Where the road leads next

Admittedly this is an odd thing to post about, but I was metro sexual long before it was in vogue to be one. I made my own clothing in the eighties for heaven sake, and to this day refuse to wear tennis shoes with anything other than an outfit that looks like I could run in. I never leave home without a belt and matching shoes and always smell good, really good. If all that was not enough to convince you, a secret motivation I have to lose some weight this year is so that I can buy new designer clothes at Ross. I am big enough to kill most men with my bare hands but would rather go shopping for clothes, write poetry, paint, or sing.

God has a sense of humor.

Even though I am built like middle linebacker, I have always struggled with body image. The self loathing comes in waves and I have never been able to fully understand it. I have been told that a poor body image is a normal effect of sexual abuse and can be difficult to pin down. Uncovering that hurt and getting healing from it is on the agenda for 2008.

If my email in-box is any indication, low self esteem is the number one issue for men and the number one issue for women is what men don't have! It is said in those cleverly craft3d m3ssag3s that what women are most concerned with is a phallus large enough to puncture their uterus. 4"- 6" which was adequate since Adam and Eve, has suddenly doubled to 8"- 10" and the message is if you don't measure up a pill will get you there in only 5 weeks!

"90% of women say they are unsatisfied with their partners size."

Really!? All the while I was told the main issues in marriage are money and infidelity. I guess the infidelity part is the women going out for a bigger... oh wait, men cheat 70% compared to women and the reasons women cheat are predominantly emotional. Imagine my shock to find out via email that women secretly want to be RotoRooted.

It all makes sense now.

Please.

I will admit that being bombarded by this stuff does not help my body image. Sure I think I would look better with more, but the truth is the number one way for a guy to add length to his twig is to lose that 2 or 3 inches of fat parka around it! Even though their wives have never complained, I am certain that most guys would agree that more must be better. We are fragile like that. We like to have the biggest fastest hardest longest loudest most expensive anything. It makes us feel secure and in control. The absolute last thing we want to feel insecure about is our boys, and God forbid if it is average!

In any case, wieners are not the point of this post. What is the point is that I can relate to the self loathing and pain overweight women carry as I watched this free episode of "How to look good naked". Carson is a bit flaming for my taste, but looking past that he has a great heart and did more good in 5 days with Layla than most people ever do for anyone else in a lifetime.

Granted, there is more to life than looking and feeling good but I think we overlook the impact that can have on us spiritually. We barely understand the physical side of life, are just getting a handle on the emotional side, and can't even come close to a consensus on the spiritual. We may find out that all three are equally important and God is equally concerned with all three.

I know from experience that if I can't love myself fully I will be hard pressed to fully love God. How can we love the creator if we hate the created? Loving ourselves enough to start taking care of ourselves can propel us to love God who in turn tells us how much He loves us which in turn causes us to love ourselves all the more.

I used to think this was selfishness and the ultimate form of faith was denial of self. Somewhere I picked up the lie that a life of disdain was somehow Godly and honored Him. That is garbage. There is certainly a point where self love, i.e. selfishness is wrong, but the motive for selfishness is a tough one to pin down. Most selfish people I meet are not selfish because they are complete - they are selfish because they lack.

If we are truly "full" and at peace with us the natural outflow is to take the love we have for ourselves and love our neighbors with it. Without exception, the times when I am selfish are times when I am hurting. Without exception, the times when I am loving and giving are when the world seems right.

If I hate me - the natural outflow is for me to hate others.

2008 is a year for me to look good naked. I am determined to get over myself enough to be happy in my own skin. I am determined to bare it all to help others. I am determined to stop wasting one more minute, one more hour, one more day obsessing negatively about ME.

Looking good naked is a great place to start and it is much more than skin deep. Our motives are naked before God. Our hearts are naked before God. Our thoughts are naked before Him as well.

Looking good naked should be the motive for everything.

I have determined that learning to trust is one of those lessons that must be experienced in order to master. Trust is an action - like swimming - you can't really learn how to swim by reading about it, or talking about it, or thinking about it.

The only way we learn how to swim is to get wet.

