Looking For The Long Ride

I don’t know about you, but for me, the advent of fall always brings with it an air of introspection into my daily life. Not that I am not prone to looking at things in depth most of the time anyway, but fall brings with it a sense of seasonal movement that is somewhat more melancholy than that mood which generally ushers in springtime.

As fall progresses we lose daylight, leaves and warmth, just to name three that happen to fit today. In the spring it is just the opposite—nobody that I know bemoans the loss of winter—and more so as one gets older. Why else would thousands of people retire to Florida each and every year if not to get away from the onslaught of old man winter.

Having said that, we have had one of the most pleasant fall seasons in many a year here in the mountains of North Carolina. It is the 3rd day of November and the sun is brightly shining and the temp out side as I write is a tolerable 57 degrees.

One aspect of life I was thinking about the other day as my wife Sandi and I took a walk after dinner was the fact that many people around us own lots of land and we don’t. We own just enough to take care of and have some nice gardens. Many of the people who own land received it by inheritance and in the overall scheme of things didn’t do anything special to get it. Culturally it seems more value is put on them than us because of what they own. I am not jealous of what they have, but rather became aware of the fact that life really is a random kind of thing when looked at in this way.

There are some people I am sure that could look at what I own and come to the same conclusion—they have less than me so what is the deal with life anyway. Why is it so uneven—so unbalanced. Joe Torre, the manager of the NY Yankees turned down a one-year $5 million dollar offer and chose to go with another team that offered him a bigger deal. And this guy manages a sports team which in the overall scheme of things is probably not all that important in a cosmic sense if you get my drift. He may be a really great guy and give a lot to charity but my best guess is that he has a great big house and owns lots of stuff but really doesn’t have a life because the yanks own him.

And now I have come to the same conclusion that the writer of the book of Proverbs came to: there are many good people just getting by and a lot of not so good people making a lot of dough.

1 Timothy 6:6 tells me that: …godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment.

To own or not to own is really not the question—to be content is the goal. And we all have our moments when so and so’s new car rubs us the wrong way or our friends promotion and subsequent raise is not something we can whole heartedly rejoice in.

I do look forward to the day when I can look life straight in the eye and say that I have enjoyed it to the fullest and lack no good thing. That I have been content with what I have been given and no longer feel that I need anything else to make my life complete.

That’s a good ride.

You know how those lunch-time conversations go: you start out talking about something simple that you think you know a little bit about and end up talking about religion, politics or advanced economic theory. Sometimes there is a loser—sometimes a winner—and sometimes everybody gets to say a little about a whole lot.

Such was the case at lunch today. We began by talking about corn-based Ethanol and its impact upon the environment and ended up talking about socialism, capitalism and the profit motive. We touched upon a few other subjects and got so heavy into the conversation we were several minutes late getting back to work.

In the process I discovered once again that even something as simple as a “factual” newspaper article can be interpreted many different ways.

It all began for me several days ago when an article about the price of beer caught my eye in the USA Today. Seems like one of the major ingredients in beer, hops, has tripled in price the last several months. This is due in part to a bad crop season in Europe but also in large part to the fact that many farmers in America are now growing corn to be used for ethanol based fuel instead of hops which had become much to plentiful—from overabundance to scarcity in less than two years. The price of craft beer is expected to go up a dollar a six-pack by the end of the year.

Then I turned the page and read an interesting story about some of the effects that growing corn for fuel will have on the environment and the nation’s poor. The story highlighted worries about damage to our land and water table due to the amount of chemical fertilizers it takes to grow corn. In the short term and perhaps longer, because much farmland will be turned into energy crops, food crops will not be as plentiful and prices will go up on some of our nation’s staples such as bread and cereal. I guess you get the drift.

In the process of all this thought floating around, we talked about the market place, innovation and what really fuels research into energy and other related matters. And it seems the conclusion was that profit is the prime motivator in figuring out the nations’ energy crisis and many of the other maladies we face.

