Why?

This weekend I received the news from back in Toledo that my 86 year old mother's health is failing badly. Like most people who advance to such an age, she needs constant care which is quickly leading her to discouragement to the point of giving up. She has lost all meaning for her life and has gone downhill in strength rapidly over a short period of time. Quickly I made arrangements to fly back to Ohio to spend the next two weeks spilling the family off in their round-the-clock care for her.

It's inevitable to ask at such a time as this: Why? Why does such a giving, caring, people-oriented, kind-hearted person like my mother have to go through this? Why?

Is there a bigger question than why? It overshadows all the other questions of who, what, where, when, and how. Knowing how it happened is fascinating, but knowing why it happened is essential. You can live without knowing how it happened, but when you can't figure out why, it's absolutely maddening.

Why are we here?
Why is there evil in the world?
Why is there so much suffering?
Why would God allow this to happen?
Why don't we change?
Why don't we do something about it?
Why does it matter?

Searching for meaning is like breathing...and when you lose all hope for meaning...you stop breathing.

Why is the question that haunts us.

The Vocation of Being Me

"Remember who you were when you first arrived and reclaim the gift of your true self." -Parker Palmer

As a third grader I was fascinated with an old book that had pictures of presidents busts on it. Consequently I found myself drawing those busts on 2' by 3' large posters that hung in honor in the hallways of my grade school. I was always facinated with creating...action figures were not availbale or affordable so I created my own. I went to the store and purchased an inexpensive bag of soldier figures, took a razor blade and trimmed them and repainted them to be my Spiderman, Iron Man, and Superman. Then as a young 13-14 year old, I began teaching with my father in Sunday School. He had to work swing shift so when he was gone I was called upon to teach 8-9 year olds - quite a formitable task for one only a few years older than they were. Within a short period of time I was teaching 100 junior age kids each week through a professional puppet stage with puppet characters teaching truths through real life stories. I created and built the 30' set, wrote the scripts directed the weekly production, and assumed the role of a dozen characters.

This combination can be traced throughout my young life...a mixture of creativity and a love for teaching. I arrived in this world with birthright gifts (creativity and teaching) then I spent the first half of my adult life abandoning them or letting others disabuse me of them. As an adult I was surrounded by expectations that may have little to do with who I really was, expectations held by people who are not trying to discern my selfhood but fit me into slots. When I graduated from college with my B.A. in Fine Art, my dad looked at it as a waste of time. "You should have stayed in the factory and you would be making more money for a sensible future," he would say.

In families, schools, workplaces, and religious communities, we are trained away from true self images of acceptability; under social pressures like racism and sexism our original shape is deformed beyond recognition, and we ourselves, driven by fear, too often betray true self to gain the approval of others.

No wonder when I pastored many would try to shape me into the pastor they wanted me to be according to the expectations of the "pastoral mold." But I was different...I would use my teaching and creativity because that was who I was created to be. The battle to face expectation for me continues even to today...potential churches and schools looking for a person to fit a vocation mold disregard my life journey and personhood as unacceptable according to their standards and expectations.

Discovering my true vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach or reinventing myself to be what others want, but accepting the treasure of the true self I already possess.

What do I want to do with the rest of my life? I want to follow the inner voice calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God...that is my vocation...that is being me!

Let My Life Speak

If my calling is "the place where my deep gladness meets the world's deep need" (Frederich Buechner), then what work brings me great joy? If that is true then a calling is something I discover not something I choose.

Yesterday was a haunting day for me. As the process of my discovered calling continues while searching for the right place of ministry, I faced old demons that whispered in my ears all day long, "you're a failure"..."look at your friends, see how successful they are"..."nobody wants you the way you are"..."Is God really going to come through for you?".."you are stuck in oblivion."

The temptation to quit and crawl into the failure cave was very real and present. But discovering my gladness often means the gritty resolution to bear with a hard task when it would be easier to quit. I have to be ruthlessly honest about my deep gladness that it is not dependent on what God has done in other people's lives but stayed upon listening to what God is doing in MY life now. Expectations and comparisons must be pushed aside in order to let my life speak...and that requires listening. My calling is not so much choosing as it is listening. When I listen more intently to the demons than God, I am condemned to live in chronic, low grade anxiety that whispers to me that I am trying to be someone I'm not. The passion and the deep gladness dissipate into the thin air of expectation and comparison.

He speaks every day to me that I am His and He has plans for me. Which "speak" will I listen to the most? Letting my life speak lies in choosing awareness developed from daily practicing God-sensing and people-loving instead of choosing the anxiety of expectation-sensing and status-loving.

Speak today Lord, for your servant is listening.

Born Again Today

A person who genuinely honors the teachings of Buddha or the beliefs held by devout Hindus understands that reincarnation is a cycle that must be broken or at least completed. To be reincarnated is not a gift but a declaration that you have not lived your life well enough. The ultimate gift in Buddhism is to complete the cycle and move to nothingness, the end of you. A part of this process is the end of all desire. In this system a person's only hope is to live out this life so that things might change in the next. This is one reason why reincarnation is not acceptable to me.

