Happiness by an Unexpected Path

This is the face of a happy man. He is off to start his first day at work. Brandon can hardly contain his excitement at getting a job at the Doheny Eye Institute. You will have to get him to give you the details of his work there. Believe me, he will be more than happy to share it with you. Be sure to ask about the slide.

As excited as were are about this unbelievable opportunity for him. We have found ourselves filled with overwhelming gratitude for the Lord’s kindness to us over the last many months. We had something of a naïve idea coming out here that Brandon would get a job right away, and we thought we would be the generous ones with our neighbors and friends out here. But the Lord chose to take us by another path. If we hadn’t experienced the lack and the struggle of the last months we would not have experienced the Lord’s physical provision. Please don’t take this for a superficial “God is so good” though He is. Something has changed deep within us from these experiences. One of the most heartrending provisions was the anonymous payment of our rent for the month of November. We were blown away by God’s care for us. Someone saw us and our need and took it upon themselves to meet our need. We were utterly stunned. It changed how we look at our possessions and money. We have also been blessed by cards and letters from home that have happened to include money at just the right times. The fact that Brandon got any freelance work at all in this great big city is a miracle in of itself and another display of the Lord's great kindness.

We are also learning that God’s care and provision extend far beyond our physical bodies. God is working in us ALL OF THE TIME to open us to the truth ourselves in relationship with Him. He uses everyday circumstances to bring up the stuff in our hearts that we have tried hard to keep down. We are learning to open to the Lord in all things. This practice is teaching us how to attend to the Holy Spirit.

I, in particular, have a lot to learn about this. The prayer project I was given in one of my classes last week was to pray Psalm 139:23-24 every day, preferably in the morning, and ask the Lord to peel back the layers of my heart throughout the course of the day. By the end of the week, I realized how completely inattentive I can be to the Lord because I have not even invited Him into my conscious awareness. I believe Dr. Coe (one of my professors) when he says that you have to develop this habit of heart to pray without ceasing. It does not come naturally. I have been made very aware of that this week. I can go whole chunks of the day without even thinking about the Lord or attempting to connect with Him. I believe that He is working all of the time at showing me my heart, but I can be pretty oblivious and, at times, altogether uninterested. Another layer of my hidden heart exposed… my ambivalence toward the Lord. There are parts of me that this awareness pains deeply and other parts that say, “yep, that’s about right.”

dez

Psalm 139:23-24 (NASB)
Search me, O God, and know my heart;

Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
And see if there be any hurtful (literally “painful”) way in me,

And lead me in the everlasting way.

The Deeper Journey

Well, here it is, my big blogging début. Whatever shall I write about? It occurs to me that there is a big part our of journey out here in LA that has not gotten much blog space. We are not just exploring a new city, but we are exploring a new life, i.e., the deeper life in Christ. This is coming about mostly through my classes at the Institute for Spiritual Formation but also through relationship with Brandon. We are very much together on this journey into the deeper life, and it has been incredible not only to open up to greater intimacy with each other but with the Lord as well.

I was recently emailing a friend about what I have been learning, so I thought I would share it here too:

I am realizing that I have been operating to some degree out of my unconscious theology of God regardless of the systematic theology that I hold in my conscious. For example I believe in my head that God loves me. What plays out in my life is that I act and think that God is my judge, that he is somehow linked to the voice of condemnation in my head. Furthermore there are parts of me that don't believe I can trust God to take care of me or meet my inmost needs or my physical ones for that matter. Rather, I have a deep belief that I must take care of myself even to the extent of manipulating circumstances and people to that end. I've got lots more examples if you are interested.

Each of us has a well of deep beliefs and desires, in large part due to our experiences in life, especially early ones. We learn early that people can't deal with our mess so we hide it. This gets impacted over the years and we eventually get disconnect from conscious awareness of this rather oceanic part of ourselves.

This is especially problematic for the Christian who feels this pressure to be perfect. The machine of the church has convinced them that they have to hide their badness. This causes for some people a double life, as in the case of Ted Haggard. In my churh experience there is ongoing teaching toward three ends: 1) developing systematic theology and gaining Bible knowledge, and 2) using fortitude in the name of the Holy Spirit to manage one’s behaviors, and 3) frenetic participation and service in church ministries. With these factors serving as the measuring stick for Christian growth and maturity, there is little time for matters of the inward life.

