“The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact w/ the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.” – Marcel Duchamp

The other day in class we looked at a few art pieces, one by Marcel Duchamp and another by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. We had a long discussion about interpretation, how we see the pieces, how we interact with them and how we discern meaning. Before we began my professor asked that the students who had studied art history in college would please remain from commenting, since they probably had knowledge about the pieces, such as their titles, who created them, and what meanings are meant to be abstracted.

Dwight, our professor, asked the students what they thought. People gave all kinds of opinions about each piece. Some were literal. Others more conceptual. Finally after giving everyone a chance to contribute, Dwight would ask if any students who had studied art knew details about the piece. For each painting someone would raise their hand and proceed to give a wealth of information. Author. Time period. Title. Medium. Inspirations. Meaning. It was stunning and inspiring how much they knew.

After a bit my friend John raised his hand and said, “Dwight, I find it fascinating that you did not begin this conversation with any sort of claim to be an expert on these pieces of art, and yet you are able to facilitate a conversation, and with your guidance and the input of the community we are all able to gain a wealth of knowledge.”

Two things have stuck with me this past week from that class. One is that I think there is a tremendous amount of pressure on pastors in the local church to be experts on the text. I think I enter into a church gathering with the idea that the pastor is to have studied all week and to have somehow figured out the passage. That is unfair for me to do.

But what if there was a community that allowed the lead teaching pastor to facilitate discussion on a piece of text that they’ve been wrestling with, and having made some observations then opened it up to the church to elaborate upon. I think I would move anywhere to be a part of that sort of community, a community of co-authors.

The second thing has to do with the act of creating, being a creator, and co-creating.

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Why do we all love music? Why do we appreciate art, whether it is painting or sculpting or architecture or design or photography or an opera or film or any other form of creating? It is in us. We all appreciate art in some form, and I think we are all creative. It comes out differently in every individual. There is an art to mathematics. Art in running a marathon. There is an art to writing beautiful poetry or a moving novel. I see art and beauty in cooking an elegant meal and in acting in a theater and in nurturing a garden.

I think these things are in us, both creating and participating in and appreciating creations, because they are in God. God is a tirelessly creative God. He can’t help it. It’s in Him.

I do not create as a means to an end. I create as a means. I have to because it is in me, and it must flow out. Of course there are parts in me, and parts in everyone I would assume (though I am careful with that) that long to be validated. Told we’re ok. Appreciated and loved. Feedback is always encouraging, but I know that even if I didn’t have this space, or the space on Flickr and To Write With Light, that I would continue to create. Even if no one ever saw my photographs I would still click the shutter. If no one ever heard me sing I would still sing. There are things in me I long to express, and ultimately I am expressing them to God, as He is the creative one who created me in the first place.

There is another aspect in this: co-creating. When you create something, I enter into it and participate. I interact with your art somehow, be it through viewing a photograph or tasting wonderful food. And then I interpret it into my own story, and it inspires me to create something myself. In this way we are co-creating together. You write a story. I read the story and it speaks to me. Tells me who I am. Moves me. We co-author together. We dance together in this art.

And so I ask you, what do you love? Do you love photography? Are you taking photographs simply because you love to tell a story without words? Do it more and more. Keep creating. Are you cooking food that speaks of the beauty of God and the earth? Send me a box of goodies. Just kidding. 135 29th Ave. E., Seattle, WA 98112.

Are you inspired to write? Keep a daily journal. Write down every beautiful detail that you can; how the room smelled and the way she looked at you that night. Write about how you felt when he left or after she died. Write about your childhood. Every writer should write about their childhood. Write about the good things. The difficult things. The wonderful friendships and the terrible loss you’ve walked through. (I have a journal that I’ve been writing in for years with more detail than you can imagine, and you’ll never read a word of it, because it’s not for you. It’s just for me and hopefully my children some day. And so I continue to write.)

Run. Plant. Sculpt. Observe. Play. Listen. Paint. Mold. Explore. Develop. Discover. Sew. Design. Draw. Type. Taste. Sing. Strum. Capture. Move.

Don’t succumb to the lie that everything you create must be extravagant or astonishing. Remember that there is brilliance in the basic.

Don’t worry about who will see it or if anyone will ever see it.

But rather, create because you were created to create.

My week in Ireland was difficult/humbling/tiring/restful/comforting. It was diffihumbltirestforting. Thank you AT&T & Wes Anderson.

I led worship at a conference for missionaries from all over the world: Uganda, Thailand, Ethiopia, The United States of America, China, South Africa, and Zulu, Indiana, just to give you an idea.

This is where we stayed and had the conference, at Barberstown Castle, which is about 30 minutes outside Dublin.

