High School reunions have their own particular kind of strangeness, though, especially if, like me, you come from a small town where the school is the nexus of the life of the community. To a large degree, the people you graduated with were more than just schoolmates. They were the people you grew up with; the people with whom you learned not only academic lessons, but life lessons. The people you played Little League baseball with, went to Boy Scout camp with, attended church with. Your families got together for dinner and card games, or met randomly in the grocery store and spent hours in conversation. Summer afternoons were spent at the swimming pool or in the county park, tossing a frisbee or shooting hoops. Winter evenings saw improptu trips to the bowling alley or the Pizza Hut down the road.

St. Marys, WV, was a place where kids did more than attend school together. We did life together. We learned love and trust and certainty and forgiveness,  fear and cynicism and anger and doubt, with each other and from each other. We laughed and cried with each other, we dated each other, we got in trouble with each other. And then we drifted apart into the wide world, where we created new relationships based on the lessons we had learned from those childhood relationships. Some stayed put and raised their own families in much the same environment and the same ways we were raised. Others traveled far and moved frequently, setting down roots too distant to reach our hometown very often.

But wherever we landed, we learned much of what we know about how to exist on this planet from the group of people we grew up with and graduated with. Our influence on one another was and is virtually immeasureable. In counteless ways, we gained our identity in those times with those people.

And so when we come together for our reunions at the obligatory 5-year intervals, there are a couple of distinct social and interpersonal dynamics that come into play.

The first is the one where we almost literally turn back the clock. We see each other through 18-year-old eyes, remembering the times spent together, re-telling stories of our great adventures of adolescent discovery, and in many ways picking up exactly where we left off.

The second dynamic is a bit more complicated. It’s the one where we realize that the person sitting across the table from us or sharing a beer with us is not the same person we knew 30 years ago. And then we realize that we are not the same either. We have lived almost two full lifetimes since we knew each other. We have been molded by different experiences, different environments, different circumstances. We have shared both triumphs and tragedies with others who have gained importance in our lives while the kids we grew up with have diminished in our memories.

It’s the tension in those two dynamics that make reunions strange for me.

On the one hand, we all want the people we grew up with to think we have found success in life. It is hard not to fall to the temptation to embellish, whether in our clothing, our mannerisims, or what we choose to reveal about the current state of our lives. Our class has never been particularly prone to that kind of behavior, but I’m sure over the years we’ve all indulged ourselves a little bit…probably less out of a desire to impress people than out of a desire not to disappoint them.

On the other hand, though, we all want to be known for who we are…especially among the people who had such a strong influence in shaping us. And so even in the embellishments and indulgences, we try awkwardly to reflect the real us, the person we have become, the person who grew out of those 12 years of shared existence.

As I made my way around the riverboat where we had our reunion dinner, visiting with old friends, meeting and re-acquaitning myself with spouses, I tried to listen closely to what my former classmates were saying. Not so much the words that came out of their mouths, but what they were really saying. And I noticed something remarkable.

It seems that once we cut through the initial phase of rekindling relationships, and through the secondary phase of realization, we hit a third phase that was both heartbreaking and beautiful.

I noticed that, even in 30 years of separation, we are all somehow united in our brokenness. Whether it was failed relationships, job losses, struggles with kids and stepkids, health problems, or deaths of loved ones, it seemed everyone was carrying some baggage about something in life that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t complaining or self-pity, and it most often wasn’t shared in all the bloody details. It was just an openness to speak out the fact that life is life, that sometimes things suck, but we’re still in there doing the best we can.

Maybe we’re all just getting old enough that we don’t need to BS each other anymore. Or maybe we realized that even though we are now complete strangers in many ways, we once shared a piece of this life together that was real and still connects us across time and space.

It may sound strange to say that I find being united in brokenness to be beautiful. But it was a stark reminder to me that none of us has to be alone. Those who seem to have it all still have crap in their lives. And those whose life seems to be crap still have hearts and love. And we all have a deep desire to be redeemed in the midst of it all. To be united through it so that we can experience something better despite it all.

