But it has felt like there has been a theme developing…

I remember Sean Penn getting upset for the Academy Award for Best Actor award a few different times over the years, most notably for his role in I am Sam in 2001. I also remember that he finally won the award in 2008 for the film Milk, so I figured it was probably worth watching. It turns out that the movie is based the true story of the first openly homosexual elected official in the city of San Francisco in the 1970′s. The acting was nothing to get excited about, but I found myself really engaged in the story.

A film about the discrimination of homosexuals? Hmmmmm….

Sometime this summer, I caught part of an interview with Colin Firth on NPR’s Fresh Air mid-day program. It was the type of interview that has you sitting in your car for a few minutes after arriving at your destination, just waiting for something to break your interest free. He was speaking mostly of his motivation and experience in playing the title role in the 2009 film A Single Man. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to see this film for myself, my interest being piqued from the interview. While the cover of the film just shows Firth in the foreground, with a woman nuzzling his neck in the background, I didn’t know what to expect from the movie, other than this character being single, or (gulp) becoming single. This time, it turns out that Firth’s character is a closeted homosexual man, struggling in seeming solitude over the sudden death of his long time boyfriend.

A film about a homosexual man grieving the loss of his lover, with fear of judgement and persecution from society? Hmmmmm… Maybe there is a pattern forming here.

Penn and Teller have a controversial show on Showtime, designed to challenge and frustrate the status quo. They take many cherished and popular ideas and beliefs, examine them, and then finally pronounce them as B.S. One episode recently took the Boy Scouts of America to task for discriminating against homosexuals and atheists. The basic premise of their argument was not that discrimination was never acceptable, just that organizations that are government funded should not do so. It’s a fair point, and one that led me into a nice little debate on Facebook with some Christians who were appalled by President Obama’s choice to appear on the view instead of at the Boy Scouts’ 100th Anniversary Jamboree.

Christians wanting the President to support an organization that openly discriminates against homosexuals? Egads! The stars are beginning to align!

As I scoured the T.V. series shelves for the next season of Penn and Teller’s B.S., I came across an interestingly titled show called One Punk Under God. It’s a six episode reality show, documenting one eventful summer in the life of Jay Bakker, son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. It was a pretty riveting series, with several intriguing and fascinating story lines. In keeping with the theme of my summer, Jay (who is a preacher at a church in Atlanta) is grappling with the issue of homosexuality and the Christian church. If he goes with his heart, and announces a complete acceptance of homosexuals into his church. None of this “love the sinner” language. We’re saying that homosexuality is not a sin. Jay’s apprehension of fallout and the actual fallout are worth the time it takes to watch this show. I highly recommend it. In fact…

God has told me that homosexuality is a beautiful form of love between two people and that the church needs to reconcile it’s beliefs to reflect this! All the signs point to this! It has to be true!

This was confirmed for me when a friend from bible college posted this video by America’s Best Christian, explaining the biblical view of marriage.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I shared it on my Tumblr feed, and it subsequently garnered 300 times more attention than my next highest tumbl. (Really? Neil Patrick Harris posting a self picture with a double rainbow gets no love? If you still don’t know about the double rainbow, click here. Whatever. I digress.) So what if that was only 300 notes? It was a big deal to me.

You know how sometimes it seems like fate/destiny/the universe/God is really trying to get your attention with something by bringing it in front of your face over and over and over again? It almost feels like some sort of invisible hand is trying to give you a “sign” that you are supposed to acknowledge? Well obviously I’ve been having some of that lately, and it all came to a head this week, with the revocation of Proposition 8 in California that had previously banned gay marriages.

Does all of this sound a little fishy?

This is the part where I confess.

I should admit that I don’t believe in these cosmic signs some sort of transcendent meaning. Well, I guess I do believe in the transcendent meaning part, except I believe it to be completely a psychological phenomenon based on the function of the reticular formation of the brain. We give things meaning, and then they seem to jump out of the bombardment of stimuli that we see, hear, and smell as we live our lives. We decide that something is important (even at a subconscious or barely conscious level), and we start to see it everywhere. We make all of this transcend everything else we experience.