In other words—companies are in business to make a profit not to make you or I feel good. I know this comes as no great shock to most of you—but to me it was a little bit of a letdown. I guess when I think about why discoveries in medicine or other areas are made I tend to filter them through an “altruism” lens. That people make great discoveries and companies fund research in order to make our lives better. And I am sure this is the case in some instances. But by and large we live in a capitalistic society that has at its very core an ROI (return on investment) strategy of some sort.

I guess I could have titled today’s adventure “Whatever Happened To Altruism” but was not sure if I could get to this very point or not.

Altruism is defined as: the principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others (opposed to egoism).

Capitalism is defined as: An economic system in which the means of production and distribution
are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to
the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.

It does seem, definition-wise, they are polar opposites. One concept implies a concern for others and the other is mainly interested in profits.

I am not saying that the two can’t overlap and work together—in some cases they do. Companies that make flu shots should be compensated for their work. And if we thought about it long enough we would probably drive ourselves crazy as to which came first the chicken or the egg or in this case the people or the profit-product.

I have a feeling people would like whiter teeth so I will invent a toothpaste that incorporates a whitening agent and market it as new, improved and so on. What!, you say that has already been done and Procter and Gamble is making millions on the idea. A product perceived as a service—what genius—I wish I would have been on that one—I could retire tomorrow.

And I guess that is the state of things in America—we don’t really do a whole lot without first taking time to consider what is in it for us. I know this a broad sweep and will readily admit that not everyone is motivated by the bottom line. It just seems like for every altruistic stream there is a capitalistic river flowing out of somewhere near where we live.

We do seem to live in an “Ebayed” society where my junk can be turned into someone else’s treasure with a few clicks of the mouse. At the same time I think it is unrealistic to expect that we can all stay home and make $120 grand a year by working the internet to our advantage. Doesn’t somebody have to produce something substantive to have any real economic value. Hey, maybe the lottery that e-mail said I won this morning bears looking into again. I hope I haven’t already deleted it. LOL

Enjoy your ride….it’s not over yet.

Often there are subtle shifts in our perception of reality that are hard to describe.

Like yesterday.

I hadn’t played golf in over four years and yet went out and held my own in a captain’s choice type tournament. I don’t even own a set of clubs anymore and had to borrow some from a friend in order to play. And it could have been really bad news instead of a good report at the end of the day. It is just the way things go.

I stepped up to the first tee and hit the ball straight down the fairway for at least 230 yards. What I didn’t know is that the people I was playing with knew that I had borrowed clubs to play and were expecting the inevitable—that I would top off the ball and it would roll about twenty feet and that the rest of the day would be more of the same. My buddy Carter told me at church today that God knew what was going to happen even before I got to the course.

This after I told the congregation before leading praise and worship that It could have gone either way—I could have sucked and wished I was home after four holes or I could have held my own (which I did miraculously) and had an enjoyable day. The way I looked at it going into the first hole was I had nowhere to go but up and that turned out to be the case. And that is the way life is sometimes. I really didn’t have what it took (in a Tiger Woods sort of way) but God did show up and helped me to see clearly as to the purpose of the day’s exercise and in the end He was strong while I was weak.

In other news the sky tonight was one of the most spectacular events that I have witnessed in a long time. The sun was just barely below the horizon which in itself gives a dimension to the sky and clouds that is almost beyond belief. That reflected radiation and the three dimensional view is exaggerated during the fall of the year. Some of the clouds looked like an other worldly landscape turned upside down with sunlight coming through every pore.

Fall in the mountains is generally a marvelous time to be alive. Chilly nights and 65+ degree days and trees that show us every color in the human perception spectrum. This year for the first time, I have also noticed that the sun light is even different during the fall—not as intense on the eyes and seemingly diffused in an also other-worldly sort of way. As the light shines on the landscape it seems to come alive in all its three dimensional glory. No painting can even come close to replicating this vision of beauty—you have to see it with you own eyeballs.