I am reminded of the story in John 21 where, after seeing Jesus in his post-resurrection glory, the disciples are gathered together, wondering what to do, trying to figure out what it all meant. And Peter decides to go fishing. To reconnect to something from his past, to something real, something that once defined his identity. And Jesus shows up. And the disciples’ choice is whether to continue searching for their identity on their own or to look to the risen Christ to define them. To cut through their hopelessness and unite them in something real, even in the midst of their doubt and pain.

I told somebody the other day that I felt like I had more significant, honest conversations during that 3-hour class reunion than I’ve had in church in the past 5 years. Now maybe that says something about my approach to church that I need to re-examine, but I think it says something bigger about our ability to simply encounter people in the reality of life, in the honesty of our circumstances, and to simply say, “There’s hope. I know it because I’ve found it. And yes, sometimes life still sucks, but there’s hope. There’s hope because there’s love.”

My prayer for all of my classmates from the Class of 1981 is that somehow, in the midst of it all, across the years and miles that separate us, we will always allow our hope to connect us. To each other. To the world around us. To the love that unites us and redeems us all.

Godspeed, my friends! Looking forward to our 35th!!

“Discipline” is not a fun word for us in our current cultural context. It denotes a surrender of freedom that we’re not really comfortable with. It’s usually something we expect out of other people but want to reserve the right to deny in ourselves.

For me there’s always been something about the dead of winter that creates a vacuum of discipline. Maybe it’s symptomatic of cabin fever, which pop psychology is now calling “Seasonal Affective Disorder.” There is something about being cooped up inside and the short, gray days that can lead to a sort of apathy about everything in general. Certainly, most of us are generally happier and more energetic when the sun is bright and the days are long. Personally, I prefer to be outdoors more than indoors. I prefer feeling warm over feeling cold. It’s easy to see why bears just shut it all down and hibernate.

But of course we open the door for all sorts of damage when we let our self-disicpline slip–both physically and spiritually. That extra slice of pizza that seems like no big deal soon manifests itself alongside the walk I didn’t take or the workout I didn’t do…not just on the scales, but within my psyche. That time I spent watching Sports Center instead of  preparing for my Bible study or keeping up with the reading assignment for the class I’m taking works on me in much the same way. Self-discipline can quickly get tied up with our sense of self-worth. It can be a rapid spiral downward into lethargy and self-pity.

One of the reasons I’m trying to resolve to resurrect this blog is part of a bigger effort to not let my discipline slide during this particular season. To not allow the winter in the world around me to create a winter in my spirit.

The cool thing about discipline is that it demonstrates for us the freedom that can come with surrender. I FEEL better when I’m taking care of business, so to speak. In fact, the rewards are so positive that it’s hard to imagine why I can so often allow things to slip so easily.

Maybe that’s why Jesus calls us to surrender our trust in ourselves to trust in him. So we can experience that freedom. That sense of worth that transcends the crappiness of our circumstances. Even on a frigid January day, the appearance of the sun in a cloudless sky changes our mood. It’s a promise of something better…not just for the coming of spring, but in the middle of winter.

Discipline is what gets us to spring & summer. So let’s dust off those treadmills, sharpen our pencils, turn the lights on bright and keep moving!

But what I’ve begun to realize, or perhaps re-realize, is that at heart I am and always have been a writer. Not an author, which is something completely different, but a writer. Someone who deals in the art and science of words. Whether as a journalist, copy writer, blogger, or even editing clients’ wording in a printed piece I’m designing, the English language has, on some level, always been the primary tool of my craft.

That may be in part what has led me into accepting more speaking engagements lately. As my freelance business has drifted more toward illustration and repurposing content and further from developing printed work from scratch, there is less and less space for real creative expression in my vocational life. Speaking and teaching opens that space in new and dynamic ways. Early in my career in marketing & public relations, I had to write a lot of speeches for corporate officers. I always found that to be an energizing experience, in its own way. But that kind of writing, by its nature, calls for a singular kind of focus. While it doesn’t necessarily constrict the space for exploring new ideas, it is limited by the context for which it’s intended.

