LongBrevity {…}

The Storyteller

I have been a storyteller my whole life. I may not have been a good one, but I have always love to tell a story. Problem is, my stories tend to be heavy on details and longer than the average attention span. I think that is because I see things with rich detail and when I talk about something, I like to include the detail. My dad had the same problem. Once, I heard it said of my father, that if someone asked him the time of day, he would tell them how to build a watch.

I have started this post three time and abandoned it twice because I started drifting off in some direction that I keep feeling needs more and more explanation. I hoping that the third time is the charm. I began this 30 day “story” challenge because I started peeling back the layers of my highly chaotic life and I started asking myself that one basic question, “what do I want to do for a living?” I have given myself permission to ask that question. I think I have plenty of skills and experience to maintain a profitable career in software development, but I left that five years ago because it was killing me.

When I worked as a programmer, I knew in my heart of hearts that what I was doing with my life was absolutely the wrong thing. I was certain the God had created me to do something specific and sitting in a cubical cranking out lines of C Sharp code wasn’t it… and it wasn’t even remotely close. However, when I quit my amazing job, that paid me way too much money, I wanted to do something that made me come alive– something creative. For some reason the thing that was screaming the loudest within me was filmmaking. I didn’t know much about filmmaking, I mean, I knew a lot about filmmaking; I had read a bunch of books, watched a lot of movies, even watched many of them a second time with the director’s commentary. I had learned a lot about filmmaking, but I didn’t know squat.

I know that sounds contradictory, but that is the best way I can describe it. For the last three years, I have loosely chased a dream of being a filmmaker only to reach a point where I wonder if I should continue. I know I need to be doing something creative with my life. I was born with many creative abilities, but I am really unsatisfied with my direction in life. For some reason, I have reached a place where I don’t really have a clear vision of where I want to go.

A few months ago, I started  looking deep within myself and asking some crucial questions. I really want to know what is written in my DNA, what it is that am I uniquely created for. Having turned 40 in May, I thought it was a good a time as any to figure out what I want to do with my life. I didn’t feel as though my current direction was drawing enough on my creativity and I needed more answers. When I began to examine my life, when I ran back the years and looked at a younger version of myself, I started asking what was the common theme in my life that seemed to play out in my memories. What were those things that I remembered, what made me feel alive.

I wandered around for a while until I started seeing something play out repeatedly in my memory, something that come back to me time and time again. Having a vivid imagination and a keen sense of observation, I began early in life to be a storyteller. As it turns out, stories have been a central theme in my life. I have come back to it over and over again the past few months, but I constantly hear the same answer when I ask myself what I want to do for the rest of my life… not doubt about it, I want to tell stories.

The problem is, I have no idea what that means. So, I am starting a 30 day journey to look at “story”, what it is, and how it plays a role in my life. I know I want to be a story teller, but I don’t know if that will be as a filmmaker, a writer, a painter, a lawyer or a professional liar. I have absolutely no idea. I do know that stories flow out of me and they energize me. So, here I go. I’ve got 29 more days to go and I hope I discover something interesting along the way.

What is "story"?

A frequent theme on this blog is how long it has been since I have written anything. It seems that I can go a year without writing anything then I’ll post something about intending to do better, followed by the creation of five or ten different unfinished blogs– then I just lose interest. So, to spice things up a bit, I have done what oh, so many other bloggers have done– created a 30 day writing challenge.

I have chosen to take a different path here, mostly since I am writing to for the enjoyment of a non-audience. I am not fooling myself, no one is sitting around waiting to hear what I have to say. Ultimately, the next 30 days is about me. Lately, I have been stuck in a bit of a miry place and I am in great need of stoking some internal fires in hopes of getting a handle on what direction my life should be taking.

I have quieted my mind and sought deeply for what it is that makes, me, uniquely me. I needed to find out what it is, that is deep within me, which I can burn for soul-fuel, something that is naturally produced inside me. When I reached the deepest part of myself and could see no further, I spoke to the darkness.  Straining to hear something, I heard the fainest echo– like the gentle rustling of a brittle leaf as it falls from its home among the branches to find its final resting place upon the ground. A little crackle that spoke a single word– “story”.

So, 30 days this September will be dedicated to “story”. What that means, I have absolutely no idea– I guess I am about to find out.

