carotidbattery.great

Someone asked me about the motorcycle trip recently.  Long story short…I’ve been putting a little time into cleaning up the old, busted website (old.carotidbattery.com) which has sent me on a trip down memory lane.    Out of curiosity, I checked Google Maps to see if the beginning of the Dalton Highway was on Street View.  Turns out the entire highway is on there!  So, if you want to see what the highway was like, check it out!

And this is a fun view…not only shows the sketchy road conditions, but also shows what appears to be a second Google Street View car.  Redundancy up there is never a bad idea.

My Grandpa passed away on the morning of Friday, March 18th.  I’m writing this as we drive back down from Spanish Fork, UT, where we held the memorial service yesterday.

My Grandpa Ed married my Grandma Smitty when he was 54.  He inherited a big family and, after being a bachelor the whole first part of his life, I’m guessing he had no idea what he was getting himself into.  He had an incredible sense of humor, dry and quick, with a smirk and chuckle that made you feel at ease, even if he was giving you a ribbing, and we all loved him immediately.  He was our Grandpa…we never thought differently.  Grandpa used to give me handshakes, whipping my arm all around, making me laugh uncontrollably…something I turned around on him when I got a little older.  He was a man who had worked hard all his life but always found time for family.  We used to love traveling to Irvine to stay with Grandma and Grandpa…going to the beach or the waterpark during the day and playing Uno late into the night after Grandpa got home from work.

I loved my Grandpa and no one would have to tell me that he was a good man.  What no one seemed to know the full extent of, though, was that my Grandpa was a hero.  He had served in WWII…enlisting in the Coast Guard (because he was too short for the Marine Corps) and serving aboard a Navy ship as the coxswain of the landing craft that brought the troops ashore in North Africa and the Pacific.  His actions garnered him a meritorious promotion, which is obviously commendable in and of itself.  What no one in the family seemed to know, however, is that he had been awarded the Bronze Star Medal (the fourth highest combat award) as a 2nd or 3rd Class Petty Officer.  My military friends will appreciate the rarity of an award like that being awarded to so junior a sailor.  To put it in perspective, when the ship I was on engaged in offensive missile strikes against Afghanistan in 2001 the ship’s captain, a Navy Commander, was awarded the Bronze Star.  Grandpa was about 10 ranks below Commander .  I’m not sure what the award was given for and, while I would like to know, I don’t think it matters too terribly much…I am most impressed by my Grandpa’s humility.  As the minister at the service pointed out yesterday, my Grandpa was truly part of the greatest generation…a man who loved his country and family and always had a strong sense of duty.  He had so much to be proud of, accomplishments from his own life, and yet he always communicated how proud of us boys he was.  I hope to be that kind of man.

I would encourage each of you reading this to take a moment to call your grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles…family.  All of us attending the memorial said yesterday how much we wished it wouldn’t take a death in the family to bring us all back together.  Life is busy, to be sure, but the eternal souls God puts around us for the few, quick years we have on this planet are worth more than we will ever comprehend.  I encourage you…myself…to remember that in the midst of the busyness.

Love you, Grandpa.  Fair winds and following seas…

I recently went to a doctor’s appointment with my wife, an appointment which involved her getting a shot.  The medicine was suspended in oil, so it was extremely viscous.  The needle itself, however, was very small gauge and it took a long time for the nurse to both fill it up and push it out.  She had to hold the plunger out for quite a while before the oil would come through the needle and when it finally did it was just a little drop at a time.  There was enough vacuum pressure inside that the plunger kept wanting to jump out of her hand.  The medicine is designed that way so that it is not absorbed by the body all at once…it’s meant to last a full week.  Interesting stuff, but I didn’t think much about it after we left the office.

