.: moments over a meal :.

I had the chance to hang with some friends from Mount Hermon tonight. Just in the matter of time that it took to show up, get seated, order, eat, pay and leave, we all had a refreshing time of feeling like we were back there... if only for a couple hours. Our lives have continued. Things have changed - some drastic and some expected. But we all really found ourselves encouraged in our brief meal together. For isn't that what some of our great moments in life consist of? A time in which we mentally and emotionally place ourselves back in those even greater moments of any given history, and recall what it was like to have life as we have been hoping for some time? Yes, we need these deep breaths of restoration to continue on in the journey... to keep on "keeping on".

.: it was a beautiful day :.

Last night, I went to what may turn out to be the greatest rock concert of my whole life! Thanks to my best friend, I had the chance to go see U2 at a sold-out show in Portland, Oregon. Words cannot even begin to express how powerful the concert was. It was at times very moving to see Bono perform so many of his classics, as well as blow us all away with stuff off their new album. They have a way of putting on an emtionally charged performance, with lights and sound and energy that made everyone just soak it all in as best they could. I felt like hearing "Origin of the Species", "One", and their opening song, "City of Blinding Lights", made it all worth the money, worth standing outside in the rain, worth risking life and limb to make it through the ice storm that was only visiting the area for that night, and worth having a cold to go with all my wonderful memories. And as my kids begin to question me of my own exposure to the rock legends of my day, I can proudly tell them of the day their old man went and saw U2... live in concert!

.: love concluded continued :.

The rumors confirmed
Never has a whisper hurt so much
An absolutely crushing blow
Though I took it all in stride
Words of affirmation
But my heart has heard clearly
Myself to blame
A heart that made up it's mind
Beauty captured
And lost
A sound defeat
Coming from a friend
I tried with some strength
But never committed to the thought
Sighs in the deepest of depths
I had thought this one possibly
Thoughts still linger
My heart was maybe always there
But fearful and hesitant all together
To see them there
Intertwined as I had hoped for
Maybe I care for her
More than I can take
More than I care to find out
I was praying
In the hopes that He would come through
Now I stratch together
Reasons to doubt
Was He ever for me?
Must every hopeful dawning
Be reduced to shadows and storms
Her touch is captured in my mind
For me to play over in days to come
Would I take it all back?
Play it different down the road?
Maybe it took such loss to answer my hope
Or to silence the prospect of moving further
Beautiful as it may be
My dreams almost seem
As if to be the deepest that I ever could touch
Myself to blame
No doubt from here on out
The choice falls upon me
It will have to come from my very core
The secrets only deepen
And my heart withdraws
With sincerity and approval
For it seems like what I hoped for all along.

.: grand and insignificant :.

I am going to let you in on a little secret. It's something that we all know, but very few of us live in light of. Everyone all around you is a fraud. Everyone! Everyone you know and experience throughout a day is a fake, one person after another. Everyone is compensating and everyone has compromised in some form or way. Everyone is pretending... and not one of us has the courage to admit it. We live in a world that believes that grandiose knowledge or unusual ability makes them greater than everyone else. And because we have been living according to that faulty standard, we have all been drawing direction for our lives from this one grand lie.

There exists this sense that a few have some sort of greater advantage over everyone else... but the truth remains that we are all equal. And everywhere you look, there is a people who are terrified of convincing themselves of their ok-ness, of even their uniqueness, and their equality with everyone else (partially because they don't believe it, and partially because those who supposedly have the advantage wouldn't have them to realize it). The reality exists that so very few of us truly knows ourselves, so the result is one great universal compensation, paired with the deepest desire to never let anyone else find out that they too are living according to the fundamental secret.

It's not just like some of us are cowering. All of us are entrenched in some sort of fear - it's just that some of us hide it far better than everyone else. All of us mask and dismiss some of the most beautiful parts of our strength - it's just that some camouflage their acts of dismissal and masking with better success than others. All of us are walking with some sort of limp, all of us are cowering in terms of some dynamic of our life, and all of us are stooping to compensate for something that we desperately feel that we lack. We are a people that clings to any advantage we might have over another individual, as if it promised life itself (believe me, I know how some of these moments feel closer to that reality than others).

The greatest awakening comes as we realize that wisdom is simply a comparative term, for all of us is wiser with regards to something in contrast to another individual. We must come to the deepest sense of everyone's fallenness and depravity, even at this stage in the story of history and eternity. All are turned in on themselves, which in turn makes us all co-equals before the Father. No one can boast of being in some sort of unique position, nor can they claim that they possess a unique perspective on anything, for all territories of existence have been found, explored, mapped, mined, and plundered. And though so very few of us will ever fully enter into this reality (myself included), there is nothing that requires that we continue to nurture a conscience that holds us back. In the end, there is really no reason to allow fear and reservation to temper our vision, passion, or advancing in what we have been called to.

If we can at all find a way to, we desperately need to find that rewiring in us, and sever it with a spirit that is nothing short of ruthless. And the only way that we will ever know that we have succeeded in this is that we will be liberated from giving a rip what another person thinks about us, for all that anyone might say is intrinsically tainted by personal preference and perspective. Who is anyone to tell us what matters most, for everyone is proven biased, confused at best, compensating in ways beyond even their own understanding, and bloated beyond measure.

I, for one, could use a nice long break from living according to this lie!

.: no longer the last word :.

I just saw him not a couple weeks ago at Thanksgiving. I remember seeing him sit on the couch and take in the power of having his family all around him. And I even can still hear the words I prayed right before the meal, thanking God for having all of our family with us for one more year. But the news came last night... he had finally passed away. And yes, we can rejoice in the fact that he is now with both his Savior, as well as his wife whom he lost over a year ago. But there is still something that lingers in every one of our spirits as Christmas Eve rolls closer (the subsequent time that we would have gotten to be with him) that speaks to the deep sadness at his absense. No more of his touch... no more of his voice... no more of his tender and deeply compassionate spirit. He has gone home... which almost promises that this Christmas, as recent others have been in the midst of similar losses, will not be the way it once was. When time was golden... when family was all around... when colors were more vivid... and people laughed more, as if because there was less to break our spirits back then. Those sights and sounds seem so close that I could touch them if only I leaned just a little bit further in my memories. A time in which we knew nothing of death and loss and mourning - only life and joy and love and peace. The world is not what it used to be, and in the loss of our friend and family member, we sigh even deeper because its brokenness is quickly becoming a more vivid reality. But praise God, the grave no longer has the final word over a person's life! Praise God, the Father has done what was needed to restore relationship. And we of all people can celebrate because he who was once hurting has, of all things, been healed through the grave. The final word is now life... and peace... and the call to finally come home.

Rest in peace, Ray... We both grieve and rejoice at your homegoing.