If you give a crap about civil rights in general or homosexual rights in particular, your feelers start to tune in to anything and everything that could help to inform or fortify your opinion. At least, that’s what my summer has been filled with. Every summer needs a theme. This is mine. Love who you love, and I will support you.

This week, Interview with the Vampire author Anne Rice officially outed herself from Christianity. Naturally, she did so via her Facebook wall. Here is the text of her post:

“For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian … It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.”

Conscience? What exactly is it about Christianity that violates Rice’s conscience? Well, a few hours later, she posted this:

“As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”

Much like her return to the Roman Catholic church a decade ago, her stark about-face in regards to the church has stirred up a bit of discussion and opinion. Many wondered if she was mocking Christ and returning to her atheist beliefs of yesteryear. Again, via Facebook, Rice offered additional insight into her decision and her remaining devotion to the “Christ” of Christianity:

“My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn’t understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.”

A friend of mine on Facebook compared her comments to those of Ghandi, who famously repudiated Christians, while embracing much of the philosophy of Jesus. Other friends of mine cannot understand how one can embrace the teachings of Jesus without joining his followers as well.

It’s a pretty fascinating concept to wrestle with. Are you a Democrat if you support President Obama? Are you an anti-Semite if you support Mel Gibson? What if you happen to like Mel Gibson’s movies? Does appreciating Tom Cruise’s role in Interview with the Vampire mean that you need to embrace Scientology as well? And now we’re back to Anne Rice.

A local Christian church had a sermon series a few months back with the title “Fan or Follower”. It was designed to separated the sheep from the goats, and the faithful from the attenuated. The desire was to elicit a hardy response of  ”Follower!” to the not so rhetorical question of how one should respond to Jesus. It was very much a situation of “either you are for us, or you are against us”. It was a significant souring point on my own relationship with the church, which I discussed in a little more detail here.

So, Anne is a fan of Jesus, but does not want to follow him along with any fellow followers.

Sounds fair to me.

I often get my words confused. I am prone to becoming drunk with the potential power that the right words can provide to the right prose. Communication is all about pictures, and the emotions that those pictures bring to us. If a word creates a certain picture in your mind, and it turns out that you got that word wrong in the first place, it can be quite difficult to amend that picture.

For me, that word is often times: aficionado.

The cause of this confusion is probably due to the contents of the magazine Cigar Aficionado. It’s pages were filled with words like veiny, nutty, full-bodied, and other descriptions of cigars that might as well been written in Icelandic. Because I could not be sure what all of these words referred to to, or even meant, I assumed that one needed to be an expert in order to enjoy such a magazine. With that, I concluded that the word aficionado surely referred to some sort of professional knowledge holder or wise sage (in terms of cigars in this case).

In actuality, aficionado is really just a synonym for fan. Seriously, look it up. No word from Facebook if they considered replacing “Become a fan” with “Become an aficianado” before settling on the “Like” button.

Being an aficionado of LOST

I adore LOST. I ridiculously love it. I’ve shared my love of LOST with so many people, I am practically an evangelist for it. I literally named my daughter Evangeline, not just because she was “good news”, but because I wanted a significant way to acknowledge the impact the show has had on my life (my wife was also smitten with the beauty of the name, but that’s a minor detail).

The pilot episode of the show was eyeball-widening intense; with big-budget, high-quality special effects, terrifying moments of near-death and actual death, convincing pathos in many of the characters, and probably most important of all: plenty of mystery. A giant man-chomping monster, a mysterious radio signal on a loop for 16 years, and a polar bear running through the forest. They were all WTF moments at their head-scratching finest.

But the biggest mystery of pilot, and the one question that was begged by the title itself, was whether or not these people would be found. Would they eventually get off the island?

