PLUNGE47

Occasionally, Meg will leave me with the girls, and in those moments the survivability rate drops significantly. Thankfully so far everyone has made it through unscathed… at least physically. Mentally you are never sure what you have done to your children. Along the path they are certain to inform you of all your mistakes… but I would guess the proof is in their adult lives.

Sometimes this image of a parent is how folks view the pastor*. That my role is to raise the congregation into adulthood (I guess the image is moving you from babes craving pure spiritual milk – to communion blood drinking adults?**). And this is true in some sense. I am the shepherd of the congregation – guiding you. But my central goal is NOT to take you to adulthood. Instead I am more like someone who works at an adoption agency. My role is to connect you with parents. Or more specifically with your Father.

And unlike me, He has a pretty good survival rate…

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* “how folks view the pastor” ~ I wonder how the church does envision the role of pastor. Of course we all can regurgitate Sunday School answers. But often our theology of words does not line up with our theological actions (like profess we should love our neighbor, but we actually gossip about them). I would guess the range would move from a low view (a cruise ship director or maybe an indentured servant) to a high view (sage with a special connection to God). Both are ridiculous…

** “blood drinking” ~ This sounds very vampire-esque, which should help the church’s appeal in the age of Twilight… My sister, a middle school teacher, told me about one of her students. The girl felt hot, as though she had a fever, and she convinced herself that she was becoming a werewolf (fever is the first sign in the twilight books – so I am told!). She sat telling the guidance counselor of her problem, how she was not sure what she would do when she turned…

During the market crash it looked like the end of the auto industry here in America. The Big Three gathered in Washington to beg for a bailout and everyone was scurrying from their stock shares. Of course when everyone else is running, that is the time to buy. So my dad, my brother, and I pooled our Christmas money to buy shares of Ford (the first time I ever bought stocks). Soon enough Chrysler and GM would declare bankruptcy, leaving their shares worthless. But Ford strove along, refusing bailout money. And this summer we sold for 16 dollars a share, which we purchased 2.

Of course it could have easily turned out the other way (we also bought Bank of America, which has been a roller coaster). The great risk petrifies most. Disables most or cause them to flee. But stuck we are left without the reward.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain

Each of our girls has a 529 for college.** They are set to adjust the level of risk as the kids near college. Many retirement accounts are set up in similar manner. Of course as the risk decreases, so does the chance for reward. But this reflects the teeter-totter of our own life. We arrive into life filled with energy and passion – risk takers, but also foolish. Yet as our wisdom increases, our passion slowly wanes.

The passion of youth is foolish enough to believe all things possible. In some ways the young do not even know the risks they are taking. With age we become more aware. We also have more to lose (not just Christmas money!). As we learn the ebb and flow of life, we see the chances of success and the possibility of failure. And our wisdom becomes percentages. So we now ask, “Does the reward outweigh the risk?”, because we no longer believe that all things are possible…

This wisdom keeps us from a great many mistakes. We avoid failure. But we also trade away our chance for great victories. So our decisions are not based on the possibility of good, but on certainty of safety…

“To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.” – Soren Kierkegaard

Rick Bradford was the first to tell me. I suppose it is a sign that I do not read enough people magazine*, but I was barely aware that Jay-z and Beyonce were even expecting a child – much less did I know they named their little girl Blue Ivy. I would say Meg and I are trend setters but really we wished we had copy-righted the name “Ivy”. I want her to be the only one, as with Phoebe and Darcy. We set out to find beautiful names that were also rare. So I pray “Blue Ivy” catches on like “Apple”.

*The thing I am most proud of this week is that I could not recall a website to get pop culture information. I guess people magazine probably has a site, but it is nice to know that my personal pop knowledge ceased in the twentieth century before the magazine’s demise.

By “Apple” I am not referring to the I-pad company, but Gwyneth Paltrow’s little girl. This knowledge could contradict my previous claim of star ignorance, but this trivia bit came from my sister. She still shops at American Eagle (No matter how often I mention her age! Not to mention she is writing her doctoral discertation and just interviewed to be prof at William Jewell – say a prayer, I would love for her to be in our area!). But more than just knowing the styles, she is often a step ahead of the trends. I can remember making fun of her for scarves years before every girl was wearing them… All to say, after the arrival of Apple, she declared she loved the name and would name her first little girl Pear. I asked, a little slowly, “A pair of what?”

Unfortunately it seems there are at least a pair of Ivy’s. But in the fourth grade I was a triplet. I went by Sean T, while there was also Sean W. and Shawn S. I suppose this is part of why I wanted original names for our girls. Something unique, to set them apart from the crowd.

Really, though, we could have found something utterly original. Even outrageous. A nurse mentioned a little girl born while we were in the hospital, Kansas Unique (K.U.). But we did not want to make our girls so different as to be laughable.

And in many ways this is how we live life as Christians. We want to be different, but not so different as to be laughable.

