Anticipate anticipation

I thought about calling this post “advent is coming.” And then I realized the humor of that statement. Hence the current title.

Last year for the 25 days before Christmas, the period known as advent, I wrote a daily blog, sort of a digital advent calendar. That blog is now available as a downloadable pdf, advent2008, and as a digital book on yudu.

Feel free to download it and share it and read it.

(Oh yes. To download, put the arrow on this underlined text and right click. Then save the file to your computer)

Let me know if it helps you during this advent season, starting December 1 (I know. The first Sunday of advent is November 30. But that’s not when the book starts).

If you want a paper copy, let me know.

i want to serve

I walked into her room. She recognized me and started to cry.

I pulled up a chair and took her hand.

“I want to serve.”

That’s what she said.

She’s dying. Colon cancer. Four years. A couple remissions.

Fran and Phil Mortensen have lived in Fort Wayne for a long time. They have spent forty years focusing on people with needs. To use Phil’s words, he stirred up the riot and Fran got it organized.

They started a church called Love Church. In time, they started Love Community Center. They started a church that would actually care about people who lived at the margins of downtown Fort Wayne. They had services, which is what most people think makes it church.

But.

They provided meals, they gathered clothing and had a clothing bank with racks and hangers and smiling faces. Tthey built a workshop to teach people how to make stuff, they gathered food, they taught people how to use computers, they loved. While Phil went around to other churches to get support and then preached and cared for people at Love Church, Fran made it work.

She kept track of money. She made it stretch. She called people. She organized. She planned. She set things up. She laid things out. She could be as tenacious as a bulldog, but because she cared so much, because she loved Jesus.

I got to know her about four years ago through a monthly networking thing for nonprofit ministry leaders. I spoke occasionally.  She decided she liked me. She constantly encouraged me. During a job transition for me, she prayed, yes, and she told me. And she talked about being encouraged by talking with me.

To be honest, I didn’t understand that.

Jesus talks about loving the unloved, caring for the sick, visiting the prisoners, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry. I acknowledge the concept. Fran did it. She never had any college training, but her understanding of practical love was at the graduate level. Anything I’ve thought about doing that would be about caring, Fran did or made happen.

For Fran to care so much about me was like an ant being noticed by, well by anything.

I don’t think she understood how much I was in awe of her. I think that she would laugh at me, a laugh of affection and modesty and incredulity.

Because here she is, after 40 years of pouring out her life into serving, in her last days, likely her last hours, saying “I want to serve.”

I assured her that she was. I assured her that she had. I assured her that she had been all the Fran that God built her to be. I assured her that she would be serving again in a little bit, this time without the cancer, without the pain. I talked to her about Martha, a person who worshiped by doing, who organized, who planned, who was practical.

And I let her sleep while I held her hand.

Fran gets “so what?” Fran decided that living a life of caring for and about others, making the name “love Church” true, was a so what that matters.

I prayed. I kissed her forehead. I stood up.

“I love you, Jon.”

I love you, Fran.

creative tension

There is pressure that is deadly. There is stress that kills. We all know that.

There is, on the other hand, pressure that is, well, sheer music.

A piano has 88 keys. A piano has 228 strings (give or take). Those strings are under tension. They are built that way. That’s how the noise becomes music.

When a pianist presses a key, a felt-covered hammer hits the one, two, or three strings that are tuned to the same pitch, and there is a note.

There is pressure on the strings. There is pressure on the tuner to get the pitches precisely right. There is pressure on the pianist to get the notes right.

The result is music for the rest of us to delight in.

• Sometimes we have to bring the tension down. Tim Walker talks about throwing away times from your to-do list.
• Sometimes we have to bring the tension up.
• Sometimes we have to find an outlet for the pressure before the strings break.
• Sometimes we have to ask for help. (What becomes clear to everyone but us is when the strings or the tuning or the notes aren’t working.)
• Sometimes we have to talk to the Piano Maker about why there needs to be so much pressure.
• Sometimes we need to relax into the music. Nancy Swanson talks about letting go.

I’m not sure what the answer is for your piano right now. But between now and the end of the year, I pray that you’ll have time for tuning and practice and delight.

emilio and the box pews

Emilio stared at the pews.. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen pews before. He saw them every Sunday morning. And Monday morning. And most other mornings.

Emilio was an associate pastor. Pews were his business. But these were different. They were box pews, benches with sides, benches with doors.

