A Pilgrim’s Odyssey

Getting Real

This is life.

 

You are born into a family. One of differing degrees of function.

You grow up and are educated in some way.

You develop interests and hobbies.

You have triumphs, tragedies, and plenty of muddling. Hopefully more triumphs.

You work, you raise a family or you don’t.

You get old.

You die.

 

That is it.

So why not get real? Why focus on distractions? 

Our culture has become one of fantasy and when you get real, this culture gets threatened. Reality is dangerous.

12 Strong

Real heroes are all around us. Some of you might have seen the Chris Hemsworth movie, 12 Strong, about the Army Special Forces sent to Afghanistan after 9/11, the first in who worked with the Northern Alliance to overthrow the Taliban, from horseback!

This week in Texas I was honored to have one of the 12 in a class I was teaching and it reminded me of the heroes all around us. Remember them all, especially on this Veterans Day.

In The Sun, I Feel As One

Recently, I went on a short journey, a sort of pilgrimage to the childhood home of Kurt Cobain in Aberdeen, Washington. Thankfully, it was all I expected.

A Journey Into The Cascades

I’ve been on the road, reflecting. The times are a changing. Who will be our Bob Dylan? Where are we going? I’m no great musician, but I have some thoughts. And I have some stories.

I was north of Seattle, at the Tulalip Casino speaking to a group of fire commissioners. I took a road into the Cascades, the Alps of America! It was an amazing drive along highway 20 through green valleys and soaring mountains.

On the way back, I stopped in Rockport, a small community of 109 and home to the Bald Eagle Interpretive Center and a great hole in the wall pub, the Rockport Bar and Grill. A good time ensued.

Our Grief And Fear

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” CS Lewis from a Grief Observed

One definition or understanding of grief is: “Grief is the conflicting feelings caused by the end of or change in a familiar pattern of behavior.”

The end of something brings an unknown. Venturing into the unknown can bring fear. Fear can paralyze us in our grief, and keep us from something new that could help us out of our grief.

A recent spate of CS Lewis quotes on the internet made me think of this, and also the incredible amount of change and unknowns we have seen the last few years. It started long before Covid with political and social upheaval.

Operating from fear can bring out our worst evils. Living bravely, in spite of unknowns, can bring out our best. It is a choice we make time and again, throughout our lives. How will you choose?

On Despair And Hopelessness

Sometimes the only comfort one can find when hopeless is understanding that you are the not only one who has felt that way. Yet, even that faint bit of connectedness usually offers little reprieve.

Our community was rocked the last few days by the suicide of young man, just 15 and the son of missionaries. Many tears, much confusion and sadness, but thankfully, an outpouring of support for his family.

It’s a topic I speak on almost every week somewhere around our big country. Even with this frequency of addressing the topic, every life given up to this horror is poignant to me.

What would I have you consider? How do I address this? These won’t be easy words.

Suicide is the result of what I call lonely logic. Alone in your head, it seems like the only solution to your despair.

The greater the pain, the greater we feel isolated and alone. The harder it is to ask for help.

How well do you really know your family and friends? Do you stop to sit still and listen to them? Do you really take the time to know their dreams and struggles, their triumphs and sorrows, their disappointments and joys?

Who really knows you? Anyone?

Suicide is a disease of disconnectedness and its evil father, despair.

Don’t sit there. Be proactive. Relationships are suicide prevention. I’m not going to give you a Bible verse because I know what God wants you to do. He wants you to love each other. In a real relationship. Deeply.

Predators And Everyday Saints

I’ve met some remarkable people the last month traveling for Maine to Seattle and everywhere in between. They are people that will probably never make the news, but they are truly the best of us.

- His childhood one of abandonment, his mother an addict, he is a survivor and responder.

- Given away from his mother in the 8^th grade, he was on his own at 16 and is now a Fire Chief with a family rich in love and achievement.

- In spite of incredible physical and mental hardships to overcome by him and his wife, they adopted 3 children needing a home and built a family of love and service.

Then today, I read an article about Peter Thiel, the founder of Paypal and a billionaire. The type of businessman both revered and reviled for many for his often contrarian conservative ways. At the end of the article it describes him in the following way:

Today, he lives in Vienna, Austria, with his long-time partner, Matt Danzeisen, whom he married in 2017, and now co-parents a baby daughter. Though he’s avoided the limelight in recent years, he is still feared by many. As anti-monopoly activist Matt Stoller told Chafkin: He’s “a nihilist, a really smart nihilist. He’s entirely about power — it’s the law of the jungle: ‘I’m a predator and the predators win.’ ”

Pondering this all, I was brought back to the basics by The Ancient Faith Bible. It is an edition of the CSB filled with narrative from Church fathers of the 1^st to 4^th centuries. A sucker for new bibles, I stumbled upon it in a bookstore on a break and couldn’t put it down. A volume of insightful commentary from long dead Bishops and monks commenting on the word of God.

