.

So even as the waves threaten to overwhelm me and I sputter with the occasional swallowed water, my prayers continue and my hope rest not in the overcoming of this disaster but in the ability of the Lord my God to do what He will even in this place…….whether I sink or swim, rise from the depths with the ship afloat with full sails or lie on the bottom of the ocean deep……even then, it is for the glory and honor of my God.

There’s a song in my heart awaiting to burst forth either way, as I hear the promises of my Lord and Savior and await His guidance.

Until then, I’ll continue to bail……

And bail well.

The year

‎"As I saw the ship staggering and plunging among these roaring caverns, it seemed miraculous that she regained her balance, or preserved her buoyancy. Her yards would dip into the water; her bow was almost buried beneath the waves. Sometimes an impending surge appeared ready to overwhelm her, and nothing but a dexterous movement of the helm preserved her from the shock." Washington Irving, The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon.

I’ve tried for the last week or so to write this blog. For some reason, I get going on it and then look at what I’ve written and hit the delete button. I’ve done that often lately as I’ve tried to write for the blog…..if you are reading this and notice such things, my numbers have truly dropped off. It’s funny, with being unemployed for the last year, as of Nov 13^th, you would think that I’d have all the time in the world to write and some people would say that’s all I’ve probably done instead of being hard-core job searching and willing to take anything to be employed again. As with salvation, the proof is in the fruit and there has been no fruit from the writing tree in months.

It has been quite a year.

I thought I had found a ministry partner and found out that ‘love’ is fleeting unless it is really true. I have watched two communities of believers react in different ways to the situation my family has struggled through in the last year since the call on the phone telling me that my job was no longer there. I have had friends struggle with the situation; not wanting to ‘enable’ me to be lazy but also not wanting to be cruel in their accountability of supporting me in the job search. I have experienced sorrow and joy, peace and discontentment and disillusionment with insight. And, it has (as in all journeys) brought me here. And, as in all things human and fragile, here is not where or what I thought I would be.

I love the sea. I think that it was part of my genetic makeup that went wildly out of control. My grandfather was a Navy vet of WWII. He had entered the service as an enlisted man and they commissioned him as soon as they discovered he was a Detroit Diesel Engineer. They put him in charge of a PT training squadron out of Florida. My grandmother said she would look out to the sea and see the squadron on maneuvers, knowing as soon as they turned into the canal that she could start dinner because he’d be home by the time she was finished with it. My father, a storekeeper, was in during the Korean war and served as a driver for the Director of Navy Intelligence in Japan. I served in the Navy myself as a Damage Controlman.

It has been a difficult year.

My image of myself; that core-ness of who I am took a devastating blow that November day last year. A shot amidships right at the magazine storage. And, despite my best attempts in the days that followed I slowly sank lower into the waves and took on water. No longer was I heading toward a destination but I was in a fight for my very survival. Far from land, far from assistance and well into the locker of Davey Jones……I truly gave up for a while. Oh, I floated up the dream of Seminary and finding the wealth of support that would get me and my family through the three years or four (max) that it would take to get my Masters of Divinity degree that would ‘legitimize’ my calling in the faces of those in charge of the human side of church. Or going back to school to get that degree that was the reason for my demise.

But in a world where my future was traded in the past for the moment of survival that I gained, such were only mere momentary measures that failed almost as soon as they were implemented. And, as each attempt was stripped away, the hardened ‘image’ of a visceral man who has survived for so long….even despite himself, was shaken and wiped away layer by layer. Soon, the young boy who had set sail so long ago in the passage of time was the only thing left.

Standing waist deep on the deck of the ship in the sea.

Love….a endeavor I was ill-equipped to undertake and a temptation that I thought was conquered that merely was forgotten in the dailiness of being upon the sea of this world. Community, that strange island passed on the port bow full of the rumors and tales of a strange people so outrageous that it had to be impossible. Future?, a mere moment-to-moment thing devoid of any grace or grandeur. Merely a teasing distraction to the water filling the cracks and crevasses of the hull, a temporary filling of the sails fallen to the deck and a fractional movement forward.