Jesus offers something quite different. If you know in your gut there's something broken, something missing, something needing to be changed, you don't have to wait for this to begin taking place in your life. Jesus promises you can be "born again" - be given a fresh start in THIS life. This is in contrast to the premise of being born again, and again, and again on a luck-of-the-draw cycle of desperation and futility of this world belief.

Reincarnation makes no distinction between being a human and an insect. It's funny how oftentimes Christianity is seen as more judgmental and less forgiving than either Buddhism or Hinduism, yet we overlook the fact that this belief system accepts without blinking an eye that billions of souls at this moment live in the state of being roaches.

If this is true, there are more of us who are sewer rats in New York City than there are brokers.

But I am not a sewer rat or insect...I am God's unique fingerprint of humanity imprinted with a soul that can enjoy forgiveness, grace, and a personal relationship with Him for eternity... beginning today!

On a Mission From God

John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd once starred in a move called The Blues Brothers. They played a couple of ex-convict-wanna-be-musicians who were trying to raise money for an orphanage. Anytime they were asked about their work, they had a standard response: "We're on a mission from God." Saying it with conviction the idea that these two inept, unworthy human beings could be on a mission from God was the central joke of the story.

Here's the story of my life: I'm on a mission from God.

Either this is true, or I have no purpose, no mission at all. Others have come before..others will come after me. But this is my day. If God's kingdom is to manifest itself, it will be through me today. God will not take my place.

I can wear my calling lightly using the excuse that I am without a secure job, a respectable title , or successful career. Or, I can live free of the fear of failure, without being preoccupied by how my career looks to others, knowing my worth as a person is not at stake in my job title.

But what I do today matters immensely. It is worth devoting my best energy to.

I am on a mission from God.

Gut Check

I am an insignificant speck of dust in the midst of a vast cosmos. I'm an evolutionary tragedy, a gnat with self-awareness headed straight toward the windshield of inevitability. All life holds for me is splat and it's all over. But what about all the people I've come in contact with and had a positive influence in my life? Don't they give me significance? The truth is that we all live in this illusion together so when people tell me I'm significant, they are living within the same illusion. I affirm others as important in the hope that I will be affirmed too. But we are all deluded by the same drug.

Maybe we should all come to our senses and wake up and see the truth...we live, we work, we die.

All of this is true if there is no God.

Maybe you can't prove God in a testube, but you can find Him in your soul. When He is missing you can feel Him in your gut.

Time for a gut check.

Exclusively Jeff

I am uniquely created by God to be exclusively Jeff. Spiritually driven to be connected to God, I am motivated to help people every moment of my existence. I am serious-minded, but look for laughter in life’s walk. Attracted to the unlovely, God teaches me to love. Faithful as a canine retriever I do my duties with a longing and soft pant for His loving caress. When He paints the sky with His inspired brush, my creativity flows like a fresh stream down the mountain. Faith, hope, and love are three amigos that tag along on my journey to being me.

Close Encounters of the God Kind

In 1977, Steven Speilberg came out with another classic film that captures the destiny that haunts all of us, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. More than just a boy meets alien movie, the story line follows Roy Neary, played by Richard Dreyfuss, who is captivated by a maddening pursuit of "he knows not what." Whether it's sculpting potatoes or building a garden in the living room, his inner drive changes his life and drives him to his destiny. He was haunted by a vision that he could not bring into focus. The clues were everywhere but he could not make sense of any of them. Could it be that each of us have been built with a "close encounters" heart driving us in a maddening way toward a God to understand and have relationship with? That drive does not always make sense and in my own organized intelligence I somehow try to outline the pathway to bring peace and comfort to my own soul. Yet the maddening chase after God does not always have all the answers on purpose. The mystery of the chase and the lack of total understanding of His presence and surmised absence has been designed by a Creator to force us to trust in Him and not our own earthy sense. It sometimes looks irrational to the world but to God he puts us right where He wants us - seeking and searching for "we know not what." It's ultimately a maddening chase to rest in His presence and trust in His guidance for our purpose and meaning.

Graduation Day

The words still ring in my ears even today. It was 30 years ago when I graduated from college that my Dad congratulated me with a "so what, now what are you going to do?" I had no immediate answer for my six years of hard work to acheive a title and piece of paper. I was left empty desperately looking for another goal to acheive. This past weekend I hit another milestone - I graduated again, this time with my Doctor of Ministry. When I arrived home from Portland last night the same words were ringing in my head - "so what, now what are you going to do?" The temptation is to find it all empty and meaningless as a diversional goal that I achieved for meaning and purpose. That's the temptation. The reality is that this was not just a degree but a life changing experience that has prepared me for what He has in store for me in life. I do not know yet what that is. But I do know that what I have completed is not the end of a school journey but the introductory chapter to the rest of the book. The book has not been completed and I am now living its chapters. Graduation Day at George Fox has only opened the exciting possibilities of pages yet to be filled until the ultimate Graduation Day at the end of my life. So now what am I going to do? I'm going to enjoy every sentence of every chapter of every day. Now is the time to enjoy being me with God!