The Piano: And the Painful Goodness of Letting Go….

I didn’t know on Saturday night that they’d be the last notes I’d play on it.  I sat down a few minutes before a woman came in response to our Craig’s list ad and touched the keys with a tune I made up on the fly.  It’s what I do best with pianos.  Those pesky notes from Bach or Mozart have always felt too confining for me.  So I simply sit and play, letting the music well up from my soul and pour out over the keys.  I’ve done that multiple hundreds of times on this piano.  It’s been a friend.  Like a good counselor, my piano’s drawn the depths of joy and sorry out from my soul and given them a voice.

Donna came in while I was playing, a bit emotional, because this kind of playing is part of us.  I wooed this woman with a piano about 35 years ago.  “Here – I wrote this just for you” I said, lying, as I played whatever came forth while she, starry eyed soaked it in.  She’s been my muse ever since.

“This piano was our first purchase” Donna told the meticulously dressed Georgian woman (from the other Georgia, where the accent is Russian) as she ran her fingers over the keys, playing the instrument better than I ever did, ever could.

“Pianos have energy” she said, before telling us about a lovely piano that she’d never allow in her home “even if it were given to me for free” as she went on to explain the dark things that had happened in that piano’s household, with that piano’s people.  “The energy the instrument picks up in a home never goes away” she said, “which is why I select my pianos very carefully.  You’ve brought positive energy to this piano” she said confidently, and we agreed, telling her that young adults from all over the world had often sung songs around that piano late into the night when we lived in the mountains.

That, of course, was just the tip of the iceberg.  That piano brought lots of people together:  my sister (with the voice of an angel) and me; a young girl who lived with us for a summer with whom I collaborated on a music project.  Later, in Seattle, my children would pick up their instruments (viola, violin, drums, sometimes guitar) and we’d riff on a Sunday afternoon together, or a some nondescript weeknight when one of my children just needed to be with me, and music worked better than words.  Like a good climbing rope, the piano kept us connected at times.

“I’ll let you know early next week” she says, as she walks out the door.  I sort of forgot about it because of, you know, Sunday and preaching and all that stuff.  Then there was a fun family gathering Monday night, and some profound nostalgia because of Giants Baseball (which never gets out of your blood), after which I headed to the mountains for three days of intensive study.  I’ve been in administrative mode for much of the summer, and this 3 day window was just what I needed to restore through the disciplines of study and solitude.

Tuesday – Late Afternoon.  I’m finished with a productive day of study when the phone rings and my wife haltingly says “I’ve sold the piano – and they’ll be picking it up tomorrow”.  Grief hits me like a punch in the stomach as I realize that I’ll never play it again.  When we’re finished talking I head out the door into the late afternoon light.  I need to breathe, to know a bit of good grief as I let this sink in.

I drive from our mountain place to a nearby trial.  Vibrant colors on the trees, fresh snow on the mountains, as muted light penetrates the opaque clouds – my heart nearly breaks for the beauty of it. I’m thinking about the piano and more, as I leave the car for my short mile walk around the pond. After a moment of initial clarity, the clouds lower, and macro is eclipsed by micro.  It’s as if all I can see are leaves, the colors, and what I named “the vibrancy of loss”.  

“Listen to the leaves” a voice says to my heart – “they’ve something to say – just for you.” 

I head down the path and think about the early days of our marriage, and our investment in that beautiful instrument.  I was going to be a church musician, and might have been except that I picked up a book on our honeymoon that lit my heart on fire with a passion to know God as a good friend, maybe even a lover of sorts.  Soon my love of music was eclipsed by my love of study.  Still, the composer in me never died, and when I became a pastor, I played piano and led worship a lot.  After all, I led a church of about 40, and after that a house church.  Piano players are hard to come by, and so I was always, at the very least, waiting in the wings as the constant understudy.  I loved it.

If truth is told though, my days of playing are mostly gone.  I still sit to play, even now, on very hard or very good days.  But mostly the piano had become furniture, and when the Georgian woman said with her precisely beautiful Russian accent, “I will use this piano to teach many children how to love music and play well – with heart and feeling”, I knew the time had come to say goodbye.  After all, that’s what I’m doing in all my other lives.

