93 Stitches

Here are a few rules on being French.

Rule #1
You are the only person in the world.  Other people are non existent until you are forced to acknowledge them.  This is the overriding key to being French.  And since no one else exists, you can make-out on the train station steps, walk around such tight, small shorts most would be ashamed to wear them to bed, and you look shocked when people walk into your store and ask you to serve them.  You carry yourself with this knowledge and spend a great deal of time ignoring everyone or everything.

Rule #2
There is only one language in the world, French.  This is why you look so perplexed that someone would speak any other tongue than French.  Also, you ONLY understand perfect French spoken with a perfect accent – otherwise you wonder why someone would not know the only language in the world.

Rule #3
You smoke as well.  But not like the Italians, who inhale large amounts of smoke from burning dead leaves and spew it into the air like a dragon to emphasize their macho personna.  No, you’re French and you smoke because that’s part of being French, which is the most important goal in life.  You carry you cigarette like a 6th finger that is a part of you.

Rule #4
You eat really good bread.  Whether fresh and warm out of the oven, or slightly crisp from laying out during the day.  Lunches are long and help you forget that there are other people out there – reminding you that you are the only person in the world.  (see rule # 1)

After spending time in multiple cities across Italy, I was able to devise these simple rules on being Italian:

Rule #1
You are Macho.  It doesn’t matter if you are a short, skinny, bald man, a 13 year old girl, or a grandmother.   You carry yourself as if you are of supreme importance where ever you go.  You talk with authority, you walk with presence, and you never let anyone second guess whether or not you know exactly how the world should be run at any given moment.  You were the cool kid In school growing up.  The italians children could not tease each other in high school because they were all cool, they must resort to teasing the Greeks or France transplants.
Fine leather, fast cars, expensive wine, greasy hair, all have one aim, machismo.  Even the buildings say, “hey we’re Italian, what’s it to you?”  when you look at them long enough.

Rule #2
You smoke.  Likewise, it doesn’t matter if you are a 13 year old girl or a grandmother.  My guess is that as an italian, at first communion, you sip the wine, then your older brother shoves an unfiltered italian cigaratto in your mouth before the taste of grapes has left the tip of your tongue.   This is part of being Italian.  The cigarette is the tomato sauce and you are the pasta.
It makes sense no doubt.  Smoking is often perceived as being “cool,” which is inherent in being macho.  (See rule #1)

Rule #3
You talk.  All of the time.  The purpose of walking, eating, or riding the metro is not to get food or get somewhere, it’s to have something to do while your are talking.  And talking, for an Italian is an art form.  It’s rhythmically speaking with a drumbeat of gestures, designed to reinforce your every word.  It’s not a conversation either.  It’s two or more people taking turns to pontificate their views of life, followed by another person either debating that point or off to another point altogether with n’er a transitionary word.  There is no back and forth discussion, just imperative declarative statements traded off by each speaker.  It’s much more like a house of parliament debate then what we normally know as a conversation.  The only thing worthy enough to interrupt a conversation is taking a drag on a cigarette.  (See rule #2, and subsequently, rule #1)

Rule #4
You are catholic.  You have the greatest cathedrals in the world.  But you don’t go to mass.  (rules 1-3 don’t work well in elaborate rooms draped in holy silence.)

Dairy Queen Blizzards…Jack Daniels Steak…Afghanistan!?!

You would not normally think of these together.  But Blizzards, first run movies and double cheese burgers are some of the accouterments that are in the home base in Afghanistan for the US army.

And all of these are getting axed.

“This is a war zone — not an amusement park,” Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Hall recently remarked ashe announced a tragedy:

these very creature comforts were actually taking too much space keeping needed supplies from reaching the front lines – where the battle was raging!

Sargent Hall’s reality check could echo here, at our “home base church” culture in the US.

I need Sargent Hall.

I have forgotten that we are at war. The great Ralph Winter challenged all believers in Jesus to live like soldiers. Soldiers have great tools and equipment, but keep their room and board, clothes et al very frugal.

My home base has a few too many creature comforts.

It’s time to streamline, get back in the fight, or “downsize” as my friend Anne Blogged.

I’m starting my first series of blogs walking through our families attempts at downsizing.  We’ll start small with cable or something, and then see where God leads.

