Teriyaki friends

There's a lot I miss about living in Seattle, like the teriyaki chicken restaurants that seemed to be everywhere. I went to the Mall of America for lunch today because I was craving teriyaki chicken and knew of a place that served it there. What a disappointment. Chewy, fatty chicken, bland sauce. It seems impossible to find good teriyaki chicken in Minneapolis.

I also miss the friends I had in Seattle. It's hard to maintain friendships when you move around as much as I do. Did. You probably notice the absence of many other people in the pictures I post. (There wouldn't be room for them anyway, seeing how my shoe is in every other shot.) I know a few people here in the twin cities, but not well enough to call up or do the pop in with. I've got a large extended family nearby, and that is super-fantastic-wonderful. But not the same as having good friends.

How does a forty-year-old man go about making friends? Join a softball team? Writers group? Church functions? Take up electric guitar lessons and join a Motley Crue tribute band?

Maybe I'll make a lot of money and then buy some friends.

And then I'll also have fresh teriyaki chicken flown directly from Seattle at least once a week.

Or maybe I'll just keep taking pictures of my shoe.

Brit's

It's been a dickens of a week.

I called up the guys and asked them to meet me at Brit's Pub for a pint and to watch Aston Villa get spanked by Manchester United. I don't care how impetuous Rooney is, he's worth the grief.

One of our favorite places in town to catch a good soccer match, I left there feeling renewed and ready for whatever the weeks ahead may bring.

Interview

My buddy John looks deep in thought as he's being interviewed by a newspaper out in Virginia. For you arm chair travelers, you can read all about his latest adventures to East Timor in Southeast Asia here.

Documentary group at sea

My buddy John with Nat. Geo. is on a Navy ship filming for three weeks. He and I started a Doc Group a few years ago, and he's showing the films on the ship. First documentary group on a Navy ship at sea...

Blogging award

Kim over at Ramblings of the Bearded One has written some nice words about me on his blog. Thanks, Kim, for the award and for the many thoughtful comments over these past few months. They truly have helped lighten the load ever so much.

Thanking a friend

This month I am participating in NaBloPoMo, a month long writing exercise that occurs annually in November. I found out about it via my friend Isabel over at Beyond the Map. Her entry today was especially meaningful to me because, well, it's about me!

Thanks Isabel! Your words were very touching; I'm so glad we discovered each other's blogs and are able to continue to share our lives together.

Barbeque

We went over to some friend's house on Saturday night for a barbeque. Annie met Sarah through a children's developement group a year or so ago and they have become good friends. Sarah's from London and has been married to Rob for about five years, and their son, Gabriel, is around Silvi's age. It's fun to watch the two kids interact and grow up together.

On the way to work in the mornings, I've been listening to some mp3's from Covenant Seminary. They've been examining the teachings of Christ in the Synoptic Gospels, and one particular point struck me as I thought about the barbeque. I've only met Rob once before, and, as is often the case, chit-chat does not come easy to me. I think it's because I'm so self-aware, and probably spend much of the conversation wondering what the other person thinks of what I am saying. The curse of the people pleaser. Sometimes I'm not the best of listeners.

But Christ didn't have this protective wall around him. He could put people at ease because he was at ease with himself. He didn't struggle with wanting affirmation or a bad self-image. Christ was the world's best listener.

To become more like him is to lose the masks we wear, giving us opportunities for genuine conversations.

Teachers

We need good teachers. I've had a few. We need teachers who will challenge our beliefs, who will not only agree with what we believe, but also call us in new directions. A few of my teachers:

Brett.
Brett is a modern-day mystic. In many ways, I am not. Rather, I tend to be a mystic in the company of pragmatists, and a pragmatist in the company of mystics. I'm a contrarian. Brett and I met regularly for coffee by Green Lake in Seattle. We talked into the evenings as the sun set over the many rollerbladers and joggers circling the city lake. Brett taught me to be comfortable with questions, to allow paradox it's place. As I pushed for cohesion, he quietly made room for contradiction. Brett lives the Mystery. And he continues to teach me.

Kevin.
Kevin was my boss when I worked for Summit Ministries. He and I spent hours debating - arguing. He was Reformed Presbyterian. I was... well, I don't know what I was. Just not Reformed. Kevin was very well read, knowledgable in many areas of classical apologetics. The New Age movement, Postmodernism, Secular Humanism, Relativism. I (without knowing it at the time) sided with the existentialists. The "concretists." Those whose launching point for understanding the world was the lived life, not the abstract world of ideas. Kevin unintentionally drove me to voracious reading binges, searching for the vocabulary to battle his world view. He was eloquent in his arguements while I stumbled and stuttered my way in the world of thought. Although he would be horrified to know it, he helped guide me away from "absolutes" and "objectivity" to the beautiful and terrifying leap of faith.