I’m letting go of my children, as one goes off to Europe, another gets married, and another blossoms into independence so beautifully that I cry when I think about her.  I’m shedding my grip on sole leadership as the big cheese teacher in the church lead – not because I’m tired, but out of a strong conviction that passing the torch is the way life is supposed to work.  It’s good letting go but, my God – it’s painful at the same time.  I know this in the rest of life and now, it seems, my piano has become the embodiment of this season of appropriate, beautiful, and challenging change.

These are the things I’m thinking when the leaves begin to speak.  And here’s what the leaves say:

Letting go isn’t just good – it’s inevitable.  Don’t fight it.  I look at a sapling who’s leaves have all surrendered, except four stubborn ones.  They’ll hang on, it appears, until an arctic wind utterly weakens them and forces their surrender.  It’s like they’re wishing it was March, when the children were ten and innocent, or when I was ten and sitting with my dad at a Giant’s baseball game.  Ah… spring.  Innocence.  Childhood.  The vibrancy of youth.  You can let it go, or fight it with liposuction, a new trophy wife, a paranoid grip on power, a perpetual look in the rearview mirror; or you can let your life ripen properly and walk into the glory of autumn, letting old identities, or possessions drop appropriately away.  Choose to hang on though, and you’ll let go anyway – it’s just that the letting go will be uglier and more painful than had you surrendered your death grip on that which God wants to so gently remove from you.  I look at these leaves and pray that I’ll say yes to every letting go God asks of me.

There’s a matchless beauty in the autumn of life.  My life feels more like August than October, but who knows?  What I do know is that for the leaves I love, in this month I love, the final days are glorious.  God doesn’t marginalize old and tired leaves – setting them away somewhere out of sight so that all the beautiful people can enjoy the prominence of youth and power, even though both are as transient as a bus and less reliable.  Why not elevate the beauty of wisdom which, like the leaves of autumn, inspire, elevate, and point to their creator?  I look at these leaves and pray that my last days will be the best, the wisest, the most beautiful of all – that I’ll still be a blessing to the very end.

You’re deciduous, not conifer.  I look at the two trees, in obvious contrast, and think about how we long to be conifers:  perpetually green – always strong, always giving, always…always.  I look beyond the fir tree though and see the other, ripened, beautiful colors, knowing full well it’s about to shed some of it’s life.  “That’s you” says the tree, and pray a prayer of thanks – grateful that I don’t always need to be on, or strong, or green – grateful for Sabbath, and shedding, and rest.

Your letting go will be a blessing.  I look at the ground, at the leaves that have already fallen.  I know that their decay will enrich the soil, which will enrich the new young trees, which will enrich the air, and the fowl, and the watershed, and the whole blessed earth.  I pick up a leaf and say to it, “because you let go – everything’s enriched.”  In a flash, I see children playing piano, some of whom will themselves grow up to bless countless others (for this Georgian lady is a master teacher).

I see new pastors teaching in the church I lead, learning to walk with God, be a blessing in this world, and multiply the presence of hope in our world.  I see my children taking their place at the table as adults, each blessing the world in tangible ways.  “Yes” I say to myself, “it’s good let go” – of old roles, of possessions, of power, of wealth.  Don’t let go too soon.  But in season, when the leaves turn glorious colors, know that God is laying the foundation for a new chapter – and this too will be glorious.  I pray, grateful that in the wisdom of God, our losses and letting go become the soil of blessing for others.

Before it’s dark, I’m back at the chalet with a long list of things to do.  There are lots of green leaves still on the tree that is my life:  pastor/ teacher/ leader/ dad/ husband/ mentor/skier/ hiker/climber.  But it’s been a priceless walk around the lake because I’m less afraid of the changing colors.  Having known a few of them already on the tree that is my life, I’ve been reminded today that in the mercy of God, even losses and times of letting go become blessings.

For a fuller set of pictures from the pond walk, click here.

