How Easter weekend correlates with my own churchly death…

Over the past year and a half, I’ve been to church perhaps five times. Each visit was filled with almost instant disappointment, for I have some very strong opinions regarding church as we presently shape it today here in the West.

However, as we approach the climax of Holy Week, and with Good Friday already underway, I feel it to be no better a moment than this to express my growing desire to once again engage in communion with my brothers and sisters. While I have no clue what this will look like presently, I can confidently tell you that I’m excited to finally feel some of the hard exterior of my heart being chipped away at, and am once again experiencing a peace in my walk with Christ that I have not felt for some time. 

Joshua Longbrake, one of my favorite writers/artists/photographers/bloggers, did a project for his Masters thesis based on the Paschal Triduum and the corresponding similar rhythms we find in our lives that I’ve found poignently applicable to my current state. 

He sums this rhythm up in a series called Friday, Saturday, Sunday, which follows the idea of death (Friday), the subsequent silence and mourning associated with it (Saturday), and the eventual resurrection to come (Sunday). It’s honestly a fascinating lens to look at life through, and which the nuances of I’ll never fully grasp.

Based off my minuscule understanding of the concept, I would say I’m currently living this narrative out, in regards to my association with the Church. My Friday came about a year and a half ago when I chose to forsake the (physical) church body after moving to Arizona, and Saturday has since continued during this time in the desert (both literally and metaphorically). As I currently understand it, I’m very close to experiencing my Sunday, for I’m growing more and more restless with being isolated from my (any) community. I deem it no coincidence that the culmination of this understanding would take place during the Easter season for me, as the parallels are strong and crushingly apparent. 

All of this to say: I fully believe this weekend is ideal for observing our lives and the narratives within them, pointing us toward our pain (Friday), allowing us to grieve (Saturday), and encouraging us that we shall rise again (Sunday). 

We each experience different kinds of pain and react to those pains in different ways. However, the narrative of the Paschal Triduum is applicable to every pain, and that is a thing worth praising God for. 

28 Things I’ve Learned In 28 Years of Life

Because I possess the wisdom of a freaking sage…

1) It’s important to have a hobby. When everything else is boring and crap, you can always turn to your garden or collection of finger nail clippings.

2) Never keep your collection of finger nail clippings in a place a potential love interest might see it.

3) Education is important, but it comes in the form of more than just school books and academic papers. Get the hell out of the classroom every once in awhile, and get the hell off of the internet. (Except when reading my stuff.)

4) Falling madly in love is overrated, and staying single for the sake of being independant is far more romanticized than it should be.

5) Being jaded isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it just means you’ve experienced a lot of shit. What you do with your jadedness is an entirely different thing.

6) Unless you’re a member of a 1920s mob squad, there’s no reason to wear a fedora. Ever.

7) Be kind to everyone you meet, but don’t confuse kindness with niceness. They are not the same, and the latter is just window dressing.

8) Quit following back everyone that follows you on Twitter, Instagram, and/or The Best Social Network Ever®. Take charge of the content you fill your life with.

9) If you’re religious, that’s great; but don’t expect everyone else to live up to your spiritual/moral expectations. That’s unfair and ultimately pointless. Forced morality is not genuine morality, and therefore, not morality at all.

10) Be completely honest with people, in spite of how uncomfortable it can be. Don’t confuse white lies with protecting someone else when you’re really just protecting yourself from embarrassment/judgment/anger.

11) Temper your honesty with empathy. Nobody likes getting told off by a dick.

12) While mankind is prone to incredible evil, it has quite a bit of—if not equal—capacity for good.

13) There is a very big difference between guilt and shame. One of these things is not like the other, as the other is a worthless crock of shit.

14) Get really into artistic expression, no matter how pretentious it feels. Art IS pretension, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less valid to the one experiencing it.

15) When you think someone “just doesn’t get it”, don’t be a jerk about it.

16) Don’t be afraid of swear words, because they can really help drive home a damn good point; especially if you’re a Christian. People know when Christians are cussing, shit is serious.

17) Not everything you read on the internet is always true, including some of these points. Use your brain.

18) For the love of Dostoyevsky’s cat, read a damn book every once in awhile. I’m not talking about the teen romance/bondage story du jour. Try something a little more timeless. A professor of mine once said in regards to books for his class, “If the author isn’t dead, their books won’t be read.”

19) Søren Kierkegaard. Start with him.

20) Try allowing yourself to endure an incredibly awkward and uncomfortable moment at least once a day. They have a lot to teach us.

