Leash

This is our dog.

This dog...I don't know about this dog.

This dog…I don’t know about this dog.

I have a like/dislike relationship with this dog.  He is a couple of years old, but still jumps all over everyone who tries to come into the house including my mother who can barely walk right now.  He spends several minutes barking every night, so I’ll look out the door to see what is happening, only to find he is barking at his kennel.  For the last year or so, he has been on a 50′ leash, tied near the corner of our house so he has access to his kennel, food, water and a bit of room to run around if he wants it.   Unfortunately the leash is necessary.  When he is not connected to the leash, without fail he finds his way over to our neighbors homes.  If we allowed him to run free, he would be turned over to the dog warden, or potentially hit and killed on the roads that are near our home.  So while the leash is not our preferred solution, we have done our best to keep him safe and at home.

On Monday, he managed to wear out his leash.  It isn’t the first time he has broken the rope, so we just tied it back together again and returned to life as normal.

On Wednesday night I came back from two days in Indy, a little tired from working on various projects.  I walked in to the garage, and as is typical, was immediately pounced upon by our dog.  After fighting him down and scratching his ears for a few minutes, I noticed that his leash was detached again.  I made sure the garage doors were closed with him inside and went to bed.

The next day I found out that our delinquent dog, had seemingly mended his ways, our roaming rover roamed no more!  The broken leash still held him!  Apparently the leash had been broken for several days, and our wandering whiner had stuck close to home.

What is going on in this mutts head?  I would hate to try it, but I bet if I took the little remnant of yellow rope from his collar, he would be at the neighbors before we knew it.  What is it about this short thread of nylon clipped on to his collar that holds him back?  The leash itself has been severed, but it is as if its influence is still strong.  Is he afraid that at any moment the leash will become whole again and hold him back?   Judging from his behavior when he is not leashed, our dog longs to have the freedom to roam where he will.  Now, when he is free, he is willingly subjecting himself to captivity.

In late 2012 I started making plans to free myself from a job that I was no longer passionate about, that I no longer had the energy to give to it that it deserved.  I felt like I was being lead to pursue other projects.  I had made a personal commitment to stay on the job until a suitable replacement was found, so I hunkered down for what I hoped would be a short wait.  It was almost 18 months later when a replacement was finally hired to take over.  My leash was finally broken.

I have to admit that the visions of my “leash-less” future were pretty grand.  I already had three fairly serious projects lined up that I wanted to work on when my time was mine.   Instead I find that I still feel like I am living in the same captivity that has held me for years.  Sure there are a few unexpected circumstances that have changed the equation for me a little bit, but I begin to suspect that there will always be circumstances outside of my control that limit the time I have available.  I have found myself with an abundance of time just sitting and thinking, which would be a perfect opportunity to work on one of my projects in particular, but I find myself afraid to start.  Instead of making the smallest strides towards completing the project, I make excuses.

So what is holding me back?  Maybe there is a small thread of my former leash that is still dangling from my neck, powerless to actually hold me, but the memory of its pull is strong?  Maybe I am afraid of the becoming tied up again?  Maybe I don’t think I deserve the freedom I have found, or maybe I just want to wait until I feel like even the shred of leash still around my neck is completely removed.  I am as confused as our poor dog.  Unsure of what this new freedom means.

Our dog may not be “free” forever; as soon as he crosses out of our property, things will have to go back to the old ways.  He will have to relearn the way of the leash, before he can be trusted again.  While no one is subjugating me, no one is holding me captive, I have to realize that the freedom I do have right now, may not last forever.  I would be a fool to not take advantage of my broken leash, especially since I don’t know how much time I will have.  Instead of complaining or making excuses, I hope to take advantage of the freedom that I do have, I hope to make a better use of my time than I have to this moment.

Is there a scrap of leash still tied around your neck?  Are you still being held back by something that should have stopped having power over you a long time ago?  Maybe it is a relationship that went wrong but the emotional pain still holds you tight?  A dream that is lost, but you aren’t willing to accept your new reality?  Could it be that you are letting past sins and mistakes hold onto you?

