A little bit of this, a little bit of that

One of the interesting aspects of social networking is the plethora (tell me, pablo, do you know what a plethora is?) of applications and quizzes and surveys and how popular they are — primarily out of boredom — that people post online for their friends to read about them. On Facebook, one of those applications was the Love Languages application. Being that I’m fairly familiar with mine, I played with it and found that, as usual the questions were asinine and I found myself re-reading the answers looking for MY answer.

It got me thinking though as I IM’d my friend Nate about it, that I feel a bit strange because what others would perceive my incoming love language to be, it’s actually my outgoing love language. Those who know me at all know that I have a heart for service (even though my attitude isn’t that great sometimes) and that often I will want to do something for someone. I don’t know if it’s just a defense against having people near me or if it’s actually that it’s different, but I actually receive love in 2 different ways than Service. When someone does something for me, I usually feel deep gratitude, but not necessarily really loved. I usually feel most loved by knowing that someone wants to spend time with me and having appropriate physical touch.

I really understand the physical touch aspect of it because if my relationship with that person isn’t right, I don’t want them touching me and it bothers me when people who I don’t really trust are in my personal space for very long. I also understand the quality time/quality conversation aspect of it because when I have it in good ways, I feel much more loved and connected to someone — especially if they are initiating and I feel the loss when someone I care about does not want to do so anymore.

Am I weird? Definitely. I’m definitely thankful for my friends who continue to initiate, who like to spend time together and only expect me to be the best me I can be — nothing more, nothing less. Thanks guys.

So on Saturday, skittles and I headed off to Irvine to check out the OC Flyball Winter Games. You can check out information about flyball here (ocregister.com) and here (ocflyball.org). The group describes it as doggie drag racing — 2 teams of 4 dogs and handlers compete to see how quickly each team can have each dog in series jump over a series of obstacles, jump on a special box which ejects a ball and take the ball back across the finish line. Only one dog per team can be across the line at a time and missing or going around obstacles or going over to the other team’s run is grounds for disqualification for the run. From what I saw as well, the competitions are based on the best of 3 runs for each team and the dogs and handlers all get into it. I’ve never heard such a cacophony of barking in my life but it was a lot of fun.

As I was trading emails with someone today, I realized that Flyball can be an illustration of how we go about life:

I think in life there are some of us that are very pleased just to run around with the chew toy and our handler. Some of the dogs at the show looked the happiest when they had a ball or toy they were carrying around.

Some of us just sit on the sidelines and bark at what we feel like barking at or squeal because we can’t get out and play with the others.

Some of us get into the race, jump the obstacles and at the last minute decide that the other ball in the other box looks more interesting and so we’ll go over there, which unfortunately interferes with the other team and gets us disqualified from the race.

And then there’s the few that bound with joy over the obstacles to the goal, jump on the box with glee, grab the ball and race home where the handler’s cheering us on the whole way. Not around the obstacles, but over them, not lackadaisical but with speed and with the joy of just going for it. May we be the team who run the race set out for us well, who hop on the box with glee and go exuberantly back to the Master.

As I’ve been working one of the songs that came across my playlist was John Mayer’s “Love Song for No One” and it struck me as funny because I had lived my life that way for many years. Now, while I’m excited about being in a relationship at some point and being married at some point, I’m not in a hurry to get there and I’m not in a hurry for THEM to get here. I’m an introvert, so I actually _like_ being alone, in my space with nobody intruding on it.

Take your time getting here, I want to finish my book

While I was in the area at church last night where they serve food for the production volunteers I witnessed something that was both funny and sad at the same time when it comes to relationships and church life. One of our creative guys was working on something and when I came back there are 4 girls sitting against the wall talking to him — I may have it wrong, but I believe he said he was being interrogated — but I digress. As I listened to the conversation they were talking about an event coming up for Valentines day and was asking who he was taking and whatnot, to which he replied ‘Well, it’s not a couples event, there are guys tickets and girls tickets, not couples tickets.’ While that response didn’t go over too well, the girls proceeded to discuss amongst themselves (by name) who it would be great to set him up with.

When he asked them why they were trying to set him up their response was ‘We’re hoping you will set US up too’. After a few more people joined, he made a comment (that I didn’t hear) and one of the newcomers responded ‘I don’t get it, how did this event become about marriage with guys?’

The girls did by applying pressure about this guys’ private life and wanting to set him up — not because he and someone would be a great match together — but because he “needed” to be set up with someone — anyone! What I have seen over time is that given time and space, people will naturally gravitate to one another. Sometimes a matchmaker may look at two people and see a good pairing and make a suggestion to both parties but that takes into account how both people are and is a suggestion rather than pressure. When applying pressure, it simply illustrates the relational gossip progression that sadly infuses church culture.

The relational gossip progression in church goes something like this: If they’re single, people wonder who they’re interested in. If they’re talking, people wonder if they’re interested or dating. If they’re casually dating someone, people wonder when they’re going to make it official. If they’re official, people wonder when they’re going to get engaged, then married, then kids, etc. Frankly that whole hamster wheel puts pressure on guys and girls and it’s not welcome. When people lack a connection to each other and engage in questions on their personal life it does not foster trust and it doesn’t foster community — primarily because people engaged in information discovery are not motivated by getting to know the other person better, they’re motivated by getting to personal information.

This kind of gossip fishing is damaging to relationships and communities because it attempts to seduce intimacy from someone with nothing in return. It doesn’t build the other person up, it doesn’t encourage growth and it acts as a hinderance to actual relationship because it puts a block both between the seducer and their victim as well as the victim and the person being discussed.

I’m not going to tolerate it in my life, I encourage you to examine yourself to see if your conversational ethics are in order.