I invite your thoughts as we go along this journey.

P.S. We might have a “home base” culture in our churches in the US as well.  Our creature comforts could be  keeping needed resources from the front lines of justice and spreading the hope of Jesus.  Our home base churches can resemble $40 million amusement centers, tying up resources that could help the front lines church in India without a sound system, a roof, bread for communion, or food for its widows.

Often in Art, music, writing, and the like, “going deep” or “getting real” means: pain, failings, secret vices, doubts, or other dark things.
We celebrate the artist who in a moment of transparency speaks to these hidden parts of our lives.

The problem is this leads a lot of reflective folks to dwell on a lot of negative things.

The truth is there are other things that we all hide: secret dreams, passions, visions, joys, relationships, and other treasures.

“Going deep” or “getting real” can be sharing a cause you care about, a vision you have, a long held goal that know one knows, a secret prayer for hurting people that is turning into dream; even plans.

Unfortunately far to little of our reflective folk, the artist, teachers, writers, counselors etc. don’t focus on this. Perhaps it’s because in today’s mess of a world nothing is considered deep, unless it involves some negative unveiling of soul-born darkness.

Bravery and courage are not doubt required to reveal the honest pain, struggles and doubts. However, just as courageous, (in our cultural context, sometimes even more courageous) is the soul that shares its deepest thirsts, dreams, desires, joys, and passions.

Perhaps we need to change our definition of ‘deep’ and ‘real’…

You can comment away.

Dear John Maxwell,

Firstoff, your wisdom and life example have inspired a generation of leaders like few others have and for this we are all eternally (I mean that literally) grateful. Thank you.

I wanted to let you know that some of your followers have taken your core teaching a bit overboard.

Your revelation leadership = influence is golden. It’s worth a lifetime of reflection. But many of us got it wrong. We also added the idea that influence = greatness both on earth and in heaven.

Greatness as defined by scripture is referred to in the context of humility, compassion, self-sacrifice/self-denial, servanthood and other difficult and anti-american traits.

The challenge is that most of these traits are harder, not easier, to possess when we gain influence. This leads us to the paradox that we are in right now: a good number of influential Christians in business, church, nonprofit sectors are not great people, just influential. Conversely, there are a good deal of great people who are not influential and are relatively unknown. Influence is often the result of greatness, but many times it is also the result of luck, family, opportunities etc.

Another way that we got off track is we added the idea that fame = influence. You can easily see how this works in our fame-obsessed cultures. We get too focused on the breadth of our own influence that we miss the depth of influence we could have on those closely around us.

Another pitfall – fame and influence bring perks. Often times these perks chip away at Biblical greatness with an engineered precision. I would even submit that many people who gain great influence start out as great people and slowly fade into merely influential/famous people minus the greatness as the perks and influence erode the humility, self-sacrifice etc.

We all have our reasons for wanting influence. Some of us seek it to cover up insecurities. Some of us want the perks of influence or have gotten too used to them. Still others actually believe that God will judge us on earth by our influence rather than our greatness. This last reason is probably the greatest deception.

I know several unknown pastors in China who have suffered and given all for the Gospel. The have only influenced a small amount. They were not team-building, strategic, time-managing, influence leveraging leaders. But they were great people worthy of standing along the greatest of leaders with the greatest of influence.

The saddest part to this tale is that many of us have been pursuing influence, even at the expense of greatness. Some of us neglect our families, feed our egos for motivation, pass up genuine needs in search of more influential people and situations, envy and lust after the perks of influence (both ego and luxury)…we even neglect our spiritual life because we are so busy in our pursuit of influence. All the while telling ourselves it is “for the kingdom,” or some other ruse.

I no way am I saying this is your fault. No, I am writing to you because so many believe you and trust what you say. I implore you to vigorously highlight the difference between greatness and influence and challenge us to pursue the former and merely steward the latter when and if it comes. I’m sure that you could articulate this concept far better than I just did, and in the end it could get a lot of us off this crazy path an back on the road of discipleship; the road of true greatness.

Godspeed,

Ryan Skoog

Late at night the phone rang, “Ryan, can you come over here and help, he’s too drunk and we can’t hold him down, we think he might hurt himself or one of us.”
It was a friend of mine who was one of the quickest wits I’ve ever known except for this issue of Southern Comfort.  Luckily he was also a lightweight.