Friend, I encourage you to identify the remnants of leash holding you, and do whatever it takes to eliminate its influence in your life.  Maybe you need to share your story with a trusted friend, or spend time in prayer approaching God for reassurance of forgiveness.  It could be that you need to forget a failed relationship, and start to open up your heart to take a few (calculated) risks again.  Of course the opposite could be true, and maybe it is time to stop letting the desire for a relationship run your life.  I could go for days and days creating hypothetical situations, and if you want to talk about your situation with a real person, I’d love to listen and offer what little wisdom I may have.

Maybe things aren’t as clear as all that though, maybe you feel trapped because you really are in captivity.  It could be addiction, debt, unfaithfulness, or just sin in general.  Maybe you are trapped in a dead end job and afraid to try to break free.  Don’t just accept your leash.  Go read John 8:31-36 and let me know if you find in those few short verses the freedom you have been seeking.  If you want extra credit, read the whole chapter!

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You can be free…our dog on the other hand…let’s just wait and see.

Super Special Bonus Content:  “So am I” ~ William Shatner    I promise you won’t regret this following this link!  

Entropy

Sometimes I can be a little bit, shall we say, fatalistic?  I somewhat relish the idea that some things are inevitable.  It takes a lot of pressure out of the situation to know that the final result is unchanging.  So when people talk about the inevitability of death, sickness, or taxes, for me there is a small little bit of peace in the finality of it all.  It is as if my internal monologue is reassuring itself with something to the effect of “We can’t change this, so let’s just accept this and move on, okay?”   That finality is not something I’ve really been afraid to embrace.

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Tonight I walked outside with a box of stuff that I needed to dispose of, and since we live in the country I put the box in our burning barrel and lit it on fire.  In those brief moments before the light from the fire began to overwhelm my night vision, I leaned back and looked up at the stars.  On nights like tonight in the country, you can see stars everywhere.  They run up and down, back and forth across the inky expanse of the night sky.   The stars letting in light like fabric with far too many pinpricks in it to still be worn as clothing.  Some areas were brilliantly concentrated sections of light, and others sporadic and distanced.

The flickering light of the fire began to distract me, and I looked over to see flaming drips of plastic falling further down into the barrel, almost like the shooting stars I sometimes see on nights like tonight.  First a small burst of light that goes out almost before you can recognize that it was really there, and then a lingering stare, as if by looking harder you can bring the starry streak back again.  I watched as these shooting stars of flame fell, igniting the trash below it.  I watched as the fire crawled up the side of the box, unmaking the things in its path, taking away their form and function.

I have witnessed the effects of fire many times before tonight, but this time the simple little exothermic reaction I had created sent a shiver through my soul.  You see, every fire has a few common characteristics: fuel, an oxidizer, heat.  One other thing that fire always seems to carry with it is entropy.  Very loosely stated, entropy is the measurement of disorder in a system.

If you’ve made it through a high school level science class, you’ve probably heard at some point or another that energy can not be created or destroyed, that energy can only be changed in form. Of course if that was the whole story, then fire would just be a restructuring of energy.  Stored energy would become released energy in the form of heat, that would interact with the larger system around it and the effects would ripple down the line forever.

Except that isn’t the whole story.

Entropy can also be defined as energy that is no longer available to the system.  Energy that is no longer usable as energy.  Energy that has seemingly been destroyed.

You know what is even more terrifying?

Increased entropy is the natural result of unguided actions.  All we have to do for entropy to increase, is to let the world do its own thing.  Entropy naturally increases as the world moves from a state of order, to disorder.  Every second, more and more energy is lost to our system (i.e. the universe) and removed from the equation around us.  Every second.  My little fire wasn’t just unmaking the stuff in the fire, in effect I was participating in unmaking a part of the universe.  Forever.