 

 

Sexual Ethics – time for healthy conversations

We Christians, especially in America, are terrible at having healthy conversations about sexuality and sexual ethics.  The landscape of these conversations are ripe with charges, counter-charges, fear, and sweeping judgements, so much so that when I write about sexuality, I need to read all the comments carefully so as to remove the hateful words that inevitably show up, offered in the name of “staying true to the faith” or “holiness” or some other such nonsense, in much the same way that the Pharisees had their rocks in hand, ready to kill, but only after they’d used the woman caught in adultery to catch Jesus in a theological conundrum so that they could condemn him too.  He’d have none of it, though, for either the woman or himself.  That’s because the gospel is, after all, good news – for the woman caught in adultery, and for literally every other person on the planet, if we’ll but let it be what it actually is.

No other arena of Christian ethics kills the hope of the gospel more than the slaughtering we’ve done of sexual ethics.  We invoke church discipline in this arena inconsistently and harshly, in ways that elevate some sins above others.  We act as if Christian sexual ethics are easy and absolute, the same everywhere for all time, when the reality is that our ethic is fluid, as seen in dress codes, french kissing, oral sex, the distinction between longing and lust, and o so much more.  We sometimes act is if heterosexual sin is less offensive to God than homosexual sin.  And worst of all, actions become labels:  She’s not a teenager sold into sexual slavery who performs sex acts as a means of providing food for her family; she’s a prostitute.  He’s not a man who occasionally fantasizes about sexual experiences with other men -  he’s a homosexual.  She’s not a woman who loves her husband fiercely, but in one night of drunken weak will, gave up her fidelity at a high school reunion and woke up with regret.  She’s an adulterer.

These labels we give each other take all the nuances that are our sexuality and turn them into a label we’re then told to wear, as if this action, or that longing is who we are.  This is what flames shame, and hence non-confession, and hence hypocrisy.  This makes honest and nuanced conversation about Christian sexuality difficult, even impossible in some circles.  As a result, the whole topic’s driven underground.  As Jenell Williams Paris writes in her marvelous book, “Reticence to engage the issues in a sustained and civil manner has led – and is still leading – to secrecy, repression, taboo and scandal.”  The fruits of this are seen in the secrecy of Christians struggles with sexual ethics and sin, as so many feel there’s no safe place for conversation.  Those who feel that way aren’t fabricating their fear.  I know it’s real because of the sweeping condemnations invoked in Jesus name from pulpits and print.  When I’ve blogged about homosexuality in the past, I’d estimate that there were about 10% of the comments that I refused to approve, because their words were so harsh and damning, even while they would sometimes say them, according to their own view, “in love”.

So, here are three resources to help you bring the issues into the light.  Read, agree, disagree, discuss charitably.  Above all else though, bring these conversations into the light, so that we can, as people of hope, provide a sense of safety for people to explore the intersections of faith and sexuality.  The result will be, I believe, a coming into the light and safety of grace, which is above all else, a place of health and transformation.

Your Brain on Porn is a ‘secular’ website that catalogs the damning nature of porn by virtue of what it does, physiologically, to the brain.  I’ve pointed several men to this material who’ve thanked me, finding it frankly more helpful than a website quoting Bible verses about sexual purity.  The problem with those Bible verses, often, is that folks stuck in porn already know them, but have become stuck in a dopamine addiction that overrides reason and their commitments to holiness.  Ironically, many people find that when the subject is de-spiritualized a bit that it’s easier to deal with it and break free.  The website includes testimonials from people whose lives were transformed by breaking free.  Every pastor should have this website in their toolkit, but so should every friend, and every person.

The Demise of Guys is a book I reviewed earlier, but offer it here again because just as women do, men face unique issues which have conspired to hinder their full functioning.  Guys have become more passive, less able to pay attention, less inclined to choose reality over fantasy, and more filled with shame, fear, and insecurity.  All of this is the result of the cultural air we breath, including porn, video games, and fantasy leagues.  Until guys name this stuff,  commit to renewing their minds, and choose life giving ways of using their free time, there’ll be little hope.  This book is a wake up call, and can be a first step toward a fuller life for many guys.