Peanut butter and pickles - from Slashfood

Just read a fun post over at slashfood. It’s funny how we all seem to like different things and often there is something that we eat (often handed down by family tradition) that cause other people to say yuck! My dad loved that old Southern classic peanut butter, banana and mayonnaise- which I find utterly revolting (mostly because mayo makes me sick). A family food that we ate, which isn’t disgusting, just odd is what we called “peanut butter and jelly mixed up in a bowl” and it is exactly what it sounds like. You have to get the ratio correct for it to achieve its highest potential, but the muddy purple concoction has earned me a strange look or two.

The two foods that I have eaten that people have said yuck! about were:

1. Well done hamburger with applesauce.
2. Bologna and banana sandwiches

I haven’t had hamburger and applesauce for a long time, mostly because I don’t like meat well done. I think it’s invention was a way to introduce moisture to hamburgers my dad would flip and press until no juice was left. My family would say yuck, but I loved it.

I don’t know where the peanut butter and banana came from, but it is just one of those sweet/salt things that just seems to work. I don’t know anyone else who was willing to try it.

What is the weirdest thing you you eat?

I have always been a person who learned by doing. Being of such a constitution, it is difficult to think about much else when someone says, “don’t do that.” As a child, I did many things I was told not to do– I touched hot stoves, climbed tall trees, and even zapped myself by sticking something into the electrical socket.

My propensity to do forbidden things was tempered by my gift for observation. I watched, observed and noted how things worked. I tested things in my mind, formulating my own assessment of how dangerous things were. When I was convinced things weren’t as dangerous as others said, I would do them– just to see what happened.

At the moment, I am still alive and kicking, all limbs and digits still accounted for. All those things that I was told might kill or harm me seriously, didn’t. Not that they couldn’t have, but lucky for me, I approached disobedience thoughtfully. Somewhere along the way, I stopped doing so many things I was told I shouldn’t do; perhaps it was because at some age I learned about sin and feared God’s judgment, or worse, hell. However, as I reflect on my history I am lead to believe something entirely different and nefarious was at work– the loss of wonder.

I could probably sit down and draw a graph that shows how my imagination diminished as my willingness to accept things at face value grew. It seems that society has a job to instill fear in every child, and that when a child learns enough reasons “not” to do things, they become grown up. Think about it, when was the last time you told someone to “grow up?” I am betting it was after someone did something that they should have known better than to do.

Just spend some time with a child, and you will here a phrase a lot like, “why?” or “how come?”. This perpetual asking usually results in an adult’s terse reply, “because I said so.” Eventually children stop asking; hopefully, they don’t stop wondering. I don’t think I have ever stopped wondering, but I did start just accepting. Much of this was due to the religious framework I was raised under– as asking why God or the Bible says something doesn’t always have much of an explanation, it just is.

When I stopped asking questions, I repressed the urge to know through first hand experience and simply relegated knowledge to something of the mind. By the time I was a young adult, I was convinced knowledge was solely the realm of the mind– simply gather enough facts and something can be known. Eventually, this rotted my desire to do anything and would become the beginning of a soul-rot that would contribute to bout of severe depression, anxiety and a complete loss of wonder.

When I took apart the patterns in my life that took me down the road of depression and anxiety, I discovered the young child full of imagination and wonder was locked in a box and starved of life. I was “doing” all of the right things on the outside, but I was dieing on the inside. The whole time, the child within me was screaming, “WHY?”. Five years have followed where I began to dismantle the cage of knowledge and set myself free to pursue life– only I have discovered that I am still fettered.

While my mind has experienced freedom, my body is stilled chained to some old patterns. I still spend way to much time thinking about doing things and almost no time actually doing them. I am stuck in an information gathering pattern. The “why” in me is alive, but my mind is stuck trying to understand all of the facets of something which paralyzes me from actually doing them.

I ask myself, “why?” and the only answer that I can come up with is, “fear.” This is the way of the world– to motivate with fear. I have swallowed the pill and it has made me sick. I see every major challenge that stands before me is an opportunity for failure. Because of that, I spend to much time trying to figure how not to fail. Ultimately, that approach causes me to do nothing, which is in itself failure, but a failure that isn’t as public or risky.

This behavior has to stop, because it robs others around me of the gifts that God has given me. It prevents me from living the life that I am uniquely equipped to live. Sure, it may seem to be a safer way to live, but strategic safety isn’t really what I see a life of faith being. There isn’t a single person in the Bible, that can be considered a pillar of faith, who wasn’t required to step outside of the knowledge of their mind, to step into a knowledge based on experience.