I held him down for over an hour as crazy drunken nonsense spewed from him.
While holding him, I was judging him for his drunkenness. In fact I was a pharisee thanking God I was not like him in that state.

Here is the irony. Holding him down I was feeling more righteous, but one could argue that I was even worse of a sinner, committing the sin of pride.
In the Bible there is a not a long list of ranked sins with one being worse than the other, but there is a short one. Proverbs 6:17-18 gives God’s top seven list of particularly dodgy behavior and the top of the list is, that’s right, Pride.

So here I was feeling pretty good about myself that I was not a blithering drunk, offending God even more than the person I was judging.

This is one of the things that makes pride so tricky. We are generally committing the sin of pride at the very moment that we feel good about ourselves.

It’s often like bad breath, everyone can smell it but us. Bad breath sours even the most eloquent of tongues.

If I am sharing the truth with someone, but I am proud or think I am someway somehow better than they are, my words are often flat, cold and not received well. I’ve found that many times people can’t hear what I am saying because my ‘breath stinks’ so bad with basic pride. (I’m speaking metaphorically only.  I use Altoids. They are curiously strong; and they did not pay me to say that, either)

Gratefulness. Humility. Compassion, Simplicity…breath mints if you will.  Take them multiple times a day.

There are only a few major colors one can wear as a guy. Suits (black, grey, brown, navy) Shirts (same plus red, green, yellow and for the rare few, pink) Pants (khaki, black, jeans)
Yet it never ceases shock everyone that in an office of 6 or more people that two or more people wear a similar color combination.

When this happens, and this is a law of the universe, some has to say (insert puke) “looks like you got the memo…”

What? I’ve never heard that one!

It’s gotten to such an obligatory level that it’s on par with “hello.” If you DON’T point out the fact that you are wearing the same outfit, then your same color wearing counterpart feels left out.

It has gotten worse over my lifetime. You used to only say it if there were a lower (pants) and upper (shirt) matching combination.
But now people say it when a somewhat similar color family is remotely close.

Please universe, change your laws. This one is driving me insane.

I did not set out to be in the smelly ally of Wuhan, China at 3 in the morning staring into the coal black eyes of a short, foul-faced communist block leader. This was the furthest thing from my mind when I volunteered to do puppets for 12 kids in the small red brick, white columned church on a hill in middle America. The kids smiled and giggled as I hacked my way through a sing-along with a sore arm and a puppet mouth held wide open staring at the brown stains in the ceiling tiles. The kids forgot that performance but I did not. This was the first time I felt the burn, the burn comes from really deep down and lets us know in our own terms that there is more to existence than TV reruns on a couch every Thursday night. Even a 6th grader can feel that. I did not know what I wanted in that moment of clarity surrounded by kids and songs and purple velvet puppet stage cloth around my knees; but I did know what I did not want. I did not want to blend into the fabric of picket fences and pot lucks because something mattered out there and by God I was going to find it if it killed me.

The smelly ally was one of the first times I really understood what real fear was. Fear, not panic. Panic was the feeling I got when I jumped out of a tree branch hanging over a cliff into the black Chattahoochee river at midnight with 12 other brainless college students. No this was definitely fear. The icy kind of fear that starts at the back of your head and moves downward, first to your mouth making it hard to talk, then to your lungs restricting your breath to the point where your feel you are breathing in and out of a straw, then to your muscles which are both slow to respond and jerky. However it never seems to paralyze your brain. No, your brain races a thousand thoughts per second — how did I get here, what is he going to do with me, where is Jeffery, what is Jeffery’s mom going to say, man it stinks here, why won’t that guard say anything, why is he not moving towards us, I wish he would quit staring at us, did he see us place a hundred tracks in front of people’s doorsteps, he had to have seen us, dang I still have tracts in my hand, where is that Jeffery, what is he going to do with us, where is he going to bring us, I hope it smells better than here, what is my mom going to say when she find out, maybe she doesn’t need to know, thank God I see Jeffery, why is that guard not moving…

And then it happened. Nothing. Absolutely nothing happened. The soldier stood frozen, not speaking, not moving. Nothing. So we started walking away, around a corner and into the endless maze of 10 foot high brick concrete walls with doors cut into each side that stretched on for miles. We could hear a whistle and the mustering of other communist soldiers. But the leader had already let us get away. Thank God. I mean those words quite literally. On to a hundred or more doors cut into the crumbly concrete maze.

