Apomo

One guy told me it was “breathtaking”. Wow, that’s alot for a proud hispanic guy to say. The same guy said he’s going to go get all his cousins and family and bring them back. Said he wants to go through it a couple more times.

Reading some of the comments in the guestbook it’s obvious that people are really connecting with God and thinking about deep stuff. That’s what we want. Hopefully we’ll build some momentum this weekend and by next weekend we’ll have a good crowd everynight.

We’re not basing success on the number of people that come through, although we do want as many as possible to experience it. We said from the begining that if we can just actually pull this thing off then we’ve been successful. We feel this way because it makes a statement about what we’re trying to do and it’s the first of it’s kind in our area, to the best of our knowledge.

We feel it’s a vanguard event in that regard. If we can get a handful of people excited about the concept, then that’s what we’re hoping for because then we can move forward with other events and it can become the organic thing we’ve been thinking about.
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But, as I’m completely bored here at work today and reflecting on stuff as I watch traffic go by outside my window I’ve been thinking about the good things that have happened to/in me the last four months since I found out about my heart failure and I can see how the Lord is making lemonade in my soul. Maybe I should write a book, “Lemonade for the Soul.” Naw, nobody’d buy a book with such a goofy title. Would they? 

Actually, I started out bitching about it (my lemons) a little to myself. But then I realized the thing I was bitiching about is actually a good thing. So then I got to thinking about lemonade and the Church Lady. See the progression?

I was getting a little pissy about how tired I get now. Used to be I could go and go and go and never really get too worn out. I was the chubby version of the Energizer bunny. I remember once I was working full-time, taking a double full-time load in college (22 units) and getting straight A’s, racing cars on the weekends, married, and helping my wife with her business all at the same time. No biggie. If I wasn’t overloaded I felt guilty. I as a driven person. I was possessed. How do you spell therapy?

Anyway, nowadays I can’t hardly go to work and go home without being spent. And I don’t even work that hard. For crying out loud, look how much time I have to blog while I’m at work! But, by the time I get home I’m beat and only have enough gas to hang out with my kids a little before they go to bed. That’s the heart problem slowing me down. My heart doesn’t put out that much blood into the system so it fatigues me.

I’ve really learned my new limits this month. My energy threshold is low. Between going to Catalyst, doing the Labyrinth, my parents visiting, work, and doctor appointments I’ve been sliding downhill a little on my recovery. My chronic care nurse manager chewed me out about it a couple days ago. Made me promise I wouldn’t go help w/the Labyrinth that night like I planned. I feel guilty about that. I’ve always prided myself on working harder than everybody else and doing the lion’s share of the work. How do you spell proud and attention whore?

So, I’ve been thinking about things lately that I’ve learned from the reality of my condition. They kinda suck, but I’m thankful.

1. I need to slow down. Obvious one. I have to wonder why I felt the need to be so damn busy all the time. What is it in my identity that compells me to overdo it? Why do I have to overachieve and overcommit? Why do I feel guilty if I’m not doing twice as much as everybody else? Why do I hold myself to such a ridiculous standard of overachievement?

2 I need to stop thinking too much about the future and be content with today. It drives my wife crazy. I’m always thinking two blocks down the street, 2 years down the road, never happy with today. I reach a goal or make an acquisition and I’m already planning the next goal or acquisition. I haven’t learned yet to stop and smell the roses so to speak. Jesus said to not worry about tomorrow. What? Is he nuts? What about five year plans, goal setting, yada, yada? He said not to worry about it. Focus on today. That irritates me. But now I’m starting to understand it and it’s starting to make sense. It’s part of faith, it’s part of being able to call him “Abba”. it’s part of peace and rest and the light burden he promised us. It’s living in the moment. Finding God in the little things. Investing in relationships, today. I’ll blog more on that later.

3. I’m learning to take a backseat in a team and let other people do the work. Physically I just can’t keep up. Pisses me off, embarasses me, makes me feel bad. But that’s the tough truth and it sucks. I want to do more than anybody because it makes me feel important. Then everybody comments on how indispensable I am and I feel validated. But I’ve had to force myself to slow down with this Labyrinth thing and let other people do more and contribute more. Jesus said to humble yourself, to allow yourself to be humbled, to promote other people, to not seek acclaim and the admiration of people, to serve, to be the last. I’m learning to do that.

4. I’m learning to pay attention to my body. Listen to it and obey it. That’s a good thing because for too long I’ve been irresponsible with my body. Now I eat better, rest better. I’ve lost a little weight. I’m even starting to drink water. That’s huge for me because I’ve never liked to drink water unless I was really hot and it was really cold. For years I’ve been addicted to soda. Before I got sick I’d easily drink 2-3 liters of soda a day. Now that I restricted to 2 quarts of fluid intake a day it’s helped me cut back on soda. Now that I’m not eating high sodium foods my tastes have changed and now water is appealing. Weird how that works, eh?

