No Going Back

 I originally posted this on Facebook on October 5, 2020. 

I keep seeing posts about "getting back" to something that supposedly was "better." Back to an America that was "better." Back to an economy that was "better." Back to a discourse that was "better." Back to .....

The reality is that there is nothing worth going back to. The longing for a return to something that was familiar and that we enjoyed is nostalgia; it doesn't mean it was "better."

The God I serve is a God who calls for a continual unfolding. Things will not ultimately be "better" until God makes it so. And the fact that it has yet to be made so means that nothing that was before is the type of "better" that I want to return to, or am called to return to, or believe in returning to. It doesn't mean it wasn't good; it's just not the ultimate good.

In the meantime, what we must aspire to is a new future in which humanity both intrinsically and extrinsically demonstrates that we recognize the uniquely powerful responsibility that we've been given for one another and for the world which we inhabit.

So far we've done a pretty lousy job with that responsibility. Neither democrat nor republican is the savior we seek. We each must take action toward a more responsible future. We must care for one another and care for our environment. Our care will never be perfect, but we can do better, so much better. We need leaders, too, who care and will empower us to care.

We can start by centering not on ourselves, but on the other.

What will improve the lives of those around me?

What can I do to make life better for someone else?

What is needed from me to care for God's whole creation?

What habits, attitudes, prejudices, insecurities, and fears do I hold that I must confront and repent of in order to serve the well-being of those around me?

Pursue these things. Then perhaps we'll experience those better days that we so long for, not by returning to some nostalgic past but rather by living into our responsible, hopeful future, together.

On Vocation, Gifts, and Calling: Part 1

Recently I've been thinking a lot about vocation, the deepest invitation to participate in God's mission in the world in meaningful and faithful ways.

The pursuit of vocational clarity has actually been lifelong. From the first inklings of a call to ministry while portraying the prodigal son in a fourth grade musical through a change in college major to more recent retooling for nonprofit and nursing home administration, I've sought to align my employment with God's blessing of who I am (vocation). 

Vocation still remains somewhat elusive, and I was compelled to explore the question further during the recent five year ordination renewal process in our denomination. Ordination in our tradition is understood as vocation tied to employment; to be ordained one must be personally called by God, affirmed by the church, and have a functional position through which to live out that call.

For some ministers the requirement to link vocation with employment can prove distressing. At this point in my life, my call to ministry is inherent in my work, but not explicitly linked to ordination. As a development and fundraising officer in a Christian retirement community, my work is about raising money. As a minister, that same work is about tending people's soul journey. It always is. 

The need to once again affirm my calling to ministry, show my continuing education, demonstrate vocation linked to employment, and renew the covenants which I originally made with the church over 27 years ago might have seemed like a no-brainer to many. In fact, many pastors and ministers treat the renewal process as just one more hoop to jump through in order to maintain their status. I know, because in the past I have, too.

This renewal period, however, led to harder discernment on my part. What is my vocation? How is God calling me to be of use in this world? What are the deeper passions of my life? Where might I best live out my faith, and under what circumstances?

In addition to those somewhat esoteric questions, I also was confronted with some more specific, contextual dilemmas. Is the Church of the Brethren as it's currently focused a tradition that I can continue to align with? Given my experiences in and treatment by leadership in the church, is this a body that I can safely continue to be accountable to? Have I failed God and the church in ways which would preclude the continuation of my leadership?

These questions, coupled with ongoing efforts to expand my skill set and employability, compelled me to reflect intensely on the ordination review process. The unsettledness in my spirit needed to be addressed before responding to the rote inquiries of the renewal process. It would have been easier to simply check the boxes, but it wouldn't have been faithful.

After a long period of procrastination and discernment, I did complete the required documents. I also included an unsolicited letter detailing some of my wrestling. Over the next few blog posts, I will share the essence of that letter and further explore questions of vocation, gifts, and calling. 

Faith for me is about surrender and alignment. I surrender to the will of God and seek, to the best of my ability, to align my life with that will. Sometimes I fail completely, or fall short in part. Sometimes those shortcomings are a result of sin. Sometimes those shortcomings are a lack of adequate discernment. Sometimes those shortcomings are simply the hidden mysteries of God, into which I move even without absolute clarity, so not shortcomings as much as faithful stumbles. 

In the end, however, I constantly strive to know the call of God on my life, to recognize and cultivate the gifts God has blessed me with, and to pursue meaningful activities of work and ministry. Whether I can see clearly or not, God remains constant and clear. And so God gives me the faith, courage, and hope to carry on.

Into the Webbed World

Today I sent a piece of me into the webbed world.

An email, a message, a text, a chat, a tweet;

I can’t remember which.

