The Journey: An Examined Life

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Death and Dying

Learning the truth of the life we are living and the death that will come to us all.

It seems our family has been surrounded by death in this past couple of years. First, a niece in her 30s, then Wendy’s sister in her 70s, and my brother in his 80s. We have just now gone through 80-plus years of pictures, watches, hats, and stories about my brother most recently. He died on July 7th. It takes me back to the death of our parents, aunts, uncles, and many family members, especially the “older generation.”

In the normal scheme of things, now it is “our” turn to be the older generation. 77 is a great golf score, but it is also a date in time: On June 26th, 1949, at the Little Company of Mary Hospital, a baby boy joined the large extended family of Andersons’, Liljedahls’, and Nelsons’.

 Seventy-seven years later, I am writing this blog to you. Most of those family members have died.

There is a particular kind of quiet that comes when the people who knew your beginning are no longer in the room. Their photographs remain. Their stories surface at the kitchen table. A hat, a watch, a familiar saying can carry more weight than it did before. Their lives have become part of the story by which we know ourselves. And now, without warning, we find that we are no longer merely the ones remembering the older generation; we have become it.  Read More

CategoriesSpiritual Conversation by

Say Yes: When Life Feels Out of Control

I would like you to join me in a conversation with a skeptic. Perhaps The Skeptic’s questions are yours too. If so, I have a proposal for both of you—and for myself.

One word describes how life comes at me some days. It feels relentless.

The phone rings, bringing another crisis. The news pulses with uncertainty: war, the cost of living, political vitriol, and one more reason to be afraid. Life can feel like the title of a U2 song: we are “stuck in a moment we can’t get out of’—or perhaps simply ‘Numb.’” It may not be that life is wildly out of control, frantic, or unstable. It may just be a day, a week, or a season when life feels like too much.

This morning I talked with a mother of five at her workplace. She had opened the store at 5:00 a.m. I asked whether she had to move stealthily through the house to get out the door without waking everyone. She smiled without words, offering only a nod that said, “You understand.” I grew up in a household of five children too, so I understood something of that early-morning routine. She knows what it is to have life begin making demands before dawn.

Now you will see why my proposal may sound counterintuitive. In such times, I say with Psalm 33, “Sing joyfully to the Lord.”1

The Skeptic: Did I read that correctly? Read More

Categoriesindividuals by

Known Inside and Out

“God has crafted our character and given us a role that will reveal something about God that no one else’s story can reveal in quite the same way.”1 So says my colleague, Dr. Dan Allender of The Allender Center.

It turns out that God not only reveals himself to us but also reveals himself through us to others. Does that surprise you?

Like every person, you have been given a song that only you can sing. Read More

Categoriesindividuals, Spiritual Conversation by

What Ariat Accidentally Preached

I’m watching an NFL game—Rams versus 49ers—and I find myself rooting hard for San Francisco. I need them to win. They don’t.

As the fourth quarter unfolds and the tension builds, a commercial comes on that nearly knocks me off my seat. The 49ers quarterback is shown walking up a hill, and then these words are heard: Don’t let the world tell you who you are.

It turns out to be an ad for Ariat boots and clothing. I wear Ariat boots. I’m not a cowboy, but I do know great quality when I try it on. And yes—you’re 100% correct—I look good in those boots.

Little did I expect to hear a national company sound like the Apostle Paul in an ad for western wear, but there it was:

Don’t let the world tell you who you are.

Yet Christianity has always offered something more complicated than rugged individualism. Scripture does not deny individuality, but it refuses to make the self the center of identity. Read More

CategoriesPreparing Your Heart, Spiritual Conversation by

Where are you?

They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”

Genesis 3:8–9

 

Adam and Eve have just eaten of the tree that God has commanded them not to eat of—perhaps the most disruptive moment in the history of humankind. The story goes on to say that their “eyes were opened” and they became “ashamed of their nakedness.” Then Adam and Eve hear God enter the Garden and immediately they hide in the trees. God calls out to Adam, “Where are you?”

Now what is God asking? Has God lost track of Eve and Adam? Read More

CategoriesPrayer by

In the Presence of Pray-ers

What do you pray in your own “private prayer”? After World War II, John Baillie, a Scottish pastor, published A Diary of Private Prayer, a month of his morning and evening prayers. Private, yes—but not isolated from his world, the public square, or the needs of “the other.” His prayers called him to love others, often expressed through compassion for the suffering and just, generous practices toward the sick, blind, and prisoners—including those oppressed by injustice.

We learn to pray best when we are in the presence of pray-ers and prayers. Baillie’s diary becomes a classroom of instruction on prayer. Listen first to his posture before God—and then to his four petitions.

“Oh, divine love who dost everlastingly stand outside the closed doors of the souls of humankind, knocking ever and again, wilt thou give me grace to throw open all my soul’s doors?”1

Read More

CategoriesJesus' Way, Spiritual Conversation by

Prophet, peacemaker, or partisan?

Your emotional reaction to the title for today’s blog is already an indicator of your readiness for curiosity. It’s not a direct statement from Scripture, but I want to raise the question of the kingdom anticipated in the Bible for Jesus’ reign.

 

Isaiah 11:1ff puts us in mind of what God’s intentions were (and are): I ask you to read verses 1-9 to make sense of today’s blog.

 

Did you notice?  Jesus was “the shoot from the stump of Jesse.” If you’re an apprentice of Jesus, this is the mandate to which we bow: “His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.”  Not to be afraid of the Lord, but to honor, respect, follow, and obey the Lord. This oracle forecasts a new king coming out of the line of Jesse, not out of any political party, but from a long past of faithfulness to Yahweh. What is the nature of this new kingdom? Read More

Categoriesindividuals, Spiritual Conversation by

Writing Your Story for Healing and Transformation

One of the privileges of my life was to help create what The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology calls “The Allender Center for Trauma and Abuse.”  Their work has shown again and again how writing your story for healing can bring clarity, insight, and transformation for those who carry pain or untold stories.

 

It is a ministry that highlights the work of my colleague and predecessor, Dan Allender, a seminal thinker and student of trauma and abuse, who served as president of the school.  The focus includes one of the most transformative processes for those who deal with trauma (probably all of us in some way or another) called The Story Workshop.  I invite you to visit The Allender Center online to see what they offer.

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