He was visiting this church for a concert. It always intrigued him to see how other churches did things, how they were built, how they sounded. He always looked at the print materials, looked for clues about how they did what they did. It gave him the opportunity to think about church.

This evening, staring at the box pews, was no different. He knew that these neat, civilized, regular cubicles weren’t how they had started. After the reformation, in the British Isles in particular, people brought in seating, they built boxes, treating them as little personal spaces in the public space of church. It was a way to have privacy, to maintain family space. It didn’t hurt that they blocked out the breezes that blew through the cold buildings. But it didn’t help to break down barriers.

As he stared at them, Emilio pictured the cubicles in his own church, and in many other churches. This time they weren’t around families. They were around generations, around interest groups, around social strata. There were groups that went into their cubicles every Sunday, with walls around them.

Sometimes that was fine. Sometimes it wasn’t.

But the challenge it posed for Emilio tonight was huge. He kept hearing about the importance of communication. He kept hearing people talk about wanting to know what was happening at the church, what great things were going on. He kept hearing people talk about the importance of vision, of knowing what is going on.

His project was to give everyone access to the information they needed to grow, in formats and frequency that helped them feel like they belonged to the community, to the tribe.

And he knew that they were trying. There were weekly bulletins, biweekly mailers, web updates, a facebook group, Sunday school class email prayer chains. There were displays in the hallways, announcements in the services, notes on clipboards in classrooms. There was a limited circulation enewsletter. There were hundreds of pieces of information. And there were people who said they never heard what was going on who, when questioned, acknowledged that they didn’t read the newsletter.

Emilio, self-styled “social media pastor“, knew that there were tremendous opportunities for conversation using new technologies. But he was also aware that a significant number of people in the congregation didn’t want to be part of those technologies. The ages of the congregation spanned a century. The income likely spanned 6 figures. The education ranged nearly as far.

He knew the social media options. He used them. But it wasn’t a social media congregation. It was a people congregation. And his responsibility was not to social media. It was to the people and to God.

As Emilio stared at the box pews, he knew that although the people sat in chairs and pews, they might as well be in cubicles…or silos.

One core message, a hundred applications, a thousand different mailboxes.

What could he do?

So what? The next question.

Rod Hart made my life miserable.

Not maliciously, mind you. But very intentionally. Because his frequent question was, “so what?”

Not the way a teenager asks that question when you beging to explain why something needs to be done. Not the way a person on the edge of depression asks that question, frequently followed with “who cares?”

No, Rod asked that question because it mattered.

And it made me miserable for years.

Rod was on my doctoral committee. He was (and still is) on the faculty at The University of Texas at Austin. He was one of three rhetoric profs. I took several courses with him. I knew that for any major research project, after you explained what you were doing, the questions you were exploring, the research design, the theoretical background, after you explained all of that, his question would be, “So what?” It’s a nice design. So what? It’s technically competent. So what? You have a firm grasp of the literature. So what?

Again, he wasn’t merely being cranky. For Rod, there were no self-evident truths when it came to inquiry.

Once you have your answer, said Rod, what difference does that answer make to anyone other than research designers and you?

And so, when I struggled for months with finding a research question, when I spent a couple years writing a proposal and another couple years writing my 431 page book (without the bibliography), I knew that I was going to have to answer “so what?”

And I did. And it was worth it. And it is changing your life.

Because you are reading this.

In 1989, I wrote “on the basis of this work I find my distrust of systems growing ever larger and my belief that the most effective form of religious persuasion is telling the story strengthened.”

And so, that’s what I do.

Think about your current project. If Rod showed up and said, “so what?” what would you answer?

———————

This is another occasional entry in the next sentence series. Follow that link for the previous sentence.

25 things

I never do memes. I don’t know how to pronounce the word or how to explain it in non-technical metaphors. Unless, of course, a meme is like playing idea tag, where you have to answer a question before you can tag someone else. Or it’s like an ice breaker at a party (which I don’t like).

That said, both jenhames and chris brogan tagged me and so I will write. My version, however is to make five lists of five things.

5 things I was doing 10 years ago:

• going to soccer games for an 11-year-old son who still wanted to be a professional soccer player. (Now he is a writer. About sports).
• learning how to be 40. (never figured it out. Gave up after 10 years.)
• dealing with a daughter in second grade. (actually, she was dealing with second grade. She spent the next 6 years dealing with school. And then she got to high school and figured it all out.)
• helping figure out how to keep college students in college. (I gave up.)
• having no clue that I would be a pastor now. (Nope. No idea at all.)