It is this realization, and ONLY this realization, that has allowed me to walk down this road of learning to trust. Walk is too strong a word, it is more like crawl, or perhaps a slow shuffle. In any case I am determined to do what ever it takes to make forward progress. At times it feels like the only thing moving me on is my stubborn determination to prove that if trust is an experience, come hell or high water, I WILL experience it.

Sink or swim - I am getting wet.

The anonymous card the usher handed me at church on our way out yesterday was a startling splash in the face. I certainly wasn't expecting the $250.00 gift card. I never even fought the temptation an hour earlier to keep my tithe check or balked at giving the $25.00 for the staff, even though the act guaranteed my kids would have one less gift this year. And my reward for dipping a toe into the deep waters of faith was I didn't drown!

I know it is almost impossible to drown getting a toe wet, but I assure you that small act from my vantage point was not unlike tipping over the edge of Niagara Falls.

This week looks like it may be a "knee deep" week. The funny thing is the water doesn't seem all that bad now that I have been in it a while. There are no crashing waves, no slippery rocks. No one is pushing me off the dock or throwing me off the boat. This learning to swim is nothing if not....

Peaceful.

Amen.

Alcoholics like me.

Homosexuals like me as well, but I will tackle that in another post.

I have a knack for attracting people that have been affected by alcohol. They are either actively drinking, recovered, are married to someone that has, or on the road to or from. Every one of my neighbors are alcoholics. There is actually a bar across the street from my house. This bar is in the garage of my neighbor.

How weird is that.

Most of my coworkers are alcoholics. I have witnessed much in my 10 years here. The big gifts at the Christmas party have always been booze. Crown Royal is apparently a really thoughtful way of saying "Happy Birthday Jesus".

So it comes as no shock to me that my guitar player on my worship team at church is an alcoholic. Much to the chagrin of my friends, his behavior is neither threatening or obnoxious to me. It is familiar and vulnerable, and my heart simply breaks for the condition he is in.

No one wants to become an alcoholic.

It took me years to get to the point where I could believe that and I believe it with all that is in me. Alcoholism is a disease and I would never harass a cancer victim for having a bad day. Alcoholics usually offend people when they are hurting, so it makes it difficult to be objective when they are spewing their insecurity and hurt. It takes a great deal of discipline not to react emotionally, but when it all lines up and the alcoholic has been heard real change can happen.

People make the mistake thinking that by telling the alcoholic all about their sins, that will somehow snap them out of their slow suicide. As if their killing themselves is a result of their life being one great big party. No one needs to tell the drinker or drug addict their failings, it is usually all they can see. The only way to help the alcoholic is to love them where they are at, not enable them in their negative behavior, and live your own life. If they choose to be nasty, we get to choose to leave. If they are hurtful and angry, we walk away and talk to them when they are sober.

One of the last places on earth that this type of acceptance happens in the church.

My guitar player has arrived hung over 2 Sundays and this last week he reacted and caused a minor disruption. It was not a huge problem, but the confrontation from the platform directed to the sound team was not transparent. Thankfully my friend admitted he was wrong, has remained teachable, and is the only requirement to be used by God.

I have a meeting with him tonight to talk about his drinking. I am actually looking forward to it. I am full of faith that he will be able to see my desire is for him to get better. He is hurting, and it hurts me to know that his only hope is in the bottle. My God is bigger than his problem.

My God is a God who saves.

Surrender is not an option.

To surrender is to admit defeat, and I will be damned if I will ever admit defeat. That was my position on just about everything until last Saturday.

Stubborn? Me? I never really thought I was, but I could certainly always see stubborn from here. I looked at my position on things a little less black and white, it was simply survival. I have always had to fight so it was perfectly natural to hang on to what I believe come hell or high water. When faced with the mandate of self denial in a broken home, hanging on to you is all you got.

So it should come as no surprise that my personality is a mix of easy going forcefulness. I think they call it passive aggressive. I am passive about most things but look out if you touch on something I am passionate about. If thinking about murder is a as bad as doing it, I have been homicidal. Cut me off in traffic and my natural reaction is to follow you home and bury my fist in your head.

I wish I was being dramatic about that.

Thankfully I have always snapped myself out of that kind of thinking but rage is a feeling most of my siblings know all too well. Apparently it is a family trait.