So I got pretty freaked out when I started thinking about it.  I’ve actively unmade part of the universe, and I can’t remake it.  I can’t fix it.  I’ve pushed the universe one step closer to it’s inevitable end!   That’s what happens you see…eventually the universe runs out of energy.  Beautiful stars die after spending all their fuel, leaving behind frozen planets and broken orbits.  One by one the stars becomes more distant, more separated, more isolated, until nothing visible remains, just darkness, the absence of light.

A total buzzkill on a beautiful starry night, right?

There are very few Bible verses that I personally find really comforting, I just don’t really get into “life verses” or motivational applications of popular verses.  I believe in the meaning of the whole bible, but I just don’t find comfort in most verses without the context of the rest of the bible surrounding it.  There is of course an exception.  If I had to summarize the whole Bible in one small phrase, I would choose this phrase from Revelation 21:5.  “Behold, I am making all things new.”  If you gave me one more phrase I would continue with Revelation 21:6 “I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the End.  To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.”.

In a universe that is quite literally tearing itself apart, in one phrase I can know that all things will be made new.  In that phrase, the Alpha (the beginning) and the Omega (the end) have told me all that I need to know.  In that one sentence, you can find God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the ultimate being that is outside of time, promising to make all things new.  Granted this small sentence is somewhat sparse on the details of how and why and when he will make all things new, but for me, this one promise is enough.  God is going to make everything new.  I don’t know how, but I know that he will.  Jesus didn’t just defeat sin and death on the cross, he also defeated the inevitable, he defeated entropy.

In a universe that is inevitably hurtling towards eternal darkness, only the beginning and the end can say “Let there be light”.

For a great science fiction short story I stumbled across the other day by Isaac Asimov (that admittedly inspired this post) check out “The Last Question”.

Watch 29 (2013-2014)

I’ve finally done it.  After years and years of struggle and adversity,  I’ve become a stereotype.  Today happens to be my birthday, and I’ve just taken 20 or so hours worth of steps into a whole new decade in life.  It is somewhat fitting that I would find my way to being a stereotype on my birthday, especially this particular stereotype.  I’m the guy who is 30 and still living in his parents house!

Some might say that I’ve not achieved anything of note, but I would like to remind them that I have been working towards this for 30 years!  When is the last time you achieved anything after 30 years of work?  Exactly.  Let me just have this moment.  Okay…that’s long enough.

Now this isn’t true in every case of a 30 year old living in his parents house, but I happen to be one of those people who does not yet have kids.  While I don’t have kids, I do know a few people who have them, and the other day I heard on the radio a list of questions that kids like to ask that adults find themselves struggling to explain.  The one that really blew my mind was deceptively simple at first, until I tried to explain it to myself.   Just imagine an adorably small, cute, little voice asking you the following question.

“What is time?”

Go ahead…try to answer it.  Explain it to the questioning little face hovering around your knee expecting you to have the answer.   Explain to them this concept that dictates our days, hours, minutes, this infernal ticking menace that tells us when to get up and when to go to bed.  Tell them all about this great master that orders our days and measures our years.  Tell your child what time is!

I had to ask Wikipedia.

Time

Every year on my birthday, I have a bit of a tradition.  I purchase a new watch and retire my old one.  If God doesn’t have other plans, I hope to have a decent collection of watches that I intend to have displayed at my eventual funeral.   I just bought my 4th watch since starting this tradition a few years ago, and I am still getting used to the smaller and less scratched face staring up at me from my wrist.  I don’t continue this tradition because I have any particular affection for purchasing new watches, and at roughly $40 or less, I’m not exactly purchasing heirloom quality stuff here.  I tend to wear the same clothes for decades, keep things well past their usefulness, and generally am not crazy about change.

So each year when I buy a new watch there is a bit of sadness.  A bit of tenderness for the year that has passed.  As I found myself preparing for the change this year, I discovered something new in my heart.

I really didn’t want this year to be over.

Birthdays have always been something I don’t broadcast loudly to the world, I’m just not a fan of the attention and small talk that comes with it.  I’ve never wanted to avoid the practical effect of a birthday though…why this year?