21) Spend a lot of time in coffee shops, as long as your laptop is closed and the conversation is open.

22) If you’re single and you see an attractive girl or boy, approach them. Strike up a conversation. Just take a chance. It doesn’t have to go anywhere. Learn the fine art of awkward conversation with a member of the opposite gender.

23) If you’re young, don’t let old people stifle your dreams, but don’t be so arrogant you ignore their stories and warnings, as well. If you’re old, just remember you were once that idiot kid that’s ruining the country for the members of the previous generation.

24) If you’re in high school and everything sucks, just remember all that bullshit will matter ZERO percent when you’re an adult. Be a band geek. Be a drama nerd. Be a basketball star. Be whatever you are, and remember that the idiots making fun of you for it will live a sad and lonely existence for as long as they remain dickheads.

25) Don’t be the dickhead. Trust me, it gets you nowhere. If you’re a dickhead right now, you probably know it. Stop that. Never place a low premium on respect for your fellow human.

26) Create something. As often as you can. No matter what. I don’t care if it’s a sculpture of your collected belly lint. (Just as long as you keep it away from me.)

27) Never take for granted the importance of a good surrounding group of friends and/or family. “Community” is often an overused word to the point of being trite, but it’s so very important.

28) Get a dog. You’ll find out just how large your capacity for being a terrible human being is, but they’ll love you regardless.

BONUS: Quit reading lists of life lessons written by some douche on the internet. These are mine; go learn your own.

One Self-Portrait Every Day For One Year…

Inspired by photographer Noah Kalina’s “Everyday” project, I took one photo every day at the same time (or around the same time) for one year, no matter where I was or what I was doing.

The Old Man and The Coffee Shop…

There’s an older gentleman ordering a drink at The Coffee Shop, and I can’t help but observe him as he moves about.

His body is ravaged with scars and bruises, no doubt markings of his most recent moments in life and moments of the past. A hospital bracelet still graces his frail and wrinkled wrists. His movements inhibited by a frailty brought on by years of wear and tear. He braces himself against the counter top as he attempts to lean over and see what kind of cupcakes are available today, breathing heavily as he strains himself to complete the task before him. A minute goes by before he appears to have made a decision, only to seemingly forget and return to his process once more, this time with considerably more frustration at his own inability to make a decision.

There are four people waiting in line behind him, each growing more and more impatient. Eyes are rolling. Breaths are huffing. Arms being crossed.

“I think I’ll take a red velvet cupcake today, please,” he says.

“Finally,” a lady in line mouths silently to her friend.

“I just want my freaking coffee,” I overhear another say.

The old man (I’ll call him Eugene from here on out, because I’m in control of the story) fumbles through his pockets for change, counting out crumbled dollar bills and pennies that society completely forgot existed.

More eye rolling.

Finished, Eugene hobbles back to his table, respectfully declining an offer from a gentleman (in the truest sense) to help him.

Meanwhile, the next two ladies in line take just as long as Eugene to decide on their order, despite having ample time to come to a conclusion while the man ahead of them attempted to do the same. Instead of doing just that, they wasted plenty of precious moments to take advantage of the time afforded them, in turn wasting everyone else’s in line behind.

Youth truly is wasted on the young.

Fighting the Church and for it…

Most of you who know who I am know that ministry is something I’m passionate about. I’ve been fortunate enough (sometimes unfortunate, but I’ll get to that later) to work in churches in various facets for the past ten years, and as a result I have experienced a number of wonderful relationships and moments.

But for various reasons, I have grown to be quite cynical and jaded, which is a typical response for a 20-something (ok, late 20-something, but shut up) to feel, especially if they’ve spent a large amount of time within the Church. Through my time on different ministry teams, I’ve seen and done a number of terrible things; all things that were borne out of good intentions, but nonetheless, things that have unfairly hurt a lot of people.

I was passionate, but that might have been my overarching mindset. When you’re guided only by passion, you tend to overlook the small, minuscule details that often have an even more palpable effect on yourself and other people than the bigger ones. I very much had an idealistic mindset in regards to ministry (and still do to this day, although it’s a bit different of an idealism than it once was), but no matter how big and “honorable” my ideals were, far too often I succumbed to my humanity and innate sense of selfishness.

Lessons weren’t fully researched. Sermons weren’t practiced enough (literally and figuratively). Relationships weren’t followed up on. Prayer requests were taken, but not always fulfilled.

I could keep going, but my ego can only take so much self-awareness right now.

These are things that every person in ministry (and to some degree, in general) deals and struggles with, so I know I’m not special in them and should therefore not allow their existence in my life to dictate my perception of things.