Odd phrases often fascinate us, when we tie them to their history. Take the idiom got off scot free. Though rumored to refer to the Dred Scott cases, then also the Scottish, it actually goes back to England. Where they borrowed a Scandinavian idea of the scot tax, tax given to the poor. The scot referred to the tax, the lot – allotment - referred to the amount given to the poor. So to get off scot free would mean you did not pay this tax. Eventually the phrase referred to avoiding any tax and the meaning continued to expand so today it can refer to avoiding any negative. (Source)

And this expanded idea is a powerful one. We love to avoid consequences. We even want to avoid natural flows of life. Whether it is staying young or finding a way to stop paying our mortgage! And this brings me around to Scott Free, brought to us by our very own. He left this comment on the blog from last week:

Scott Craven December 28, 2011 6:46 pm
Hey Sean, some people can make thousands of dollars each time they tweet. We could pay the Church off in no time. You just need about one million twitter followers.

I have an inkling that Scott is right – Twitter goes beyond just a tool to spread my gibberish. Through my brilliant tweets and your help getting a million folks to jump on the bandwagon we can be rid of the church’s mortgage Scott free… Admittedly this plan is half cocked. There is no way a million folks would follow me on Twitter, and I like to believe I would not sell out my tweets for money (though everything has its price – can I be bought?). So let me cut to the chase without any more idioms!

Nothing comes for free. Even the lottery is just a redistribution of wealth (an unhealthy version of the original scot tax, where often the poor seem to pay the tax and business gets the first cut!) . In the same way we will not find a magic fix for our church finances. Nor, for that matter, our personal finances, or broken relationships, or work performance, or …  While we have so many different problems, the root of healing begins in the same place. Relationship with God. As you fix this relationship, other things will fall into place. Not because of magic, but because God teaches you a new way to live. Finances are healed as you become less materialistic. Relationships are healed as you learn to love others with the love Christ has lavished on you. Work perfomance is healed as we learn to work in all of life as if we are serving God.

Not to say everything will be roses. We are only one part of the equation. But, the beginning of healing is in Christ. Even the beginning of THIS world’s healing. After all Christ brought the Kingdom to earth and we are the first fruits (hence my focus on Ezekiel 47). So we are called to live as Christ and in this we bring heaven to earth.

If we know and follow His will… too often the light of the world is in the dark when it comes to scripture. So I have started a twitter account. Beginning this Sunday I will give details on how everyone can follow my updates. Each morning I will post a scripture passage and a brief thought - obviously less than 140 characters!!! More importantly I will attach a link to the passage – so you can read it yourself. This will provide a simple reminder for us to get into scripture. NOT because you need more of my thoughts, but to set the stage for you to hear from God.

And when we do what He says… everything will change.

How to Follow me on Twitter… 

• My Twitter account is the same as the blog, plunge47. If you have a twitter account you can easily follow me. (Just use the link on the side bar!).
• But if you do not have a twitter account (and do not want one), you can also sign-up to get updates via your phone – as long as you have text messaging! Text “follow plunge47″ to 40404.
• And with Ryan’s help we have created a way to receive the tweets via email. You can sign up on the church web site (click here).

“That pretty little lake, the one you pass on the way into Kansas City International Airport? Its glassy azure surface is one of the first sights that newbies to Kansas City see…” Kansas City Star

The world we live in grows quicker by the minute. Sound bites are no longer the preview before a commercial break. Instead they are the whole story. A tweet reveals the day’s news. The 140 characters can sum up the value of a position, even define the life of person…

Obviously a tweet does not bring depth. Most people tweet to begin the conversation – with the intention of people diving deeper. But the messages fill our society and I am not sure anyone hears over all the chirping… We are not deep. But lately I am not even sure we are shallow. Most of us are just peering out onto the waters – listening to the bird calls.

No one even know what the water holds…

“But it turns out the lake may not be the best advertisement for the metro area. In fact, the lake is filled with airplane deicing fluid, and lots of it.” ~ Kansas City Star

Irony ~ My blog brings a surface rant on shallow tweets. I never went below the surface to question the cause. Because tweets can be conversation starters, if anyone was willing to have a conversation with the other side.

But we are not willing to sit down and discuss things. We would rather talk from afar. No matter that our gossip now reaches around the world… but why won’t we discuss things with the other side? Do we consider the other side to be evil? How do we overcome this breakdown in communication?

Or maybe it is just easier to put out 140 character soundbites? Because the answers are too complicated and difficult we would rather shout and rant, than actually deal with any problems.

Take politics and poverty. I often hear opinions that would cut back (or even cut off) poverty reduction efforts. “Those folks need to learn to work.” But imagine a complete cut-off. Poverty would increase. More troubling, everyone’s safety would decrease, as the violence we have conveniently cornered in government housing projects spread out. I can easily imagine European style riots…

But in the same breath I mentioned a major problem with our current strategy. We place folks into government housing bandaids. Situations that provide no healing. Just keep the problem cornered, in places we do not have to go.

Yet, try to have a conversation about this and the talk revolves around defending the status quo or ending the status quo. Viable options rarely arise.

What is more likely to arise is accusations. Words and phrases that perpetuate our thoughts of the other side as evil. Then up come barriers and separation…

BUT, this is not always the case. In healthy families the pattern plays out, even the accusations. But the barriers never form. Now topics may be avoided, but the relationships are not broken.

Why? Because in family the relationship is more important than the idea.

Now if I could just get the church to realize this… but how? Well I guess the first step is another dose of irony…  but would anyone follow me if I started a Twitter account?

funny. I only hear chirping…