Well, as best as I can self analyse, I suspect it has a lot to do with finally reaching that stereotypical age of 30, while living in my parents home.  You see, I haven’t gotten as far along in life as most of my peers.  I don’t own a home, I don’t have a wife (or realistic expectations of one), I am not blessed with children of my own, and I lack a college degree and all the trappings of success that come along with it.  So as I reflected on where I find myself at 30, as I measured myself against “the standard”, I find myself lacking.

“What is time?” 

The best Wikipedia could do was “time is what keeps everything from happening at once”.  

Initially uncomforting, this seemingly simplistic definition has bounced around in my mind since I read it.  Even as simple as it was, I didn’t really understand it at first.  I knew what the words meant, and what the words meant in relation to each other, but it was still just an abstract concept that didn’t really bring forth the full weight of time.

Today I understood.

Most people have a song or two that speaks to them.  A piece of music that reaches down into their core and rips and tears and massages its way into your heart and life.  Imagine your favorite piece of music, all of the notes, sections, repeats, and choruses.  Now imagine them all playing at exactly the same moment.   It is meaningless noise.  Your favorite parts and their counterpoints are blended together into one giant mess of bleh!  It is meaningless…all of the beauty is stripped away.

Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.  Time brings order, beauty, and structure.  It divides sections, choruses, bridges, and refrains.  Time is in the breaks of the music, and time is in the climax.  Without it, the song is not a song.  All meaning is lost.

My 29th year has meaning because it happened in time.  My trips to Nicaragua and Haiti, my departure from my ministry position of 8 years, my mothers continued battle with cancer, all have meaning because they  happened in time.  I have grown and matured in ways I would not have expected, as a result of time passing.  Others around me have changed, and so have my relationships with them, again, because of the time that has passed in the last year.  If I had the option to play all of these moments at once, I would not be able to enjoy them or learn from them.  I do not know if this year has been a chorus, bridge, or refrain in my life, but I do know that without it, the whole of my time here on earth would not be complete.

Perhaps equally as importantly, I know that if God wills it, I could one day be living independently, I could feel the brush of my wifes lips against my cheek, and I could feel tiny little arms wrap themselves tightly around my knees and hear a tiny little voice ask me “Daddy, what is time?”.

These things could all happen, or they may not.

In the place of the above events, I could find my way overseas, taking photographs that change the world, or hiking the Appalachian trail from Georgia to Maine.  I could find myself dying from a gunshot wound in Syria, or beheaded on film for the world to marvel at, and then slowly forget.

Or it could be some unforeseen combination of all of the above, with things I have never even considered thrown in to change the tone and movement of my song.

I am grateful for the start of another measure, for more notes, for more time.  I’ll do my best to remember that my song may not sound like everyone elses, but that those differences will make my life meaningful to me.  Perhaps others will find inspiration in what they hear in my life, and a small theme from my song will work my way into theirs.

So as I reflect on my life so far, I encourage you to reflect on yours as well.  Are you playing the notes you want to?  Are you too busy focused on everyone elses song that you’ve forgotten to give yours the attentive ear it deserves?  Listen, listen for the ticking of the clock that is ordering events in your life into something beautiful and meaningful.  Wait patiently for the chorus, knowing that without the verse, the chorus means less.  Most importantly focus your attention on the conductor, master of time and space, as he offers direction and guidance, trust him to make your song beautiful and meaningful, and do not doubt him, even though it seems like he asking for the wrong thing.  He has the whole song in view, and we only know what is happening or has already passed.

Listen…the clock is ticking.

Previous watch posts:

The First Watch

Watch 28

Ecclesiastes 3

There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

    a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
    a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
    a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
    a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
    a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
    a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
    a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

Simplify

I have too much stuff.

I don’t mean a little too much, I mean a lot too much.  I recently found myself moving some of my stuff out of one building, back into my parents house (yes…I still live with my parents) and I had to take three trips to get it all home.  That isn’t just three trips with my Tahoe, but three trips with my 20′ cargo trailer.  I shuttled the stuff to two different places and did my best to jam it all into the amount of space I have access too.  That’s right, two different places.  I have a 10X15 storage unit that is completely full of other stuff.

