Since we got an iPad, I’ve been using it as my Bible while following along and taking notes during Chad’s messages. Not only does it allow me to navigate between passages quickly, but it also lets me look up random sparks of curiosity.

This week: myrrh!

Chad noted that the three gifts listed and indicated what they are symbolic of: gold is a gift for royalty, frankincense is a gift of worship, and myrrh is a gift that foreshadows Jesus’ death as it is an aromatic oleoresin used in burial*.

No, I didn’t know that bit about oleoresin. It’s from the “Myrrh” Wikipedia page. Here are some other interesting tidbits:

• The word “myrrh” comes from the Aramaic word meaning, “was bitter,” which seems awfully close to Mara, the name Naomi chose for herself after her husband and sons died at the beginning of Ruth.
• It’s more than just potpourri or a candle from Bath & Body Works: at times, it’s value has equaled or surpassed that of gold.
• The ancient Egyptians used it to embalm mummies. Hey, we were just reading about ancient Egyptians in Exodus!
• It seems like myrrh is a bigger deal in the Roman Catholic tradition, but I grew up Baptist so I don’t really know much about it’s importance to a parish’s actual uses/traditions other than seeing that it was mentioned on Wikipedia.

I only look this stuff up because I like to learn. I think the most important thing to take away from myrrh is that it’s not just a rich gift representing the wealth of the givers. It’s a meaningful symbol**, an indication that this sweet little baby king has a difficult mission ahead of him.

*Possible the creepiest baby shower gift ever.

**I’ve spent the past month or so talking about symbols with my Honors English classes, and I hope they’re paying attention because God is a good writer who uses symbols that help us understand the themes of his story.

The girls have a bedtime routine: pajamas, toothbrushing, songs, prayer, sleep. The songs usually include “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes,” “Somewhere Out There,” and a church song. That’s how they say it: “Church song.”

Church song means one of the song we sing during musical worship at Second Mile. Usually Janice starts singing one and we join in. Tonight, however, Elly started. It went like this:

Elly (pretty much to the tune of “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes”): Church is so helpful…

It went on to mention something about church going to the ocean. It was fun to listen to.

After she finished, I started praying. That’s my usual role, although sometimes Elly contributes. Tonight, she wanted to pray, too. I finished praying for Janice’s back+neck (maybe a pinched nerve, but definitely really sore) and that we’d be a missional family, and Elly started praying. It went like this:

Elly: Um, um, please take the bump off of Lucy’s leg and make it feel better, and help us not be afraid of things, and help us be nice, and help us be good listeners, and help us not be afraid of the dark.

I was proud that she prayed about not being afraid because of a Halloween conversation we’d had on the way home from trick-or-treating with friends on Monday night. There was a particularly scary yard, complete with crime scene tape, a wandering zombie, and a girl who jumped out from a seemingly innocuous cardboard “Happy Halloween” sign. We explained that we don’t celebrate the scary part of Halloween, and she asked why.

I hadn’t thought about it in depth, but there I was in the front seat of the car with a little girl in a Lemon Meringue costume in the backseat. I thought about how often God tells us not to be fearful in the Bible, and I want Elly to grow up knowing that we worship a God who doesn’t want us to define ourselves by fear, so I explained that God tells us not to be afraid, so it’s not something we put in our lives on purpose.

I’m glad she thought to ask God for help not being afraid, and I wonder where our future conversations about this will go.

*I haven’t posted on here since school started in August, but there’s been plenty to process. This is my little reminder to myself that I can find time to type out a post in less time than I usually assume it would take.

I decided reading Pulitzer winners would be a good idea after reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. In line at Bookman’s, I saw The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao on that little table where the put the bestsellers and books of critical/popular acclaim. I thought, Hey, I’ve been wanting to read that. I bought it. I don’t remember what I was actually in line to buy.

Oscar Wao sat on my shelf for awhile. That’s what happens to most of the books I buy. I don’t know why I picked it up. It has nothing to do with anything I’ve been reading, studying, or doing at work. Maybe that’s why I picked it up.

I don’t quit books. I almost quit Oscar Wao. The only book I’ve ever quit in the middle was The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. It was insufferably bleak, plus I already knew the twist at the end. Oscar Wao is not insufferably bleak, but there is a certain bleakness (it does begin with a discussion of fukú, the notion of being cursed in the Caribbean) added to a certain rawness made of the characters’ identities in sexual behavior and abusive/broken relationships. I’ve been searching for the right phrasing for why I wanted to quit that book, and I’ve come down to this: it’s just not a hopeful book. But I didn’t quit, and I have Eugene Peterson to thank for that.