I took a 30 mile ride with my biking buddy Lonnie on Saturday and purposefully picked a route that would display all the fall had to offer—and we were not disappointed. The colors were so intense that they seemed to burn themselves into our memory banks—and there were so many of them. It was definitely “peak week-end” color season. The traffic in and around Boone was almost at a standstill—smart people stayed away from town or else prepared themselves for the traffic jam ahead.

All in all it is an exciting time to be alive—I can hardly wait to see what kind of ride tomorrow will bring.

I am fully convinced that if a man wanted to he could keep busy for at least the next ten or twenty years just reading the different ideas expressed in the thousands of Christian themed blogs available to us through the world wide web. At a touch of the keyboard we can be almost anyplace in the world thought-wise. It is a discussion that has an internet based community involved around the world.

For the most part I believe that this is a healthy thing—a global conversation that has the effect of making us all equal. There is no clergy and laity divide as pertains to the internet—no division between the secular and the sacred. And this is a good thing.

Yet I am disturbed by all the information available to me—it is almost to much. There are good conversations going on about everything that can have a conversation going on about it. Tithing and taxes; leadership and church structure; accountability and on and on. I have even authored a few of these conversations myself.

As I was reading tonight I began to wonder if a time of rest would ever come upon the people of God and me in particular. Will we ever reach a point of being content inside that we know enough to be at peace with what we know. I know that is a mouthful but you get the point—or is the point more about getting to the point of knowing that we will never get to that point and to make peace with that.

As I was thinking about this a verse to a song Bob Dylan wrote years ago came to mind (you almost knew that was coming didn’t you). The song was off his born-again album “Slow Train Coming” and is entitled “When He Returns”. Think what you want about Dylan and where ever he is today spiritually (I don’t really know), he wasn’t faking it back then. No one could write what he did in their sleep and keep it up for several years.

The verse in question is this:

Will I ever learn that there’ll be no peace, that the war won’t cease

Until He returns?

And to a degree this answers my question—if we can agree on what he is saying in this verse.

My take on it today is this: we will continue to question things until that moment when we don’t and then we won’t really remember it being any different—we will just feel it inside—that something has shifted in the way we look at life and our journey in particular. If we are asked about it we will look somewhat amused and wonder what all the fuss is about.

Like a scene from a postcard you would buy in a little shop while on vacation was the weather in the high country this past Saturday. Chilly in the morning especially in the shadows, the day warmed up to a respectable 67 degrees at about 3 pm.

I met my biking buddy Glen at the Riverfront Store at 12:30 and we took off northwest on Railroad Grade Road through Todd to Three Top Road and then on to Highway 88—a round trip ride of 32 miles. And for mid October in the mountains, the weather was picture perfect.

It was the type of fall weather that outdoor fairs were made for—cars lined up and down the road on both sides—muisc playing in the distance and the smell of hotdogs and other fair-food filtering through the air. People were everywhere as we wound our way through the narrow road about four miles into our ride—cars backed up looking for parking spaces and people standing in the street talking to one another as if nothing else mattered.

With all that is going on in the world it is amazing to me that we are somehow allowed to inhabit this space of time and find such enjoyment in the act of simply living. Not quite a dichotomy but somewhere in between and softer and more mysterious somehow. This reality of work-week and weekend—my time and your time and our time together—fits like a glove yet is as fragile as an ocean eco system.

Life is precious and by this time in my journey I have finally figured out incomprehensbile at times.

A bible verse comes to mind as I write: Luke 17:26. Asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would be coming Jesus replied that it wouldn’t be coming with careful observation because the kingdom of God is within us. And then he went on to say in verse 26:

“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People
were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the
day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.”

I don’t know about you but this is one of those pictures that has been stuck in my mind for a long time. Things were normal and then they weren’t all in the space of seconds. I guess this is why as I passed through another beautiful day I was struck by the delicateness of it all. You don’t often think of the the earth spinning in space on its’ angled axis and revolving around the sun as being delicate. It all seems so large and impersonal. All the countries spread out on the globe as we see it in pictures taken from spacecraft hovering above us.