Yourself is a sad, lonely man who lives on a hill in Siberia. He says it’s somewhat cold, but it’s a dry cold, so much more tolerable. Yourself likes candle-lit dinners and sunset walks on the tundra with his Yak, ‘Yak’. Sometimes when he needs entertainment, he puts acorns in the ice to frustrate the squirrels.

So I’m never making fun of yoga people again, at least not thinking that it’s something wussy…..holy crap, it’s not just the human pretzel, wrap your arm around your torso and hug yourself, there’s a lot of strength and flexibility things they do. I did my first yoga class ever today and it worked me. I’ll probably go back but I felt like a total klutz.

Verklempt - choked with emotion (German verklemmt = emotionally inhibited in a convulsive way)
(Courtesy urban dictionary)

And Skittles earns the triple word score for the day.

I was reading the Spaz’ blog yesterday and she inspired some follow-on thought. Before I get started, go check out her entry here and then come back.

I believe the western church today has meandered into irrelevancy through a combination of the masturbatory pursuit of the warm fuzzies, self absorbtion, rules and “no trespassing” signs. Our world and culture are full of the conditional: People will like/love you — if you’re thin/attractive/rich. People will be friends with you, meet with you, do stuff with you — if it’s convenient, if you can do something for them. Marrriages will break up over “irreconcilable differences,” men will leave women because they’re not attracted them anymore or “just don’t feel it,” women will leave men because they’ve “fallen out of love.” Why would anyone want to be in a group of people where not only do they have to deal with that, but also have a stack of rules of what they have to do and be in order to be accepted there and by God?

The church has missed the point and have succumbed to the pharisaical pursuit of spiritual police officers who care more about the rule being broken than they do about why the rule exists. The church is supposed to be the place where people not only come to know God, but WANT to know God because they have seen God through how the church loves one another and specifically how it loves them. When Jesus walked the earth, he didn’t congratulate the church leaders for following the rules; he more often than not rebuked them for their insulated self-righteous thoughts and actions. He didn’t seek out the guys at church, he sought out the most likely to not be in church — the poor, the crippled, the prostitutes, the johns — not because he wanted to beat them over the head with what they’ve been doing wrong, but to experience a taste of real relationship, of real love and real acceptance and to give them real inspiration to live.

Most of the time, to enact real, positive change and the motivation to do things better and right is to provide a positive, encouraging environment where the person is inspired to change rather than coerced to change. I have seen this in my own life — when the “I am loved and valued” need is met, I don’t have to focus any energy on meeting that need, I can throw away the things that I was using to ineffectively satisfy the need to be loved, valued, worth something and going somewhere, pull my head up and see the others with needs around me — and what I can provide is to not only tell them, but to show them they are loved and they are valued. I’m not especially good at it yet, I know there are people in my life that would hear that and laugh and think you’ve got the wrong guy, but I don’t care — I know I’ve made mistakes and will make mistakes as I continue to learn, but I also know that I’m way better at that today than I ever have been and that’s what matters. I know I’ve missed the point. I’ve intentionally hardened my heart and walked by those who are asking for help or money, simply because I didn’t want to and didn’t think they were worth it. For years, I went through life treating God like spiritual booty call — get in contact, get what I want and go back home to my regular life, not really interested in any real give-and-take relationship with Him. Unfortunately, when you develop a pattern of treating God that way, you unintentionally can begin treating those whom you really want a relationship with in the same way, hardening my heart to them and not giving them what they really want: me.

I can see where the church has gotten off track is with the whole idea of salvation, why people need to be saved and saved from what. Christ did not come in order to simply persuade people from bad actions into do-goodery, Christ came to give life and give it to the full, not once people die, but right here and right now. What does that mean? I may be far off base, but what I understand it to mean is that as I mentioned above, a full life in Christ gives us relief from the survival struggle, relief from trying to force relational ends to meet, from trying to strive for getting what we need to quench the unmaskable cravings of our souls. The heartbreaking fact is that millions of people will shuffle in and out of church on Sundays and never know the life-changing love of Christ in their lives and will never experience that life here because nobody is willing to draw them in and to embrace them for who they are right now.

The western church has to wake up and start the change or it will die of either old age or asphyxiation. Culture change is a must to rid the old attitudes of “this is how it must be because this is how it has always been,” “those people don’t belong here” and “someone is in my spot.” I feel like there are many in the “christian right” who try to legislate morality rather than changing the hearts of those with whom they believe are trying to solve their problems immorally. Unfortunately, because of the rigidity of many in the church, the church cannot adapt itself into relevancy because they are uncomfortable with change. Let me speak clearly: If one is a true Christ follower, change is inevitable and welcomed — change may be painful, but living with the friction of cruft in our lives only slows us down from where we want to be. I’m inviting change…I know it will be hard, I know there will be tears and I know that there will be a bit of temper tantrums thrown down….but it’s better than who I was and where I was, it’s going to take me to a new sense of passion, of joy and of destiny and I’m excited to be different than I was 2 minutes ago, yesterday, last week and definitely last year.

Who’s with me?

I still have no idea how it really happened, it was crazy. I was making up 2 batches of Nachos, one with chicken, one without. Put them both under the broiler for a few minutes to melt the cheese, opened it up and lo and behold, it was on FIRE. Not your smoldering little bic, mind you….a real jump out of the oven door my biscuit’s a burnin’ fire in my nachos (not the kind you can get in what-happens-in-stays-in vegas, fortunately). The roommate wanted to take it out, but I figured that there’s nothing IN the oven that’s flammable, so let’s deal with it there. Unfortunately it wouldn’t starve, so we had to resort to pouring a saucepan full of water into it to put it out. I guess that’s one way to celebrate the new years… and I was glad I had another pan of the good stuff.