See, when I read The Contemplative Pastor, I read an entire chapter focused on Peterson advising pastors not to forget to view the people in their churches as sinners. He says some beautiful things about sinners, the foremost of which is the clarification that the term is not a “theological designation” nor a “moralistic judgment.”

He points out that it is not a term dealing in comparisons between you and me and everyone we know and hear about on the news. There is no more or less involved, no relativity at all. Peterson would have us realize that referring to someone as a sinner “is not a blast at his manners or his morals. It is the theological belief that the thing thatmatters most to him is forgiveness and grace.”

Forgiveness and grace matter to broken people. Oscar Wao is full of broken people. Oscar is an obese kid who fails in the Ladies Dept. and thus exiles himself to Dungeons & Dragons, fantasy literature, and the hopes of one day making it as a sci-fi writer. Lola, his older sister, is a runner both literally (she’s the star of the track team) and figuratively (difficulties send her away: away to college, away to Europe, away to Santo Domingo, away away away but always returning, too). Belí, their mother, is defined by abandonment during her childhood (the climax of that portion of her life involves a full-back hot oil burn and confinement in a chicken coop) and objectification from adolescence on (the men in her life only see the body that takes her from unknown to a fling with the most popular kid in town to a fling with a character we only know as the Gangster—yeah, that doesn’t end well for her).

I saw all these broken people and I challenged myself to keep going. I saw some connection to the brokenness I’ve seen in lives of people I’ve known and loved since coming to Tucson. I saw a connection to how we talk about influencing culture instead of being influenced by culture (this book is soaked with What It Is To Be Dominican). I saw a connection to what I talked about this summer: Jesus did not shrink away from coming to save broken people, which I am, a sinner, just as much as people like Oscar, Lola, and Belí.

So I kept going. I finished the book. It won’t be one I recommend to people, but I’m glad I didn’t quit it because Jesus doesn’t quit broken people, and churches are made of them, too, including ours. Reading about characters like this helps me dig into the motivations, reactions, and consequences that come up in real lives around me.

Eugene Peterson’s The Contemplative Pastor may turn out to be one of the most important books I’ve ever read. I took in these words during the most stressful period of my life, a time when I was learning how to lead a family, a church, and a classroom all at the same time.

Yesterday, on the phone, my mom described her first year teaching as “feeling like the world was spinning without me, or like it was spinning and I was just hanging on like a kite.” That’s an accurate description of what my last year felt like. It feels a little slower now that I’ve had a summer to both reflect and prepare.

The above quote comes after Peterson returned from a year-long sabbatical following thirty-some years of pastoral work. The reason they comfort me is that he returned refreshed and full, able to meet and serve and lead. This is a reminder to me that such a thing is possible. I like hearing this very much, seeing as how I’m about to dive into year two of leading a family, a church, and a classroom.

Last week, I mentioned that conflict arises in stories in one of two ways: someone/thing new enters an environment and changes it, or someone goes out into a new place on some sort of quest.

This year, in my story, I have been on a sort of quest. I’ve been trying to understand the answer to this question: What does my leadership look like?

I’m an elder here at Second Mile, but I was having trouble seeing the imprint of my leadership. Sure, I managed and took care of and helped out when necessary. I met and discussed and spoke and supported. I felt like I was filling A Leadership Role, but not like I was leading out of the way God gifted me.

The difference between filling a role and leading out of giftedness is difficult to articulate. The best metaphor I can come up with is the feeling of trying to wear clothes that belong to someone about my size, but maybe an inch or two taller and ten pounds heavier. I felt loose in it, baggy, like I’d always be trying to fill it out. I wanted to know what it felt like to have this elder role fit like clothes that belonged to me.

I remember this question coming into my head while driving home from a meeting with Chad. I’d never thought of it before. It felt strange and new and possible, yet frustrating. I prayed in the car that God would help me see how I could lead, not just fill a leadership role. Since then, I’ve had a few points of clarity.

The first had to do with Second Mile’s creatives. We are a young church with plenty of artists, designers, filmmakers, writers, and generally creative people. I love creativity and originality, and I greatly value these traits as a part of our expression of worship, so I wondered if I could help those people connect to support one another, to share ideas, to find ways to unleash their artistic brilliance.