I had my own room. And a bidet.

The toilet had artwork inside the bowel. Little blue and white flowers painted on the linoleum. I felt bad actually using the bathroom. There was also a heated towel rack, which should be mandatory in every bathroom ever.

This was a 5 star hotel. To give you an idea of how I’m used to traveling, I packed my sleeping bag and my own towel for the trip. I think the staff at the hotel was offended. Whatever. I don’t need your silly chocolates on the pillow.

But thanks for the heated towel rack. That I will accept with open arms and a clean, showered body.

My father and step-mother were there as well. I haven’t seen them since I’ve moved to Seattle, so it was really great to be with them for a week. There are very, very few things as good as having a Guinness with your father. I think it’s safe to say that God drinks Guinness, and He probably gets it from Dublin, because as the bartender told us regarding why Guinness tastes different in the States, “It doesn’t travel well.”

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The people at this conference, I believe, where the giants of the Kingdom. There are all kinds of individuals we glorify as a culture because they are writers or speakers or dynamic personalities, but I really believe that in the age to come we’ll all be surprised as to who are glorified in the eyes of God.

A brief story.

Demi and Marta are Ethiopians who run Project Mercy. Project Mercy promotes education, health care, and other holistic community development projects to create economically independent communities with high ethical and social values. After years of responding to humanitarian crises throughout Africa, Project Mercy seeks to end the cycle of famine and disease through holistic community development initiatives. Their programs include the Medhane-Alem School, the Glenn C. Olsen Hospital, men’s and women’s skills enhancement, dairy cattle breeding, an agriculture program, and HIV/AIDS orphan care.

There is more.

Demi and Marta were dignitaries in the Ethiopian government. They were hosts to presidents and kings and prime ministers and the Queen of England. They have an incredibly brilliant story full of rich details, but to summarize, they eventually had to flee their country in secret as refugees because of religious persecution. They went from having everything to not having food or water for their own children.

As refugees in Fort Wayne, Indiana, which has a large refugee population, they began Project Mercy. They now live again in Eithiopia where they continue their work.

This was one couple out of the 50 some people at the retreat, all of whom have stories of grace and mercy, trial and triumph.

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I do not feel worthy to wash the feet of the people at that retreat, much less lead them in something as sacred as worship. It was humbling. It was also a very difficult week because I realized how much I have invested my soul into Mars Hill Graduate School. I’m not just there reading texts and writing papers. I’m co-creating, as are the rest of the students. I realized how much I love school during that week of being away. It is terribly difficult and emotionally draining, but worth it. It is going to be an interesting few years here at school.

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(Photography site coming soon. You can give me currency and I’ll send you something pretty.)

On Tuesday nights I have a class called Introduction to the Hermeneutical Task. Hermeneutics is, essentially, how one interprets a certain text, and more specifically for me, the Bible. For instance, I read the Bible from a Western, caucasian, upper-middle class, male, 21st century point of view. All of these factors contribute to how I interpret the text. A female living in Kampala, Uganda might, and probably does, read the text very differently than I do. Neither points of view are right or wrong, but understanding them is essential.

This class in many ways deals with what one believes and why he or she believes it. The professor, who I think is a brilliant and compassionate man, is very honest in his approach to interpretation and faith and asks the same of all of his students.

On the first day of class he passed out surveys for all of the students to fill out. The questions were generally along the lines of what books have you read lately? and who are your favorite authors? and what are your top few films?…that sort of thing.

But the last question of the survey took a different direction:

How do you know?

It was a very vague, yet somehow specific question. I looked at it and waited for a good while before I began to answer.

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The next week our prof read aloud a few of the most common answers to the questions. Lots of people are reading Dan Allender (not surprising), David Sedaris, Rainier Maria Rilke, and that woman who wrote all those stories about a wizard boy. Apparently she’s the bees knees. I had no idea. Someone should have told me.

He got to the last question, the one about knowing, and read aloud some of the responses.

I don’t know.

From my experiences in my lifetime.

Those who have gone before me have taught me.

I can feel it deeply within me.

It feels like the right way to live.

Because of circumstances I’ve lived through.

And then he read this response:

Everything to me is black and white. True and false. Right and wrong. I believe it and have no doubts.

Everyone in the classroom sort of chuckled at the last one. Quite a few people laughed out loud. The statement seemed so definitive. I smiled because it reminded me of my undergrad and how lots of people seemed to know without having any doubts about anything at all, or at least that’s how it appeared.

Our professor, with compassion and anger in the same moment, looked at the class with tears in his eyes. He paused. I could feel the silence in the room.