We got the tracts from a turnip farmer in Australia who said he heard God tell him to go to China. A couple of years later he ended up in Beijing. One night he rode his creaky chinese bike with a metal basket in front full of tracts into the grey concrete of Tinamin Square and handed out tracts to the students protesting there. He then went to sleep and, for the thousands that were massacred that night, those were the last words they read. “Why not get these tracts to everyone in China?” he thought. So he started with 100 cities in China. You know, small cities of 15 million people, like Wuhan. Apparently, sometimes we dream, other dreams find us.

The only problem was the 100 million Communists soldiers who typically do not take kindly to foreigners spreading religious propaganda in the middle of the night, among other things. This I experienced firsthand in the smelly alley. Fortunately, I also experienced something of a miracle at the same moment.

Foam puppets and hardened communist soldiers don’t have a large amount in common. But for me they do; both are a direct result of the persistent desire inside. It leads all of us places we would never dream, never dare, or never believe.

It strikes us all when we don’t want it to, and never when we’re ready.

And to think, I did not want to give up my rights and follow God blindly because I thought it would be boring. Slugs have made more informed decisions, I’m sure of it.

I had a maroon bible given to me for Christmas by my mom with my name written in it in cursive pencil that has almost entirely rubbed off. As a stereotypical boy, I loved reading the stories of battles and leaders in Judges and Kings, including that weird part about Ehud the left-handed liberator.

Something that struck me as obvious as when someone has gotten botox was the fact that everyone who followed God was challenged, tested, beaten, mocked, forced to hide, and a host of other adventures that were the furthest thing from boredom. Not altogether safe, but light years from boring.

Oddly, the maroon Bible did not have anywhere in it where God asked someone to do something easy. Completely uproot yourself and go to a far away land, free a million slaves with a stick, beat a giant with a rock, fight an army that outnumbers you 30 to 1, sleep with lions, tell an insane, murderous king that he is wrong, endure a cross are all fairly high-courage activities. Real courage, ‘not work yourself up at a multi-level marketing meeting’ courage. Yet in the red-brick church, little was spoken of a God who continually asked for massive sacrifice and straight up guts, no, we were reminded by our refrigerator magnets of the pink God who wants us to always be still. The contrast was stark to me like a bedroom light being flicked on – so I had to go read the whole be still refrigerator verse.

The maroon Bible said it differently.

It said Moses was in a jam. He had the greatest army in the world at that time chasing him, sharp-rocked mountains on either side, the red sea (more accurately the reed sea, but why change a tradition from the 1600s?) in front of him, and hundreds of thousands of Israelites complaining in his ears. He was pretty sure that God was going to save them; as a few miraculous plagues would lead him to believe. Yet the humble leader did not know how. This is when he coined the refrigerator magnet verse, be still and see the salvation of our God.

This is a very true and powerful statement repeated many times in other places. There are times to trust and wait upon the Lord. This was not one of them. God responds to Moses’ comforting words with a few words of His own, What are you waiting around for! Tell them to get up and start going! Hardly comforting. Definitely not easy. God needed the Israelites to act so that he could go ahead and make water split and inspire the world (and a Charleston Heston movie) for thousands of years with one of the greatest miracles ever. As they took action, God acted.

I realized this as I sat alone in my flat in the college town of Uppsala, Sweden. It was a Friday night, but I felt this genuine desire to stay in and talk to God – historically called prayer. I had a gut feeling that I needed to pray for opportunities to share my faith for some time now. I figured that the idea of heaven forever, and hell forever were real. In response, I enthusiastically prayed out loud, really loud, “Dear God, please give me some opportunities to share your love with other people.” Afterwards I was feeling pretty good about myself – almost ready to write my own pink-God-refrigerator-magnet.