All of these holes in the story created a huge gravitational pull for me to lean in, to continue watching, and to hope beyond hope that everything would turn out OK. But my hopes were not just fed by the new illumination of the continued narrative each week… my imagination ran wild with possibilities and theories of “the truth”. In those dark places, where certain details of the story had not yet been told, I could hardly stop myself from coming up with reasonable and not-so-reasonable solutions to the puzzle.

When the finale of the third season of the show turned out to be a flash forward, giving us a glimpse into the future, the found question of LOST… was finally answered. The gap in my mind was filled with “the truth”, but somehow I still wanted to know more. I was still leaning in, I was still watching, and I was still hoping that everything would turn out OK. I cared about the characters. I cared about the minutiae. I cared about all of it.

As the show was drawing to a close earlier this year, I felt myself dreading the new gap that was imminently creeping up in my own life: a world without LOST. Gaps and holes are fine, as long as there is a starting point, and a finishing point. Open-ended questions can be maddening and neurosis inducing. Although life before LOST was wonderful and fulfilling, the idea of never hearing that spooky title frame sound left me close to despondent. Beginning a gap that never ends is like a death.

When the show finally did come to a close several weeks ago, a number of people were disappointed. While everything did turn out OK for the main characters, some fans did not appreciate the final 15 minutes, which seemed to imply a sort of do-it-yourself spirituality, in which any and all religious or spiritual belief eventually leads to a self-created place of paradise. Other viewers were stunned by the fact that a large number of questions (holes and gaps) went unanswered. Many of these folks were disappointed to find out that a specific element of the story which was particularly meaningful to them, was ignored or poo-pooed away.

Personally, I was extremely satisfied with the finale. Although I had my own theories along the way, and I had my moments of jubilance when I happened to be “right” with one of my predictions, I was prepared to be happy no matter what. Somewhere along the way, I had given up the reigns to my enjoyment of the show. I consciously relinquished my role as an objective viewer, and became a homer for whatever the writers put in front of my face to enjoy. My love was blind, and I didn’t care where it let me. Whether the gaps were filled or not, my mind was set, and I was determined to enjoy all of it.

So, as future without LOST has now become a present without LOST, you may not be surprised that I don’t believe that it is really over. My mind gave the world of LOST considerable meaning to me, and that same mind cannot let it go. I don’t want to believe that it is over. The endless gap that started at the culmination of the series is unacceptable for me to suffer.

Since much of the value of LOST during it’s run was subjective and self-created (like the postmortem paradise of the finale), why can’t I manufacture my own hope for the narrative to continue?

So that’s what I’m going to do. When the DVD and Blu-ray come out with special features that fill in the gaps, know that I will be elated. When the new, interactive internet story begins, know that I will be giddily following along. And if none of this ever happens, and it truly is over, know that I still believe that it was all worth it.

I may not be an expert, but I am an aficionado.

Are you?

I’ll see you in another life, brotha.

He has been labeled as a pluralist by some, and a heretic by others.  But he still ardently believes in the beauty and truth contained in many, if not all, of the world’s expressions of faith (or doubt).  Samir finds it distasteful and arrogant (as do I) when a singular religion claims to have a stranglehold on truth.  Even when Christianity aims for this type of “light in a dark world” status, he mostly rejects it.

There are a lot of interfaith groups out there, but Samir gladly throws atheism into the mix.  In his book, he offers an interesting perspective on a common debate among atheist and religious thinkers:

“Does religion own virtue?

Are religious people more likely to be protectors of the earth’s resources, more likely to believe in nonviolent solutions to world problems, and more likely to care for the poor and oppressed?