“How dare you laugh at and judge someone’s belief system,” he said quietly, but loud enough that everyone could here it. “Damn it if we ever judge anyone’s hermeneutic.”

….

I was humbled, and I think the rest of the class was as well. I had quietly judged someone because they were sure of things which I often doubt. For years I have felt as though I have been trying to figure out what I believe in an environment that thought they had it all figured out. And now here I sat, in an opposite environment from the one I just left, doing the exact same thing as those I had disagreed with in college had done.

How dare I ever judge someone’s belief system.

I cannot express in words how much that simple moment taught me.

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I called my dad that night and told him the story from class.

“Sounds like you’re in the right place, doesn’t it?” he said.

“I was thinking the same thing.”

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

The local gathering I’ve been apart of for the past year has these monthly classes of sorts where anyone can come to learn about Grace Gathering as a community, about our past, where we are, where we’re going, et cetera. There’s also this wonderful few hours of Q&A where anyone can ask Chris, our lead pastor, anything they want. It’s designed to help new people become acquainted with us and to possibly get some answers to a few questions. Typically people attend both classes and then get involved in some way or another. It’s is unusual that anyone would attend the classes on a monthly basis.

I am unusual.

When does anyone get a few hours to ask their pastor/teacher anything they want? Who gets this opportunity?

So every month, or as much as I could, I would show up to these classes to sit in and listen to Chris explain our gathering and our foundations, and I would listen to the people in the class ask their questions. I love observing people. I guess I’m a people-watcher, in a very non-stalker sort of way. I could sit in metro systems or libraries and just observe how people interact for hours. It fascinates me.

I discovered that, for the most part, people asked very similar questions in the Q&A portions of the evenings.

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What is salvation? Can it be lost? Or conversely, can it be found?

What are your thoughts on women pastors/leaders?

How can people die in terrible ways, like genocide, and all the while God apparently stands by without doing anything?

Why do people take some of the Bible literally and some of it as figurative?

Why so many denominations?

How can the death of one man on a cross literally do anything for me? Or to me?

How is it that some of my friends who aren’t followers of Jesus more Christian-like than most Christians I know?

Why is beer so good and yet Christians are so against it? And what is your favorite kind of beer? And do you have any here at these little sessions? And have you had Newcastle? Leinenkugel? Sam Adams Boston Lager? I know. Seriously.

Does God really forgive politicians and war criminals?

If Jesus is the “only” way to heaven, doesn’t that seem quite elitist?

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One time Chris actually let me field all of the questions for an evening. It was amazing. You might not have liked my responses. On the other hand, maybe you would have.

As I continued to go to these sessions and meet people and listen to their questions, something struck me as very odd:

The same questions that were being asked by people who don’t follow Jesus or by those who consider themselves as new followers of Jesus were the exact same questions that were being asked by the most brilliant female and male authors I’d been reading. The exact same questions. I would be reading something by N.T. Wright and he would ask a few questions about faith, not necessarily questions to his readers, but questions on his own heart, more so to God. And then I’d go to these sessions and I’d hear the same things.

Somewhere between the basic and the brilliant I believe we have lost something. Somewhere along the line I feel as though Christians feel as though they’ve got it. It’s as if we learn a one-liner about theology and then we’ve got that one figured out. Once saved always saved. There. Glad I can file that one away as “figured out”.

And it’s not that simple, is it?

It’s kind of like this van bench that I found one day when I was in Mexico. I came across it as I was walking through this village, looked at it, and wondered where it had been. I wondered about the conversations that taken place on it. On the outside it looked simple. Old. Plain.

But in its depths there was more. It was more complicated than it seemed. It has a past. It has been places. It’s being used or something now.

That’s how those questions seem to me. Even though they are as old as time, there is more there. For me it’s almost never a simple answer that can be memorized with a catchy one-liner. I want to examine everything. Again. And again. Because I don’t ever want to be caught between the basic and the brilliant.

When the last thing you want to do is write, that is when you should write.

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I’ve been very frustrated with Paul as of late. The writer, not the actor in Cool Hand Luke. I’m sure you were confused until I clarified.

I am not a confrontational person. In fact, I will go very far out of my way to avoid conflict, even as far as Ohio. If you know me then you know that to be true. I do not like tension in social situations; honestly I don’t particularly like social situations in general. I could very easily slip away into obscurity with a book, maybe some good music, a pot of Folgers, and a Moleskine with which to jot little notes to myself that I will probably never use, like quotes from NPR interviews or detailed descriptions of how the room smelled a particular shade of calm that day.