In the midst of my gross self-approval I was interrupted by what I felt was a voice inside that seemed to almost scream, “quit praying, get off your couch, and go outside! I can’t give you opportunities to share with others in your apartment.” Once again being surprised by God’s simple logic, and my inept ability to see the obvious, I got up and started to walk outside where thick white snowflakes were slowly meandering their way to the ground. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was doing, but God told me to quit praying, so there I was.

I walked by a nearby park. Over a dozen pre-teens were hanging out, throwing snowballs at each other. A few snowballs landed on me and started melting down my back, so I put a few in their little Swedish Jr. High faces. Afterwards I got a chance to talk with them. I was bombarded with questions which lead to an opportunity to talk about Jesus the God with all of them. I got the privilege of praying with one of them, who decided to follow Jesus several months later, which made me so happy I wanted to karate kick the air.

The first time I accompanied her people were drooling. The volunteers at the home for the most beautiful people with special needs were thrilled that someone would actually come and play some music. The blond, wood upright piano was giving its best shot at being in tune while she sang with a broken dingy mic stand awkwardly lunged in between her legs and the piano bench. A clear shimmering voice bounced off the green concrete floors and rebounded across the room lyrics sincere as a seven year old kid’s bedtime confessions. She sang her heart out to those 60 people as if there were a crowd of thousands hanging on every note, or as if she were playing for the angels in heaven itself, perhaps in that moment we were. I tried to accompany her with my strapless guitar falling off my leg and a microphone falling into the sound hole, but it was so hard to keep from just watching and witnessing that awe filled moment. I kept thinking that more people needed to hear this voice, these words, this heart…and a bit later a few million did.

A few years later, she took a courageous leap to share her voice and songs with the world. I remember sitting in a crowd of people seeing her on stage in front of thousands of people. The piano was in tune this time. The guitar player actually had a strap. The mic stand was not awkwardly between her legs and the piano bench. But the heart was the same, the words were the same, the voice was the same. It was like it did not matter if she was playing for a handful of people with special needs or thousands of admiring fans. I remember thinking, perhaps the real reason for this was that she was playing for heaven and the angels before, and was still playing for heaven and the angels now. Her audience never changed.

As the light danced like reflected water across the shimmering piano that night, I thought about how I will always be inspired by people who throw their heart and passion behind helping just a few people. This is greatness. Almost all of us would be inspired to sacrifice if it affected thousands. The heroes, however, sacrifice for the seemingly insignificant. This is what is so special about the story of Jesus the God.

Faith in God.

Love for Saints.

These are the two balances of Christendom. Faith is unmoving, love is constantly meeting people where they are at. Faith is clear. Love is messy. Faith is stubborn. Love is flexible. People of faith sometimes have a hard time loving, and people who love have a hard time believing. But the truth is that BOTH in their truest forms come from the heart.

These are the things that stories are told about. Courageous exploits of faith. Huge sacrifices of love.

It is almost impossible for a human to hold both of these strongly at the same time. It is so hard to have an unswerving faith in truth and what is right ans still have a deep compassion for the who abandon the truth time and time again. It is so hard to believe that people you deeply love are hellbound.

But there is One. Jesus. Perfect faith, pure love. This is why it was so hard to pin him down. The faith camp is conservative, unmoving. The love camp is liberal and understanding. But Jesus had a rock solid faith in God the Father and a clarity as to what was right and wrong better than any mind in human history (even Gandhi acknowledged this), it was paired with the most self-sacrificial love ever displayed.

We all have a measure of faith. We all have the love of God poured into our hearts. But walking in both is as challanging as learning to write with both hands. We all favor one or the other. I’m left-handed and favor my life, I learned to use my left, and I prefer my left. Others are born right handed and are just the opposite.
It would be foolish for us to argue which is better, but even more foolish to not use the other hand at all.

I meet a bunch of one armed Christians. They hold their own conventions, have their own mega-churches, conferences, books, blogs, even their own dominate style of church sanctuary, clothing etc. The faith camp can “convert sinners” and forget they are people with memories, dreams, and fears like all of us. The love camp is out to prove how “stupidly simple and mean” the faith camp is and love people deeply, at times forgetting there is something called repentance, hell etc.

The path of Jesus requires two hands, faith and love.

The hardest part of all of this is the fact that Love, is greater than faith. If we are going to err on one side of the issue, self-sacrificing, humble love is the better.