What I am learning is that God could care less about me living a perfect life. He is not interested in me fixing myself. He is interested in relationship with me. If Christianity were only a program of moral improvement, it would require neither God nor a Christ. It could exist on the basis of personal effort toward perfection. Jesus attacked this notion of self-achieving-perfectionism on many occasions, especially when the Pharisees were around (e.g., Matt 23). A poignant example would be Luke 10. In this story, Jesus is at the home of Martha and Mary. Martha is scurrying around doing good work and gets frustrated when Jesus lets Mary just sit as His feet. Jesus makes clear that Mary has chosen the better thing here, i.e. relationship over work.

This week I have been pondering Hebrews 4 and Matthew 11:28-30. They are both invitations to enter into God's rest. We are invited to enter this Sabbath rest and rest from our works. That is so contrary to my unconscious theology of having to fix myself and earn his love. Why is it that I have not seen this up until now? The freedom that is being offered here threatens to completely rock my world. What would it mean to really live with the pressure off?

I realize that this is starting to look like a sermon, so I am going to stop myself. Perhaps, I will close this line of thinking by saying that I have been completely blown away by what I have been learning. My evangelical faith tradition had lost the many of these treasures of mystical spirituality during the Reformation in their zeal to pursue sola scriptura. In a very real sense, I am compelled to grieve for that loss. There is richness in the Christian experience and tradition that I had no idea about.

Dez

Happy Ninja Day!!! NinjaDay2006

Today is Ninja Day. I didn't end up killing anybody, but I did (although accidentally) cut a guy off on the freeway today. What is Ninja Day you ask? Read about it here, or better yet, watch the video.

Check out these instructions on making an uber ninja mask! Where were these when I was a kid?

The California Flag

We were shopping in Walmart the other day. On the wall at the end of the checkouts was a list of all the best cashiers, with their pictures and a huge banner underneath with their numbers posted for how fast they could check people out. The kind lady that was checking us out did not have her picture on the board. She didn't make the top ten list of cashiers. She wasn't like "Brittney", the number one cashier who was checking out 570 items per minute. No, shopping at Walmart here in La Mirada is a bit like trying to drive on the 5--long lines, and not enough lanes. (For all those back home who are used to refering to interstates as "I90", out here it is pretty much just "the" followed by the number. "The 5." "The 405." The "110." And of course, the great "The 1," aka "The Pacific Coast Highway."

Anyways, as I drifted about while waiting (not unlike the beginning to this blog entry) I took a good look around. Just above the big Walmart scoreboard was the American flag, and next to it, the California flag. This was the first time I'd really looked at the California flag. Let me describe it. It has a bear in the middle. A red star in the corner, and a red stripe along it's base. A bear, a red star...why is the California flag...so...communist? I thought at the time that all it needed was a hammer and sickle to complete it's U.S.S.R. symbology.

I was so perplexed by the flag that when I returned home I looked around online to find out just exactly why the flag used the symbols that it used. What I discovered was that California flag is not actually that communist. My conspiracy theory was shot to pieces when I learned that the "Communist Manifesto", was published in 1848, two years after the emergence of the "bear" flag. I got confused by this site for a little while (a hoax on snopes.com--who would have thought it? Click on the "more information about this page" link to learn their motive), but eventually learned my lesson about checking my sources and have written the little summery below.

***

In 1821 Mexico won its independence from Spain. At this time, Mexico included what is now California, Texas, and many of the other western states. (See Map)

For reasons outside of this discussion, Texas ceded from Mexico in 1836. They won their independence later that year, after battles at "The Alamo" and the great victory at San Jacinto. Mexico considered Texas a "rebel province", and Texas wanted to join the United States. When Texas was admitted into the United States in 1845, the Mexican-American war began.

War was officially declared between the U.S. and Mexico on May 13, 1846. However, news of this did not reach California until later in July. Meanwhile, thirty-three men intent on a revolution knocked on the door of the Mexican Commandante of Northern California, who apparently invited them in for breakfast. Believing in their cause, the Commandate surrendered. Surprised, the Americans declared California independent, and raised a flag with crudely drawn grizzly bear (common in California at the time, but extinct since 1922) and a lone star, an ode to Texas. On the flag was written "California Republic".

On June 23, 1846, American forces arrived, the "republic" was dissolved, and the revolutionaries joined with the Americans in the war against Mexico.

The Mexican-American War ended in 1848. California was admitted to the United States in 1850. The "bear" flag was adopted in 1911 as the official flag by the State Legislature.