But they kind of do. So much so that I actually haven’t attended church on a regular basis for quite some time; at least since I’ve actually worked in the church. Having moved out to Arizona back in November, I’ve allowed my new location to be my reason when telling others, but in my mind I know that it goes so much deeper than simply not knowing the lay of the land.

I’m burnt out. Have been for quite awhile. Much of the reason for my jadedness is my own fault—which is something I’m painfully aware of—but moving beyond my own personal shortcomings, I believe there are some very legitimate ones for this outside of myself. Ultimately, I choose how I respond to them, and I’ve responded poorly at times, but the existence of these very reasons are cause enough to talk about them in hope that we can begin to eliminate them.

As an example, I attended a church this morning just down the road from my house. When I’m trying new churches out, I like to go by myself and keep to myself. The reason for this is twofold:

1) I’m an observer. I prefer to sit back and watch something taking place before I determine my role within it. This hasn’t always been the case, as in my younger years (fogey alert), I was always attempting to be the center of attention and control the environment. This still creeps out from time to time, but I’ve begun to develop a preference to observation and contemplation above the other option.

2) It’s interesting to see how long I go without a single person approaching me.

That second one has produced some interesting results, as in almost every church I’ve attended within the past year I’ve gone through every service but one without talking to a soul (outside of the door greeters and parking ministry people; don’t even get me started on the parking ministers). Nobody said a word to me. Is it a two-way street? Absolutely. Should I expect every person in the church to approach me? Not at all.

But come on.

I interned at a fairly large church one summer, and at the time my cynicism was really starting to take hold. I invested heavily within the youth that I was working with, but outside of that, I decided to try for the first time my experiment of seeing who would approach me.

I went through the entire summer without a single person talking to me during “adult services”. Outside of the youth group, nobody even knew who I was.

I realize I’m being nitpicky by focusing on this single idea, but it’s a pretty telling idea, nonetheless. If a staff member (granted it was temporary) of a church can be so anonymous within his/her own body of believers that nobody even knows who they are, how much easier would it be for the layperson?

The underlying reason for my reluctance to invest in a church again is due to my desire to avoid fake love. Everybody knows that on Sunday morning between the hours of 8 and 1 p.m. (depending on which service you attend), and long before the football games get started, we are at our most surface level best. We care deeply about each and every person that walks through the doors. So deeply that we take the time to ask how they’re doing, but maybe not so deeply enough that we actually answer their return questions honestly. There are more smiles on a Sunday morning than the rest of the week combined.

It’s an understandable thing we do, as we can’t always be unpacking our deepest, darkest insecurities and worries in a setting like that. And sometimes we just want to be in a positive environment that would perhaps counter our own negative one. I totally get it, and I agree with it myself.

But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. That doesn’t mean it HAS to be this way. Do I know how to fix this? No, I don’t. Perhaps it’s not for me to know; perhaps my only place is to simply ask the question and hope that someone far more capable than I am can find the answer. But then again, nothing I’m asking is anything new. These are things countless others have wondered, and have even attempted to address.

I’ll keep asking the questions, though. And I’ll keep earnestly searching for the answers, hoping that others are doing the same, and perhaps we can align our paths together and search beside each other. To me, that’s what the Church is and should be.

Gay marriage and freedom in Christ…

“There is freedom in Christ” does not mean just freedom from sin, but freedom to simply be as you are, without fear of rules and regulations.

Without having to look over your shoulder every moment of the day, wondering who is watching.

Without having to constantly explain your actions to a group of people who know next to nothing about you.

Without having to consider every possible outcome to every little thing you do.

Without having to worry about expulsion for a mistake you have already repented from.

For all the things freedom means you have the ability to do without, it has just as many things you have the ability to do.

To express your opinions.

To ask difficult questions that might not have definitive answers.

To explore the possibilities of God’s personhood outside of what we currently know Him as.

To question authority that oversteps its boundaries.

To invest deeply and passionately in your relationships and community.

To consider that you don’t have the absolute hold on all truth.

We as a Church have this need to definitively explain things the way we see them, with very little room for interpretation or compromise. Throwing it under the guise of “being steadfast in our beliefs”, we fundamentally discard the vital component of our belief system, which is faith. The very idea of faith is that we can’t be certain of all things, which is something all of us would consider to be obvious; yet our actions speak of something far different.

“The Bible is clear that gays shouldn’t be married!”

“Women are to submit to men as the head of the household!”

“There is a Scriptural mandate for slaves to obey their masters!”