I’ve always been fascinated by words, literally for as long as I can remember. I am captivated by both their power and their subtlety. Finding just the right word or turn of phrase is, for a writer, analagous to a painter finding the perfect interplay between light and shadow, a hockey player scoring a tough goal in traffic, a chef creating just the right balance of flavors, or a flyfisherman making the perfect cast to a rising trout in a difficult spot among conflicting currents.

Words matter.

That’s something I’ve come to learn more powerfully than ever as I’ve studied scripture and theology more broadly and deeply over the past few years. I’m realizing more and more that there is an amazing economy of language in scripture…that there are no wasted words. There is meaning and texture to everything. And so I’ve come not only to appreciate the words on the page even more, I’ve come to expect them to reveal something, because, like all of us, they are each there for a reason.

Gaining an understanding of  Biblical history, and especially the cultural context of 1st & 2nd Century Israel, is critical. The words from scripture that mean something to us today do so only because they meant something specific to specific people at a specific time. When we contextualize words to our current experience & understanding, we lose the thoughts & feelings they were meant to evoke in their original context.

But on a deeper level, we also need to understand how the words chosen by the various authors allowed them to give voice to their relational experience with the living God. That their words were chosen not only for instruction and inspiration of their audience, but also for the creative expression of their writers. It is more dialogue than monologue. It is, at its heart, conversation.

That’s why I need this blog. It not only gives me a workshop in which to practice my craft, it gives my ideas a vast range on which to feed and wander. It gives voice to experiences, both physical and spiritual, both material and ideological. It gives the words a place to land when they come spilling out of my head.

So here I am, trying to jumpstart the blog by writing about writing. Sometimes you just have to get words on a page to bust open all the dammed-up ideas that are piling up in your psyche. My hope is always that faithrants.com is always about creating conversation. Maybe by opening up a flow of backed-up words and ideas I’ve helped you find new and inspiring ways to express and ignite your own dialogue. Feel free to hit up the comment section or respond on Twitter or Facebook. How do your own expressions create meaningful conversations?

And so when Facebook suggested the other day that I “like” Barack Obama, I did it. Not because I agree with all of our President’s politics & policies, but because I knew it would generate some reactions…especially from my conservative Christian friends.

Similarly, when Facebook thought I should “like” Sarah Palin, I saw an opportunity to stir things up a little more. Since there’s no “dislike” button, I just made a snarky comment about being unable to “like” Sarah Palin because hell has obviously not yet begun to freeze over.

Now, I’d be lying if I said that my current political beliefs played absolutely no part in my little antics. But that’s a topic for another conversation altogether. No, this is not about politics, at least not directly. It’s about how we identify, classify and label ourselves and each other by what we assume each other’s political beliefs are. And, more importantly, how we allow our political beliefs to co-opt our faith, especially in the Christian community.

Some of my Christian friends were taken aback, and others downright shocked, that I would “like” Obama and “dislike” Palin. They assume that because I say I believe in God, go to church, teach Sunday school, participate in leadership, etc., that I must believe all Democrats/Liberals are pure evil and that the Republican/Conservative movement has all the answers we good church-going folks are looking for. I heard comments like, “Wow. I thought I knew you.” As if I was somehow now a totally different person because I wrecked their assumption that my politics were the same as theirs because my faith is the same as theirs.

And to be perfectly honest, that’s exactly why I did what I did.

We’ve got to open the door to these conversations in our faith communities. Because when we become politically polarized in our faith, we lose our ability to articulate the Gospel.

I don’t know what Jesus thinks about Barack Obama’s or Sarah Palin’s poltics. But I do know he loves them. And to me, that’s the point.

Our faith should be so much bigger than our politics.

Yes, the political arena is one of many places where we can express and live out our faith. People of faith are right to make their voices heard there.

But we have to recognize that no single candidate, or elected official, or political party/movement ever has had or ever will have all the answers. At some point, it’s got to be okay for us to agree to disagree and to seek reasonable compromise.

Above all, we have to love each other. Just like Jesus loves us. Just like he loves Obama and Palin.

When love comes first, amazing things start to happen in God’s kingdom.

I think I “like” love.

But I think we’re missing a lot if we don’t dig back and understand the teachings that formed the foundation for our own foundations. Because I’m convinced that EVERYTHING in what we call the Old Testament, which should probably more accurately and respectfully be referred to as the Hebrew Scriptures, points to Jesus, what he did in the world, and what he is continuing to do in our lives today.

