14 June 2006

Day in a life

What's happening:
  • Our bid on the house was accepted yesterday
  • Last night Eric and I worked wee into the early morning on Case Mountain's creed - it's really starting to take shape now
  • We had the house inspection today - it really does seem to be an exceptional property
  • Tomorrow I will probably start the mortgage process
  • At work I had two budgetary projections due that I got done, but in each case they were over earlier projects by hundreds of thousands of dollars - ouch!
  • I do a review of all construction docs for the new high school on campus for technology issues, it needs to be done this week
  • Saturday Eric and I are Idaho-bound!

13 June 2006

Things a-movin' with the house

We got a verbal acceptance on our offer. Below are pictures of the outside of the house:

10 June 2006

Deficits, a life lived in the past, and the future with indictments

Do you ever wonder if you have such deficits, character flaws, or mental issues that to move forward in life is not literally possible? Sometimes I must admit that these are thoughts I have. This week I've been met with big things that should bring happiness. Eric and I zoom to Idaho to participate in a Christianity in postmodernity conference. I will be seeing family that I haven't seen in over 10 years who are just wonderful. They love freely and have many testimonies of God's goodness when things weren't always so good. I should be ecstatic, but the primary emotions are actually a bit petty. I will get a lot of looks for how much weight I've put on since they have seen me last. They will be kind, but there's no way to avoid them having to recalibrate their mental image of me. It's kind of suffocating to think about. It seems to represent in a tangible way many of the areas of my life that I am most ashamed of.

Then today Eric, Katie, and I were looking for duplexes as part of the church planting adventure. This will be the first property I have ever owned and again instead of happiness there is mostly anxiety. A lot of it's normal - who doesn't think twice about buying a house. Then there are the nuances of purchasing with friends. We spend a lot of time talking through the issues, but it is natural for some anxiety. Then again, I think back to conversations about renting for so long and not having anything to show for it. And recently someone looked very suspicious of me regarding the duplex arrangement. The gesture was, "What sort of deficiency does a person who makes decent money have to be a renter and then going in on a duplex instead of buying their own house?" I guess in many ways I feel I've failed my own and others' expectations.

I find that much of my life is lived in the past. When looking at the future it feels too big or to be too much of an indictment to move forward. It wouldn't be accurate to leave this entry on a simple down note because indeed I have hope. I just can't seem to get it to translate into the future.

The apostles plus 2,000 years

It is generally recognized that the early church believed Jesus' second coming was tangibly close. Jesus in the Gospels has a message of immediacy to reinterpret the Kingdom of God and has a mission that takes place in the span of his life. Everything is now.

If the apostles knew earthly existence would extend 2,000 years beyond their lives, would their scriptures have been any different? Would the value of land and living a peaceable life have had more pragmatics? Would we have a better idea of when to kill for justice or find that notion counter to the Gospel? Would we have more/better principles to guide us through corporate law, issues of societal harm such as ecological war zones that kill or disease generations of people? Would capitalism, socialism, communism, or theocracy have been spelled out as divinely inspired? Would economic realities that take into account leveraging capital, stocks, etc. have been expounded? Would we have had clarity in how all of the world's religions were supposed to fit, or would we find that indeed much of the world is destined for hell and that's just the way it is? Would we have found more attention to ritual and how to handle life when the ritualistic expectations are unfulfilled?

Sometimes I find it hard to find meaning in this land between times. Sometimes I find it hard to live a sustained, truthful life in the Gospel and want to find a reason why.

Broken V. bent

Eugene Peterson spoke in a Mars Hill Audio interview about wanting to get rid of mechanistic language for God and humans. I think he is right. Words such as "broken" and "dysfunctional" don't really honor or provide justice to a person. They bring me to a place of manipulating in order to get a desired result. This is far from how I've experienced God interacting with me. In Out of the Silent Planet C.S. Lewis uses the word "bent" to describe men who are influenced by evil. That appeals to me.

Just rambling now...

Value of simplicity

A couple of friends and I are starting a church. I've been reluctant to take hold of it publicly. There are a variety of reasons that I will probably explore in another posting, but suffice to say I feel a freedom to express it openly now. So here's the first outright posting regarding Case Mountain Community Church.

We're working on a number of foundational documents: mission, values, philosophy, vision/goals, and even a creed. Things are clipping along at a nice pace. Recently, our attention has been on the values. We are thinking of adding simplicity. Below is a bit of my trying to tease out what this might mean:

Simplicity - some definitions and synonyms:
  • "the quality of being simple or uncompounded" - Visual Thesaurus
  • "a lack of penetration or subtlety" - Visual Thesaurus
  • "absence of affectation ("deliberate pretense or exaggerated display") or pretense" - Visual Thesaurus
  • "freedom from difficulty or hardship or effort" - Visual Thesaurus
  • "lack of ornamentation" - Visual Thesaurus
  • the quality of intentionally reducing complexity - me
  • sacrificing the peripheral to focus on the important - me
  • forfeiting complexity to the gain of only that which is significant - me
  • peeling of layers to get to the real - me