And let’s not even talk about relationships. Let’s talk about relationships. One time when I was dating a girl in college I practically broke up with myself to escape the awkwardness of the relationship. There’s an incredible amount of pressure in the beginning stages of a dating a girl to do things well and with class. Class is not my middle name. (NOTE TO SELF IN MOLESKINE: make your son’s middle name literally “class”.) I fumble with my words. I sweat in awkward amounts. I try to act in a way that is sophisticated and impressive like Steve McQueen but it always ends up coming out like not Steve McQueen. More like Steve Martin but without the charm, so actually not like Steve Martin at all. Basically I am very awkward.

This tendency to avoid conflict is not a strength, at least I’m told that it isn’t. I can read a lot of the Scriptures and not feel uncomfortable because some of it doesn’t involve conflict. James, for instance, doesn’t upset me at all. He seems very practical and peaceful. I think that James and I would be very good friends. But then I read other portions of Scripture and I get upset, even a little mad at times, at what some of the authors say. I usually feel bad for this.

Paul, in my opinion, said some really hard things to accept. Lots of people say they believe things because the Bible says so, but I’ve always had some trouble with believing an idea simply because someone wrote it down. I’m not saying that I doubt the validity of Scripture or it’s divine inspiration, but things aren’t always as black & white to me as they are to other people.

And so Paul has been frustrating me, and maybe that has come out of lack of understanding, or maybe because he seems so confident, and I rarely feel confident about much at all. Some of the things he wrote about women absolutely baffle me. Some texts we seem to take quite literally, but the phrases and commands around them we don’t follow as a whole. He wrote with authority in his literary voice. Spirituality holds the greatest mysteries within its foundations, and so any sort of writing with authority has always had this stigma to it. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just difficult to swallow at times.

So I’ll read Paul and I’ll get frustrated. Maybe at him. Maybe at myself. I don’t think that’s all that important.

But then Paul goes and writes something beautiful like

And now I will show you the most excellent way…

(That is my favorite line in all of the Scriptures.)

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

And then I’ll think to myself Where did that come from?

It is as if a voice of grace calls out to me, a voice of patience that asks me simply to be and to wade through the things I find difficult, and to trust that it’s all under control. Yes there is conflict, but it’s going to be ok. Tomorrow is still going to come.

Love will always be a redeemer for me. It somehow brings me back from tension to a place of peace, in much the same way that a certain aroma can take you back in your memory to your childhood to a very specific moment and space, where cares were less and trust was more.

The less I have, the better off I am.

The more I have, the more complicated things become.

Traveling has been one of my greatest teachers in regards to these concepts. I value being taught by professors and such, but there’s nothing like getting your feet dirty in another culture’s soil. It is difficult to describe in text the experience of staying with a family that doesn’t speak your language. To some this would be very, very uncomfortable.

To me, it’s quite possibly heaven on earth.

I wish that I could sum up my experiences from this past year and a half throughout all 21 countries, but I think that would take an entire memoir, of which I do not feel qualified to write.

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One of the things I have learned, especially in that last year, is that I do not own anything, and yet I own everything.

All things are mine. Creation is mine. All truths are mine to claim. All teachings are mine to grasp.

And yet, in the same breath, all of my things are on loan. They are not really mine. I may seem to have possession of them, but they are not mine. They are only given to me to use. I hold them all open handedly.

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I college I used spent one of my spring breaks living out of a backpack. I’d drive up north in Virginia, drop my car off at a not-so-reputable hotel, and then a buddy of mine would drive me maybe 50 or 60 miles south and drop me off to make my way back to my car on my own.

Me. A pair of boots. Food. Some clothes. Gear. A bible. A book. Sunflower seeds. A pipe. A backpack. Happiness.

As I walked I thought about how little I really needed to survive. Food. Shelter. Clothes. And I have noticed the same to be true in regards to how God designed us to live. It seems that Jesus was quite often found saying how difficult it is to be rich and how blessed the poor really are. Jesus is constantly frustrating me like that. In my opinion he could have made things much more believable and neat if he would have just explained things a tad bit more. This is only my opinion, and I have been known to be wrong some most of the time.

Traveling brought me to the same conclusions. I would go from country to country with only the things on my back to keep me going day to day. I would try to meet as many people as I could (sometimes to find a place to stay or some free food to eat. Stop judging me.). We would trade stories and books and advice on where to stay next. I discovered that I had been so dependent on so many things at home, thinking that I couldn’t live without them. How could I survive without a car? New clothes? or Apple products? NO! Impossible. I refuse to entertain it.

But I think Jesus was right.

And so I’ve been trying to change how I live. I am trying to realign my life to understand the essentials and to hold loosely the non-essentials. I’ve made a few lists. It’s ok if you disagree with them.