When I was a child, I zapped myself with electricity from the electric socket. I was told not to do that, but I did it anyway. It didn’t feel good, but I didn’t get electrocuted like they said I would. Today, I know the power of electricity, I know the surge you feel when it buzzes through you. I don’t recommend that anyone stick something into a light socket, because you can get electrocuted. You don’t have to touch a hot stove to learn that you can get burned– most warnings are worth heeding.

What I would warn against, is allowing the spirit of fear to join forces with the power of knowledge and create an enemy against life. If there are things that you know to be good, but are afraid to do because of the possibility of failure, I would warn you that there is an enemy at your gate, one that will rob you of life and keep you in slavery to fear. If you have lost your sense of wonder and discovered that your gift of imagination has run away, look for the enemy, the one that robs you of spontaneity, he is probably guarding your front door.

The funny thing about fear is that he is like most bullies who have little actual power and back down when you stand up to them. Fear’s strength is given to him through inaction, acting in the face of fear robs him of any strength. When in doubt, do something. Doing nothing allows fear to win.

So, what is it that is preventing you from doing something in this new year?

UIF2ISO for Mac

Ok, from time to time there is a tutorial I download that I can’t use because the CD image is in a UIF (Windows based) file and I use a Macintosh computer. Until now, I would use my rogue PC laptop that sits in the corner or I would simply find a different tutorial, but I just found a great little Mac app that will do a conversion for me: UIF2ISO for Mac.

The main part of this program has been available for a while, but it is was a command line app which, unless you are a Linux geek or something, was not Mac-ish enough for the general Mac user public. So, someone wrapped the app in a Mac GUI and now there is UIF2ISO for Mac!

Note: they have dropped support for OSX 10.4, so unless you have 10.5 or higher, you are still out of luck

I have many, many unfinished posts that I’ve started writing and never finished. I am going to go through many of them and just flush them out into the wild. I have tried to do this before, on several occasions, but started reading a post and began feeling like it really needed to be finished before publishing it. Well, it was deja vous all over again. I started writing again on the posts and failed to finish it– again, keeping it stranded. Many of these posts have some good stuff in them even though they are not finished.

This post was to be about “crooked paths” and how it seems that God often leads people down paths that don’t seem straight. This is often contrary to our religious concept of a “straight and narrow” path that we expect to be the correct one. I wanted to look at that religious concept and compare it to many of the paths that God’s has lead his people down throughout the Bible and see if our concept matches those examples. Well, I only got to the introduction of that concept (after much rambling about my life) and never had time to do all of the verse research for my examples. Maybe one day I will get back to this, but until then, consider this my first “flush” — an unfinished post that I am publishing anyway.

Originally written February, 24 2009:

I haven’t written anything in a long time. For the past several months something deep inside me has wanted to explode out in words, but something has been repressing it. Every time I have sat down to write, something has distracted me. It’s not because I have nothing to write about, so much has been happening in my life since my last post– I just seem stuck.

Recently, I have been turning over and over in my head my direction in life. Over two years ago, I left a great paying software development job to pursue an interest in filmmaking. While I can’t consider my pursuit a failure, it has not taken the direction I expected. I had hoped to be writing and making films that spoke from the eternity in my heart, but that is not what has happened. For many different reasons, I have found myself looking to others for inspiration and motivation– something that I have not found, at least not in the way that I wanted.

Despite the last two years having taken I path that I did not expect, I do not feel that it was the wrong path for me to take. I have met many wonderful people and forged several great friendships, something, that I feel, is always worth the cost. But somehow I have a deep sense that I am off target and steering in a direction without purpose or vision. Every time I try to circle the wagons and regroup, I end up heading off again with no resolution or sense of direction.

Is filmmaking something that I need to be pursuing? The downturn in the economy makes me want to run back to the more profitable world of software, something more stable and significantly more lucrative. But each time I begin to look at software development jobs, I get a sick feeling in my stomach and a deep foreboding begins to creep into my psyche. I don’t understand that reaction, I am looking at jobs that pay 70-90k per year, how could something like that create this dark of a reaction?

I think that the answer is hidden somewhere along my current path. I have a concern about my current direction, but I have no real desire to return to path the was easy and comfortable for me. Why? I think it all has to do with the reason I took a different path in the first place. Creativity. I fear going back to a place where there is no need for that part of me that makes me feel alive. I imagined that filmmaking would put me on a path that would help me tap the deep rivers of life that run within me, helping me to plumb the depths of creativity that God placed in me, one of those important things that make me uniquely– me.