The obvious answer to this question is no.  To which many religious people respond, ‘Yes, but this is just because the sense of right and wrong of atheists is feeding off of centuries of the development of morality and ethics nurtured by religion.  Once that storehouse of religion is used up, secular societies are going to fall vicim to their inherent vacuum of values.’”  (It’s Really All About God, pg. 190)

and

“While religious people relate their lives to something transcendent, which often means ‘elsewhere’ and ‘later’, atheists are in a position to assume full responsibility for ‘here’ and ‘now’.  They cannot avoid, cover up, or postpone solving personal and communal issues in Some Other Time and Some Other Place with Someone Else.  All that happens, happens in the present.  Every person and moment is precious, unrepeatable, unpostponable, and thus sacred.”  (It’s Really All About God, pg. 191)

It’s tricky to have discussions about religion, especially when beliefs about nearly everything vary as wildly as they do within my particular religious upbringing: Christianity.  There are Christians who believe in the justification of war, and those who are dedicated to radical peace.  Christians who consider America to be most “Christian” nation in history, to those who believe the exact opposite.  Musical instruments, style of dress, use of technology, sexual preference, authority of scripture, and countless other issues are constantly debated and disagreed upon within this one religion.

So, how does one decide what to believe and how to be classify themselves, religiously?

Depending on who is looking at me, or who I am being compared to, I am either fanatically conservative, or heartbreakingly liberal.  Am I whoever I want to be?  Or am I whomever you want me to be?  What about you?

When it comes down to it, you can either look at the beliefs that make up our lives as showcasing how different and separate we all are, or consider the beliefs that show how alike we all are.

I’ve been mostly absent from church services for the past couple of years.  While I would not classify myself as an atheist, it didn’t seem fair to call myself a Christian either.  While the term “post-Christian” is an appropriate description of much of western Europe, it seemed a rather arrogant distinction to put upon myself, no matter how accurate it seemed to describe my spiritual state.

But, with this discovery of Samir Selmanovic, a Christian with answers for some of my toughest questions and some questions for answers that I didn’t even know that I held to, I feel like there still may be room for religion in my life.

I’ll leave you with one final quote from Samir’s book, and one that has stuck with me the most.  It’s Samir giving a summary on what someone would possibly gain by following Jesus:

“Follow me, and you might be happy-or you might not.   Follow me, and you might be empowered-or you might not.  Follow me, and you might have more friends-or you might not.  Follow me, and you might have the answers-or you might not.  Follow me, and you might be better off-or you might not.  If you follow me, you may be worse off in every way you use to measure life.  Follow me nevertheless.  Because I have an offer that is worth giving up everything you have:  You will learn to love well.”

May it be said that we all “learn to love well”.

When I turned 20…  I wondered if I would ever bench press 200 pounds.

When I turned 30… I wondered if I would ever weigh less than 200 pounds again.

When I turned 20…  I was sure that Friends was the best show on TV.

When I turned 30… I was sure that LOST was the best show on TV… ever!

When I turned 20…  I was sure that my closest college friends would remain my best friends for life.

When I turned 30… I still believed that, and finally stopped pining for a time machine to go back to those good ol’ days.

When I turned 20…  I was positive that I would be a Christian minister for the rest of my life.

When I turned 30… I sat back and counted eight different full time jobs within several different career paths over the past decade.

When I turned 20…  I marveled at the spiritual themes in The Matrix, and congratulated myself for being so spiritual to “get” all of them.

When I turned 30… I play a sort of pin the tail on the donkey with everything, and God is there… every time.

When I turned 20…  I wondered what there was left in life to learn, because I had figured out so much already.

When I turned 30… I appreciated each new day as an opportunity to learn something new.

When I turned 20…  I knew the woman that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

When I turned 30… I spent many months without her, and I still knew that she was the woman for me.

When I turned 20…  I dreamed about how I could change the world.

When I turned 30… I reflected on how much the world had changed me.

When I turned 20…  I believed that Phoenix, AZ was the best place in the world to live.

When I turned 30… I still believed that Phoenix, AZ was the best place in the world to live, but that an amazing life is possible anywhere.

30 has always seemed like a magical year for me.  Jesus got his show on the road around this age. Siddhartha began his path towardsenlightenment after 29 years on the earth.  My mother was 30 years old when she gave birth to me.  So there are various reasons as to why this birthday is significant for me.