Let’s start with the essentials:

- Food

- Shelter

- Clothing

Right. That’s about it. It’s interesting to see what Jesus said was important and what was not.

There are a few places where Jesus says that we shouldn’t worry about what we’ll eat or what we’ll wear and such, because God loves to provide those things for everything and everyone. From birds to boys in Indiana. This has been huge for me. It is in God’s nature to give me the things that I really need, and so I don’t have to worry about them at all. He’ll take care of it.

(Now it should be noted that you and I and others might disagree on what it means to have food and clothes and shelter provided. Maybe someone can live on much, much less than I, and therefore their definition will be different of what it means for God to provide.)

Now let’s move to my list of non-essentials of which I am trying to hold with open hands.

The non-essentials:

- 1990 Honda Accord w/ moon roof

- The Soup on E!

- Apple

- Tents (including tarps strapped to trees)

- XMU on XM Radio

- Coffee (Believe it or not, I actually prefer Folgers.)

- NPR

- Nikon, Polaroid, Canon, Holga (Thanks Tim for the new Spectra.)

- 35 mm and medium format film

- Music:

My all time desert island top 5 albums (in chronological order):

1: Les Miserables || Original Broadway Cast Recording (1987)

2: Jimmy Eat World || Bleed American (2001)

3: Death Cab For Cutie || Transatlanticism (2003)

4: Matt Redman || Facedown (6.15.2004)

5: The Album Leaf || In A Safe Place (6.21.2004)

- Musical Instruments

- Montrail Running Shoes

- The Internet

- Flickr Pro Account

- Coca-Cola Classic

- A razor (That’s easy.)

- My Rainbows and Chacos

- B o o k s

- Wendy’s Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers

- The North Face Denali Fleece

- Nalgene Water Bottles

- Moleskine

- A few choice beverages

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All of the non-essentials are nice to have, but are not necessary for living. When I start thinking that I can’t live without any of those items, that’s when I have to really reevaluate my priorities. Because if I don’t have them, tomorrow is still going to happen. Tomorrow will still come. If I lose something, it’s fine. Tomorrow will still come. If something gets stolen, it’s ok. If I or someone else breaks something, life will continue. We will be ok. (Hello Jeff Pamer.)

I want to hold all of my possessions with open hands. If I have food, shelter, and clothing then I’ll be alright.

I know a few people who are absolutely generous with everything they own because they know that it’s not really theirs. They’ll let you borrow any single thing they own if you need it (or even if you don’t need it, because need is a fascinating concept).

As I take steps toward these things, I find freedom. The less I have, the less I feel chained to having and gaining, and the more free I feel to share and be giving. I’ve also found that I’ve become more innovative with the things that I have. I have a few friends who can take a little and make it into a lot. They are thrifty and creative, and this is inspiring to me. Very McGuyver.

I do not claim to have arrived. I am at the beginning of this eternal process. It ranges from economical to financial to physical. It is a holistic shift that has begun to open my eyes to a new kingdom which was there the entire time, but I was unaware of it.

This bit of writing might be best contemplated if read while listening to some sort of musical selection. There are lots of things I could suggest, but then this writing would go in an entirely different direction, and you don’t really care much about my tastes in music. So I give you the freedom to choose on your own. I would strongly recommend against the “Party Shuffle” option on iTunes, though, because I consistently have a bad experience as it almost always leads to some sort of mixture of Peter Frampton and Dolly Parton, which might be acceptable for you, but is not for me.

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Lately I’ve been walking out to read on the River Greenway to read during the late afternoons. It’s a brilliant path lined with trees and fields and at one point a beautiful little landfill. The landfill is obviously very stinky, and so I typically steer away from that section. There are a few benches on the path in the other direction from the landfill, but I like to go down to the riverbed and sit on a log or in the mud. Some people don’t like to get dirty, but I actually prefer it. (Clean running shoes are ugly running shoes.) Nonetheless, I avoid the benches to opt for the riverbed. And there’s a certain spot behind a certain bench which I have been favoring as of late. The thing about this spot is that it is about a mile or so walk from the parking lot on North River Road, but honestly there is no other spot which feels like this spot. I’ve tried other ones, but I always feel like I’m cheating on a girl when I go to them, as though that particular log at which I normally sit knows that I’m at another spot, and it is not happy.

And so I walk to this spot, one step at a time. I’ve thought about parking on the side of the road near the spot, which would eliminate the 1 mile walk from the parking lot, but I’ve actually found that part of the enjoyment of the spot is the walk. As I walk I pass numerous couples, mostly older than I, who typically give me a strange look which either says Yes. It’s a good day for a walk or Please don’t steal my purse. I prefer the former, and I’m used to the latter.