Finally, “The End of Sexual Identity” is an important book for anyone looking for an honest conversation about sexuality and Christian ethics.  I sense that the author’s shaped by Bonhoeffer’s “Ethics” book, which means that she resists easy moralizing and judgmentalism, believing that proof texting, and shooting people with Bible verses isn’t what it means to be Christ followers.  For this reason, many conservative won’t like her.  On the other hand, she makes a strong case of exalting celibacy and chastity, which will no doubt alienate some liberals who falsely believe that being sexual active is a necessary ingredient for being fully human.  There are far too few books on this topic that nuanced, thoughtful, gracious, and well grounded in both scripture and cultural history.  This is one of them, and so even though I doubt anyone will agree with everything she writes, I recommend it without reservation.  After all, what’s needed right now aren’t the same old theological sound bytes, delivered up more loudly, or with special scary effects.

What’s needed is a bringing of sexuality into the light so that we can say to one another, “come – let us reason together”.  This will help us become more like Jesus, both individually, and collectively.

Happy Reading!    Feel free to share other resources that have proven helpful by responding in the comments section.

 

If you give a moose a muffin – and other kinds of repentance

The best children’s book series, in my opinion, is the “If you give…” series.  I like it because it speaks to the realities of cause and affect, and the importance of what Peter would call the “day of visitation”, but does so in a way that children and even adults can understand.  Each book begins with someone giving an animal something edible, and then this simple act leads to another act, and another act, and another act, until the day is filled with nothing that was originally anticipated.  This is the way of it for mice, and pigs, and the plural of moose.

Who knew that giving a moose a muffin, or giving a mouse a cookie, or giving a pig a pancake, could lead to such a flurry of activity?  But there’s more in play here than just children’s entertainment because in truth, much that is significant in our lives comes about because we took what we thought in the moment was going to be an insignificant step:

It was just supposed to be an elective class, but as a result of it she changed her major from drama to global development, spent a summer in Rwanda, and now works for a company focused on global health initiatives.  If you give a mouse a cookie….

It was just supposed to be a concert, but Mozart’s Requiem pierced his soul, pouring water on parched parts of it that had dried up due to disillusionment, growing up as he did in a strange blend of Jesus talk, racism, and obsessive social propriety.  He wept as listened and tasted again for the first time the reality and goodness of God.  This revival would lead to a different vocation that would take him around the world and help him give voice to people doing remarkable yet unsung things in Jesus’ name.  If you give a moose a muffin….

It was, for me, just a weekend in the snow, in search of powder and in hopes of connecting with a cute blonde.  The words of the speaker at this ski conference, though, were spoken only for me, it seemed, and before the weekend was over, I’d taken a major step in my life which eventually lead to a change of major, a change of college, which of course, would lead to my marrying a different person, and ultimately becoming a pastor, a writer, and a resident of what is, to me, the most beautiful city in the world.  If you give a pig a pancake….

We decide to get the wood floors in our house refinished.  We move the piano out of the room.  We decide the room looks cleaner, nicer, without a baby grand.  I envision how nice it would be to own an electronic keyboard and once again write music the way I did when I was young.  We start thinking about the meaning of simplifying our lives, and downsizing.  Just thinking about this makes me realize how insanely wealthy on the global wealth scale, and how this creates real responsibilities.  I read a book on the subject of simplifying.  We begin envisioning living lighter and, though getting there will mean more work rather than less, at least in the short term, we decide that this is part of our calling and start walking down a new and life changing path.

Someone watches a documentary on the global exploitation of women.  They only go there because they were flipping channels out of boredom.  Whatever.  Their eyes are opened, and they’ll never be the same, as they take steps to make the world better reflect the justice and freedom that God has in mind for us all.  Soon they’re deep in a story much larger than flipping channels and waiting for the new season of Modern Family.

I call these muffins, and cookies, and pancakes, and concerts, and floor refinishings, and documentaries, ‘catalyst moments’.  Here’s what all of us would be wise to remember about catalyst moments:

1. You don’t come looking for them; they come looking for you.  Theologically, this is what is called the ‘day of visitation’, and we diminish ourselves if we think that the visitation requires a burning bush, and an angel.  Visitations happen all the time – on hikes, in concert halls, in pubs, staring at newly finished floors, staff meetings, staying overnight in a homeless shelter, taking a class, listening to a person describe their deep pain or joy – there are lots of moments of visitation.