That one felt like a shirt I liked at the store but wouldn’t actual choose when I went to my closet in the morning. I liked the idea of it, but I didn’t know how I would function in that role on a day-to-day basis. Plus, other people were serving in that area and were frankly better suited to do so. That was was a No. I was thankful for the clarity, but left without a definitive answer to my question.

The second had to do with producing content. We did a series awhile back that I have always wanted to turn into a book. It’s called Son of God, Son of Man, and it focuses on Jesus’ divine+human nature. Each message was a different aspect of human life that Jesus experienced, understands, and transcends. I got all the old podcasts from Chad (I think this was pre-iTunes, or perhaps on our old website, not our current one), listened to them, and started making plans for deep, scholarly theological research, for ways to incorporate art from our community into the design of the book, and for ways to make it more than just a sit-down-and-read experience.

I love the idea of working on projects like this. I would also love to help turn Eric Kelly’s God’s Economy series into a book/study, as well, but it just don’t fit with my life right now. In another moment of clarity, I set those things aside for another time, a time in the future when I can get uninterrupted time to focus, write, and edit. (To continue the clothing metaphor, this one feels like a bespoke suit that I only want to buy when I know I have someplace to wear it.)

Then, after the Seeds meeting earlier this summer, we were all tasked with giving Collin an idea of what our next steps were in terms of involvement with the project. I drove home from that meeting not with an answer, but with a possibility. Seeds needs to sustain momentum, I thought. The idea of Seeds-focused community group floated around in my head, but I wasn’t sure what to do with that.

Janice and I spent a month or so talking about all the implications of that idea. It would certainly send ripples into other community groups, not to mention our own, so we wanted to talk plenty of time to pray and seek counsel on this next move.

One Wednesday evening, we ate dinner with the Haynes and then sat down to talk this idea through. After discussing the process, looking at what’s in place for Seeds now, and what dominoes would fall if we went in this direction, we decided that this isn’t what Seeds or Second Mile needed. There was enough support from the committed people currently leading the project to keep momentum.

But we weren’t done. In my thoughts about the Seeds group, I figured it would be best if it met every two weeks to give people time to get tasks done. In the meantime, I told Janice that it would be cool if I could pop into other community groups just to learn and observe and support.

That realization combined with a conversation Chad and Angel had on their way back from visiting family in New Mexico about leadership needs. One of them: community groups. Not on the micro level of individual groups, but in terms of the macro, of the whole network. We all realized that the side project I saw as a possibility inbetween the Seeds group meetings was actually something that could be very healthy for all the community groups at Second Mile.

Here’s where I started to get genuinely excited. I’m a learner. I observe and make connections, and here is a chance to do just that. I would be visiting groups with the intention of learning how they’re functioning, what strengths and weaknesses each exhibits, and what can be done to help this network be stronger and healthier.

I am also an encourager. God has blessed me with the gift of looking into other people’s lives and giving them a nudge forward or a lift up. With this new role, I saw the opportunity to encourage the leaders, to connect them for support, and to help them continue to develop. I also have the chance to look at how we can develop more leaders and prepare them to lead well for a long time.

I left that discussion with the first positive point of clarity in terms of leadership all year. This fall, I’ll be going on a new adventure in community. I’ll be bouncing around to different living rooms, meeting with leaders, and taking time to see what God is doing in all these little pockets of community.

This means a big change for our family. Janice and I have lead a community group for probably three or four years now. Elly has grown up knowing that community group comes over, and she gets so excited that she asks about it. We’re taking a break from that role now. It felt weird to tell our group about this, but I know there are community group homes for them here.

I’ve already had in-depth conversation about what’s going on in our groups, and I visited Carol+Tenney’s house to hang out with their group last Tuesday evening. I’ve got a page in my notebook already full of directions/points/questions/discussions about community groups. Chad has a shelf full of books on the subject that I can peruse.

To wrap it up with the clothes metaphor, this role feels like my favorite thing to wear. At school, on Fridays: jeans, sneakers, shirt+tie. I’m excited that my leadership this fall includes observing, learning, supporting, and encouraging in the area of community groups.

This past Sunday, I brought back something we’d done when Second Mile was still about a dozen people meeting in Chad’s living room. When we were small, we found ways to do this often, and I thought it might be useful+fun to try and do it with seven or eight dozen people.