Liam.
Some teachers need speak only a few words. Liam was a professor (who I never had) at Mars Hill Graduate School. He also is the founder of Lothlorien, a study and retreat center modeled after L'Abri. I only had three conversations with Liam, but he opened new vistas for me to explore. He taught me that my suffering is not a "lesser-suffering." The pain I experience on a daily basis - loneliness, doubt, anxiety, etc. - is just as legitimate as the pain suffered by those in less fortunate countries. Just because I have a full stomach does not mean that my suffering is of no concern to God. Liam also taught me to be practical in my philosophy. Concrete. And he also allowed me to call myself a "writer."

Brent.
I had the opportunity to know Brent before he died in a rock climbing accident. Annie and I attended his conference on The Sacred Romance, and I have never been the same since. My conversations with him led to a true paradigm shift in my thinking about God, theology, philosophy, literature and film. He offered me water when I was dying of thirst.

I hope you have good teachers.

A poem

Over at Brett's blog, he wrote a great poem called Mom's Day. Check it out here.

Souls of generations
in the eyes of my son
Oh, that I could be found worthy
of such a gift

Reconnecting

(revised) It's been very different than I imagined, this reconnecting with people I haven't talked to in twenty years. I woke up thinking about these "kids" I spent nearly four years with in high school. I've heard back from four of them so far, with details on a fifth.

It's making me think of things I hadn't thought of in... well, twenty years. The sand dunes in New Jersey on our senior trip. Writing a rather bad play for the student talent show. Singing a solo. Yes, a solo. It's a good thing, getting back in touch. It's fun to find out how twelve others who started out much like me crafted their lives. And "the good ole' days" can all too often maintain a mythological hold on us. It's important to make it real again. Concrete. Lived. Breathed.

It's good to go back. From time-to-time.

A sure sign

One sure sign that you're speeding toward the edge of a midlife crisis? You sign up at Classmates.com. Next week marks 20 years since graduating for high school. I know it may open up a can of worms, but I'm starting a blog over at summitreunion.wordpress.com and am trying to get everyone in my graduating class to contribute. (There were eleven of us, so that makes it a little easier) I've been in contact with two classmates so far. It'll be interesting to see where this goes...

Community?

Some friends I haven't seen in a long time stopped over last night to see Silvi. One of them is in the process of leaving his church of eight years or so. I say in the process because he still enjoys listening to the sermons, but he has no fellowship with the huge congregation.

He attended a conference in Colorado put on by Aussies Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, where they spoke of their book, The Shaping of Things to Come. I'd never heard of the book, but I guess it's stirring the waters. My friend and I talked about it, about incarnational living, about this whole community thing. I enjoyed the conversation, but I woke up feeling very frustrated.

I just want to get there. Wherever there is. I've been actively deconstructing Church for nearly five years, and it is so old. Once, when I lived in Seattle, I spent a few hours sitting overlooking the Puget Sound with a prof. from Mars Hill Grad School. We talked about breaking out of the deconstruction circle. He believes that it is possible to break free, at least enough to find some rest. He said that what's often lacking is someone to come along side of us and say, "Psst. Look over here. Here's a small door you can walk through. And I'll go with you.

I feel like I've been walking through a lot of doors. Which one is the small door?And who will go with me?

But I digress into self-pity again. I just need to serve more, read my Bible more, pray more, be Missional. No, no. I just need to do less, allow God's voice to penetrate the silence, become less and less. Wait, I've done all those things. What's on tv?

Scriptwriting

I've written a lot of video scripts over the years. I got my first professional writing job in Colorado, writing science scripts for public school educational videos. I worked for a small production company where I also learned how to shoot and edit these programs. My boss and I became friends, and we would roam around the Rocky mountains in his truck, looking for shots of vascular plants or the changing aspen leaves, listening to Lyle Lovett and talking about his favorite author, William Faulkner.

I struggled to write those scripts. Piles of biology textbooks, hours of research at the library. Revision after revision. I wanted to write programs that would inspire, would make the audience weep. Not science videos for tenth-graders to fall asleep to in Miss Crump's biology class. It was tough.

Looking back, I really don't think much about the writing. Instead, I think of the time my boss and I ran down a dirt road high in the mountains, trying to get a shot of a hawk in a tree. I remember being offered a cappuccino by an orderly while filming a man being "violated" during a cryogenic prostate surgery. And I remember the "power lunches" my boss and I would take, where we would sit for hours and talk about life and God and Jasper Johns and video equipment.

I don't know if I'll ever write those scripts that will inspire people. But I do know that I was inspired while writing some rather dry science videos over a decade ago.