2. Our lives are richer if we’re paying attention.  One of the challenges many of us face is that religion often blinds us to moments of visitation.  The religionists of Jesus day picked apart His healing of a man born blind – “Why did this Jesus heal on the Sabbath?”  “How did he heal?”  “Are you really the man born blind, or a body double to trick us?”  They parsed and pontificated, but they never saw.  I’m convinced many Christians never hear what God is trying to say.  Some of them are too busy to listen, their minds constantly running 100 miles per hour, so that they never see the sunrise, or hear the Mozart or Mumford.  Right at the critical moment of intimacy, when his spouse has exposed her soul and his, the cell phone rings.  “THANK GOD” he thinks, as he answers and avoids yet again the single most important conversation of his life.  Visitation averted.

We need to wake up and pay attention, because visitation usually comes when we’re not looking, and if we’re either intentionally avoiding God encounters, or are just too busy, we’ll miss them over and over again.

3. Our lives are richer still if we respond.  If we hope to walk in God’s better story for our lives, it will be best for us if, in our encounters, we respond.  If God’s asking you to confess your sin to someone, do it.  If God’s asking you to take a class, or visit an orphanage in Romania, or volunteer for a medical clinic, or invite someone over, don’t ignore the prompts.  Sure, check things a bit to make sure you’re hearing from God, rather than just reacting to heartburn or lack of sleep, but when you know God’s speaking to you respond.

Robert Frost makes it sound like there’s a single fork in the road - one moment for Moses, or Jonah, or you, or me.  Without even trying hard I can think of about five hundred vital, life shaping moments, including:  a Sonic game in 1978, watching “The Mission” in a theater in Friday Harbor, a night climbing in Stone Gardens, a hike to Snow Lake, responding to an e-mail from an acquisitions editor, and choosing to go to Los Angeles for seminary even though everything in us wanted to be in the Pacific Northwest.  All these forks in the road have made all the difference.

How do you attune your heart to listen for God’s voice throughout your day and week?

Wrong Words lead to Wrong Actions: Environmentalism and John 3:16

She came in on a hot summer day to be treated for Asthma.  Dr. Matt Sleeth treated the young child, born into poverty, and told little Etta for whom breathe had become a literal life and death matter, that he wouldn’t let her die.  A few years later though, she did die, in a severe asthma attack – in prosperous America.  Don’t worry – this isn’t a post about American health care system(s).  It’s about something much more important- how our reading, or misreading, of the Bible shapes our actions and how those actions affect other people.

Dr. Sleeth gives us a hint of the issue when he writes that “to reduce traffic congestion during the Olympics, the city of Atlanta closed the downtown area to car traffic, increased access to public transportation through additional buses and tyrains, and promoted flexible work schedules, carpooling, and telecommuting for Atlanta workers.  The result:  for seventeen days, peak daily ozone concentrations decreased 28%.  Concurrently, acute asthma events dropped as much as 44%.  Atlanta’s inner-city children on Medicaid seemed to benefit the most, showing a more than 40% decrease in asthma related emergency room visits.  After the Olympics, when Atlanta traffic patterns returned to normal, so did Ozone concentration, asthma attacks, and rates of emergency room visits among the poor.”

The colors of brokenness in our world are many: human trafficking, abortion, torture, totalitarianism imposed in the name of God, or the state, or both, addictive behaviors of every stripe, greed, loneliness, boredom, poverty, lack of access to clean water or health care.  The good news is that for many of these issues, Christians are stepping up, painting the colors of hope on the canvass of their world.  Soon, our church will begin partnering with a mobile medical clinic to meet the needs of an increasingly large uninsured American populace, which will better enable us to serve our world and make God’s reign visible.

There’s an area though of injustice and devastation that at best gets little attention among Christ followers.  At worst this area is dismissed as snake oil science, or new age attempts at a one world government.  The neglected area is environmentalism, and its well beyond time that the church wake up to just how central stewardship of the planet is to our calling.  Scott Sabin, who directs a favorite project of mine (more about that later) has written a simple small book about environmental stewardship as a central element of discipleship.  His thesis is  that it’s central for __ reasons.