At the heart of rage lies a wounded insecure child lashing out. I am certain this is not a clinical diagnosis of rage. I arrive at this because I learned to rage as a child. It usually manifested itself during times of helplessness, or being "wronged" or being afraid. Take a step past the inflicted child and rage is all about control. There is no time more vulnerable than childhood, so if I have control issues, I learned how to cope then.

Last Saturday a series of events lined up in my life. There was nothing dramatic about these events. I didn't have the desire to run my neighbors over or anything like that, but the realization crept into my mind that I was trying to control a situation I had no control over. Before Al-anon I would have happily locked horns with the problem and try and wrestle it down no matter how impossible the chance of success might be. They call that insanity.

It may have been the lack of sleep the night before, the comfort of the bed cradling me, the chill of the air against my face in contrast to the warmth of the covers, but whatever lined up during my Saturday nap was divine.

I saw what appeared to be a book case full of tall thin flat diamonds stacked on end. They were similar is shape to diamond Christmas cookies, but much thinner, narrower and made of a light alloy or plastic. I remember audibly saying to God, "I give you control" and these tiles, or chips, or whatever started pouring out of their container. The cascade began at the top as a few tiles in the center simply fell over off of their tip. There were no shelves, they were all perfectly balanced one on top and next, and as they poured out they made a sound like dumping Lego's on hardwood.

The funny thing is I wasn't asleep. I was very much awake and aware of everything around me. For a moment the vision became more real and once the event was over I was left lying there as before.

As I thought about this later, I don't ever recall actually giving my life over to God. I thought I had. I have certainly attempted to. But it wasn't until this moment that I actually felt like something changed in me.

This week has been a continuation of the same theme, although much less dramatic. It is interesting to me how one can know what to do, practice it for a time, forget what works, only to remember it again. For all my complexity and deep understanding of things of God, I still act like a sheep.

Thank God I still have a Shepard.

In a never ending goal to completely confuse myself about all things cultural, I grabbed a book in the library about religion. I only read the preface, so I can't recall the author, but I agreed with everything she had to say.

I figured if I could agree with the preface, why ruin it by diving into the 600 pages of her actual writing.

I know, but hey at least I am starting to read.

Anyway, as near as I can tell her motivation for the book was to save the world from eminent destruction. Did I mention I read the last 2 pages as well? Well I did. Her premise is that 1000 - 200 BC was a time when religion changed from actually killing stuff for God to figuratively killing ourselves for God. It may not be that simple, but that is what I think she was telling us, and like I said before, why would I ruin it for myself.

Even if she arrives at another conclusion, my conclusion is based on the fact that I agree with it and it lines up with my theology and world view.

One of the things she stated was that people used to get their state of nirvana, religious shivers, transcendental state of being because of the group conscience. Essentially, the effect of being around other like minded skulls of mush makes our mush resonate and not feel so stinking alone and vulnerable. Therefore, my quorum of like minded individuals that think the moon is god, would from time to time work ourselves up into a frenzy and kill your like minded group that think the sun is god. In fact, the act of killing you for our moon god actually makes us feel even better about our collective. Stupid sun people.

Apparently all that changed (mostly) during said time of enlightenment. I could actually research this, but I am having too much fun making my own sense of 6 pages of forward and 2 pages of conclusion. See how dangerous reading can be.

The deal is, I agree that most major religions feel that the way to God is self sacrifice. Jesus exemplified this and was the primary reason He came. "The Way" is simply to love God and love your neighbor the same way you love yourself. The authors assertion is that unless we get back to that thinking (she mentioned nothing about Jesus mind you, at least what I read) we will all revert back to killing each other to appease our blood lust for our particular resonate self identity thingy. A good example of this is sports. A better example is the war on terror.

But I digress.

The thing that really jumped out at me was the concept of God back then and the concept of God today. If you were to ask Buddha or the monotheistic Jews or a Hindu IF there is a God, the answer would be you are asking the wrong question. The question would never be if, but what are you doing to please him.

That is incredibly profound.