5 snacks I like:

• orange slice candy
• honeycrisp apples
• corn dogs
• peanuts
• coffee (Hey. It’s a snack. and a food group.)

5 places I’ve lived

• New Hope, MN (went to the same elementary school as Rick Mahn).
• Carol Stream, IL
• Austin, TX (1982-85, UT-Austin)
• Fort Wayne, IN
• Goshen, IN

5 jobs I’ve had

• hauling the garbage at a camp (camp closed)
• operating an IBM 370/125 mainframe computer (1974-1980) (Yep. I was in IT before it was called IT) (organization closed)
• production helper for marketing department at company that made gravity-flow racks for coolers in convenience stores. (Company closed)
• college professor (College was acquired. Now it’s closing)
• late-night program host at college radio station (students don’t run it anymore)

5 updates on posts I’ve written

• Hope got her license and is now driving.
• I finished the deck.
• I finished the bondo-ing the car. Rust hasn’t showed up yet.
• I haven’t lost any weight
• I’m still not good at managing my time (but I’ve talk a lot with Chris since this post.

Okay. Time to pass on the tag: Paul Merrill? Five pictures. Rick Mahn? Five happiness reasons. Rob Hatch? Five of anything. Amy? Five family stories. Jim Hughes? Five things about visiting people in the hospital for non-hospital people.

Thank you for playing.

cleaning up the list

There is paint on my hands as I type.

It’s dry. Don’t worry about the keyboard.

I’m waiting for primer to dry on a couple of folding doors. I trimmed them today and primed them. After I finish writing, I’ll go back out and prime the edges.

This isn’t big news. It’s a typical Saturday project.

The news is that we bought the doors three or four years ago. We bought them because the current doors keep coming off the track. The new doors have been in the garage, part of the accumulation of stuff that has kept it a one-car garage (or at times, a no car garage). They were not on my list for today. They wre barely on the list of projects that I know I need to get to. We even considered giving the doors to Habitat for Humanity earlier this year. But we didn’t.

During the past few months I’ve been working on working.

I’ve been working on organizing the garage. I’ve been working on some projects around our house (deck, bathroom painting, auto body repair). I’ve been working on throwing things away. I’ve been working on finishing.

That’s probably the most important word in all this. Finishing. And for me that means facing down the obstacles that I put in my own way.

I could give you a thousand examples of what that means. I will give you one.

When we bought the folding doors I’m working on, we bought them for an opening that I assumed was a standard. 48″. The doors are called 24″ which means that they are 23.5″. Which means that in a 48″ opening they have a bit of room to open. When we got home, I discovered that the opening is 47″. The doors would fit, I suppose, but only if you were making a wall rather than a door.

I have spent the past 3 or 4 years afraid of making a crooked cut on the doors.

Today I decided to cut the doors. I screwed a straightedge to the back of the doors where holes wouldn’t show. I made the cut. It turned out great. I’m now painting. By the end of November (depending on the rest of our schedule here), the project will be done.

There are a thousand projects on my list. I will never get them all done. Many of them don’t need to be done. But the current doors come off the track as often today as they did four years ago. And today I decided that I could finish this project. There are still 999. But rather than thinking about them all and doing, today I decided to do one.

Thanks for stopping by. I’m going back to painting.

——————

Just so you know, another project I started this week (Tuesday) is reading through the Bible. Lots of people have done it. Lots of people do it every year. I’m not lots of people. I’m not that structured. So I’m reading it through before the end of the year. Besides, if it’s a love letter, or a story, I have a hard time with the bit a day. I’ll let you know how it goes.

kyrie eleison - still

(This is a reprint of a post from November 21, 2007 to help prepare for Thanksgiving.)

Lord have mercy.

That’s what kyrie eleison means. It’s Latin. I heard it about 30 times last Sunday afternoon. Not because someone was upset (”Lor’ have mercy”) but because I was listening to a children’s choir sing.

That’s the choir in this really bad picture taken with my cell phone. What you should be able to see in this picture are the following: 50 kids, 6th-9th grade; a conductor; a piano; a jembe drum; 3 steel drums; a drum set; a cow bell; a shaker (not the religion, the percussion instrument).

This kyrie, taken from a mass attributed to Saint Francis, was set in Caribbean style by Glenn McClure. It starts with the steel drums, and then involves the whole group you see.