One of the reasons I think we either spend little time or avoid altogether those ancient scriptures is that we think somehow Jesus “changed” everything when he appeared on the scene a couple thousand years ago. So somehow all of that “Old Testament Stuff” doesn’t apply to us anymore.

But I think we’re selling those teachings short by that way of thinking. Maybe instead of seeing Jesus as changing things, we should instead look at him as fulfilling them. And how we continue to live day by day in that fulfillment.

Part of our hang-up with the Hebrew Bible is its very “ancientness.” It’s hard to tell what we should take literally and what we should take figuratively. Which stories are real and historical, and which ones are symbolic and metaphorical? Was the universe really created in six literal 24-hour days? Was Abraham really in his 90s when Isaac was born? Where did manna come from? Was Goliath really 9 feet tall?

Then there are those long lists of family lines, detailed legal descriptions, and bizarre (to us) traditions…what’s up with that? Why does God seem so violent in his commands concerning the pagan nations surrounding Israel? And what on earth is Song of Songs all about?

I think sometimes we get so hung up on the minutiae, so lost in the details, that we miss the big picture of what’s happening as those narratives unfold in all of their distinct and diverse voices. And the big picture, at least to me, seems to be about preparation.

As in all things, context is the key. While individual stories, passages, and details certainly hold meaning and purpose for us today, they must be understood in their original context to be fully appreciated. And in a nutshell, the context of the Old Testament is Israel, growing into its role as God’s instrument to spread transformation and salvation to the world, learning how to know him and trust him, and, most importantly, working through all of the very human junk that gets in the way.

Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, God is preparing Israel. He first prepares Abraham’s family to become a nation. He then prepares the nation to become set apart from the culture around them. And finally he prepares them to enter into a different kind of kingdom and to bring the rest of the world along. It is through their real context in time and space that this story of preparation unfolds.

And so to not understand this foundational context of preparation is to not really understand the fullness of Jesus and the movement to follow him. It’s not enough to say, “this is the way the world was and Jesus came to fix it.” As if God comes up with the whole Jesus plan as a last-ditch effort to save humanity after everything else has failed.

Rather, we need to see the entire scope of history unfolding, of how the Old Testament period of time was the period in which God prepared the world for something that was part of his plan all along, from the very beginning. And then to understand that there’s not a clean break between the end of the Old Testament narrative and the beginning of the New Testament, but that it was–and is–a continued–and continuing–revelation of God’s purposes.

To view Jesus simply as the solution (New Testament) to a problem (Old Testament) really sells him short. To understand his–and our–place in history, in time and space, as part of a continuing story that is still unfolding day by day, moment by moment, we need to reach back into those foundational narratives and see how we were–and still are–being prepared at every step for God to present what’s coming next.

Israel’s ancient story is still our story today. The more we embrace that notion, the closer we move to the reality God invites us into.

I love metaphors. I think there’s a reason Jesus speaks so much in that form through stories and parables. Metaphors draw pictures of concepts in a way that speaks to our commonality of experience.

Regular readers–both of you (insert smiley face emoticon here)–will notice that lately I’ve been wrestling with expressing some frustrations in the arena of church leadership. And last night, in one of those times when my brain wouldn’t shut down and let me sleep, this whole Merry-Go-Round/Roller Coaster metaphor started to creep into my imagination. And it speaks to a lot of my current sense of restlessness.

Folks who know me will get it when I say I’m a Roller Coaster. Wildly erratic at times, rushing at full speed from place to place, tossed about uncontrollably. If it wasn’t for the belts and harnesses I’d fly off the track. Life to me always has been and always will be a thrill ride. An adventure. An experience to throw myself into without worry or regard to where it’s going to take me or what it’s going to do to me.

Other folks, though, are more like Merry-Go-Rounds. Enjoying a nice, pleasant, easy pace. No jerking around. No sudden acceleration. No adventure. No need for belts or harnesses. No puking at the end of the ride.