And that brought me back to the place I always end up. It is all vanity, save Family, Faith, and Community.

Many Rivers To Cross

The great Jimmy Cliff wrote:

Many rivers to cross
But I can't seem to find my way over
Wandering I am lost
As I travel along the white cliffs of Dover

They are the lyrics of a beautiful and winsome song, the ode of a life traveler beaten down, but still moving forward.

It seems lately, I’ve been crossing a lot of rivers, from Seattle to Maine and now I’m somewhere in the middle in Wisconsin. Often weary, I keep traveling and I’ve experienced some magical things that keep me moving forward.

In Kitsap County, outside of Seattle I heard some amazing stories. Actually, some miraculous stories. A miraculous grocery store bailout and a well timed reading of –

Mark 11:23 “Truly[a] I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.

There is a richness of life you can only find in listening to others and allowing them to reveal themselves. On a computer screen or phone, life can become one-dimensional, just an assortment of pixels. In person, in the presence of another, you are reminded of why the answer to life is living, is loving, is experiencing this world around us.

You have many rivers to cross. When we open our eyes and ears to other people with no other filter than our hearts, we find wonder.

So We Blew Up An Aid Worker

For those who don’t trust America, this is a good reason why. We bomb aid workers so our leaders can act tough.

From the NY Times:

“President Joe Biden murdered an innocent family when the US military conducted a "righteous strike" on Aug. 29 against a vehicle that American officials thought was an ISIS bomb that posed an imminent threat to thousands of people at the Kabul airport.”

“In a late Friday afternoon report, the New York Times reveals that "Military officials said they did not know the identity of the car’s driver when the drone fired, but deemed him suspicious because of how they interpreted his activities that day, saying that he possibly visited an ISIS safe house and, at one point, loaded what they thought could be explosives into the car."

“Times reporting has identified the driver as Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime worker for a U.S. aid group. The evidence, including extensive interviews with family members, co-workers and witnesses, suggests that his travels that day actually involved transporting colleagues to and from work. And an analysis of video feeds showed that what the military may have seen was Mr. Ahmadi and a colleague loading canisters of water into his trunk to bring home to his family.”

“While the U.S. military said the drone strike might have killed three civilians, Times reporting shows that it killed 10, including seven children, in a dense residential block.”

“Mr. Ahmadi, 43, had worked since 2006 as an electrical engineer for Nutrition and Education International, a California-based aid and lobbying group. The morning of the strike, Mr. Ahmadi’s boss called from the office at around 8:45 a.m., and asked him to pick up his laptop.”

Why did we do this? To strike back at ISIS-K who killed our young Marines, a Navy Corpsman, and a soldier at the KABUL airport. But we did it blindly, and we lied about it. And this is why our actions must matter, and be more than statements. We must stand for what we believe.

Toyota, Supply Chains, And You

New cars, especially popular new cars can be hard to find, and a long wait if you order. This has resulted in skyrocketing used car prices. But one manufacturer has been almost immune to the computer chip shortage that has plagued auto-manufacturers, Toyota. At a time where American manufacturers have experienced incredibly decreased production, GM at 60%, Ford at 50%, Toyota has led the world by staying at over 90% production.

How did they do this? They predicted the supply problem if chip production was ever disrupted, and they stock-piled computer chips. Pretty simple, huh?

As the article I was reading in Fortune magazine about this said,

“Unlike many of its rivals, Toyota essentially stockpiles chips. That’s a deviation from JIT, which dictates that supplies reach the production line only when they are needed. (Stockpiles occupy valuable space on the factory floor, as well as on the company’s books.) In practice, Toyota’s suppliers do the actual stockpiling. Like all automakers, the company relies on a multitude of components that contain semiconductors, such as smart displays or audio systems. Toyota requires suppliers of those components to maintain up to a six months’ buffer supply of chips dedicated to Toyota orders—just in case.”

Now why I do bring this up? Because we can learn in these uncertain times from Toyota. Identify what you need to “stockpile” and do so.

And it might not just be goods. How about stockpiling time with your family and friends? How about building relationships with people you’d need in a time of need. How about building your “spiritual” home for future threats to your faith?

When you are caught short-handed, it is too late to stockpile. We also tend to make bad decisions during times of crisis. We make short-sighted corrections that lead to worse problems. Just look at our responses to Covid.

Preparation is a common biblical theme:

Proverbs 20:4

The sluggard does not plow in the autumn; he will seek at harvest and have nothing.

Proverbs 24:27

Prepare your work outside; get everything ready for yourself in the field, and after that build your house.

Luke 21:36

But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.

Hebrews 11:7

By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.