I don’t want to fall into a trap of feeling like I have “arrived”, but I’m looking forward to some geographical, financial, and vocational stability in my life for a change.  Time will tell if that is what my thirties have in store for me.  I’m finally ready to start them… tomorrow.  Tonight, I’m going to go kiss my kids goodnight and know that if it all ended, I would still count myself as blessed.

Namaste.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The video was exactly the breath of fresh air that my religion-weary lungs needed to take in.  I started a quest to learn more about this man, this book, and this new perspective on my faith that might rescue it from the toilet bowl it has been sitting in for the past several years.

I became a fan of his book on Facebook, ordered his book from Amazon, and basically fell in love with his spirit and perspective on the most important things in life.  Samir is a sage.  I highly recommend his book to people that ponder the mysteries of life, God, and one’s relationship to the “other”.

To give you a unique look at Samir, check out this video that his daughters made to encourage people to NOT purchase this book:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I don’t want to discuss too much of the book without you.  I want you to read it and talk about it with me and others on this website.

If you’re still not sure what this book is about, and you aren’t much for watching videos, check out this interview of Samir by Robin Russell.  Here is my favorite quote from Samir from that interview:

We are going through a period where what it means to be religious is changing. Religion has to adjust to an interdependent world. In the past, the strong city was a city with big walls. But today, the strong city is the city that has more bridges and airports and links. Links make you strong, and links are also boundaries, so we can have our identity. If our roots go deeper, we can afford to take off some walls.

So, if you can’t find the book locally, just buy it here.  If you want to talk more about this book through this website, let me know in the comments.  If we have enough people involved, Samir may be willing to participate in a group Skype chat with us.  Sounds pretty great to me!

Cheers and Namaste!

Although it was just like Lenny had described it to me, it was a far cry from the peaceful view of  the city that I had observed on my flight in.  A sea of people, at least 10 deep on each side, were beckoning and hollering at me as soon as I came into eyeshot.  Since I don’t speak Creole, I couldn’t make out what was being said to me.  I picked up on a “taxi” here, and a “American” there.  A Haitian woman approached me and offered me a taxi ride.  I told her that I was looking for Nader, and she said that Nader was not there.  I didn’t want to offend her, but I also didn’t want to go with her.  Suddenly, a man in the middle of the crowd yelled “Sack!”, which I have come accustomed to responding to, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

My relief was short lived though, as this man was not Nader, and he informed me that Nader was not there, but he could help me.  Because he had called out my name, I had to trust that he was a friend of Nader’s and would be able to help me with the rest of my journey to my friends.  I told him that I was scheduled to fly out on a Tortug’ Air flight to Port-de-Paix in less than 90 minutes.  ”Port-de-Paix?” he said.  ”We go now!”

The roads in Port-au-Prince are not all paved, and those that are are not painted for opposing traffic to each know which lane is theirs.  It was one of the more white knuckled passenger experiences of my life.  When my driver wasn’t zig-zagging through oncoming traffic, he was laying on the horn with the drivers in front of us with the audacity of driving at a reasonable speed.  But, all is well that ends well, and we arrived at the regional airport in time to catch an early flight to Port-de-Paix.  My driver negotiated my ticket exchange on the earlier flight, and I wished him well with a five dollar handshake.

Sitting in the final airport of my trip (I had been in the Phoenix Sky Harbor and Miami International Airport just the day before), I was anxious for the reunion with my best friends from college: Lenny and Warren.  The last time that we had all been together was at our mutual friend Phil’s wedding in the summer of 2003.  Our time apart (five years) had been longer than our time together (four years of college), and freaky coincidences had kept us apart.  Warren had asked me to be a groomsman at his wedding in 2004.  My son’s imminent birth prevented me from participating or even attending (a pretty understandable excuse).  My involvement in Lenny’s wedding was preempted by my daughter’s birth in 2006 (again, an understandable choice).  Randy was a little sullen when the birth of my third child did not coincide with his marriage.