5. I am happy to say I dealt with fear. When the doctor tells you there’s a life threatening situation going on in your body and that it’s severe, fear grips you. When he first told me about my heart failure fear gripped me. I went cold, my ears rang, I got tunnel vision, I got hot and cold at the same time and my chest literally clenched. But, immediately I thought to myself “NO! No fear! Calm down. Deal with it.” From then on I’ve not been scared. It’s weird. I’ve been a little anxious here and there, and there’s been some tension. But not fear. I assume that this will work it’s way out somehow. I’m not sure how it will, but I’m still thinking about being a grandfather, the future of the emerging church (with me in it) and all the stuff of a life well lived. I just don’t worry about it. That’s the peace of God. Truthfully, and maybe this isn’t the right thing to do, I don’t even pray that God will heal me. He knows I don’t want to be sick, but whatever is the best thing is what I want. Good things of have come of it so far, who am I to doubt God’s providence in the situation?

Ok, enough for now. What can I do to live in the moment right this second? Note to self: Fix the fart fan in the bathroom. It sounds like an Edsel with a knocking rod.

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my company has it’s own slang. when i started everybody would say “you love it!” about everything. “You gotta stay late tonight. And you love it!” Then it was “Get you some!”. Like if you said “I’m going to lunch.” Somebody else would say “Get you some!”.

Then, the last thing you’d say before you hung up the phone used to be “Late.” Like this, “Ok, I’ll email that to you. Late”, and then you’d hang up. Then “late” became unfashionable and everybody said, “Peace”. “Ok, I’ll email that you. Peace.” and then you’d hang up. I noticed just today that “Peace” has fallen to the wayside and now everybody says “Cool, cool” before they hang up. “Dude, I’ll fax that report over right now. Cool, cool”. Some people are shortening that to “Coo, coo”. Whatever.

One that never changes around here is the ubiquitous use of “Dude”. It’s company policy that we have to begin and end every sentence with “dude”. “Dude, whassup dude? Dude, where’s that fax you promised me dude”, then the other guy would probably say “Duuuuuddde! I gave it to the other dude, and he was going to fax it to you dude. Dude! Where is that sucka dude? Dude, I’m sorry dude, I’ll send it right over dude.” THen the other guy would say “Coo. coo.”.

I don’t know about all that. I’m ok with the Dude and the Peace. But Coo coo just sounds fowl and “Late” sounded too Snoop Doggish for me.

What’s up with Snoop Dogg anyway? Shizzle, cannizzle, drizzile, manizzle. Whatever. It just sounds like krunk to me.

Peace. Late. Coo, coo.]]>

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I’ve been wanting for awhile to get away for a spiritual retreat where I can fast and pray and just hang out with God. I’ve never done that. Haven’t fasted in a long, long time.

But I’ve been wanting to get away and just let God do…whatever.

There’s a place about 4 hours drive from here called “The Lord’s Land” which designed for just this sort of thing. Very tranquil, peaceful, isolated, lots of nature.

Heard from a friend of mine about another place less than two hours from here too that’s actually a monastery overlooking the ocean.

I just want to get away and focus a little. So much stuff going on. Work, family, illness, labyrinth, visiting family out of state, reading books…. it’s all good stuff. but i need to center. i need to just go where expectations, schedules, appointments, tasks, concerns aren’t.

I think I’m going to plan on doing this at least twice a year. Figure I can go to Catalyst and an emerging conference and do two retreats a year. Plus all my reading and blogging. That’s a good spiritual development plan I think.

Have been thinking about this for awhile. Even before I began reading Manning.]]>

Anyhoo, in his talk he focused on the types of influence/power a person can have in a group. He mentioned political power, economic power, and social power. He focused on social power. He said that social power is more valuable than the other two. I’m going completely by memory here so forgive me if I’m wrong about all my facts and stuff. But he said that social power is the ability of a person to connect with other people and have a relationship of credibility with them. So, the more people you can connect with and wider your network of people is, the more social power you can to bring to bear on your project/job/endeavor.

He said that the average person has about 30 people they a relationship of influence with and these people tend to be in about 3-5 different worlds/cultures/groups. In other words, each of us has and identity in more than one world. Family, work, church, school, fellow hobby enthusiasts. There is some overlapping but basically we connect with people in various “worlds”. He said a person with social power will have upwards of 100 people they connect with in an average of 16 worlds.  That’s amazing. You know the person he’s talking about. The person that knows “everybody”, who can’t go anywhere in public without being recognized by somebody. A person who has a good enough connection with enough people can really get things done because of their social power. The rest of us are limited in our ability to broker in this area.

That got me to thinking about my social power. I’m far less than even average. Truthfully I can hardly think of 10 people with whom I have any influence and I basically exist in 3.5 worlds; home, work, internet, and somewhat in my wife’s church. Uh…that’s not good. I need to get out more.

Combine that with another thing they talked about at Catalyst, and something I’d already been thinking about, is that I need to immerse myself in culture in order to become a part of it, to think like it, to relate to it, to touch it with incarnational love.  I can’t stand over here and try to be friendly with them over there. Nor can holler at them over there and tell them to come where I am. I have to figure out a way to get over there and become all things for all men in order to save/love some.