I found some vintage-y images of boxing matches to represent conflict (I’ve avoided saying “pictures of boxers” because it doesn’t necessarily refer to what I mean) and allowed people to process the conflict in their lives visually. I’d love to hear what people thought of this little experiment, so post a comment on the Facebook link or send me a note via the question/comment/note link at the top of my blog.

I kind of like that I talked about imitating Jesus by facing up to and resolving conflict yesterday at Second Mile, and then the NFL lockout ended today with a hug between New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Indianapolis Colts center Jeff Saturday.

The contentious work stoppage between NFL owners and players is an example of conflicts we hear about in the news that are separated from our ordinary universe. I am not a powerful business man who owns an NFL franchise. I am not a large man who is sidekick to one of the best QBs of all time. But I still have to work to bring resolution to conflict in my life.

One of my goals for this summer is to add a Global page to Second Mile’s website. That’s been in the plans for awhile now, but it just so happened that a few obstacles slowed progress.

The biggest of those obstacles: purpose. I knew I wanted to include M3, our partnership in East Asia, and Eric and Dejah’s work with Outside the Bowl in Tijuana. However, I didn’t know why. Why should we include that info on our website? What is the use of making those connections public knowledge?

I wondered if it was enough to have them be a part of the ethos of Second Mile without being included on the website. I didn’t want the sole reason for those connections’ presence on the web to be a kind of showing off to those who might come across the site looking for a church. We don’t support those projects because we want to appear missional; we are involved in them because we are missional—which does not require the internet.

Tonight, however, I understand the purpose: prayer. When Chad talked about Philemon tonight, one of the things he mentioned was how Paul always tells the people he’s writing to that he is remembering them in prayer. Then, Billy and Erica shared their plans for mission work, and we prayed for them as we sent them out, and it clicked.

The best use of a Global page at this point is to help Second Mile know how we can remember people in prayer. Specifically, people in faraway places who are connected to this community of believers in Tucson.

Alex Mar is currently working with Samaritan’s Purse in efforts to provide relief to the people of Sudan. It’s a tad surreal to me knowing that someone I know is doing something to help in an internationally renown area of conflict and poverty. Since many of you know Alex, as well, I thought it would be worth me sending him a few questions about what he’s doing, and he was kind enough to take a break from managing the operations of a humanitarian organization’s base to send me answers back.

What has living in such a volatile region been like?

Alex: Actually, pretty normal. As close as we are to the conflict, we’re still far enough removed that it doesn’t directly affect us very much. And honestly, being foreigners working for an American NGO removes us even further from any real danger. So for us, it’s mainly keeping tabs on the news and security updates from the UN. But for our national staff, it’s a different story. Many of our staff have friends, relatives, and/or homes in the regions currently in conflict.

How close have you been to violence?

Alex: We’re about a couple hour drive from Abyei, and maybe half a day from the Nuba mountains, where most of the violence is happening now. There are smaller skirmishes here and there, but nothing has reached within a 4 hour drive from us.

How do you see the people of the region being affected?

Alex: In our area, the people in Aweil, the largest nearby town, are most affected by the price and availability of food and fuel, which they’ve been getting from Khartoum until the roads closed recently. But there have been thousands of families from the northern areas that have relocated with few, if any, resources to camps throughout the region. These people are forced to set up fragile shelters and scrounge for food. Some are lucky enough to find open hand pumps for water, but most have very limited access to a clean water source if the surrounding towns aren’t willing to integrate them into their communities.

What has your role been for your organization?

Alex: I signed on as an intern and ended up at Samaritan’s Purse’s largest base in South Sudan, where we run a huge church rebuilding program and a Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) program supported by 3 different grants, 2 of them government funded. After our team gave up trying to get me to make coffee for them, they made me the Base Systems Manager, whose main role is to set up systems to improve the operation of our programs. Since our WASH program is government-funded and has more detailed requirements, I’ve been working on setting up systems to track all of the expenses involved in running our program, like inventory, fuel, and labor, and allocating those costs to each of our grantors. In addition to that, I’m also managing our compound and living quarters.

How has this matched up with your expectations of what you’d be doing in Sudan?

Alex: I came here wanting to see what international relief work really looked like, and in that sense, it’s been a huge success. Humanitarian organizations look much different in the field than I imagined, and I’m learning a lot being here. I thought I’d be doing more hands-on work with Sudanese communities, but I the job I’m doing has been sorely needed for a while, so I’m glad to do it.