Merry-Go-Rounds don’t understand Roller Coasters. They’re too uncomfortable. Too unpredictable. Too uncontrollable. Too messy. Too dangerous.

We Roller Coasters, similarly, don’t get the Merry-Go-Round life. Circling around and around and around and around. Seeing and experiencing the same things over and over and over again. Too comfortable. Too predictable. Too ordered. Too safe.

Roller Coasters want everyone to be Roller Coasters. To experience the thrill. To be utterly and thoroughly exhilarated by the very wildness of the ride. To fly off into the unknown and be totally at the mercy of the ride.

Merry-Go-Rounds have no desire to be Roller Coasters. Merry-Go-Rounds wonder why Roller Coasters can’t just straighten the track, flatten the hills, and be more…well…stable. More cautious. More under control.

Now I’m not talking about extremes here. I’m not about to go jump out of an airplane or bungee off of a bridge. Nor am I talking on the other end of the spectrum about folks who just do nothing and settle for a bland, couch-potato type of existence. I’m just talking in broad generalities.

If you’re a Merry-Go-Round, please try not to get mad at me here. Because I love you. I just don’t get you. Going around and around and around makes me dizzy. It’s not pleasant or peaceful at all. In fact, I find it stressful. Unnatural. Because when I look at Jesus, I don’t see a Merry-Go-Round. I see a Roller Coaster.

And yet, in many ways, there is something about “church life” that is much more Merry-Go-Round than it is Roller Coaster. It is the most counter-intuitive thing I can imagine. And I think the reason is, we’re much more comfortable PLAYING church than BEING the church.

Playing church is comfortable. It’s safe. It’s predictable. It’s plannable. It’s showing up on Sundays, singing nice songs, passing the plate. Casserole dinners. Shaking hands in the aisles. Not offending anyone. No risks. Polite prayers. It’s a Merry-Go-Round.

Being the church is dangerous. Unpredictable. It’s stepping into the war zone of culture and addiction and poverty and brokennes. It is battling the demons that entrap total strangers while forcing yourself to face your own. It is risking everything to follow Jesus wherever he leads you. It is loud, powerful, hands-in-the-air, tears-in-your-eyes worship. It will fill you with adrenaline one minute and empty your stomach the next. It’s high-fiving your friends right before you barf on your shoes. Roller Coaster.

Admittedly, some Merry-Go-Rounds will never embrace Roller Coasters. Some folks will always be content to spin around and around, their biggest thrills coming as the horsies bob up and down. Smiling and passing the potatoes. Playing a nice comfortable game of church.

Others will long for the rush of the Roller Coaster, but live a life afraid of leaving their friends on the Merry-Go-Round. Worried that the Merry-Go-Rounds will resent them for changing rides. Afraid to leave the game and live the life. Trapped in an endless cycle of regret. Resenting both the Merry-Go-Rounds that hold them back and the Roller Coasters who live with wind in their hair and hearts pounding out of their chests.

Those who will take the risk and ride the Roller Coaster will be filled with life in a way that can never be experienced on the Merry-Go-Round. We will suffer as much as we rejoice. We will cry as much as we laugh. And we will love every minute of it.

We will always love our friends on the Merry-Go-Round. But we can’t ride with them.

It seems we Christians do a lot of talking about “inviting people to church.” And that’s cool, I guess, especially if you belong to an active, loving, sharing kind of church. We tend to want to share that experience with folks. I can dig that.

I guess the thing that bugs me is not so much the idea of inviting folks to church, but why we’re inviting them. I’m a little worried that it’s often like church itself is the endzone we’re playing for. That if we could just get more people “in church” things would be better…their lives would improve, our communities would get fixed, and the world would be a better place.

Clearly, the church has a significant role to play in those arenas. It just seems like at times we may have our cart a little before the horse.

Now don’t get me wrong…I love my church. I am very active in both ministry and administrative areas (love the ministry, hate the administration…let’s just be real here). And please keep in mind that when I say “church,” I’m talking about the building/organization/Sunday morning worship service aspect (small “c”), not the “body of Christ,” ecclesial (capital “C”) meaning of the word.

I think the church has a vital role to play in the holistic experience of God’s kingdom. But is it really the primary place we should be giving people their first introduction to Jesus?