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I’ve been trying to process what it means to follow Jesus. If you believe in God then I think you might find the following thoughts to be true, and if you do not believe in God then I believe you will still find the following to have some sort of value.

I used to be really terrible at starting things and not finishing them. If I wasn’t a follower of Jesus then I could easily see myself starting Buddhist practices but then giving up eventually for social or political reasons. I would start books but never finish them. New Year’s resolutions would never take any definitive form. (Although this year’s resolutions have been quite obtainable in many ways.) And so this idea of following Jesus is really quite daunting. Almost silly.

But I would say that recently something has clicked for me which has changed everything. It might be too early to tell if it has really changed everything, but for dramatic literary purposes, let’s both agree that it has changed everything and will one day change the world.

When I was walking on the River Greenway two days ago I started thinking about breathing. Why do I take so many breaths? I read that an average person (which, by the way, if you know an average person, please introduce me to him or her) takes 28,800 breaths in one day. Why did God design us this way? Why not one breath per day? One huge inhale. One huge exhale. It seems like it would be a much better design. Much more streamlined.

And the heart beats entirely too many times in one day. 100,000 per 24 hours on average. Again, one big beat per day would seem a whole lot more logical. I’m not saying that I have a better design, but the heart works hard enough as it is. If we could eliminate females in general then my heart could relax much, much more.

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But following Jesus isn’t about arrival, is it? It’s not about crossing a line to get into heaven. It’s not about obtaining perfection in one moment, but rather it’s a holistic process. A step at a time. A breath at a time. A beat at a time.

This idea carries over into all sorts of areas in my life. I have started to take things in small increments. For the longest time when I would sit down to read a book, and especially the Bible, I would always feel this pressure that if I didn’t read for a half an hour or read 5 chapters in one sitting then it wasn’t even worth reading. But I’ve found that one line of beautiful prose is worth every second. One paragraph of Neruda or one thought from Mother Theresa can be stunning. I will walk my mile to my log on the Greenway if only to read one page or one chapter, because that page or chapter may be exactly what I was supposed to read that day.

I think one of the biggest reasons I love photography is because it captures 1/250 of a second at a time. One simple moment without complication.

And in regards to breaking bad habits, it is one step at a time. I think Alcoholics Anonymous have this down to a beautiful science. They know it’s not about cold turkey for most people. Cold turkey is this overwhelming idea which is so heavy that it’s not even worth trying. So instead, there are steps, and you take the steps one at a time. You don’t skip from step 2 to step 5 if you feel like you’ve got a hang of it, but instead you go through the program, taking each step as a crucial process. Each step is vital.

Each breath is crucial.

Each beat is deeply important.

This life I live is taken a step, a breath, and a beat at a time. I’m not a cold turkey kind of person. It’s not in my DNA. I’m a processor. I have to sit on things for a while and breathe them in. When there are temptations to live outside of the ways of Jesus,then I must remind myself to take one step at a time in the direction of the Kingdom. I don’t think about conquering my vice as a whole, but instead I think of how I am going to get through today with a Kingdom movement, each step being important.

So when I see Jesus saying to His disciples Follow Me, I don’t see Him saying Arrive now. I see Him inviting them into a journey, full of failures and triumphs. This gives me great hope, hope that I can make it. Hope that tomorrow is going to come, and it will be full of mercy and grace.

dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot

Because it’s not entirely about sitting at my spot on the River Greenway. Part of the enjoyment is the walk from my car to the log, and from the log to the car.

She keeps going after the guys that you know will hurt her in the end. She gets called all sorts of names in your social circles because of this. Why does she keep making these decisions? Doesn’t she know that everyone talks about her like that? You would never act that way. How could she act that way?

And then somehow you find out that she grew up without a father. She grew not having anyone in her life to tell her certain things that you are supposed to be told by father, about boys and friends and valuing oneself. This information changes everything. Of course she’s doing the things she’s doing. She’s looking for something. Someone to value her. Cherish her. Father her in some ways. This changes everything.

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Airplanes. Tight spaces. Lots of people. Long hours. People are expected to respect others and their personal space, even if there is hardly any available. And your sitting in your seat with your headphones on watching another Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks film because they are just so darn good together and you say to yourself You’ve Got Mail! is just too good to not watch again. But there’s this man behind you who will not talk with his inside voice. It’s as if he feels the need to tell absolutely everyone on the plane about how much he won in Vegas and how what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, or something like that. His voice keeps getting louder and louder. You can’t believe it. No one talks this loud. Ever. Who does he think he is talking like that?