Each of the little specks of humanity that cover the earth has a story—a beggining and an end and a middle part.

There is history and there is today. The grass around our houses grows and we buy a mower at Lowes to cut it down. We are free yet we are tethered to a plot-line that hasn’t been fully developed. Or maybe it has been and that is what all this blogging is about—an attempt to make sense of something that really can only be understood after we have graduated from this place and enter into eternity—of which I can say that that ship has already begun her trip many, many years ago.

We are on-board the big story and attending at the same time the small ones that surround us and make up our days.

Like bike riding on a beautiful fall day in the mountains of North Carolina.

It is a gift and I want you to know that I really do appreciate it. I don’t deserve it—yet it is for this very day that I was created—to feel my heart and lungs and other parts of my body—each doing their jobs well on this perfect Saturday.

When you live in the mountains of North Carolina, each year always has one day when you know that the season has changed from fall to winter weatherwise. You go to bed one evening surrounded by balmy Indian summer like temperatures and wake to the sound of high winds and a 40 degree temp reading.

And the local forecast says that there is more low temperature weather in store for our future. It had to happen—it is just a matter of when and how much.

I remember when Sandi and I moved from Michigan to North Carolina and experienced our first winter. It would get very cold for a couple of days—maybe even snow—and then the temperature would moderate up for a time, the snow would go away and the Carolina Blue skies would invite us out for a late afternoon or Saturday stroll around our favorite lake. Unlike Michigan which would cloud up in late October and you would not see the sun again until April. There might be a few warming trends per winter but by and large the temperature would stay cold and the snow would get dirtier and dirtier during those winter months.

It was something you took for granted and learned to live with but always looked forward to warmer weather with a passion. We even brought our cross-country skis with us but sold them after a winter when we found out you couldn’t really depend on any regular snowfall or tempertures to go with it. We’d get a foot of snow one day and the next day it would be fifty degrees and we would be sitting on the front porch in our lightweight jackets getting a winter tan. I gues that’s why North Carolina is a leading retirement state—it’s all about the moderate weather.

Don’t get me wrong—we have all four seasons here—just not as extreme as in places north of us. In Michigan we had the “lake effect” snows—located as we were between Lake Michigan to the west and Lake Huron to the east. Some days it would take hours to shovel out the drive way in order to get to work—but most of the time we always made it in.

During my recent bike rides I have seen a lot of wooly worms on the road moving slowly from one side to the other. Most have been dark brown or black which, according to local tradition means a long cold winter. And it’s not like we don’t need the moisture—having been in nearly drought conditions for most of the year. It is a lot worse water-wise off the mountain. Heavy rain has a tendency to run off whereas snow will stay on the ground and soak in as it melts.

I don’t know what the almanac says about this winter but I do know it is about time to change my focus and begin to get serious about laying up some wood to keep us warm when the cold and windy days that are just around the corner are more normal than not.

Until then, maybe I will get a few more rides in and a little more garden cleanup taken care of.

After several months of being very regular in my blog thought-life I have seemingly entered into one of those seasons where putting anything into words seems a stretch. It is not that I am not thinking—just that my thinking seems to be formative and not substantive.

The feeling is as if part of the hard-drive of my mind is behind a curtain and is not readily acessible to me—I haven’t lost anything but what is there is not creating any energy of its own. In other words there have been seeds planted in the ground but they are waiting for the appropriate amount of sunshine and rain before they even begin to think of sprouting. And for a blogger and verbal processor this is a real trial—what happened to that kid I used to know who had lots to say about anything that came to mind.

It is like playing a musical instrument in that you practice and practice until you begin to notice a change in sound quality—then it seems you peak for a while and don’t move off the black square for several weeks or months. It is hard to maintain the practice discipline during that period when growth doesn’t seem to be happening. Growth is taking place—just not at a speed that can be picked up on by our internal radar. And when we do notice the change and benefit from the feeling that movement imparts it really is a cumulative result of those weeks and months we seemed stuck in the same place. A spouse or friend may have notcied the incremental improvement but to our ears things were not sounding as sweet as we would like.