1. Our God given task has never changed.  – Genesis 1 & 2 reminds us that our calling is to ‘serve’ (translated ‘work’ in most Bibles) and ‘protect’ (translated ‘keep’) the garden.  It was, in fact, the very first job God gave to humanity, and though humans were removed from the garden, every indication of God’s dealings with his people (see especially the environmental laws related to Israel’s treatment of the land, and related public health laws having to do with water sanitation and waste treatment) is that this calling never left humanity.  To the contrary, God’s judgement on Israel is that ‘the land mourns‘.  When our lives are driven by greed and consumerism, we’ll overuse and abuse creation, and the result will be environmental degradation.

2. Our fallen world cries out for us to act.  Romans 8 tells us that all of creation is longing for the redemption of humanity, that creation is groaning as humankind abuses creation.  You see, in God’s creation mandate he told all creatures to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ so that the cycle of replenishment could continue on the earth down through the millenia.  Instead, we’re presently seeing increasingly species extinctions that are caused by humans (especially through pollution, overfishing and over hunting).  This isn’t just a problem for the whales and polar bears.  The same causes of extinction create cultural crises, and environmental crisis, so that people, made in God’s image, suffer too.  Cancer and Asthma are on the rise in America, but that’s less than even the tip of the melting iceberg.

3. It’s part of the upstream solution to numerous downstream problems.  Scott’s book speaks of environmental as a justice issue because our failure to steward the earth has become a contributing factor to countless justice issues:

“There is a dramatic statistical correlation between race and proximity to facilities where hazardous waste is treated, stored, and disposed of.”  (Scott Sabin) Entire communities are destroyed in Appalachia by “mountaintop removal coal mining practices” which blow the top 800′ off a mountain to get at the coal, destroying streams and water tables for communities below.  It’s cheap and efficient if your only consideration is dollars.  But if the long term well being of communities is worth anything, then we need to rethink this.

Illegal immigration?  Countless immigrants from Mexico make their way to the states, not because they want x-boxes and flat screen TV’s, but because their land has stopped producing anything at all, having been stripped of its topsoil for a host of reasons. Astonishingly, some Americans have responded to this by saying we need to deport ‘these people’ so that we can collectively have a smaller environmental footprint.  I can’t respond to that kind of thinking without swearing, so I’ll move on.

In Thailand, this same problem doesn’t lead to illegal immigration – it leads to parents selling their children, often unwittingly, into sexual slavery.  That 13 year old girl sleeping with 20 men a night is doing this because her parents were unable to feed her, or themselves.

What does all this have to do with the Bible?  Many of us remember reading John 3:16 as children and being told to replace the Bible’s words, “the world” with our own name.  So, when I was in 4th grade, I stole a glance in Sunday school at the brown haired girl across the circle before reading out loud, “For God so loved Richard Dahlstrom that he gave his only son”.  It’s great to be loved by God.  It’s terrible to mess with the Bible that way.  God was saying something significant here about his love, not just for me, not just for humanity even, but for the whole world – for rock badgers and mountain goats, salmon and honeybees, forests and mountaintops.  By the reading the book of Job, I get the feeling that God loved the world because he delighted in it, and while that’s true, the more I understand the world, the more I realize that he loved every element in the world because every element needs every other element.  The ones in charge of loving the whole world on God’s behalf?  Well, these days, it’s supposed to be God’s followers.  Instead, God’s followers are often too busy protecting free markets and deregulation, so they outsource environmentalism to “the world”.  I, for one, am moving in a different direction because I can’t appeal to Genesis as the basis for marriage and continue to be silent on God’s words regarding care for the planet which come from the same chapter in the Bible.

I welcome your thoughts…

Naked and Not Ashamed: Steps in our pursuit of intimacy

NOTE TO MY READERS:  I’m going to be moving my blog away from the Patheos website that presently hosts it, so if you’d like to be apprised of my posts and join the conversations, feel free to subscribe by clicking over there on the right.  Thanks! 