I have too much stuff.

In my mind, there is a good justification for all the stuff, like the professional keyboard I bought that I can’t play at all.  I bought that to impress a girl, which seemed like a good enough reason at the time.  I’ve been thinking about learning to play it…for the last 10 years or so.  Hey, give me a break, I’m a little busy managing all my stuff to get around to learning to play…I’ll get to it eventually!   It’s just between working to pay for all this stuff, and then finding places to put it all, it proves to be difficult to find the time to actually use some of it.

Occasionally it is nice to be the owner of lots of stuff, I’ve gotten to be the hero a few times loaning stuff out to people who didn’t have the stuff I have, it’s been nice to support other people in their endeavors.  I recently helped a church record a pretty stellar worship CD by loaning out my recording rack and a few microphones.  I really enjoy helping other peoples dreams come true, and I’ve had the opportunity a few times as a result of having specific stuff.  Isn’t that justification enough?

I digress…

Not all of my stuff is equally useful.  I’m a nostalgic guy, and if something has been with me for a while, it eventually earns a place in my heart.  At this point it takes on an almost untouchable status in the pantheon of stuff.  One such item is a sweatshirt from high school that was from one of my favorite bands, I wore it so often that the cuffs of the sleeves got pretty worn out and eventually torn off.  I haven’t worn it for a few years, but I kept it in a place of honor on my chair.  Under a pile of clothes.  And a blanket.  And a towel.  Well I kept it, and I’m sure my life was better as a result.  I’ve included a picture so you can bask in it’s awesomeness.

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It’s like awesomeness that you wear.

That isn’t the best picture, so here is another one.

There it is...it's the black thing that is on fire. Yep.

There it is…it’s the black thing that is on fire. Yep.

Yeah…so here we get to the crux of this post.

I have too much stuff…and it is time to do something about it.

The stuff is not just inconvenient, it at times stands between me and who I want to be.  It keeps me anchored to a physical location and it costs me money, time, and energy that I want to be using elsewhere.  I don’t want to be like the rich young ruler who wanted to follow God, but was held back by his unwillingness to let go of his possessions.

I want to be able to respond to God’s call in my life and I do not want to move three trailers worth of stuff in order to do it.

So as you may have gathered from the above picture, I’ve started taking action.  It has been a slow process to even get to the point where I acknowledge I have a problem, and I think it will continue to be a slow process to reduce my possessions to a healthy amount.  I am still trying to figure out how I’ll know when I’m done trimming things out, but I wanted to start this journey publicly so I wouldn’t talk myself out of it.  I’m not sure if I’ll write new posts every time I make a significant change, or just add on to this one.  Frankly, I’m not sure anyone will really care,

Does anyone need any stuff?  I’ve got some to remove from my life.

Up next?  The closet.

If you know me, you know I wear a grand total of 7 shirts on a regular basis. So why in the world do I have over 100?

If you know me, you know I wear a grand total of 7 shirts on a regular basis. So why in the world do I have over 100?

 

Safety is not Guaranteed

In June I was in Nicaragua with my church for our annual support trip to Pastor Chemas church in Tipitapa, Nicaragua. The area had recently been experiencing some earthquakes. Now earthquakes are terrifying in normal circumstances, but in Nicaragua the fear of the populace is especially high due to a long and sordid history of damaging quakes. So as we prepared to go to Pastor Chemas church, and stayed in the capital city each night, the thought that perhaps there would be an earthquake was in the back of my mind. As I looked around at the team God had assembled for this trip, I got a little more nervous. Out of 20 people on the trip, 8 (maybe 9 actually) of us had relevant first responder training, or were nurses, or were in school to be nurses. In my mind this clearly meant God must be planning something. I thought the possibility that we were walking into an earthquake was pretty high. Continue reading →