It is that middle place that I referenced several posts ago—the point between who we were and who we are becoming. I am surrounded by several things I could do right now—books to read, songs to listen to, plants to get in the ground before frost begins and so on. I am at once the creator and the created—hoping there is still enough elasticity in the clay of who I am to allow the form of who I am becoming to be shaped.

The poet T. S. Eliot said: Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

And I guess the reverse is also true—we can’t wait to communicate with one another until we fully understand what it is we desire to communicate.

So, as this stream of thoughts passes by like a slowly flowing river, we can all jump in and float for a while and enjoy the ride.

Having just attended one of the premier Christian conferences in the United States it almost goes without saying that I came away from it changed. How much so remains to be seen and worked out in a practical day-to-day way—but if being equipped can get you through the next couple of life phases then I am already on my way there.

It always amazes me to see how many people want to move on to the next level in all things spiritually-Christian and that as I looked around the meeting room how many of the people didn’t look like the type that I would have over for dinner on a Friday evening. They are probably looking around the room and wondering what all these strange people are doing there as well.

The conference location: the former Heritage Grand Hotel built by Jim Bakker between 1978 and 1985 as a part of what was known as PTL ministries. In and of itself this is a major shift in spiritual dimension that the world does not often see. What had been cursed and left for decay is being used by a large ministry to bring health and healing to a new generation other than the one that sowed their money into the original PTL concept and facility.

During its heyday, PTL saw about 6 million people visit it annually and was the third most visited location besides Disneyland and World. I remember taking the kids and hanging out at the waterpark attraction all day almost 20 years ago. It was a nice facility that played Amy Grant type music and was family friendly. Today, only the island it was built on remains. It would have cost a fortune to fix it and it was torn down years ago.

This past weeks conference was called a Worship and Warfare conference and consisted of 6 meetings over three days with each meeting lasting from 2 to 3 hours. The first hour or so was spent in musical worship which was always good if not always approaching intense. Various musicians ministered throughout the conference with Jason Upton being one of my favorites. These musical times were each followed by a teaching and imparting time with my favorite being Bishop Joseph Garlinton, a black charismatic preacher from Pittsburg. If you remember the Promise Keepers march on Washington, he was the praise and worship leader for the few songs that were sung that afternoon on the mall.

Anyway—I could go on and on and chase a few more rabbits and do a play by play description of all that took place but that is not my intent—maybe more later on.

As I mentioned, Joseph Garlington was one of my favorites—his delivery is unlike any preaching I have ever heard. He came onto the stage with his personal pianst who—for the whole hour and fifteen minutes—played amazingly appropriate music lightly behind the preaching. Garlington would often break out into song, using the words of his text as the chorus and verses. Sometimes, the rest of the Morningstar worship team would begin playing as well and a crescendo would be reached and then the music would taper off and we would be back in the auditorium listening to this black fellow from Pittsburg lay it all out for us.

He is the whole package—funny, informative, inspirational, self-effacing and very purposeful and precise. He was a man who knew what he was going to say even before he stepped to the podium but didn’t let that keep him from slipping in the little holy ghost things that helped me and the rest of his listeners get the most of what he was trying to say.

One nugget that I came away from the conference with is this: One of Garlinton’s parrishioners came to him and told him that he had recently gotten into the habit of giving God thanks every morning in a very precise and deliberate way. He would thank God for his wife and kids, his home, his job and his heath, etc. After doing so he felt like he had opened a window into the kingdom of God that he could walk through and be blessed the rest of the day.

I have simplified this story for relating here but I think you get the point. In giving God thanks we are in a sense creating a kairos moment in time.

Wikipedia says this about kairos:

Kairos is an ancient Greek word meaning the “right or opportune moment”. The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos. While the former refers to chronological or sequential
time, the latter signifies “a time in between”, a moment of
undetermined period of time in which “something” special happens. What
the special something is depends on who is using the word. While
chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative nature.