When people around me started moving towards the gate, I figured it was a good time to follow them.  I ended up with a seat in the front of the propeller plane just a few feet longer than a Suburban.  This was the view in front of me:  

while this was the view behind me:

After flying in jumbo jet for my most of my life, I was not prepared for the amount of turbulence that a plane this size would experience, even on a clear and pleasant day.  I decided to grab my camera and document my own death, were it to occur during this harrowing flight.  I got a decent shot of the city:

Glad to still be winning the fight against gravity, I managed to snap a shot of the Haitian mountains (and a bit of the propeller):

Less than 45 minutes into the flight, we were descending.  The shadow on the ground became larger and larger:

Finally, with children running and waving along the dirt runway, my plane landed in Port-de-Paix.  Instead of collecting my bags at the baggage claim, they were handed to me as I walked toward the airport building.  In the new sea of faces at this airport, I looked for any that I would recognize, but to no avail.  My early flight had put me in the right place, at the wrong time.

Not knowing how large the city was, or if anybody knew of these American guys named Warren and Lenny, I blurted out the name of their school, to nobody in particular.  ”Sonlight?”  A man next to me asked, in confirmation.  ”Yes!  Si!  Oui!” I said all at once like the confused outsider that I was.  Holding up a cell phone, he said: “I call Sonlight.”

After looking at this man’s clothing, I immediately felt an odd sense of familiarity.  He was wearing the jersey of the French soccer star David Trezequet, number 17 from Juventus.

He punched in some numbers and handed me the phone.  A Hatian voice greeted me on the other end.  The voice informed me that Lenny and Warren were busy and unable to come to the phone.  He would have them come to the airport to get me as soon as they were located.

So, I waited.  Even though my new buddy with the Trezeguet jersey had made me feel more at ease, he was suddenly gone.  In case something were to happen to me, I still had the strange urge to document it on film.  So I took in my surroundings, in HD:

Click here to view the embedded video.

After about 30 minutes, my main man with the zebra stripes ran up to me.

“Sonlight?  Sonlight?” he called out towards me, with his eyes and hands beckoning me to follow him.  I grabbed my bag and stepped through the gate into the city.  Just a few steps away was a banged up old pick up truck with the brake lights on.  Then, the brake lights turned off, both the passenger and driver side doors opened, and both of my friends emerged with grins even goofier than my own to welcome me to their home.  While I wasn’t able to capture that moment with any lenses outside of my physical body.  I made sure to grab a shot of the two of them before we settled in for the ride back to their homes and families.  I spruced it up in iPhoto a bit, just for dramatic effect:

Warren (left) and Lenny (right)

To be continued…

My son and I at a community service project last Fall.

This morning, while sitting at the kitchen table, the question that I had expected my son to eventually ask me, was finally asked.  After taking the self-applied clip-on tie off of his undershirt, buttoning his top button, and correctly reseting the tie, he looked at me and said:

“Daddy, why don’t you go to church with us?”

Kim happened to be walking down the hall, but she heard the question and raised her eyebrows at me as if to say “He’s your son!”  She realized that this was going to be a man to man conversation, and continued to the bathroom to prepare herself for the upcoming church service.

I looked at my son’s earnest eyes, and contemplated his even more earnest question.  As many parents do, I weighed the merits of a short answer that would stop his questioning, but be less than truthful, against a more truthful answer than might take a series of answers and explanations about things that he might have trouble wrapping his mind around.  Today, I chose to give him the more honest answer.

I told him that it was because of my beliefs.  Although the church and I share some of the same beliefs about living a moral life, we differ on so much more.  The main difference, as I told my son, was the church’s view of the other, the outsider, the adherent of another faith, and/or the unrepentant sinner.  This church (like many others) believes that after death, certain people will end up in some sort of hell.  For most of my life, I have believed the same.  But in the past few years, for a variety of reasons, I no longer do.