The real problem is that despite working around the industry that I had felt drawn toward, I have yet to parlet that into a deliberate exercise in creativity. For the last two years I have worked on projects that didn’t require much from me creatively. Deep down, I still want to create, I want to make art, but something more sinister is at work preventing me from doing that very thing. I don’t know if it is just pure laziness or if it is some covert fear of failure that is bridling me and holding me back from doing those things that I need to be doing.

For many years I was afraid, because I was under a dogmatic assumption that God doesn’t want his children working in the film industry– something that I later came to believe was simply imagined and not actually based in who God is and what He does in and with his people. Not something I simply conjured to make me okay with something, but based on prayer and the doors that seemed to open at just the right time, when I simply rested in God’s sovereignty and stopped living a life driven by a misguided religious fear.

I don’t say this to suggest that there are jobs that are “okayed” by God and others that aren’t– I don’t believe that God operates that way. Sometimes, based on my life experience, God will allow you to take a certain path, only to lead you to another one. There have been a number of times in my life that I have taken paths that I couldn’t have imagined that God would be okay with, but discovered that something wonderful in my life would not have been possible without it.

I don’t understand the ways of God. In the book of Isaiah there is a verse that becomes more and more true the older I get:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

—Isaiah 55:8-9

I know more now than at any other time in my life, that God doesn’t do things the way that I expect Him to. Almost all of my religious fears are based on assumptions and conclusions that I have made about God, but the more I become acquainted with the people that God used in the Bible, the more I realize that God almost always does what is unexpected and uses that people who are often the wrong type of person or someone who is on what seems to be the wrong path.

While I worry about not being creative and not living up to what God has created me for, God is simply taking me down a road that exposes my fears and doubts and constantly compels me to put off my anxieties and simply rest in Him. The more I rest in what God has already done for me, the less I worry about what I am doing wrong and simply look for the doors that are opening to me and taking that paths that appear before me. The more I trust in Him, the more I cant’ help but realize that exact path is not issue, it is the walk that matters.

There are many verses in the Bible about “paths.” Those who want condemn a certain path will pull out Matthew 7:13+14 which declares that “wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction” with the compelling that one should only take the “narrow road that leads to life.” The problem with such a misplaced criticism is that it is usually imposed on by someone who has the “narrow road” pre-defined without any understanding or experience of being “led to life”… or even more importantly, the experience of having God actually lead them down a crooked road.

Would God lead someone down a crooked road? I think that the answer is best know through experience, but certainly if He would, then there should be evidence in the Bible. I think that the first solid example of such a path would be Abraham…

Sorry that I never got around to finishing this one, certainly such a study would be one worth doing. How about digging into this and posing some of our own insights and experiences?

By now you’ve probably seen the much talked about episode of Grey’s Anatomy and learned the futures of Izzie and George O’Malley and you might be sad… but you may also be wondering about the great music in the show. Well, I can tell you about one of the songs– ‘Where the Road Meets the Sun’, the song that played over Izzie’s decision to have the surgery. That beautiful duet was written and recorded by two emerging Nashville artists, Matthew Perryman Jones and Katie Herzig. You can get their new song at Amazon and iTunes and here are the lyrics:

Where the Road Meets the Sun
By Matthew Perryman Jones and Katie Herzig

Angel wings spread over water-worn wishes
Guarding the dreams and the things left unsaid
Here we are wandering, aimlessly roaming
Lovers who linger and never forget
And when it’s done we will walk were the road meets the sun

Waiting for you by the Santa Maria
How long must I stay with these letters from you
I don’t know whether we’ll end up together
But I’ll always know that our love is true
And when it’s done we will walk were the road meets the sun

Don’t Disappear
(Darlin’ I want you)
Don’t leave me here
(And when the day comes)
I’ll meet you here
‘Cause I know that wishes come true
I’m finding my way back to you

Angel wings spread over water-worn wishes
Guarding the dreams and the things left unsaid
And when it’s done we will walk were the road meets the sun

And when it’s done we will walk were the road meets the sun (x10)

KATIE HERZIG & MATTHEW PERRYMAN JONES “WHERE THE ROAD MEETS THE SUN” (LIVE) from SITUATION OPERATION on Vimeo.

If you don’t know these artists, you should get to know their music. Both of them have free albums available on noisetrade.com and both have original unreleased music available on the innovative new service briterevolution.com. Get to know their music, you will not be sorry!