It got me thinking about Jesus Christ and the fact that He wasn't on the earth trying to convince people to believe in a God. He came to show God's people the true nature of a God they already had familiarity with. Everyone in the Jewish religion believed there was a God during the time of Christ. Jesus claiming He was God sort of threw them for a loop. Not to be outdone, they killed him. Take that God! I am sure there were exceptions outside of Judaism, but the question of "if" would have not been the first thing on the minds of most people. Other religions still believed in polytheism and even the Romans had a concept of God and left the matter to the Jews. Heck even pagans worshiped a form of God. It may have been a chicken, but it was a chicken with power!

You know what? The post modern world has no such fundamental grounding. In fact, I dare say that conventional wisdom is that there is no God.

We have gone from believing the sun was god and trying to please god by killing his creation, to self awareness and enlightenment, to self sacrifice and service, and now somehow we find ourselves all the way back to atheism. What is worse is that we are right back at "group nirvana" where the highest form of religion is conformity and association with other skulls of mush.

I personally think this new religion is government, but that is for another post.

For me, it makes sense why it is so difficult to get people to change their lives for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They simply don't believe there is a God! How can they ever believe in His Son? It is like asking me to have a relationship with a dead friend. He may have been "real" but if I can't make the physical connection how much of a relationship can I really have? If we ask people to make a spiritual connection to Jesus while ignoring the fact they may have no concept of the spiritual attributes of God, how successful can they be?

Its like a cell phone with no service.

There is so much more to this, but I wanted to get it down somewhere before it was sucked away.

Speaking of cell phones, is it just me or have you noticed that everyone seems to have those things permanently stuck to them?

I wonder when we will start the Sprint and AT&T holy war?

For my regular readers, or reader as it may be. :)

You may have noticed that every so often Davie gets all, you know "in his head" on a post or two.

I feel an explanation is in order.

I am a very complicated dude. For one, I am predominantly "right brained". Basically, I think like a girl. I look like a man, but I sing like a girl, look at the world like a girl, have emotions like a girl, and generally obsess and worry like a girl.

I know - I am 6 foot 2, 250 pounds, built like a middle linebacker in the NFL and think the sky is pretty. I play all sports well, can rebuild cars and put up walls, need to shave twice a day, good looking, coordinated and athletic, and feel bad if I kill a bug.

If that wasn't enough, I am a First Tenor. An actual can hit a high C full voice and live up there tenor. I sang alto in Jr. High and for fun I would sing soprano. Even to this day I tend to sing songs much too high for a guy that looks like me. I think it is funny now but I used to hate it.

And just to make all that more interesting, I am highly prophetic when it comes to spiritual things. I used to be able to hear people think. I am not making it up - it was awful. In High School I had few real friends, and would scare the hell out of any girl I dated because I was so intense. This behavior and insight meant my fist girlfriend was my wife.

To top it all off I had some traumatic events in my childhood that I am working through. Some of them I have come to terms with like the alcoholism in our family, others like physical abuse and emotional pain I am still trying to uncover.

So from time to time all this emotional stuff lines up and you will read some very different posts about church stuff and other things. These are mostly just me letting off steam about the condition of the world and the Church as I see it. I don't know why I feel the way I do about that stuff, it is just something God has added to the mix of me. There is a rich history of prophetic people being a touch crazy. The bottom line is prophetic people have this deep urge to express to people what we feel, and getting the message out can be a bit overwhelming for everyone.

So I blog.

And talk with my friends who get tired of hearing about what needs to change until I am proven wrong or things change. The frustrating thing is that some of the changes can be 2-3 years down the road. Thankfully, once I get it off my chest I am not like the spoiled 6 year old that wants ice cream in Wal-Mart. I am quick to point out the signs along the way however, which is just about as annoying.

No one likes a know-it-all but sometimes I just know. Sorry - deal with it.

So that is a little insight into Davie, and why the title of my blog is what it is. I am on a journey and most days it is a wonderful unexpected winding road. I may have rest stops along the way, a side road or two and even some back tracking, but life is so much better living it in the skin you are in.

The way I am made, what choice do I really have? I sing like an angel, I know too much to be normal, I can do too many things to just sit idle, I am too emotional and in touch with my creator not to care, and too stinking tall to just blend in.

I am a "worship leader".

