Fuzzy Water

“Can I have some more of that fuzzy water?“ my niece asked. That would be ”bitter water“ in the local vernacular. Gassed water, bubbly water, mineral water and a half a dozen other names, but never ”fuzzy water“. But Rachel calls it just that. Of course, we all are calling it that now.

But the not only is the water fuzzy, but so is life sometimes. I have been trying to work though to some mega-thoughts and challenges recently, and they are all still fuzzy. But here is how far I have gotten so far . . .

. . . lots of people are living outside apparent reality, or under the radar of observable behavior, or stealthily having a double life is what more and more people seem to be doing. Or they do what I do sometimes, think entirely opposite of all said and stated beliefs . . . thinking that is completely and totally in contrast to all that I have worked for, with, and toward for the last 27 years.

How can this be? Well perhaps it is simply an anomaly with me, but I think not because it seems that I am running into more and more people my age that are living two lives, or at the very least thinking two lives. The why of this has puzzled me greatly . . . especially about myself and my thinking. These two worlds are fighting against one another and they ultimately lead to completely opposite directions in life.

The fact that I can even be having these conversations with myself points to a great dilemma; is anything I have believed for the last 27 years even valid?

You can chalk this conversation up to six or seven possible apparent reasons, but they all fall short in the end . . . I know, I have been thinking about this stuff lots for the last 4-6 years. One side of me, the pastoral side, wishes to help people resolve the two-thinking dilemma. Another side of me, the self-righteous arrogant person, wants to shout at all such people you are double-minded and an enemy to the Kingdom! There is another part of me, the opposite-side-of-all-stated-beliefs side, that wishes to just walk away from it all . . . the conflict, the controversy, the conversation, period.

It at the very least shows me how fuzzy life can be, and how deceitful my heart can be. In the end though, I have complete confidence that Jesus can see to the heart, and the heart of the matter . . . His discernment has no fuzziness at all.

how the church pimped my ride today

After church this morning, as I finished pronouncing the benediction, Ray stood up in the back and asked everyone to be seated. He then proceeded to come to the front and treat Brenda and I to some great meal tickets for some super eating spots in town. But then the kicker was what they gave me to drive for the day! Look at this photo and drool! I drove this thing at obscene speeds, and I gotta tell you, from zero to 60, it’s faster than the angels of God! This qualifies as the nicest gift a church has every given me as their pastor, period.

In the Greek Kitchen

When the Greek waiter asked Jake and I to follow him into the kitchen, I thought he was joking. But he was more than serious . . . he took us back to the fresh catch cooler and let us pick out our own sea-bass for dinner. But the ruckus and looks our walk through the kitchen caused, deserves to be blogged about.

We were in the employee only sections of the fish house. And all these Greek gals were slaving away in the kitchen and you could feel their animosity that Jake and I were invading their domain! But the fish were what Jake and I were focused on, nothing more, nothing less. But it was interesting to see the inside the kitchen area.

Anyhoo, Jake and I selected the fish that we wanted grilled for dinner that night and made our way back to our table. There we enjoyed our family, a spectacular sunset, and eventually, Mr Sea-bass himself. I think I will tell the rest of the story in pictures.

Racing the butterflies

The smoke from the wildfires outside the city is choking the air with smoke and ash. It is like a terminal haze laying over the air, gray, polluted, even direct sharp sunlight is having trouble getting through it, and we haven’t had a cloud in the sky in weeks.

So this morning as I was riding my bike up the mountain to the South of the city, and finally getting above the worst of the bad air, I found myself racing the butterflies. There were all kinds . . . Purple Shot Copper’s, Small Coppers, Large Whites, Bath Whites, Wall butterflies, and Small Tortoiseshells.

Butterflies can only fly if their body temperature is above 86 degrees, and consequently the butterflies are usually sitting on branches and such, sunning themselves, but today all were in flight. And an amazing number of them seem to be racing along with me as I poured sweat while pedaling uphill. It was a magical moment in the good air.

When I sit and think of all the elements that had to come together to have this five minute moment this morning, it is more than a little mind-boggling. Life is complicated! And it is too often just a series of nows, the this moment’s of life that can not be duplicated nor repeated. I wonder if that is a gift or a curse for the Western Mind which is centered around planning and individualism?

Stuck in the ruts

When I was a kid, there were loads of dirt-roads around . . . no asphalt or cement to be found at all. And these roads often had huge ruts! When I was a little whiper-snapper I thought they might swallow my dad’s truck whole and that we would never get out. Some of them seemed to have teeth and lips, just waiting to suck us in.

I am discovering that those ruts of my childhood were the easiest ones in life. The pot-holes and ruts of adult life are feelings of being trapped, or stagnant in the sense of not moving nor making any progress, and feeling irrelevant and life having no meaning . . . this is what I mean by being stuck in a rut. Bob Walker asks the question, “If you could do anything you wanted, if God told you that you were free to choose, if you had all the time, energy, money, staff and education you needed, and you knew that you could not fail, what would you do?” (This question came to me via B. Biehl)

What a question huh? And as I understand it, most people love this question and find themselves set free as they try to answer it and then start baby steps toward reaching it. This is the question that often leads people toward their dreams. It helps them in many ways, but especially in discovering the next step. But what if your answer is “nothing”?

Either my rut is way deeper than Dr. Walker ever anticipated or ever seen, or I am a hopeless case because I have no answer to this question. Does that mean I don’t want to do something? No it means that I don’t know what that something is. This is more than a rut; it’s a crater.

Some folks tell me it’s mid-life whatever, and I tell them that I have already passed mid-life number one and two, I have never heard of mid-life crisis lasting for years on end. It’s a hole so deep that there is no light coming through either end. It smells of despair.