As I was helping set up for the concert, I carried in the stands for the steel drums. They are made of ordinary, hardware-store-variety galvanized pipe. And then I thought about the steel drums themselves, made in Jamaica, shaped by hand with more skill than expense. The same is true of the hand drum. And the cowbell. And the voices. And the words said by many, attributed here to a follower of Christ who abandoned pretty much everything, including dignity.

And as I listened to the voices and percussion blend, I realized (or remembered), that calling out to God for mercy doesn’t have to cost much. It doesn’t take expensive instruments (like the 8 foot Steinway grand piano) as much as it takes willingness. We don’t have to build ornate places to cry out for mercy.

In fact, the cry for mercy comes not when we understand everything but when we can’t; not when we are on top of the world, but when there isn’t anywhere else to go; not when our lives are together, but when they are falling apart.

Thanksgiving is a melancholy time for many people. We know we are supposed to be thankful, but we look in the mirror and can’t imagine the people around us being very thankful for…us. And we know we are supposed to be thankful, but we aren’t sure who to thank. And we know we are supposed to be thankful, but…

And so, may I offer a suggestion for what to say right before you put on the smile and make the list?

“Kyrie eleison.”

–

related posts

8 ways to be thanked.
waiting
gratitude

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8 ways to explain 2.0 friend to 0.0 family

(This is a reprint from November 24, 2007. I’m including it now to give more time to get ready for these conversations than you had last Thanksgiving.)

Many of us spent time with family this weekend. I’m sure that many of us had the odd experience of wanting to repeat something that one of our friends said…and then having to figure out how to explain twitter or blogging or the internet.

1. It’s like the party line phone you had growing up, where you could listen into to calls that came to other people. Only now you don’t have to pretend you never heard.

2. You know how you like to shout at the television? With 2.0, @newmediajim can hear you.

3.  Remember the friends you had over every Sunday evening after church for coffee? It’s like that. I just can’t see them…and they fix their own coffee.

4.  Remember how you used to walk down the street and say hi to people along the street? That’s what I do when I turn on my computer.

5. When I was 8, Grandma Larson gave me a journal. I wrote in it once. Now I can write every day.

6. When you were in college, you got to know some people. For the next forty years, you did a round-robin letter. You wrote a letter, sent it to the next person, who added hers and forward it to the next person., who did the same. When it made it around all 6 people, you took your letter out and wrote a new one. We do that every day or week or hour.

7. Sometimes you get tired of the TV channels you have (”There’s nothing good on tonight.”) I help make my own content to watch.

8. Oh, it’s just someone I met at work.

—————-

Here are more 8 ways posts.

And I’d love to be in your in box.

8 ways people talking about intentional social media strategy may (still) be right

(This first appeared June 25, 2008. I think that the points are worth repeating and the people would probably appreciate new traffic!)

You know, them.

The people who suggest that you can be thoughtful and strategic about this blogging stuff.

I mean, the people:

1. like Joanna Young, who suggests that you can generate a month’s worth of posts in 30 minutes. She talks about creating a mindmap with the theme of your blog. I tried it one day, while driving. I wrote one phrase, “affirming words” on the middle of a post-it index card. I generated 5 post topics in four minutes. They wrote themselves quickly and they actually were thoughtful and connected and significant.
2. like Liz Strauss, who suggests that you can build an editorial calendar for different days, and that you can map out a month of blogging activities and control your blogging time rather than having it control you. A month ago I started a theme for Sundays. I’m working through the week the same way. (Note: the calendar idea is near the bottom of the post. It stayed with me for months before I realized that I could do it, too.).
3. like Chris Brogan, who suggests that you stop just thinking about your personal brand and instead, actually do specific things in social media. I discovered that I have several things covered, but that I need to be more specific about a few more.
4. like Becky McCray, who says that we need to learn to say no. Actually, Becky has said a lot of things to help me focus, but that’s one collection.
5. like Rob Hatch, who is proof that people on the other end of social media are people. There are other examples, and you know who you are, but who’d have imagined Brogan’s and Hatch’s and Swanson’s in the same physical space at the same time?
6. like Cheryl Smith who started a blog intended for public consumption but didn’t tell anyone about it until she had written enough posts to prove to herself she could. That kind of patience has borne fruit for her. (And she let me look ahead of time and helped me find some words from Isaiah that I had been trying to remember for months.)
7. like Paul Merrill, who I finally believed about turning off the comment approval. It has freed up conversation wonderfully. (In the process, I also finally got wordpress set to email me each comment so I know. It hadn’t been working before.)
8. like these faces who remind me by their daily patience and love that the core of social media is the social, not the media.