I know this is not an original thought, but shouldn’t the church be going to people first, before bringing people to us?

Jesus spent his time living in the margins to bring the kingdom into reality. Yes, he taught in the temples. But first, he served in the world. Healed in the world. Forgave in the world.

I wonder if we sometimes use the “invite people to church” mantra as a crutch to keep from really being the Church. As if by simply inviting folks to the “Sunday Morning Experience,” we are excused from the hard work of entering into the messiness of their lives and the relational exchanges that kingdom living is really all about. Is the unspoken message that, once we get them in the building, we get to turn them over to someone else “more qualified?”

I mean, it seems like so often we tend to judge the state of others’ spiritual lives on the mere measuring stick of whether they go to church or not. As if that alone is enough to really make that transformational relationship with Jesus happen. But I think there are as many living, breathing, serving followers of Christ outside the “church” as there are lukewarm, spiritually crippled “Christians” inside it.

If we really want people’s lives, our communities, and the world to improve, the goal can’t just be getting them into church. The goal has to be reaching out, serving, loving. Offering the message of Christ’s forgiveness and his invitation to be transformed in real relationship with him. To simply give hope. It doesn’t require a program or a budget or a committee. It requires real people taking an active interest in the lives of other real people in the real places where they live. In fact, sometimes I feel like the programs, budgets, committees, etc. can become barriers to real ministry and mission. They can easily become crutches that support a consumer approach to church, rather than catalysts to a servant approach.

I’m proud of my church, and I do want others to share in the experience we offer. And if inviting someone to church can help them enter into what Rick McKinley calls “the living, breathing, purpose and presence of God on our planet” that is God’s kingdom, that’s groovy. I recognize that it often does happen for people that way, that a first-time worship service experience can move people into that place where the Jesus story really starts to mean something. I celebrate that.

But if we’re really doing our jobs, really being the hands & feet of Jesus, shouldn’t church attendance more often come as a result of someone’s experience with Jesus in the reality of their lives? Is a simple “invitation to church”–even in the friendlist church–often little more than an invitation into a community of strangers with strange ways?

I’m not saying we shouldn’t invite people to church. We should. I just hope we understand that, when we do it, we are only inviting them into one part of the story, into a single aspect of the experience of living in the kingdom. That it becomes a doorway into which people enter Jesus’ story, or a place where people can explore and grow in their relationship with him. Not just some touchdown club that pushes people into “churchy” work so the organization can survive, but a vehicle where people can live out God-sized dreams. 

Church (small “c”) is a beautiful, necessary thing. But ultimately, church (attendance, membership, activity, etc.) is not the goal. The kingdom is the goal. Being the Church, not going to church.

As I sat back down at my desk this morning (and got caught up on all my e-mails, traffic on the WVAngler.com message board and activity on my Facebook page) I turned to John 21 to finish preparing my sermon for church tomorrow (I’m filling in for Pastor Steve, who was also on vacation last week).

Before I left, I had already outlined my basic premise for the talk–about how Jesus reveals key truths about the disciples’ identity and his own through this story about a fishing trip (vv.1-14). But when I began to pull together the pieces for the message this morning, it struck me how directly the metaphor connected to my own experience.

I often find myself in that state of mind that Peter and the other disciples must have found themselves in at the beginning of the passage. Frustrated, confused, and more than a little restless. And, like I imagine Peter might have done, when those stresses begin to escalate I want to escape somewhere–not to run away from the situation so much as to gain a new perspective on it.

If you can buy into that theory, you might see that the disciples’ fishing trip is not a retreat away from the life they are called to…we might see it more like a vacation; an escape from the space where stress, confusion and frustration rule, into a relaxing, comfortable, familiar zone. Like all of us do from time to time, they needed to get their heads in a different place in order to understand and deal with the new reality they were facing. And Jesus meets them in that space and re-focuses their perspectives. He calls them into their own identities and reinforces his own identity to them. He feeds them, both literally and figuratively, so they can go into the world to carry out the mission he has taught and groomed them for (notably, the rest of the chapter tells of Jesus’ reinstatement of Peter).