We’ve all had moments when we ran and hid, tears stinging in our eyes as we either said or received angry words, words that should never have been spoken.  We’ve all had moments of anger towards those we love, when we felt our blood pressure rising and couldn’t imagine the person in front of us as capable of goodness or beauty.  We’ve all had these moments, and when they pile up we become something we were never meant to be.  We become lonely.

Isolation and our longings to connect would go on to saturate thoughtful music and film, beginning with Ordinary People, and continuing on with Fight Club, Garden State, Lost in Translation, and Goodwill Hunting.

Loneliness and isolation are woven into the fabric of every cultural demographic worldwide.  It’s increasingly said that “all poverty is relational”, which means that when people are stuck in cycles of oppression and want, there’s a lack of healthy relationships upstream from those presenting problems.  Dealing with relational poverty is increasingly seen as the first step in dealing with material poverty.  But the wealthy aren’t immune from loneliness.  In The Price of Privilege, we read that wealthy people, “in spite of their economic and social advantages, experience among the highest rates of depression, substance abuse, anxiety disorders, somatic complaints, and unhappiness of group of children in this country”.  The overwhelming evidence is that whether you’re shopping at Goodwill or wearing Gucci, odds are that you’ll face intimacy challenges.  There are two good reasons for this, along with the good news that the gospel provides a way forward in our intimacy dilemma:

1. We’re made for intimacy.  If the first two chapters of Genesis are our reference point for how humanity is intended to live, then we’re clearly made for intimacy.  “It is not good” says God, “the man (humankind) should be alone”, after which God creates another person and we find this glorious phrase, “naked and not ashamed” in the text, a word which means that this first couple knew each other perfectly, with nothing hidden, and were able to love each other in the knowing.  God is telling us something significant here about the longings of the human heart, telling us that in distinction to the animal kingdom, we’re made for more than procreation and copulation.  We’re made for intimacy, and this is as it should be because we’re made in God’s image, and God isn’t a one, but a three: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, living in perfect fellowship, community, and union.

It is, in other words, “in our nature” to seek intimacy, to be fully known, and to fully know.  It’s why we risk sharing our hearts with others, as we peel back layers to share our deepest selves, or listen intently as another unveils in order to be known.  It’s why we have parties and spend time with the neighbors.  It’s why we smile when we see an old couple holding hands and think to ourselves, “this is as it should be”.  Maybe the Beatles were right; maybe love is in fact, “all you need”.

2. Anti-Intimacy is in our nature.  Though love might be all we need, love isn’t “all we have”, because there’s something in us that runs from intimacy too.  We discover this in Genesis as well, where we see that it’s in our nature to make anti-intimacy choices.  First, we reject intimacy with God by saying in essence, “I don’t care about your longings for me.  I want to do what I want to do”, and choose paths of our own making rather than those of the one who loves us perfectly and longs for us to be whole.  Then, having chosen autonomy from God rather than intimacy, everything else unravels.  We suddenly see the world through a different lens, and shame becomes part of our being.  We feel the stinging pain of our own vulnerability, our loss, our hurt – and decide that we don’t want others to see that, so we cover our shame.  In the Genesis garden we covered it with leaves. Today we cover it with other things:  fancy clothes, fancy cars, plastic surgery, schedules so packed that we’ve no time to share or listen to those we love, machismo, hyper-sexualization; it’s a long list but in the end we see that there’s a whole tool kit enabling us to hide from each other.  And we’re experts at using it.

What’s more, we’re afraid.  Adam tells God that he heard God’s voice and was afraid, so he ran and hid.  I’m afraid of rejection, afraid of conflict, afraid of truth telling because at various times when I’ve gone down these roads, things haven’t turned out well – I’ve been hurt, and so I crawl into my shell – choose safe illusion over naked reality.  “Naked’s too risky” is what we tell ourselves as we run from each other, not literally usually, but metaphorically through the use of words that paint a thin veneer of propriety over reality.  The result is loneliness, as we know from movies, and the lives of others and our own lives as well.