Hey, just a note that Kim and I now have a joint blog called Goats in the ‘Hood over at blogspot.com come by and check it out, it should have some fun and informational blogs about many of the things we have been digging into, like baking bread, budget shopping, planting a vegetable garden and roasting our own coffee at home. Much of what we are doing is timely as many Americans try to stretch their dollars a little further.

I don’t know if you are anything like me, if you are, you always encounter problems at the very end of a project. In my life, it seems to happen most when I am doing something technical, difficult or very labor intensive. I have it happen when changing brakes on a car, when writing computer code and most recently, when digging holes. I hope you are not like me, in that my past experiences put major roadblocks in front of me when I have something to do. It may be because I am hyper-analytical or that I have an un-useful idea of personal perfection that makes even the smallest projects too large to tackle or so complicated that I can’t summon the necessary motivation to get started. It is probably rooted deep in some childhood experiences I have yet to excavate, but it is something I actively war with.

Recently, I have been considering the idea of community and what that means as a Christian. When I chose to move into a less desirable area of Nashville to live, there was some sort of driving desire to connect with and serve my community, something I had no idea how to do. I have been digging into the Bible and trying to figure out what it is that is gnawing at me from the inside, something that isn’t satiated by a church community or a group of friends, something that is rooted more in a desire for others to know the Father’s love for them.

Several years ago, I had an soul-itch, an inner irritation that seemed to be drawing me to the foreign mission field. In the fantasies of my mind, I had conjured what that would look like, reaching out to people and introducing them to Christ. I had warm fuzzy thoughts of having some deep spiritual flow that would supply all of this need that the world had for Christ, something supernatural, powerful…. and completely unrealistic. It was when I was reading a biography of one of my spiritual heroes, James Hudson Taylor, that I encountered something that would shake my concepts and wake me from my foggy dream.

Taylor felt the calling to the mission field in China at a very young age, something that remained in him and motivated him into his early adult years. He too was caught up in the foggy dreams of the mission field. In his dreamy state, he imagined that by simply going to China he would suddenly be imbued with the life of faith necessary to live under harsh conditions with few lines of support and be fortified in a way to make the gospel effective. During one of his many moments of prayer he received a sudden conviction. How could he possibly expect to live by faith in China when he had no experience of living by it at home in England? This thought changed the direction of Taylor’s life and provided a solid foundation for the life of faith that was to mark him as one of the most influential missionaries of all time.

The changes that such a consideration had on him were powerful, several of them left my cheeks tear-stained as I read the accounts. Taylor learned something that helped me greatly; there is no grand tomorrow in which everything will be different, everything is as it is today and you must live now. I had some sort of fatalistic desire to be a missionary to the Muslim world, something that I knew could likely lead to martyrdom. I knew that ministry in such a place would require more than a sound doctrine, it required a gospel living, something I was pretty sure I didn’t have.

When I got over some of my dreamy ideas of missionary work, I began to ask myself if I was living any sort of gospel life. Sure, I was faithfully meeting with my local church, serving the Body in several different areas of service, I was offering my tithe, I was seeking the Lord in His word and yet I had some deep yearning to have a life that meant more to the people that surrounded me. I wanted to care for people in a way that I desired to be cared for and loved. I quickly realized that I didn’t need a foreign mission field, all the challenges that would press me into a genuine gospel living were right in front of me, in the homes of my neighbors and in the streets surrounding my neighborhood.

When I moved into my house in Nashville, the Lord presented my with some neighbors that are pressing me into such a gospel living. It didn’t take me long to discover needs right next door. Over the last two years I have been inwardly compelled to care for my neighbor Mrs. Dillon, a little 80 year old widow with many health problems and nearly as many family ones, with a broken body and a vivacious spirit.When I introduced my girlfriend to Mrs. Dillon, the need to become involved in Mrs. Dillon’s life multiplied. Kim, being a woman, was instantly endeared to Mrs. Dillon. Such a relationship allowed us to look more deeply at her needs and discover just how much she needs a helping hand.

I don’t intend to take you on a journey of my experiences with Mrs. Dillon, instead I wanted to take you into the place where love is tested. The gospel life is not easy, I think that is because it requires an exchanged life, much like the apostle Paul expressed when he declared, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.” One of the first lessons that God began to teach me in this little experiment in community, is that there is no room for my self. I know that God has a sense of humor when He teaches me things, or at least I am sure He did when my lawnmower broke.