Here are some interesting quotes I found:

"At a company meeting it was determined that we should raise a flag, and that it should be a bear en passant [French: 'in passing'], with one star. One of the ladies at the garrison gave us a piece of brown domestic, and Mrs. Captain John Sears gave us some strips of red flannel about 4 inches wide. The domestic was new, but the flannel was said to have been part of a petticoat worn by Mrs. Sears across the mountains...I took a pen, and with ink drew the outline of the bear and star upon the white cloth. Linseed oil and Venetian red were found in the garrison, and I painted the bear and star...Underneath the bear and star were printed with a pen the words 'California Republic' in Roman letters. In painting the words I first lined out the letters with a pen, leaving out the letter 'i' and putting 'c' where 'i' should have been, and afterwards the 'i' over the 'c.' It was made with ink, and we had nothing to remove the marks." -William L. "Bill" Todd, artist of original Bear Flag.

"Another man left at Sonoma was William L. Todd who painted, on a piece of brown cotton, a yard and a half or so in length, with old red or brown paint that he happened to find, what he intended to be a representation of a grizzly bear. This was raised to the top of the staff, some seventy feet from the ground. Native Californians looking up at it were heard to say 'Coche,' the common name among them for pig or shoat." -John Bidwell



***

In conclusion, history yet again amazes me at its fractal-like complexity. The deeper you look, the more there is to see. The humble beginnings, misspelled words and crudly drawn characters, that later became the symbols for the 6th-10th largest economy in the world. My next question is why is it exactly that the 1911 State Legislature chose the "bear flag" to become the Official State Flag? What about the short-lived ill-organized "California Republic" is worth immortalizing?

***

References:
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist6/toddflag.html
http://www.parks.ca.gov/pages/73...%201836%20to%201850%20statehood.pdf
http://www.calguard.ca.gov/docs/Flags_Over_CA.pdf
http://www.dfg.ca.gov/oceo/projectwild/bear/33.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_state_flag
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Republic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican-American_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas#War_for_Independence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_War_of_Independence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican-American_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_California

The Pier (With Iraq Tributes and a Stormtrooper)

We wanted to get out of the house last Sunday. We wanted to see something. We wanted to have fun. But what? Nothing really came to mind. Well, actually, lots of things came to mind, but nothing so great that we were able to take action upon it. Finally, throwing the proverbial dart at the proverbial globe, we hop in the car and take off towards the sun. It was about 3:30pm. The sun was going to set at 4:52pm, so we made haste in our pursuit and chased the sun as far as we could before it disappeared.

We ended up at Santa Monica State Beach. We could go no further, there was an ocean in our path, and there was no crossing it. As we began to explore the beach we came across a temporary monument to the U.S. soldiers who had fallen in the Iraq War. The beach was full of crosses, all in rows like Arlington National Cemetery. There were 2,845 of them that day, one for each of the soldiers lost. The crosses covered the full depth of the beach, marching straight into the ocean, chasing the setting sun, but never moving forwards, for their stillness robbed them of their journey. It was a moving sight.




Santa Monica State Beach has a large pier that stretches far out into the ocean. It had restaurants and shops and even a carnival on it. We walked to its end and watched the sun set. On our way, we saw many musicians setup on the pier, singing and playing away. Next to them were many merchants, selling their wares. Fisherman were everywhere, throwing their hooks and bait into the ocean and hoping for a catch. The Musicians and Merchants and Fisherman all had that in common. It was crowded, and as we walked along the wooden planks beneath our feet neither creaked nor moaned. They were used to it all.

The sunset was clear and glorious.




We went for a walk next, looking for someplace to eat. We ended up walking quite a bit, but didn't find anything. We were both surprised by this. It was getting late, and we decided to head back to our car. However, as we were pulling out of the parking lot we met a stormtrooper. He almost didn't let us pass, but after waving my hand around long enough I finally got the force to work well enough to get him to say "I don't need to see your identification, these aren't the droids we're looking for, move along". (Though Dez thinks he just got annoyed with me and my waving hand.)




In the end, we made it out without any more obnoxious fines from the Empire (that is, California). We ate at a Quizno's, which took quite a bit of exploring to find, then proceeded to church.



Currently, we attend Mosiac, which is held at multiple sites. The site we attend is in the Mayan, a nightclub in downtown Los Angeles. Erwin McManus, the lead pastor and "cultural architect" of Mosaic, has been very refreshing to us both with his talks (or sermons).

A fairly happenstance adventure, all-in-all, that turned out all right and most of all performed its greatest task--it got us both out of the house to see something beautiful. A surreal sort of beautiful, however; with the blending of the Iraq monument and the stormtrooper revealing an internal disconnect between imagined fantasy and brutal reality that I'm not entirely sure what to do about. It just strikes me odd in a way how quickly we can go from one to another.