Before explaining anything else to him, I let him know that despite his desire to be just like me in so many ways, his beliefs would have to be his own.  Whether my words of explanation will have any more influence on him than my actions, only time will tell.  But, I wanted to express to him how personal everyone’s beliefs are, and how they should have some measure of respect.

After describing hell as a place where people were sad and crying for ever and ever, and where God could not/would not ever see them or rescue them, my son replied that he did not want to ever go there.  I told him that some people believe that the population of hell is made up of people who deserve to be there.  I shared with him my belief in a God who would not create someone who would eventually end up in hell.  In fact, I read a great quote in a book by Samir Selmanovic just yesterday:

“I have become convinced that a God who favors me over others is not worth worshipping.”

In the end, my son walked away with a couple of new thoughts about God and hell, and an apparently sufficient answer about why daddy wasn’t going to church.

Really, I just can’t wrap my head around the belief that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and at the same time that God is the creator of this mess that falls short of Him.  If God is responsible for the situations in our life that lead us to make choices, then He is also somewhat responsible for those choices.  If He is not responsible for those situations, then everything is just chance and chaos.  God cannot judge our actions justly if we are all playing with different pieces on often vastly different game boards.

I’m sure that I could say more about this, but I’ll save it for another time.

Not believing in hell is just a stone’s throw away from not believing in “sin”.  In light of my Christian upbringing, this is a belief that challenges much of what is commonly understood about the purpose and nature of Jesus, the namesake of Christianity.  If there is no hell, and there is no sin, then what was Jesus all about?  If he was just a great moral teacher, and not God incarnate, then this changes everything.  Depending on what criteria you use to classify a Christian, then you may not consider me one anymore.  To be honest, I myself often wonder if I should claim that for myself anymore.

I feel like I’m a sort of religious no man’s land.  Where I’m going to end up is unclear.  I just know where I don’t want to be:  In a place where God loves me (enough to give me life in heaven) more than he loves other people (so little that He lets them die in hell).  If you found some place where I could find myself more at home, please let me know.

I have a lot of goals.  One of them involves becoming a better facilitator.  Another involves becoming a better communicator.  Still another is about being a wise man.  A few months back, a local college preparatory school asked if I would be interested in substitute teaching.  I identified this opportunity as a process that would help me towards those first two goals, and even provide a little income on the side.  After meeting with the administration and learning a little about the school and its values, I agreed and began to substitute a few days per month, for various courses.

While I was there, a funny thing happened.  I LOVED it.  Now, I don’t mean that it was a pleasant surprise and a welcome change to my schedule.  I mean that I could feel something inside of me and around me as I walked through the doors into the hallway.  Now, it may be that they pump laughing gas through the air vents, but I think it is more likely that some vivid picture of life that I had in my own mind was being matched by something outside of me.  It was the realization of a goal that my subconscious mind had been teleologically fixed to, and I thoroughly enjoyed becoming aware of it.

Still, my goal remained to be a full-time Project Director and Facilitator with The Pacific Institute.  I was meeting new people, developing new projects, and collaborating with others for some exciting work in the coming months and years.  The goal was fixed, my affirmations were clear, and the plan was moving forward.

Then a door opened.

The head of the upper school called me to inquire if I would be available to fill in for a teacher for the rest of the school year.  Without even thinking, I politely declined, citing the amount of time I needed for my projects with The Pacific Institute.  Because my goal was clear, and I perceived this new information to be a threat to that goal, I shut the door.

But, as it sometimes does, opportunity knocked again.  This time, our conversation touched on the courses that would be on my docket.  Subjects like psychology, religion, history, and social studies.  She wasn’t asking for me to fill a hole as a warm body.  She was telling me that she had interviewed several interested applicants, and still believed that I was the best candidate for the position.  She was confident in the positive impact the position would have on me, and the students of the school.

So I did something that I should have done the first time around: I evaluated.