One of the ways that I became involved in Mrs. Dillon’s life, began with mowing her lawn. Before I moved in, my neighbor across the street, Napoleon, a man in his 60′s used to mow her lawn. I noticed him out there one day mowing and suddenly felt convicted that such an old man was mowing her lawn when I was perfectly capable; so, when the next week came around and I pulled out my lawn mower to mow my own lawn, I went ahead and mowed her’s as well to save Napoleon the trouble. Beginning with the first time I mowed her lawn, God began to teach me.

God’s teaching began when, with sweat pouring down under the Tennessee sun, I began to consider how I could shortcut the mowing and move the process along faster. Mowing my own lawn was taxing enough in the heat and an additional lawn was pushing my out-of-shape body physically. Almost immediately, when the thought to shortcut the lawn came to me, the phrase, “love your neighbor as yourself” seemed to ring out. I began to consider what something like that would mean in terms of lawn-mowing. I was astounded how quickly my analytical and legalistic brain began to argue for the gray-area and try to determine the absolute lower limit of what is required to love someone as myself.

How quickly I am mired in reasoning, but it was clear to me that if I had not shortcut my yard, I should not shortcut hers, so the scraggly areas behind the shrubs got mowed and I moved the trashcans away from the fence to mow the area where they sat, I think I even brought out the weed whacker and trimmed. I felt satisfied that I had fulfilled the law, and when my neighbor Napoleon commented on how good it looked, I felt pretty good about myself… but God had more for me to learn.

Some time, shortly after becoming Mrs. Dillon’s new lawn care service,  I was out doing my religious service of “loving my neighbor” when I ran afoul. While attempting to get a cut close up next to the house, I ran my mower over a grounding stake that sat was left over from some TV antenna that probably graced their roof back in the 70′s. Such a small thing contained my next lesson, and I’m sure God was chuckling over this one. CLUNK! It was some version of that sound that my mower made before the machine jarred violently and the engine died.

I don’t remember what I said, but I am pretty sure that some profanity was involved. I was not finished with the lawn and now my mower was broken, but the biggest problem was with my reasoning. Immediately I began to murmur. Why did this have to happen when I was “loving my neighbor?” If I had just simply stuck to mowing my lawn, I would still have a working lawn mower. What a way for me to be repaid for my love! Jammed packed in a twisted grounding stake and a severely bent lawnmower blade was revelation– what I was offering wasn’t love.

Ultimately, I bought a new mower blade (I probably needed a new one anyway) and I finished the lawn, but the revelation that I had that day would stick with me and I would continue to muse on. Eventually I would come to realize that much of what I was doing for Mrs. Dillon was motivated by some twisted sense of obligation and was not sourced in any sort of divine love or exchanged love. The challenge to develop community in love, is something that God is continuing to teach me, often at times when someone’s need bumps up against my personal issues.

I have plenty of personal issues and there are plenty of needs out there, so God has plenty of opportunities to perfect this kind of love in me. Most recently it involved holes. Mrs. Dillon’s house is in poor repair and Kim and I had identified several key things that we could do to improve Mrs. Dillon’s standard of living and make her environment safer for her. One of the most obvious, was her front step. Every day Mrs. Dillon would make her slow trek to the mail box, often to discover it empty. There are many hazards along that path for an 80 year old woman with such a broken and feeble body, but the greatest was her front step.

Much of Mrs. Dillon’s house was constructed in a shoddy way, but her front step was simply dangerous. A standard step has a 4-7″ rise and a 10″ deep base. Mrs. Dillon’s step had a 10-11″ rise and a 16″ base. There was only one step– and it was a doozy! I know that there is no way to help you understand how jacked-up this step was, because just telling you inches most likely doesn’t help you at all, but I guarantee you that you are so used to what is standard, that if you encountered a step that was just an inch or so out of standard you would realize it immediately because your foot is trained to expect a solid surface after only so much drop.

To watch Mrs. Dillon navigate this step would probably be funny if it wasn’t so pitiful. Her stooped and broken body would move slowly out the door and head directly for the wrought iron  supports at the corner of her stoop, she would grip the iron and turn herself completely around and go down the stairs backwards. With such a large drop and no hand railing available, this was probably the single most dangerous thing that she encountered on a daily basis and something that had to be remedied.

I considered the options for fixing her concrete step and erecting some hand rails and Kim and I set out for Home Depot to price some materials. It turned out that iron handrails are really expensive and we had to come up with a new solution that fell within the available budget that was set aside to help care for Mrs. Dillon. Kim mentioned that her grandfather made some railing with iron pipe and I realized that pipe railing was quite common, as a matter fact, that was what I had for railing on my front steps.