That was on Friday…jump forward to Sunday where the sermon we heard boiled down to a simple phrase: To truly live, receive and give.  Sounds so simple, right?  And it is, or at least it’s meant to be.  But sometimes the process of receiving and giving isn’t quite as fluid as we would like.  In a way, we are like the syringe.  We plug into Jesus and his love pours into us…or, depending on what gauge we are (how willing, open and available we are to receive), and (like the plunger) how much we fight the flow of His love and Spirit, it can end up just being a slow drip.  Furthering the analogy a bit, the point of the syringe is not to hold the medicine…it takes it in only to later dispense it again.  The whole point of existence for the syringe is to receive and give.  In the same way, the Christian’s purpose, their way to abundant life, is to receive from Jesus and then turn and pour that love into others.  Receiving Christ without letting Christ flow through is like a syringe that holds its medicine.  What good is a full syringe?

Of course, it’s not a perfect analogy, because the process of allowing Christ to flow through you and into someone else is not really akin to a needle prick…or at least it shouldn’t be…maybe you’ve met a Christian who felt like they were sticking it to you.  But there are other parts of it that work.  For example, Jesus’ love isn’t something that you take in and absorb with full understanding immediately.  While it goes to work right away, and gives new life from the start, that’s just the beginning of its work.  It sticks with you, working its way into your being over long periods of time, having the lasting effect of healing and wholeness.

I love how God shows us pieces of himself in the mundane appointments of life.  And I don’t even like needles.

I’ve been reading (listening to, actually) John Piper’s “Don’t Waste Your Life” and it has served to further solidify the following thought in my mind: to be a “good” Christian means to be a “bad” American, and vice versa.  This is not a resignation (America is lost…give up), nor is it a novel idea, but I think much of the modern American church still conflates the two, that to be a good American means to be a good Christian and, much more dangerously, to be a good Christian means to be a good American.  But, really, aside from our nation’s settlers being a group that arrived here seeking religious freedom, and our founding fathers largely being a group that identified with Christianity, our nation was built upon freedom and liberty, not faith in Christ.  That faith may have been the undertone or the taken-for-granted understanding upon which the Constitution was built, but the resulting document allowed for a nation that would, one day, choose to exercise its freedoms and not identify itself with any one faith, let alone Christianity.  And this is exactly what we have collectively done.

So, which are you?  Which am I?  Am I an American Christian or am I a Christian that happens to live in America?  Which holds more sway upon my life…my American citizenship or my citizenship in the Kingdom of God?  These two states of citizenship have come to the point where they are fundamentally at odds.  I’m not talking about all of the things that Christians are known for being “anti” (homosexuality, pornography, abortion, etc.)…I’m talking about the fundamentals of individualism, commercialism,  materialism…comfort, safety, significance.  If I am a good American Christian, I seek comfort and success in the name of Christ.  I take care of my family, save for retirement, I don’t fool around on my wife, I tithe…I can have a comfortable life in a comfortable house and Christ can be a tagline that allows me to feel good about it all.

But what in the Bible leads me to think that this should be the way of it?  Where does the concept of retirement come from?  (By the way, I have a retirement account, so this a real question I’m posing to myself.)*  Is my life marked by radical love for others, joy and contentment in Christ and His glory, and a desire to see others find their joy in Christ…or am I a good American, that takes care of his responsibilities, goes to Church and lives in a moral manner.

These are hard questions and ones that I don’t have good answers for, on my own account.  I know, however, that there is a true opportunity to forsake this life and to not lose anything in the process…to actually gain real life in the process.  To so desire God and His glory, alone, that where He takes me and how He uses me is pure joy, regardless of the challenges, pain and sadness experienced along the way.  This all sounds like craziness, but think about it…how many people do you know that are truly, truly happy?  Do those people have and hoard a lot or do they love and give, give, give.  Those that I know that are filled with joy are folks that have joyfully sacrificed their lives…not just because it’s what they should do or because it might buy them a ticket into heaven, but because God’s glory is truly what they desire at their core.

That’s who I want to be…

* UPDATE: Piper goes into this in much greater depth, obviously…I’m not saying that retirement accounts are ill-advised or evil.  I’m saying that hope, trust and security in retirement accounts is something to be questioned.  Piper points out that looking to our retirement years as the time when we can retreat from others, from responsibility, from Christian labor is missing the point completely.