But, how to do that? It’s got to be more than subscribing to Rolling Stone and Wired (I subscribe and read both), it’s got to be more than reading all the emerging stuff you can (I do), more than going to Catalyst (I do) and other emergent type events (I plan to), more than watching MTV, VH1, SPIKE, and FUSE (I have started to), more than listening to secular music (I do, almost exclusively). Even doing all that, still all I’m doing is observing from the outside looking in. I’m not really IN the culture. I’m merely at the edge of Christianity looking inward at the dominant culture.

How do I increase my social power? How to I interact with other worlds, other cultures within our culture? What is our culture anyway? There are so many different sub-cultures to choose from.

One thing I’m doing is becoming a part of myspace.com culture. I’m surfing around, learning stuff. I’ve joined a few groups and plan to hang out there and make friends there. Maybe through that I can make some local friends and become part of the local culture. It’s so damn hard to do this kind of thing though with my physical limitations as well as my schedule. I pretty much work all the time, have a family, am helping with an emergent church, and trying to keep from overdoing it so I can beat this heart problem.

I have alot to catch up on. Coming from an isolated, alienated, ultra-conservative, fundie background it took me forever to shed that skin. Then I had to go through detox to get rid of all effects of my formerly toxic faith. I’m still in recovery. Then to catch up on popular culture, learn about pomo and work etc… Jeez, somebody get me a drink! I’m so far behind I can’t see the front of the line. I’d never heard of my space.com until three weeks ago. I was almost the 33,000,000th person to sign up. Makes me feel old.

But, I have to do it. If I don’t then, well…I don’t know. I just have to do it. I feel compelled.

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But, as I read through the various types of people I’m struck again by the sameness of them/us. Whether Catholic school girl, straight edge dude, goth, divorcee, Bible thumping fundie, average Joe, ugly Jane…whatever. Everybody just wants to noticed. To be liked. To be appreciated. To be thought sexy and inviting. Everybody wants friends, everbody says they want to keep it real, everybody says they want love. Everybody just wants true relationships. It’s a common denominator I think with all of us.

It’s just more evidence to me of the dire need of incarnational love in the world. People respond to it, they gravitate to it like bees to honey. It’s what feeds our soul. We’ll look in the most sordid places for it. We’ll tolerate all kinds of shit from people in order to get just a taste of it. We’ll rationalize, justify, and excuse all sorts of misbehavior on our part and of others to feel it, even if it’s a false love and we know it’s false. It’s crazy the way we think.

Man, the more I think about this the more impossible it seems. And the more imperative it seems. Narrow is the way and few are they that find it. Fewer still are those who actually travel this path. I think I’ve found it but I’m not sure how true I can stay to it. Love is not cheap. Love is not easy. Because love is not about me.]]>

found this on there.

There’s a pretty little planet spinning round the Galaxy,
Where there’s several billion people half in total poverty.
Religions have amassed great wealth in the Creator’s name.
The situation is insane.

Glory, Glory Hallelujah,Glory, Glory Hallelujah,Glory, Glory Hallelujah,
The situation is insane.

Religions’ gold was spent on wars and building massive homes,
The Creator doesn’t want huge shrines with steepled crystal domes.
Religions’ bank accounts are often crammed right to the brim,
What a putrid, stinking sin.

Glory, Glory Hallelujah,…
What a putrid, stinking sin.

Our thanks to our Creator for his prophets through the years,
Who were killed and hurt and mocked and burned ‘cause of Religions fears.
Religions have confused the world for very, very long,
Perhaps they ALL are wrong.

Glory, Glory Hallelujah,…
Perhaps they ALL are wrong.

We pray to our Creator, who we know exists for sure:
“Please strip religions’ assets soon and give them to the poor.”
“Please OPEN politicians’ eyes so they can see the light,
That poverty’s not right.”

Glory, Glory Hallelujah,…
That poverty’s not right.

Please cut out all the middle men so we worship only you,
Please show us miracles again, just like you used to do.
Please liquidate religions that have bent your truth and lied.
Religions should be crucified!

Glory, Glory Hallelujah,…
Religions should be crucified!

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Had a funny thing happen w/Mom. She picked up a CD I had laying around. “Who’s this?” she wanted to know. “U2” I answered. “U who?”, she asked? She had never heard of them and we had a good laugh about when she found out they’re the most successful band in the history of rock and roll. I told her a little about their spiritual side and she was impressed. We read through some of the lyrics and she  immediately appreciated the spiritual value of some of their songs. Told her a little about Bono (she’d hear of him) and how he’s really involved in AIDS activisim and that sort of thing. I was impressed that she thought it was pretty cool. She listened to the CD (Dismantling an atomic bomb) and thought it was good.]]>

Of course that was before they told me the price. Ouch!! When she told me the cost my wallet yelped, jumped out of my pocket and ran out of the room covering it’s ass with both hands. haha.

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