I’ll save you the details and all the adventures had in getting all of the materials, but I will say, it wasn’t easy or straight forward. But Kim was diligent to remind me how much this was needed by my lovely old neighbor. I decided to augment the existing concrete step and pour a new step on top of the existing one. This was easily done, it took about a half and hour to build a form and another hour and a half to mix the concrete, pour it and finish it.

Once the new step was set and usable, it was clear how badly it was needed. I almost felt ashamed for waiting so long to get around to putting it in, but the pipe railing was another beast entirety. I have to actively resist telling you about all of the issues we had with the piping, things made me want to abandon that part of the project several times. The pipe was cut to specifications and threaded so that they could be connected together with angled fittings and all that pipe sat in front of my house for weeks waiting for me to get up the energy to do it. Every time I came home, I was haunted by the sections of black iron pipe that sat tilted precariously against the white vinyl paneling adorns the facade of my front porch.

I had even begun to screw together the parts to make the railing– a project I abandoned on day, leaving a partially built railing setting in Mrs. Dillons yard. Over and over, I told myself I was waiting for the energy, ultimately, I realized I was waiting for the love. I was sure that the railing portion of the project had gotten filed into the “obligation” drawer, something I could shirk and put off as long as I wanted to, something entirely devoid of love.

Eventually, my heart was rekindled and I set about to build a most excellent set of railings for my neighbor. I think part of the reason it was difficult to love my neighbor in this way, was because I knew the work involved was hard. Digging post holes for the pipes by hand is sweat work, made more difficult by the occasional rock or large root that seems to show up just to impede progress. I had already filled my mind with all of the possible difficulties I would encounter along the way–only to discover others I didn’t think about.

It turns out that my first set of post holes weren’t as difficult as I worried they would be. The dirt was hard due to the lack of rain, but for the most part no other obstacles appeared. But I am a cynic by nature and my mind began to think about the greater problems that would befall me with the next set of holes, but my worries were unfounded, the second set was even easier that the first. Before I knew it, I had the rails constructed and set in the holes. I poured in the Quikrete and voila, handrails, for the first time, Mrs. Dillon could go down her steps safely–looking forward.

But my story doesn’t end there, it goes further. The front step was only the first of two places that needed railings. Next up was the set of steps leading down to her driveway. Those steps were more traditional, but still dangerous for a little old lady to navigate safely. Through circumstances and compromise, I decided to only put up railing on one side of the driveway stairs, a concession that I was happy about since it meant that only two more holes needed to be dug.

The first hole was slow going, the dirt was very dry and compacted. It took much more beating and hacking to get through the first six inches of soil. The post holes needed to be much deeper due to the length of the pipe, almost twice as deep as the front steps. After the first six inches, the soil was moister and the digging easier. Eventually, I reached a foot deep and had a foot more to go. After about four more inches, I experienced what I had dreaded. PLUNK! The post hole digger had met a large rock.

I pounded the rock with every large heavy thing I had to try and break it, but it would not budge. Suddenly, I was looking at a halt in progress, I could go no deeper. I considered back filling the hole and forgetting that railing, it was only marginally important anyway. But then I had another idea. Mrs. Dillon’s husband worked for Nashville Gas for over 20 years and had a load of tools for iron pipe. I quickly found a pipe cutter and after making some measurements, I chopped seven inches off the bottom of the pipe. The pipe was going to be plenty deep anyway, so the extra inches only meant the last posthole wasn’t going to have to be so deep since it was seven inches shorter as well.

With the finish line in my sights, I dove into the last hole. Now they say, Murphy was an optimist, but I am pretty sure he was a cynic just like me. Well, as I can normally expect, is something hasn’t gone horribly wrong already, the last thing you have to do usually will and the last post hole was no exception. At first, the dirt just wanted to crumble and the posthole digger couldn’t grip the dirt enough to pull it out, so I had to tear the dirt up with the tool and scoop it out by hand. After about four inches of digging– PING! I began hitting stuff that had to be pounded and dug out by hand. Inch by inch I ended up tearing up by hand, reaching into the dirt and working free stones, bricks and large pieces of glass.

The last post hole was not giving up without a fight and I had to go once more into the breach. Eventually, I felt a sense of victory as I tore out the last remaining piles of dirt and brick. After many hours of sweat and tears I had finally reached my final task, the final hand railing… only to discover the my calculations were off on the angle of the steps. Instead of a perfect 45 degree angle that I calculated, the steps ended up being much steeper, and the fittings that I used to construct the railing was going to have to change, that meant an evening run to Home Depot, which I hoped was still open.