I’ve been thinking through this whole, you know, creativity thing…a lot of thoughts.  I don’t think I’m going to try to keep this coherent…it’s just going to be a lot of verbal spitting.  I think that God makes some people creative, and others more creative.  I think the only ones of us who are not creative are those that don’t care to be.  I think that if/when you are the creative type you exude creativity on some level…you don’t have the option.  It comes out of you, even when you try to repress it in the mundane.  When a creative person finds themselves unable to be creative, for whatever internal or external reason, you will see them become frustrated, angry, depressed.  So I think there’s maybe three kinds of people, now that I think of it…those that aren’t really creative and don’t really care, those that are creative and struggle with expression, and those that are creative and express, whether they want to or not, whether they can make a living through expression or not, whether people ask them to or not, whether anyone ever cares or not.  The first group is ignorant to the blessing and the curse…and sometimes ignorance is truly bliss.  (I’m not using the word ignorant in a derogatory way here.)  The third group is what it is and doesn’t try to be anything but what it is.  There is hardship, certainly, but the mandate to express overpowers the roadblocks.  I believe I am in the second group, and I think this group has it the hardest.  This isn’t a pity party…I’m trying to think through this.  I am a creative person, but I think that sometimes my creativity is old news, is plain…I am viewing it as someone else might, through the eyes of a potential consumer of my creativity.  By consumer, I mean viewer, listener, beholder and/or purchaser.  I’m not creating because I must (as the third group does) but because I have the capability, enjoy doing so, and very much want to be known, even if just by myself, as a creative person.  Those in the third group are oftentimes conscious of the consumer, but would go on creating regardless of the consumer’s interest.  Those in the second group always have the consumer in mind, even when they very much wish to be free of the consumer’s perceived presence.  If I make music, will others like it?  Will it be something that someone else might be interested in?  If I make visual art the same questions pop into my head.  Sometimes I wish I could either not care if I was creative or not be able to control the urge.  The hindered, self-conscious, overly critical middle ground is a difficult place to call home.  So, I guess the big question is this…as I believe one who is creative can never ditch their creativity, can someone in the second group graduate into group one?  I don’t think writing the hit song, “making it”, and not having to work a traditional job necessarily means graduation in this case.  I mean can a person lose the self in the process and become overwhelmed by the art they have been called to produce?

Sometimes I think that I’m creative but just don’t have the time or resources to adequately express my creativity.  But then, upon having that thought, I wonder if, simply by virtue of me thinking that, it means I’m really not that creative after all.  I mean, most of the “creative” people I know have only been able to express their creativity through hard work, sacrifice, at all odds, without proper resources, and by simply grinning and bearing it…because they’re creativity would not settle for anything less than full expression.  Does being “creative” necessarily entail the need/desire/ to express said creativity?  Is the fact that I’m thinking this much about it mean that I’m way too analytical to be truly creative?  Ok…I need to stop…

Short post here on something that’s been bouncing around in my head since this weekend. I had a pretty low day Saturday…one thing led to another and I found myself in the toilet of negativity, calling to my savior, Eeyore. Sunday morning arrived and within a few minutes of being in church I was profoundly struck by the similarities between myself and the Jews of 33AD Jerusalem.

We all are, presumably, familiar with the events of Palm Sunday. Jesus arrived at the edge of the city, hopped on a donkey and entered the city to an outpouring of support and praise fit for a king. Days later, Good Friday…they killed Him. There was obviously a misunderstanding there…some disconnect in the Jews’ expectations of the King they wanted and the one they were getting. They wanted a King, like David of old, to put down their oppressors and establish Israel to its former glory. They got a King that had little interest in human hierarchy and structure until and unless it had a negative impact on the “least of these” or interfered with human hearts being set free from spiritual slavery.