What is God showing you through this experience?

Alex: I think God is showing me how much of my understanding of Him has been built by my community and my environment, for better and for worse. Just a few days ago, I was feeling pretty sick and one of our cooks, a wonderful Sudanese woman named Rebecca, who I can’t even communicate with (she doesn’t speak English), walked over and prayed that I’d be healed. Also, yesterday (July 9^th) was South Sudan’s Independence and first day as a sovereign country after decades of war and oppression. I’ve had to force myself to remember that the God who has been present in my life has also been present here for so much longer, and is a lot bigger than I realize.

Monday morning, I was praying to Jesus about stress. This summer has been a nice decrescendo into mellow days. I didn’t realize how wound-up I was at the end of the school year, but now I do, and I was asking Jesus about that.

The reality of my theology is that Jesus knows the origin of all that stress, and also that I can ask him about it. I was asking for wisdom as to how to not live in a such a way, and since then, the Holy Spirit has been answering that prayer this week.

The strangest thing about the answers? A pinata metaphor. Yes. I thought of all the stress I build up over Things That Could Be Worked On, Things Not Yet Completed, Things I Would Love To Someday Work On Or Complete, Things That Are Really More Ideas Than Actual Things But Would Make Wonderful Things If I Could Ever Get Them Beyond The Idea Stage, etc.

The pinata metaphor applies to those assorted Things as such: either break it or take it down. This summer has been a wonderful time of completing tiny little projects*, and it’s made me realize how many Things I Leave Hanging there are. Instead, I need to either get them done in a timely manner or knock them off the to-do list completely.

After asking Jesus about how not to live with so much stress, a pinata really did come to mind. Then, I specifically remember thinking about how strange yet applicable that metaphor was to my particular prayer**. Too many times I have left myself wondering which pinata to swing at, or swung*** at one while wishing I could swing at another, or kept hanging up more and more pinatas while not bothering to pick up the bat and knock a few down first.

The point of this metaphor is that I believe the Holy Spirit was telling me to guard not just my time, but my tasks. I need to be aware of Things God Would Have Me Focus On vs. Things I Think Would Be Fun And/Or Possible or Things I Wish I Could Do Now Or Perhaps Soon. I’m a dreamer who needs to keep my eyes on the path ahead of me, not up in the clouds.

*I’m keeping a Done List this summer. It’s like the opposite of a To-Do List, which I find give me a great amount of trepidation about what my future should hold. This Done List reminds that there are also Things Completed.

**I only remembered the Volkswagen commercial later. It’s not a perfect representation, but the frustration exhibited by the little boy and then the dad is pretty accurate, so I went with that video.

***The inclusion of the verb “swung” is for Christy and the other folks who asked about the past tense of “swing” at the Seeds Mtg.

I so very much loved Sunday’s sermon. Storytelling resonates personally with me (it’s even what I named my company) and I’ve been mulling over it all day. I keep thinking upon the point that we are all called to be storytellers. I think it is so important to listen, understand and hear the stories of others not just to develop empathy and compassion, but because these stories feed off of each other, constantly altering and redirecting plot lines. I keep picturing sound waves bouncing off each other, impressing upon each other, influencing and affecting the living breathing organism that is OUR story. Our story of Second Mile. Our story in God’s ministry.

As I was thinking about it, Jesus story was not autonomous. His story was not just his own, but also the story of Mary, of Zacchaeus, of Ponchus Pilot. Often in the Gospel, Jesus chose to tell his story through the stories of those around him. We know he is merciful not because he says “I am merciful,” but because He introduced us to a woman at a well and told us her parched story of healed brokenness. We know he is empathetic not because he says “I will come and cry with you,” but because he participates in Lazarus’s story of death and new life. I know that Jesus loves me, not because I have ever heard Jesus audibly utter those words, but because I have been told Peter’s bitter and heartbreaking story of denial. Because Jesus still went to the cross for Peter, I start to understand what Jesus means when he talks about forgiveness. Through Peter’s story, I begin to understand Jesus’ kind of love, the kind of love he has for me.

Not only does this start to help me understand my story with Jesus, but also my story with all of you. The kind of protagonist I am/become is directly related to the kind of supporting character (or perhaps even antagonist) I am in each of your stories.

Thanks Scott. I’m so excited for this series.

Laura