This is our dilemma.  We’re made for intimacy and long for it, but there’s something in us that wants to run and hide.  The results are stale marriages, stalemate relationships between children and parents, millions settling for the pseudo-intimacy of porn or sexual addiction, and an ache in our hearts which, try as we might, we cannot fully numb.

3. There’s an isolation antidote – The gospel is good news because it makes a way for intimacy.  God pursued Adam in the garden and said in essence, “you’ll never be able to cover your shame – but I’ll deal with your shame” and God killed an animal and made coverings for Adam and Eve.  That act was a seminal picture of what God would do in Christ when, naked on the cross, he absorbed our dysfunction and shame, our sin and guilt.  This reality enables us to know that we’re fully loved and accepted, in spite of our failures.  There is ONE who is inexorably for us, more even than we’re for ourselves.  Learning to actually believe this isn’t some theoretical theological exercise; it’s what enables our own transparency and intimacy.

What’s more, this Jesus not only forgives and loves, he transforms, so that little by little, we find ourselves better able to choose truth telling, confession, forgiveness, sacrifice, and vulnerability.  All the ingredients of intimacy become ours in fuller measure because the Master of Intimacy lives with us, and in us, and is committed to teaching us his ways.  “Perfect love” we’re told, “casts out fear” because fear involves judgement, but the one who is our judge says, “you’re known – and forgiven”.  If I can believe this, receive this, then I can learn healthy patterns of intimacy, because I know that, come what may in this world, there is One who loves me completely, with whom I can be naked and not ashamed.  If I have this as my starting point, I’m on the right road.  If I miss this, I miss a lot.

A better story…on what to do with the rest of your life, and saying yes

(I’m happy to introduce my youngest daughter, Holly Dahlstrom, to you.  Her joy, courage, and love of people inspire me.  Her capacity to hear God’s voice and follow is a reminder to us all that “a better story” awaits, if we’ll but listen for the voice of our Maker and follow.  You can follow all her Rwandan adventures throughout the summer here.)

CEZ, OVC, ‘letter of invitation’, MOU, developing world, US Embassy, PEPFAR, cultural assimilation.

These are words I never expected to use in a single conversation.  Yet I found myself on the phone this morning speaking with the volunteer specialist for World Relief discussing the final details for my upcoming journey to Rwanda.  How did I find myself here?  The answer is simple.  To some the answer I will give is frustrating and naive.  To me it is merely the truth.  I would not have found myself using these terms on skype this morning if it had not been for God’s calling on my heart two years ago to do something very new.

I sometimes think that “call” is a term overused in Christian culture.  I always wondered how I was supposed to know if I was being “called” to do something or if I just felt like it.  Was God going to speak to me from the clouds like He seemed to do in the Old Testament?  Would it be through miracles and signs that I knew the feelings I was feeling were from God?  I truly never understood the concept of “calling” until I was in the midst of my own call.  One night I went to bed living my life as usual and the next day I woke up and realized that my life was never going to look the way I thought it would.

The world is wide…and cold: Advice to dads from one who loves being one

I don’t know where the line originates.  Maybe it comes from one of my children, who spoke to another of my children because they miss each other as they live their lives in Seattle, Germany, and soon, Rwanda.  Wherever it comes from, it found its way into this little exchange between two of them, and is at the core of an element in their intertwined lives that brings me great joy.

“Why are you so far away?” writes one.

“Because the world is wide and cold,” writes the other.  ”Alas.”

“That is sad…”

“Indeed.”

As Father’s Day approaches, I’ve much to boast about, in my opinion (and I’m not prone to boasting).  I love my three children fiercely, and have good relationships with each of them.  They’re all different, all beautiful, each displaying different facets of character – unique in their loves, joys, ways of living.  I’m proud of them and as this particular Father’s Day approaches, for reasons I can’t understand, I’m celebrating their lives and am mindful of the great privilege I’ve had to share my life with them for the past 26, 25, 21 years respectively.

But the dialogue that opened this piece is no doubt the matter in which I take perhaps the greatest pride, and joy because it tells me something very significant:  My children love each other; love each other enough that they long to be with each other, so much so that separation creates a hole.  It’s not tolerance, admiration, respect… it’s love.  And this brings me great joy.