Everyone is getting agitated. You can see people glaring at him. One guy looks like he’s about to get up and sack the guy from across the plane. The tension is palpable. But then you see the person sitting next to Mr. Loudy Face who is taking the brunt of his personality, and you see compassion in her eyes. You see grace. Eventually you see her give him his medication for something. Could be anything. Some chemical imbalance. Doesn’t matter. It’s not his fault. And this changes everything.

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He’s 16. Driving a BMW. Has everything. Looks. Nice house. Popularity. Tons of friends. And he knows it. He’s so arrogant that you don’t want to be in the same room with him. It’s so easy to feel jealous or angry and look at him with judgment. But you know that his parents give him everything and do little real parenting, and this changes your perception. He’s an upper-class American. He’s at a huge disadvantage in some ways. How hard is it for someone of privilege to value others more than themselves? And in this you find compassion, but you don’t know why. He doesn’t deserve your compassion….but for some reason it’s there.

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And as life would have it, you see her the next day at the coffee shop you frequent. She’s crying. You don’t know why. You can’t hear, but you know it’s bad. There are people sitting with her. All around her. She is devastated. And honestly, you know that you don’t need to know why. Maybe it’s a death. Disease. Doesn’t matter. You can see that whatever it is, it has caused her a world of hurt. And you find yourself thinking, if whatever it is that happened to her were to happen to me, I probably wouldn’t be in a hurry to get anywhere either.

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I think there’s a reason why Jesus said Don’t judge, or you’ll be judged. Forgive, and you’ll be forgiven. It’s terribly easy for me to judge people, especially those that I don’t know. Most of it probably comes out of pride or insecurities.

He’s going too slow. She’s so loud. They are in everyone’s way. She’s rich and she knows it. If he would just have some self respect. Why does she dress like that? He’s always talking.

But everyone has a story. Everyone has a past. Everybody has been shaped by something. One parent. No parents. Economic situation. Rape. Culture. Orphaned. Pain. Struggle. Lack of pain and struggle. Death. Divorce. Privilege. Popularity. People are shaped by situations and the people that surround them.

Everyone has a story.

And when you know someone’s story, it changes everything, doesn’t it? Your friends who act certain ways, ways which would annoy you if they were from a stranger, are given grace because you know them. You understand them. He acts that way because of this. And she does those things because of that. You understand. Everyone who knows them understands.

It’s the strangers, though…

When we come to the realization that everyone has a story, it changes how we treat people. When you see a man on a plane being abnormally loud, you know that he is that way because of something in his past, and that thing most likely isn’t his fault. Or maybe it is. Either way, there’s a story, and because there’s a story, there is grace.

And if I went through every day with this mentality, would it change me? Would I act differently? Would people perceive me to be someone new? Someone different?

And what if an entire community embraced this idea? I think it might change the world.

Hadija hadn’t been introduced to him yet. He’d been there the whole time, it’s just that she was unaware of it.

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A few men in Uganda were walking down a road and heard what sounded like a cat, except that they heard it coming out of a 40 foot deep pit, and even more specifically, a latrine. They reported it to local probation officer and it was commissioned to the fire brigade to go down and retrieve the cat. Not a fun job for anyone to do, but it was ordered, so it had to be done.

When they went down 40 feet into the latrine they started to hear a change in the sound of the cat. Something was not right. Not familiar. Or maybe too familiar. Down. Down. Down. Closer to the sound. Closer. Closer.

And then there she was.

Her umbilical cord was still attached. How long had she been down here? Who would do this to a baby girl? A 40 foot pit full of feces? How was she still alive?

She was carried up and out and cleaned off, and to the surprise of everyone, survived. They guessed that she’d been down there at least 3 hours, maybe more.

Two things happened rather quickly. The first is that somehow, through word of mouth from the villagers, they discovered that her mother was a 19 year old girl named Hadija. A teenager. Single. She had taken her very newborn baby and dropped her down that 40 foot latrine to die, and now she was sentenced to 5 years in prison in Luzira, Uganda’s highest security prison for attempted murder.

The other thing that happened was that the baby was sent to New Hope, an orphanage and school in Kasana, Uganda. New Hope has over 100 orphans living on its grounds as well as over 300 more area kids and orphans from surrounding villages that come to them for schooling and water every day. It is a trusted place by the government in many regards, and this is where the decided that the little girl should go to live.

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And now allow me the honor of introducing you to Jonnes and Gertrude Bakimi.

Jonnes has more life in his body than I’ve ever seen in another single human being. He breathes in God wherever he goes. You can feel it, deep within your soul. When he walks into a room he brings joy. When he tells stories you feel as though he had just experienced it that morning. He is so animated and so full of love that you swear he doesn’t exist, that he has to be either an angel or some mythical unicorn that is heard of but never seen.