It seems once that title is bestowed on a person, everything that was and is to come is all about being a "worship leader".

When people ask me what I do I rarely if ever respond that I am a "worship leader". It could be that I just started leading recently and just volunteer. I think if the title actually defined an office in the church I may use it, but I am not sure I should. To be honest, I have always been afraid of the title. One of the first recorded acts of worship was when Abraham took Isaac up to the mountain to worship God. He took Isaac up there with the full knowledge he was going to kill him! Nope, my response to the "do" question is that I work at a print shop and run a small marketing company. If they press me further I can narrow it down to specifics, but my first response is hardly ever telling someone I am a leader, let alone a "worship leader".

I don't think we get to tell people we are leaders. A self imposed title of leader is tyrannical thinking in my book. If I have to tell you I am a leader - I probably ain't one. To tell someone I am a "worship leader" smacks of pride. It is like telling someone I am the best husband in the world without ever letting you interview my wife. I may be the best, but without a bit of proof the title is meaningless.

I have noticed that the "worship leader" title has an uncanny ability to make those called just about unbearable to be around. Almost without fail, the more you hear a "worship leader" telling you about their gift, the more you can count on them doing nothing that lives outside their idea of that gift. For some, it is the ultimate calling and everything in life must lineup to it.

I have known many "worship leaders" in my lifetime, and I can pick them out the minute I meet a new one. If I don't pick it out right away, I will be sure to be told all the ways they are great. I get to hear how long they have been leading, who they know, how God shows up when they, what God did after they, how difficult it is to be, when the next time they get to, how they have this great new, and so on. It is actually quite comical, and I have come to the conclusion that they are all somehow cut from the same cloth.

It is a big velvety flowing swirling melodic cloth with big voices and big hair and affected facial expressions and zeal. It really is an amazing thing to behold, and I too can get caught up in the experience of it all if I am not careful.

See, my fear is that "worship leading" can so easily turn into nothing but entertainment. Worship in the modern church is tied to music, and music is big business outside the church. Everyone that comes into church has a point of reference of what music should look and sound like. Since worship is music, it had better be big, have a good beat, some pretty people on stage and electric guitars and drums. Ask a "worship leader" if they mind having the lights off when they lead, or if they can lead without instruments. Impossible.

I think I am going to stay as far away as I can from the title of "worship leader". As I recall the goal is to be called a servant.

Now that is a title worth striving for.

I hesitate to post about this.

The simple reason is that posting about religion is an exercise in futility. Most people that know of what I speak are already turned off to the institution of the church, so this is a case of preaching to the choir.

This is the oldest Gothic church in the US. I took this picture last year while on a sabbatical after the loss of our pregnancy. This church is basically a museum now. In fact I had to go to the gift shop and request they open it.

Let that sink in a bit.

This church witnessed and housed soldiers of the Revolutionary and Civil War. It was actually used as a stable for one of those occupations, a telling condition of the state of a country during war.

Which brings me to my point.

Somewhere along the way we have lost sight of who we are supposed to be as the church. We are the peace makers. The earth groans waiting for us to bring peace to the earth. The earth literally waits in agony for the return of the princes and princesses of peace. I know that sounds spiritual and dramatic, but take look around at the unrest of storms and earthquakes and hurricanes and global warming and war. The earth is in agony and even if you dismiss the spiritual, Al Gore has pointed out that we are responsible for the condition of the planet.

I think he is absolutely correct that we are responsible, but the solution is not in government policy, it is in the church rising up and doing what it right.

The condition of the world is the fault of the sons and daughters of God. God has given us dominion over this place, and we messed it up. We keep messing it up by killing our brothers and sisters. We keep messing it up by separating fathers from sons and mothers from daughters. We have blood on our hands and blood in our gas tanks and blood on our iPhones. We have blood in our wombs and blood on the House and Senate floor and blood in the Oval Office and knee deep in the Supreme Court.