A boy standing on the water-filled deck facing the impossibility of overcoming the storm, alone, knowing that all that he thought was real was simply an illusion of his sinful and depraved mind.

Often, when we are faced with such complete and utter destruction, we beg whatever we have to and promise whatever we have to and grab whatever hand we see presented to get ourselves out of the situation at least for a moment so that we can breathe and ponder its immensity so that we can face what we have to do to never come to that place again. I know, because I have been here before and I have done the same thing.

Add to that the picture of the rest of the crew, incapable of doing the work themselves and relying on you to see them through……picking up on your fear and your isolation that causes them to pull away from you and cling to those who can give them peace in the troubling winds…… that moment comes when the house of cards that is you falls apart and scatters to the floor, trampled on in the urgency of the situation.

A boy standing on the water-filled deck up to his neck.

Not exactly the future I had envisioned staring out of the second story attic of the world of my childhood as the sounds of Johnny Horton extolling the tale of the Bismarck. Not exactly the man that I envisioned myself becoming in the glories and battles of the open sea.

There was no sudden ‘salvation’ on the horizon this year, no sudden insight that enabled me to bring about victory from defeat or a miracle born of ingenuity that would make you shake your head in the amazing simplicity of it. No, merely a little boy frightened beyond his days slapping at the waves that threat to overwhelm him and a deep-soul burden cry of disillusionment and fear shouted to the unseeing sky.

And in that moment of my despair, where I have realized that I cannot do what needs to be done by myself and the pride that once made my backbone so ramrod straight was imaginary and useless; then…….

We moved out of my family’s house that was stressing everyone and moved into a place of our own…….friends providing the funds to buy and renovate it.

We are settling into school and healing from the wounds we have caused each other in the dark of the storm………

And my faith, once that jewel that adorned my crown, has been discarded in the light of its uselessness……………………..

Even in the reality of being guided by the hand on the helm of my life, that God/Man that commands the seas to calm or rage, hasn’t shaken me as much as losing my faith.

It brings me back to the moment in time when I was strapped into a harness with a thin, two inch piece of rope wrapped around the metal mast of the ship and told to climb the 40 foot thin pole that was jokingly called a main mast to replace the top running light on the port side arm. With the sea tossing it in a two to three inch arc through the air. It took me a half an hour to do what the deck hands, the Bosun Mates, would’ve done in ten minutes.

Fear caused my limbs to freeze, the nearness of danger my heart to race and the impossible heights that I was called to go making me wish to be someplace else……..

That moment, each and every step I took or movement I made, where I overcame the fear, danger and uncomfortableness to reach the next rung, the next jump of the rope or to reach over dependent only upon the support I had judged inadequate……..that moment I am reliving today.

That moment in-between the flight of dreams and the reality of gravity……and the realization that you’ve reached it.

God is passing by and my eyes fear to look up, even if it is only to see His back…………

God has given me a bucket and the sheer foolishness of bailing the entirety of the ocean with a five quart bucket makes me want to cry……….

But I bail because I have nothing left but the reality of who God is and the promise that He has made to me and you………even in the neck-deep water that has washed over our gunwales………..

Whether the ship slips beneath the cold waves and disappears from the air of this world……..or some miraculous salvation comes over the horizon……..

I bail….

Because from the helm comes the chant of promise, the declaration of love and the eternal future……..

“I know the plans I have for you…..plans to prosper you and not to harm you………”

“Plans to give you a future and a hope….”

So, even as I bail the depth of my depravity and sinful temptations that have sunk me so low into the world……..

Even as I struggle to fellowship with the community of God and have those who are so inclined to walk alongside the truth in my life…..

My belief in God grows stronger even as my faith weakens…..and my heart sings……

‎"Make music to praise the LORD, you faithful people who belong to him. Remember his holiness by giving thanks. His anger lasts only a moment. His favor lasts a lifetime. Weeping may last for the night, but there is a song of joy in the morning." Psalm 30:4-5 GW