As I looked closely at the opportunity, I became acutely aware that I was not operating within a vacuum.  Taking responsibility for my choices and their consequences has been my modus operandi for the past seven months, but I often forget that almost every choice has consequences outside of me as well.  It’s another paradox, it seems.  I can’t focus just on my own choices and their consequences, and I can’t just be passive and let my life happen to me.  It’s a delicate balance, and I was leaning too much on the goal of being a successful Project Director.

But why did I want to become a successful Project Director?  Was it so that I could share my own experiences with others in a way that would help them to avoid the pain that I had experienced?  Was it to impact people in a meaningful way so that they would find something great within themselves because of something I did or said?  Was it to do my part as a citizen of the world to make it a better place?  When I took all of those things into consideration, the teaching position was offering me a process towards an even greater goal: not just to be a wise man, but to be a wise man with a legacy for my children.

In the end (or beginning, as it were), I gladly accepted the position and will begin on January 4, 2010.  Since I was a teenager, I have had the idea in my mind that I will have my act together (in some way) by the time that I reach 30.  If Jesus didn’t really get his game going until then, and Siddhārtha didn’t reach enlightenment before 30, why would I?  In February, I’ll reach that magical age, and while I’m not sure that I’m going to have my act together, this new chapter has me very excited about what life (and my students) will teach me as a teacher.

While speaking to a group of high school students last month after the Ft. Hood shooting, our discussion touched on the volunteer nature of American armed forces.  When someone mentioned how much soldiers have to sacrifice in order to join up, I brought up the professional sacrifice of Pat Tillman.  To my shock and amazement, none of the students had ever heard of him.

While sharing Pat’s story with this group, my own personal emotions regarding Pat’s decision and death came surging back to me.  While I’m definitely more of a pacifist now than at any other time in my life, I can still draw strength and inspiration from his decision to give up his high paying and high profile position as an NFL player.  The act of temporary sacrifice for the sake of a greater good has not been exactly been a hallmark of my own life.

Trying to find a balance between striving for what I want, and denying myself those same desires has been the unresolved theme of my life.  In an effort to “die to self” in an aim toward virtue, I often times sabotaged myself (and my family, as a result) as I came too close to reaching my desires.  I began to expect failure like a musical virtuoso expects applause. I couldn’t believe Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka when he remarked that the man who suddenly got all that he wanted, lived happily ever after.

I’m not sure that I can say that I completely understand Pat’s decision, but recently, it has taken on new meaning for me.  From everything that Pat accomplished (3.84 GPA in 3 1/2 years at Arizona State University, while being named Pac-10 Player of the Year, as a 5 foot 11 inch linebacker) to what those close to him said about his drive, it seems clear that he didn’t do very many things half-assed.  So how does someone with that kind of focus and resolve just change his path so drastically mid-course?

What if he didn’t change his mind?  What if his decision to enlist was completely in line with his personal goals and desires?  If becoming a successful professional athlete was Pat’s supreme goal, then yes, he did make a wholesale change to his values and desires.  But if his desire was to be a great man, then it was just his definition of what makes a man great that changed.

It’s another variation of the discussion on life as more of a journey than a destination.

I now understand desire as a virtue.  As long as that desire aligns with the ultimate principles that govern life. A desire that leads to a full stomach, an escape from reality, or an orgasm is not one to embrace as life-giving or virtuous.  But a desire that leads to a peaceful resolution, a restored relationship, or the benefit of others may be.

Desires and choices come from our goals.  When we are immature, we can only see a short distance into the future.  As we grow, we can see farther and our goals reflect longer term aims.

Pat’s goal was to be a great man.  My goal is the same.  But how I’m defining great has changed.  A great man doesn’t deny fulfilling his desires for the virtue of denial itself.  A great man aligns his goals with the most virtuous truths on the highest level of abstraction that he can reasonably comprehend.  Now, if I miss a meal, miss a nap, or avoid romance with other women, it may seem seem like some sort of denial of desire, but it is what I want.  And I’m finally OK with getting what I want.