And we sit asleep and lock our churches and fill our marquees with marketing slogans of what God can do as our world spins out of control. We segregate ourselves Sunday morning by doctrine and color and culture and teach our people to rely on the pulpit instead of the Father. We preach about peace and vote for war. We endure the sanctuary and revel in the stadium. We celebrate the institution of our fathers while losing the heart of our sons. We pray for the purity of our own daughters while willingly watching the degradation of another's. We call bondage freedom and restraint stifling as the poor die alone, the orphans sleep unwanted, the oppressed cry out for justice and the widows weep in utter loneliness.

And we sit asleep, acutely aware that as we slumber the authority we once had is being drained away. Drop by drop, year after year, generation after generation. Until all that will be left is the shell of what could have been as the earth groans in agony waiting for the sons and daughters of peace.

Wake-up Sons and Daughter's of God, let's restore the Church, let's start at home.

Last weekend we attended a "Christ Led Family" conference at our church put on by the Maxwell Family. There was so much good stuff, I hardly know where to start. The time we spent learning about this family and their life was short, but the results are going to be tremendous.

It has changed my life.

One of the first things I did when we got home Saturday night was to throw our TV out. We had been thinking about doing that for the last few years, but it was time. The kids actually agreed we should do this, so we are now even further out of the main stream.

We home school, we mill our own bread, we serve at church as a family, we are our kids best friends, we run 2 home based businesses, and we are actually quite happy to sit around and talk to each other. We are so far out of the main stream we are sitting on the banks.

You know what? I like the banks.

The stream can just rush right on by for all I care. I know where it is headed, and I for one want nothing to do with the waterfall at the end of the line.

The main reason we took the TV - or "The Beast" as Steven Maxwell calls it - out of our home is the appetite it feeds. Entertainment is all about fun and fun is directly tied to the amount of money you feed it. Fun is an ever changing idea, and seems to never come free.

You pay for fun, sometimes you pay dearly.

I am after joy. Joy is something that you can't buy, comes for free, and sneaks up on you when you least expect it. Fun is gone the minute it is over but joy lives on forever. You can't recall fun without experiencing it again, but joy can be recalled any place any time.

I was telling my son about this concept in relation to roller coaster rides. I asked him if he remembered the feeling he had riding the ride? He can't. He can remember how it made him feel, but he can't recall the actual feeling.

Joy, on the other hand is very real whenever you recall it. Without much effort, I can recall the feeling of seeing my son and daughter for the first time. Not only can I experience the same feeling, I can actually add to it when I see how much they have grown. I can still remember every detail of the moment I knew I had met my wife and now when I look over our life together that first moment, that promise of all to come, is just that much sweeter.

Even though some of these events are years old the joy is still there just waiting to be rekindled. Joy is like a smoldering ember waiting for a bit of memory to fire up the blessing all over again.

T.V. was fun but I don't have time for fun. There is a lifetime of joy to experience and I want it all.

Monday evening I had to run into work and restart a Citrix server I broke from home. My wife and I took the opportunity to steal away from the kids, and found ourselves alone in my office.

Yes, the thought did run through my mind, and no it didn't happen.

As an aside, I think most men love the idea of anything intimate outside of the bedroom. The fact is we usually think about sex all day at work anyway so it seems a perfect fit to bring the fantasy world into reality. The best part is that it is perfectly "legal" and moral to fantasize about you and your wife role playing at the office. But I digress.

No, this trip was not about being physical at work, it was about being spiritual.

As we were all alone in the office, had to run around the shop and restart ICA terminals, Julie suggested we pray. Honestly, I was still thinking about other things, but the idea stuck so we did.

Walking from department to department we simply prayed for peace and prosperity and for specific people as I told her who worked where. It was nice. It didn't even seem that strange to be praying in the building.

10 minutes later we were done, lights out, doors locked, and on our way home.

I was installing a scanner in our pre-press department today and a strange thing occurred, I started a very deep conversation about God with a former LDS. He actually initiated it by saying that everything was about money - even religion. He shared about his experience as a missionary for his church, and how he hated it. How he was forced to say things he didn't believe in, and how there is no truth.

He is really struggling, and all I could tell him was that he was right. For most people it is about money, but that is a lie. The world tells us our worth is found in our bank accounts, while God tells us our value is as a son and daughter.

I am not sure I made any impact, but it was amazing that we were discussing religion, Mormonism, Catholicism, and Christianity at work.

I wonder how that happened?