Some thoughts or scenarios:
  • nakedness or honesty in our relationships with God and others
  • developing the art of using the fewest number of words or objects to express, but finding that these simple expressions are pleasing and beautiful
  • seeing simplicity as art; to hone the skill of taking complex, disparate, multi-discipline concepts and weave understanding that is lovely
  • appreciating that the vast majority of things should be expressed in avenues that everyday people can understanding
  • using big words when appropriate, but never to distance or violate the person of another
  • Kingdom principle of entering as a child - allowing all things to start new and fresh, to peel away those attitudes, possessions, and relationships that hinder rather than grow
  • Not a lot of chrome
  • aesthetic lines that compliment, but rarely take from functionality
  • Architecture that servers
  • Saying what you mean without pleasantries or self-protection
  • Realness that honors what is most important and sacrifices self-interest or being misunderstood to love
  • an uncompounded thread that weaves through life, God, and meaning
  • a tangibility that does not compromise other elements that seem mutually exclusive such as faith and mystery
CMCC - values

05 June 2006

Nice evening

As I've gotten older, I find to mutually exclusive things at work: I enjoy more time alone and I really don't like the single life. Last night I eased into the start of the week getting a number of minor chores done, having lunch ready for this morning, and being able to end the day with a nice read from Out of the Silent Planet. I even had a couple of morsels of bittersweet chocolate which was a taste of heaven. Last night I enjoyed singleness.

03 June 2006

Betty the redeamed pin-up queen and John the governor contender in one night

this is an audio post - click to play

Betty, John, and Jason brought together through the Ruba'iyat...




















The Ruba'iyat and Existentialism

I think this stanza from The Ruba'iyat captures much of Existentialism's notion of "absurdity":
If only there were occasion for repose,
If only this long road had an end,
And in the track of a hundred thousand years, out of the heart of dust
Hope sprang again, like greenness.








I envision the last line throwing the others into confusion.

Master's - walk through big spiritual events

So, I need to have a theme/plan for my Master's special project. It's a little weird not having one by now, but I guess you have to live where you are. I may put together a few entries as I go along that help to muse this out. Today, I purchased The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khyyam and Marxism and Christianity by MacIntyre. The Ruba'iyat was a book that brought back my first exposure Wittgensteinian language philosophy and Kierkegaard Existentialism. McIntyre is one of the philosophers that is particularly helpful for those in the Emergent Conversation. So this got me thinking about the events in my life that have shaped me spiritually. Everything in my life could fit on the list, but below are things that stand out. I guess the thinking is that this might help tease out something to spend the special project on:
  • Early life in Fundamentalist Christianity - strong Bible as Word emphasis
  • Mom's spiritual quest
  • Life changing, salvation experience
  • Full engagement in Evangelical Christianity
  • High school - tug to be pastor and in business; saw as mutually exclusive and unreconcilable
  • InterVarsity - exposure to charismatic movement, exorcism ministry, healing of memories, confrontation on theology of women in ministry, exposure to intense mission expressions, exposure to spiritual warfare, exposure to worship (not just in song), etc.
  • College - exposure to Philosophy as a tool to express God in fresh language and conceptualize him differently; good liberal arts education and some undercutting of Fundamentalism; new humility for faith and stronger love for Jesus
  • Bank internships - found giftings that worked well in business, but unfulfilled
  • Church internship - found similar giftings that were good in business were good at church; exposed to dark side of Pentecostalism and authoritarian leadership; engagement disintegrated; stripped deeply
  • Church plant - learned a lot about servanthood, but had bad attitude; never lived potential, but church grew; was obsessed with isolation and loneliness and never quite pulled out of nose dive; found I was not as attracted to associate pastorate as I originally thought
  • Chief technology officer - out of the church plant season developed the roots to my technology career; found that I loved organizational culture and being able to find solutions and help shape culture through technology; given taste of leadership as well as engineering, but was not able to gain traction
  • Chief information officer - moved to CT; job started highly engineering and crumbled to pieces because of leadership deficiencies as well as unhealthy staff; have begun rebuilding and a refocus on leadership and people has emerged; all probably part of God's plan, but one hell of a ride; sometimes feels like tail spin and cresting at the same time
  • Master's - exposure to liberal theologies and interfaith dialog through Hartford Seminary; chipping at some fundamental elements of faith, but strengthening in others that are more core; challenged in belief, but also given much to provide new and better perspectives; explored Paul Tillich and universal revelation; influenced by Tony Campolo; continued themes of Wittenstien and Existentialism; exposed to Emergent Conversation which gave a little more form to voice that has been evolving since high school and looking for truthful expression
  • Church planting, part two - not sure what this means; may culminate some of the Emergent stuff; the mother church is classic charismatic and may feel threatened with theological concerns/differences; ability to re-due screw ups from NLC?; exciting communal feel that includes buying a duplex with friends serious of integrating faith and all of life