Maybe not the unicorn part. I don’t know where that came from.

Jonnes and Gertrude had 10 children under their roof, a mix of some of their own and some adopted. Raising children is a very big part of both of their lives. So Jonnes was kind of suprised, but not really, when his kids asked if they could have the new little girl that had just been brought from an latrine to the orphanage. They’d been bringing her home from the baby house every Sunday or so to play with her and nurture her.
His kids ask for the little girl in the same way that most kids ask for a puppy.

Can we keep her? Can we? Can we? Pleeeeeeeeaaaassssseee?!

And this has become normal for them. This is the kind of family they have become and it is a life that they have embraced. Jonnes knew the story of the little baby but he didn’t think that they could handle a newborn right now. They already had 10 children (Joshua, Joanna, Jordana, Joseph, Jonnie, Judith, Eva, Lyn, Angel, and Fatuma), so it is not as if their hands weren’t full already, aside from helping run an orphanage and a school.

But Jonnes felt a nudge. A tug. Maybe a push. He knew what he was to do. He was to take this new little girl into his home as a daughter. He would, once again, become a father to the fatherless.

But he did not foresee what the next nudge would be, and it would change his life in a way that he could not have never imagined.

When they decided to take this little girl, whom they named Joy, into their home, Jonnes started to hear from God that he was supposed to go and reconcile the girl to her mother. He was to take her to the prison to see the girl, now 20, who had thrown her away. Jonnes resisted this thought from God at first. How could I take her back? What if she rejects Joy? What if she wants Joy back? These thoughts flooded his mind as he considered what he believed God to be telling him. He talked it out with a few of his close friends and confirmed that this was what he was to do.

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The date came for Jonnes and Gertrude, two of their daughters and a few others to go to the prison to see Hadija. They arrived at the prison but had to wait one and a half hours to see Hadija, which gave them some time to learn about her from the prison warden. No one, not even the warden, knew why she was there. She had been there for 12 months and had not had one visitor. Not one.

Finally she came out.

20 years old. Slender. Small. Just a girl. Just like a girl from the school at the orphanage. New questions rushed into Jonnes’ mind: Where is the man who made her pregnant? Where is her family and how are they feeling? Did she have anyone to talk to? LORD, please give her another chance!

Hadija knelt down and greeted the group of people who brought her her daughter. Fear filled her eyes. Jonnes introduced himself. He told her that he had brought a gift and that this was forgiveness from her child whom she had thrown away. He told her that on behalf of Joy, they forgave her and loved her. Then he handed her her daughter.

And Hadija wept, unable to speak.

The warden stepped in and said What is happening here? Have you brought bad news? We have to know? Jonnes stepped forward and said,

It is ok. We brought love. We have not brought bad news. We brought love.

Jonnes then proceeded to explain the gospel of Jesus with Hadija, how God had spared Joy’s life as a sign that He wanted to give her a new beginning. He told her that Jesus had the power to take away her past, and Joy’s life was a miracle for her sake. Hadija said that she wanted to know this Jesus and live for him. At that moment heaven came to earth.

Hadija then took her rescued daughter to introduce her to the wardens. They asked if this was truly the reason why she was in prison, and she said that yes, it was. Jonnes said that one of their inmates was a free woman that day, actually more free than many of those outside.

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Jonnes and Gertrude and their group took Joy home that day. Hadija was changed for eternity. Over the next few weeks Jonnes and his family came to a new decision. They were having a difficult time in thinking that, when Hadija got out of prison, that Joy would no longer be a part of their lives, but would be returned to her mother, as Jonnes knew was the full restoration that God had intended. But it came to be that, as a family, they decided to adopt Hadija as well, number 12 in their ever-growing family, to help raise her and raise her daughter. She has a few more years to serve at the prison, but those years will be served with hope.

Today, Hadija has 3 more years left. Joy is 2 and is full of her namesake. Jonnes and his family take Joy to see Hadija as often as they can, and they look forward to the day when the 12th member of their family comes to join them.

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Where are you in this story? Where do you see yourself? Do you see yourself in a pit, longing for and needing rescue? Are you in a prison, surrounded by your own guilt with seemingly no way out? This story is our story as well. All of us are in it somewhere; all of us connect with them somehow.

This is a story of true reconciliation. Of pure restoration. Of a God who longs to rescue His children, whether they are in a pit or in a prison. He longs for reconnection to His creation, no matter what the cost.

One thing I have learned, and I believe this to be true for me now more than ever:

There is a Father to the fatherless.

*When Jonnes told me this story over a long meal one night, I asked him when he finished if I could tell his story. He looked at me with compassion and said “It’s not my story. It’s His.”