The concept seems very biblical and is not manipulative in nature. We give thanks when the promise is given not when the money hits our bank accounts. If we find that we haven’t given thanks for something that happened yesterday, what makes us think that something is going to happen today.

Anyway, there is a lot more here than meets the eye in a casual sense. But as far as nuggets go and spending three days at a Christian conference, I think that it has paid for the trip. What do you think?

As I sit in the restored lobby of the old Heritage Grand Hotel built by Jim Bakker many, many years ago and now owned by Morningstar Church, I feel like a man in the middle—I am not who I was yesterday nor am I yet ready to inhabit the man I will be in a few days. The middle is not so bad for a moment or two but not someplace I will set up my tent and begin a garden in by any means.

The occasion is the Worship and Warfare Conference sponsored by Morningstarand attended by people from all over the country and the world.

Jason Upton ministered in praise and worship yesterday morning and in process helped us reach the throne room of God if you believe in such a place. His authority in things spiritual is tangible—which means you can feel it in different parts of your body. His exhortation and obvious love for the church is very strong—he talks about spiritual things almost as much as he sings. He is a man on a mission for God—yet still a man with all of our shared flaws and so forth. But his heart is on the right track and he is an amazing example of what God can do with someone who has his/her heart turned toward Him.

Today, it was Todd Bentley dropping in from Abbotsford, British Columbia, to show us that we too can be a mighty force for God in the earth. Signs and wonders follow him and he is in high demand as a conference speaker—and for good reason. He is a man who spends a great deal of time with God and then imparting what he has gained in order to help others receive from the Lord themselves.

It is amazing to see how many people sincerely desire to be touched by God in order that their lives will be changed and they can touch others and bring peace and healing to them as well.

All in all it is pretty overwhelming and I haven’t not begun to process all that I am taking in. This post is just a brief update on my ride today. I do hope you enjoy yours as well.

I hope that you have enjoyed Alan’s message on perceptions. Part two
will be available soon and he has just done a part three. I will keep
you posted and let you know when they are downloadable.

I have
recently come to the conclusion that life is not as easy as the “name
it and claim it” bunch attest—but neither is it as hard as we sometimes
make it. Truth is truth wherever you find it—in the Bible or written on
the wall at the bus station.

I read an old e-mail from a person
I used to know well and in it he had copied some written points from a
“what it means to be a success” kind of book. One of the points was
that most people who are sucessful are people who respect themselves
and don’t go looking for respect or validation from others—ie. if you
don’t respect yourself it is hard to have respect for someone else.

The
spiritual dynamic surrounding this concept is many-fold—if our parents
didn’t give us the validation and feelings of worth we felt we needed,
many of us in that boat are still looking for that acceptance in the
people we work with and fellowship with. To that end we may give
these people a lot more weight in our lives than perhaps they deserve to have.
We may even go as far as to perceive them as being someone they are not
in our need to have them like us or give us that feeling of belonging
that we are always looking for.

The bible tells me that I am
accepted in the beloved and I fully believe that—yet I have to wonder
sometimes why I have such a problem putting the pedal to the metal in
relation to that understanding. If my worth comes from God, why and I
still looking for some of it elsewhere?

As we move forward in
our life’s trip, the exploratory process that will move us on—though
painful at times—is not without mercy. We look, we find, we forgive, we
release and move on. The light of God has to hit the darkness that is
in us before we can see what is there and take the crowbar to it.

Sandi
and I are going to take some time out next week to attend the
Morningstar Worship and Warfare Conference in Charlotte. Todd Bentley
and Jason Upton will be there along with the Morningstar regulars. It
is a three day deal and I am sure that things are going to happen to
propel us even further into our unhindered future.

So what if
we didn’t get to go to New York this year—there obviously were other
things in mind for us. I can flow with that and New York will still be
there next year.