I read through some Bible commentaries to get a sense for what the scholars who study these things have to say about this passage. Mostly they talked about themes like surrender, obedience and faith. And certainly, those are at the core of the disicples’ experience. But it also points to that need we all share to just simply change our surroundings sometime to clarify our perspectives.

Sometimes you can’t see your way through a situation, or even the daily routine, until you get away from it.

Predictably, this little weather system has turned my mind to the metaphors God reveals to us about himself through the many voices and faces of Creation. Just as that first whiff of spring did back in February, this (hopefully!) last breath of winter has me thinking about the constant struggle between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world. It is Jadis desperately trying to cling to power in the ultimately unstoppable wake of Aslan’s roar.

As a human being living on planet Earth, there’s stuff I struggle with. Selfish desires to control my environment. Deeply ingrained patterns that lead me away from what I know is right and good and true. Old habits that can get packed away and taped up in boxes, only to occasionally find their way back to the surface and scream for my attention.

Two close friends have had to deal with the ultimate winter in their lives in the past couple of weeks as loved ones have said their final goodbyes to this world. Another friend’s sister-in-law has been given the final diagnosis. All over this planet, people are blanketed by the winter of a broken world. Addictions, poverty, hunger, disease, death.

Even as the snow is falling on my backyard, though, a brave cardinal is singing in his loudest, clearest voice. He and I will not be conquered by winter. Because the greatest gift to Creation is hope, even in the midst of our despair. The spring of God’s kingdom is upon us. Winter cannot win. Its victories will come, but they will be brief and unsustainable. Jadis will always fight in vain.

I am enlarged in the waiting.

The call of trout waters has finally about overcome me, and I’m going to try to break away later this week to feed the monster for a day or two. It’s still a few weeks too early for the best of West Virginia’s wild trout waters to really turn on, so I think I may explore some hatchery-supported streams in Western Maryland that I’ve been wanting to get to know a little better. Plus, it will do me good to shake off a little bit of the wild-trout-elitist attitude I’ve been fostering the past several years. I need to remind myself that there’s nothing wrong with catching stocked trout on pretty streams that can’t support wild fish. Especially if I can save 30-60 minutes of driving time each way to do it.

So I sat down at the bench today to tie a few flies and begin restocking my supplies. My primary fly box was pretty well decimated by my Montana trip last year and I haven’t tied a single fly all winter to refill it for this year’s season. I usually tie sporadically from about the end of December through early March, but I got a little lazy about it this winter for some reason. Anyhow, I got a start on it today, and hopefully I can gain some momentum over the next few weeks to get caught up.

The whole notion of trying to get caught up actually sums up the way life’s been around here this year. Excessive obligations, often coupled with a lack of energy with which to deal with them, have formed a season in my life that has been defined by an almost desperate feeling of running behind. I know some folks who overcome that feeling by just knuckling down and busting their hump until they get caught up, but for me it tends to lead to deeper lethargy and an overall feeling of listlessness. It’s like the more I need to be motivated, the less motivated I seem to become. And so the obligations pile up, and the energy to deal with them decreases.

Our Lenten sermon series at church has dealt with spiritual disciplines, and this week the topic was breaking the habit of “hurry” and finding the space in quietness and solitide where we can experience more of the fullness life offers. That’s probably what has been lacking most for me during this season of over-commitment and depleted spiritual energy. Usually, that’s something that can be cured by a few days of woodland trails and moving water. The places where trout like to live are the places where I tend to hear the quiet whisper of God most clearly and most deeply. It is at once like a pressure relief valve and a source of refreshment and renewal.

It will be a few weeks before I can break free long enough for the kind of multi-day expedition that I really need to completely recharge my batteries…an extended trip to my beloved Elk River or one of the many headwater brook trout streams I’ve become so fond of since I lost enough weight to hike into them without risking serious health issues. But until then, a brief respite on some new (to me) water should at least provide a measure of relief. Just to feel water flowing around me, to enjoy the smells and sounds of Creation, and to enjoy the mysterious duality that flyfishing offers–complete focus on the task of catching fish coupled with an equally complete opening of the mind and spirit–should be just what the doctor ordered.