I’m sure reading that last statement makes all of us cringe at least a little bit more than the rest, but all three come from views of what the Bible has to say; and to be honest, the Bible has a few passages that very clearly state sentiments of each idea. Yet, that last statement is universally lauded against and explained away, without any consideration of the first two possibly needing to have the same treatment. These are the fallacies of thought and action we give ourselves over to without fully allowing the freedom of Christ to permeate our entire lives, not just one specific subset of them.

Taking the issue of gay marriage into account, I posit that it is absolutely possible for someone who is opposed to the idea of homosexuality to be completely for homosexual marriage. In fact, I even know a few of those whack jobs. They are incredibly loving people who hold a very special place in their hearts for those on the fringes of the Church, and only want to do everything within their grasp to bring them into the fold. The reasoning is that though they may disagree on something like human sexuality, that doesn’t require vehemently seeking legislation from a secular government to regulate their ability to receive the benefits a heterosexual couple would receive. Almost every Christian believes and shouts for joy that the “law is dead” and there is only Christ, yet law-making is the way to go for a number of our brothers and sisters. It’s an odd juxtaposition to see that spiritual laws are no longer necessary due to the atoning sacrifice of Christ, yet secular laws are imperative.

In a cultural context of a Christian stuck in a foreign land, we are very quick to turn that land into our home through legislation and regulation. If Earth is not our home, then why are we so eager to make it look that way?

It’s unfortunate that we don’t allow the idea of “freedom in Christ” to shine for the glory that it is, as opposed to actually making it look less appealing.

On that one suicide post and the responses I received…

I didn’t expect that kind of reaction…

Last week I wrote a post regarding my attempted suicide just over a year ago, and the resulting effects ever since. I’m not going to give too many details, because I seriously don’t want to look like I’m humble-bragging in any way; but suffice it to say, that story seemed to resonate with a lot of people.

A lot.

The irony here of course is that when you’re depressed, you feel completely alone. You feel as if nobody in the world would seem to understand what you’re experiencing. I knew that to not be the case even before writing that post, but it was really driven home to me how widespread the struggle with depression is.

And just how little attention we actually pay to this struggle.

I received a large number of messages from many of you detailing your own personal battles with depression and suicide; some of these stories I was aware of, but mostly they came way out of left field. I couldn’t help but cry while reading your responses, for a lot of you are hurting or have been hurt deeply.

While I don’t intend to seemingly turn this into a defensive post, I do want to highlight another reason why I feel depression isn’t taken seriously enough. Amidst all of the positive and encouraging messages I received, there were still a number of inexplicably cold and callous responses.

“Just get over it.”

“Grow up and move on.”

“Perhaps it’s your own fault you were depressed.”

While these quotes are devoid of context, they are exact representations of a few messages I received, and I have something to say that’s probably a little shocking: they’re right.

Ultimately, getting over it and moving on is what we have to do at some point in the midst of depression, especially a depression that contains many pains that were directly our own fault. I can honestly say that a lot of what I was hurting over could have easily been avoided had I made better decisions in my life and relationships.

While these statements may be unfortunately true on a fundamental level, they provide no actual help and are utterly useless.

Telling your friend who’s stuck in quicksand that it’s his own fault for not paying attention in the first place won’t actually…you know, get him out of the quicksand. Reiterating that he should have been more careful won’t do any good to remove him from his current predicament, and that’s one of the mistakes we make with those struggling with depression.

While the words of a few people have undoubtedly angered me, this isn’t about them. They can’t possibly understand at the moment, otherwise they wouldn’t say such harmful things. I’m not hurt by what they said, as I’ve finally gotten to a place in which I’m understanding more and more about who I am and what my ever-evolving role in life is. Honestly, I don’t think they are trying to be harmful. I believe their words, though misguided, come from a good place. They want to see those around them struggling with these issues get better. Unfortunately, it’s on their own terms, but that’s neither here nor there.

Anyway, I intended to be thanking those for their kind words with this post, and of course I’ve gone on longer talking about the opposite of responses.

Meh.

Again, I want to thank all of you for your words, no matter what they were. That means you read something I wrote, and felt strongly enough to write back, which is humbling to me. I’m not promising that I’ll go back to writing consistently (because I know every single one of you have been waiting with bated breath for that to happen), but I will say that I’ll probably be moving on from this topic for at least a little while. I don’t want to broadcast this portion of my journey, as it’s not for the world to see.

Yet?

At some point, when I feel that I’ve come out of the woods altogether, I’ll probably give an update. For now I’ll stick to terribly inadequate attempts at being funny and insightful.