I popped in and grabbed the parts I determined I needed, only to get back and realize that forgot one part. I considered once again abandoning the project and calling it a night. The sun had already set and I was working under the illumination of my truck’s headlights. But I knew I couldn’t just keep putting it off. I have a horrible track record when it comes to completing things, so I purpose for the happiness of my sweet old neighbor, that this labor of love would get finished that night.

Well I got the project finished, the posts were set and the concrete poured. I didn’t cheat the project, I gave it 110% Something I wouldn’t have even done for myself. I am prone to quit and abandon things too easily; mostly because I make them too complicated to begin in the first place, but ultimately, I felt plugged into a different life, a Life that didn’t want to quit, a Life that loved a little old lady and was willing to go the extra mile for her.

You would probably think that after such an experience I would be able to sit back and enjoy the fruits of my labor, to see the smile on an old ladies face, to know how much she feels loved and cared for by the Lord, but I feel altogether different. Much like Oskar Schindler as portrayed in the movie Schindle’s List, at the end of the film as he sees the faces of all of those Jews he saved, he begins to weep bitterly, “I could have done more,” he says, “I could have done more.” While my feeling is not as remorseful as Oskar’s it is the same. In moments where I feel that I am experiencing and building genuine community, I see so much opportunity. There are so many people who are broken and in need, who would know the love of the Father if more of His people would exercise to show it.

I am chief among the sluggards, drugged and stupefied by some sense of religious obligations and not motivated by a pure Love that is sourced in the divine. Something deep is calling out in me to love with reckless abandon. To meet the broken and battered of this world and extend a warm hand of love to them. Why after so many years of pursuing my faith in such purely doctrinal terms, following forms and practices that don’t reach beyond the walls of the church to speak and care for the lowly ones in this world, why now is the Lord stirring within me in this way?

I can’t help but reflect on a something I read this morning as I pressed deeper into my search for the Jesus that is revealed in the Bible, it was a portion in the gospel according to Matthew, where Jesus had been performing miracles, healing the broken; something that drew the broken to Jesus by the thousands. At the end of chapter 9 in verse 36 it says, “And seeing the crowds, He was moved with compassion for them because they were harassed and cast away like sheep not having a shepherd.” Continuing in verse 37 and 38, “Then He said to His disciples, The harvest is great, but the workers few. Therefore, beseech the Lord of the harvest that he would thrust out workers into His harvest.”

I have always heard this verse used in the context of winning souls or converts, but I don’t think that I ever registered the characterization of the “harvest” here. The harvest that moved him with compassion was the throngs of broken people who were in need of healing. These verses are followed immediately, in chapter 10, with Jesus giving authority to the disciples to heal people and sending out to do just that. Jesus, who is the Lord of the harvest, thrust out new workers, and the harvesting work they were doing was to “proclaim, saying, the kingdom of the heavens has drawn near. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons…” (Mat. 10: 7&8).

But that wasn’t was struck me, what struck me was 9:36 when it says he was moved with compassion for the crowds because they had been “harassed”, one commentary suggests that the Greek word for harass here is related to a practice of skinning a sheep. The religious leaders did not take care of the people, instead the robbed them of their comfort and displaced them, leaving them to wander. It was these broken people the Jesus chose to reveal the kingdom to, these people without a shepherd. I can’t help but wonder why it seems the churches today aren’t filled to the brim with broken people.

In Nashville, we have churches on nearly every corner and I see the people coming in and going out, most are not the broken and the lowly. As a matter of fact, I have been a part of churches that seemed to weed out the needy ones, making the church an uncomfortable place to be. In my life, I have been ministered to more often by the broken and lowly in the church, those without respect, who live a life poured out on others while the people who are given the first place in the church are those who have it all together and can afford their rent and own a car.

Perhaps this is the last posthole in the church, the recovery of love. As I am learning, this love is not an easy way to go, because it demands everything from you. This exercise of this love is full of pitfalls and obstacles. But if we could begin to see how radically different life would be if we didn’t worry about stock markets and housing markets, if the only economy the concerned us was the economy of God, something that is building itself up in love, how radical would that be? What if we didn’t care about all the things the world cares about? What if 100% of our energy was exercised to actively love people, what would that look like to the world? Why not find out?