So, where am I seeing myself in this? And what does this have to do with my negative turn this last Saturday? I, too, like the Jews, want a King to put down my oppressors (my debt, my house that refuses to finish the remodel I started on it, my frustrations with work, my normal marital challenges, my general sense of being overwhelmed and out of control) so that I can be free of it all and enjoy a victorious life. I want a King of my circumstances. But Jesus wants to be King of my heart in the midst of my circumstances. It doesn’t mean my circumstances are “good”, necessarily, but it means that my heart is infinitely more important to Jesus and He is perfectly ok operating within the circumstances to get to my heart. When my expectations of what Jesus wants don’t line up and my life isn’t getting any easier, because circumstances aren’t changing, I am bound for frustration and despair. The truth is…when I really get it…when He has my heart and I am satisfied with that, my circumstances lose their hold on me and I on them. I am satisfied in the midst of chaos. I have peace. Please, all of you, remind me of this! Often!

Hope is a magical thing. Similar to other elements of the Christian life, hope often runs counter to what makes sense, both from a cultural and an experiential perspective. Quickly list off in your mind or on paper the top 10 or more reasons why you don’t hope, or why you lose hope. It’s probably a very rational and defensible list. But look closely…see any commonalities? In my mental list I see things such as “What would cause the outcome to change now when none of the circumstances have?” “A+B has always equaled C for me in the past…why would they suddenly equal D now?” “These are just common problems we all have, why expect that I would be different or that now would be different?” My list is all based around what I’ve done, what I’ve had done to me, what I’ve seen others do. It’s a man-made list based entirely on man’s capability, and what hope is there in that?

The opposite of hope is submission, cynicism, bitterness…and sometimes even the lesser-known evil of rational pragmatism. It’s a submission that means defeat, that all is lost and the stronghold has been captured. A trust in man’s capabilities will ultimately lead me, time and again, to this point. Why keep fighting if there’s nothing to fight for, right? All assets, capabilities, supplies and resources have been expended and I am still being attacked. I have no other options at my disposal, except one. Hope. Hope rolls in like a storm…from a place and at a time not at all expected, or previously experienced, or culturally prevalent. Hope says fight. Hope says fight because not only has the stronghold not been taken, but it never can be and that all claims against it are fraudulent, merely designed to discourage and defeat me, and nothing more. Hope says that I am not alone against my adversary…I’m not alone in that others are fighting, and have fought against the same adversary, and that he is already defeated. Hope says that what currently doesn’t seem or feel real or true is actually more real than my all-to-often accepted “reality”. This is the life of the Christian, then…to fight on in the midst of darkness, when all seems lost and we are utterly abandoned by all that we’ve come to rely upon. Hope.

I found out this morning that I have a torn meniscus. Not a huge deal, really, and I’m sure I’ll be able to get it fixed pretty easily. After getting the call from the doctor with the results of the MRI, I took a look online at what a meniscus actually is and found this picture.  I can’t look at this without thinking of how amazing it is that a knee actually works…I mean, look at all of that?  And that’s just one joint…I have 229 others.  Fearful and wonderful…that’s how I got put together.

“Now these three abide: anger, outrage, and fear—and the greatest of these is fear.” – from Russell Moore’s post entitled Don’t Be Afraid.   A great reminder that whatever is going on in politics, government (or any other facet of life, not related to eternity) Christians have no cause for fear.    Think how many times you say or hear the words “I’m just afraid that…” or “It worries me that…” or “I fear that…” and we don’t consider the enormous gravity of what we’re saying.  Am I really in fear of whatever it is that follows “that”?  Because, if so, Satan has my right where he wants me.  I can be concerned.  I can be prompted to take action.  I can even be angry, but fear is not an appropriate response, nor should it be what motivates me to concern, action or anger.  When it comes to the political, Jesus clearly is concerned only as far as it affects hearts, and not much beyond that. (Mark 12:17, John 8:7)  We should be concerned about the political, about the actions of our Government, in as much as they affect hearts, lives and minds, but my Chicken Little fear has to go.