It really doesn’t matter.

Into the webbed world it went,

Rich with wisdom,

Full of expectation,

Bare with honesty.

Into the webbed world it went

In search of a reply;

Anything would do.

“Thanks.”

“Hello.”

“Like.”
"Maybe."

"Yes."

“No.”

Into the webbed world it went,

This byte-sized piece of

Thought synapse,

Probing inquiry,

Smart observation,

Information request.

Into the webbed world it went.

Audience known:

You.

Friend.

Consumer.

Audience unknown:

You.

Friend.

Consumer.

Into the webbed world it went:

Truth.

Opinion.

Perspective.

Into the webbed world it went,

Testing,

Probing,

Challenging.

Into the webbed world it went.

My dreaming.

What I imagine.

How I hope.

Into the webbed world it went.

But who knows

Where it arrived?

If it was heard?

Will it be kept?

Does it really matter?

I can’t remember which:

An email, a message, a text, a chat, a tweet.

Today I sent a piece of me into the webbed world.

Stepping Out: Unexpected Thoughts on Being an Entrepreneur

When I resigned from my job in April, I assumed that I would find another job within an organization. I immediately began exploring possibilities where I could use my years of organizational experience and a newly minted certificate in nonprofit management in an executive management position.

I was excited about the changes, and nervous about how to translate my church-based experience into other fields of leadership, but I was confident that my work background, skill set, personal profile, education and references would open opportunities for me. And although job searches in today's work environment are arduous and largely impersonal, there has been some progress. No job, but what feels like progress.

One day along the journey I had a person suggest to me that I start my own business. My laughter could be heard down the hallway! But that laughter turned into consideration, and the consideration led to imagination, and imagination led to consultation, and consultation led to articulation, and articulation is being converted into action. I am starting my own business. Are you laughing now?!?

Since some of you might also be in transition, I thought I'd offer some of my thought process. Maybe it will help you. If you'd like, I'd be glad to talk with you more directly. Drop me a line.

Here are some of the thoughts that I've wrestled with along the way. I'm pretty sure my wrestling is not done.

Point: I don't have much to offer. Even though I have rich and varied leadership experience, there is a nagging sense that such experience is not really experience. I've had great staff members to cover my backside. It's hard to point to the specific skill sets that distinguish me.

Counterpoint: My experience and education are unique and profound. I am frequently surprised when practices and concepts about leadership and organizations that for me are intuitive are heard as new (and helpful) ideas by others.

Point: I am not an entrepreneur. I've always worked in organizations with a set job description and lots of bosses. I don't know anything about starting something from scratch.

Counterpoint: My whole life has been entrepreneurial. Within the context of my jobs, I have always been a creator, initiator and developer. Each of my jobs required major changes, and it was an entrepreneurial spirit which helped me thrive in those situations.

Point: I am at the wrong point in my life to risk self-employment. While my wife and I share the income burden, I have always been the primary wage-earner. Insurance, retirement savings, paid vacation and the like are all part of the work culture that we count on.

Counterpoint: There will never be a better or right time to take the risk. This is my mid-life. Well designed and astutely managed self-employment will be different, but it is not impossible. We will learn to adapt to a different financial flow to our lives.

Point: I am a team player and this is an individual sport. It will depend wholly on me, and I work better in teams and as a leader of groups.

Counterpoint: Already I see that I will not be alone. There are several wise advisers walking with me. There are potential partnerships emerging. I will able to use my passion for working collaboratively to bring people together.

Point: I don't have my act together. I am a flawed and limited human. I have weaknesses and vulnerabilities. I am unsure at times. My brain doesn't always work the way I want it to when I want it to.

Counterpoint: I don't have my act together. I, like the people and organizations I work with, am a flawed and limited human. I, like those I serve, have weaknesses and vulnerabilities. I, like those I would encourage, am unsure at times. Amazingly, my brain still works, and in mysterious, unique and wonderful ways.

There are, of course, other points of concern. Where will the business come from, especially that first contract or two? How will I respond when things don't go as planned? Will I be able to focus? Will the work become too consuming?

But the possibilities are too great to ignore, the calling too strong to shrug off. I love helping others perform at their best. I have a passion for healthy organizations and a deep understanding of how leadership fosters that health. I like questions, big, hard, complex questions alongside simple obvious ones. I have a unique view of how artistry impacts leadership, a perspective cultivated as a musician and bureaucrat.

So here I am at a crossroads in life I never anticipated. How I got here is still a bit of a blur, and where it ends up is definitely hidden around the corner. The current vantage point, however, holds a clear vision. It is a vision for how artistry leads and how blessed I'll be to help others find that synergy. 

Our Counseling Culture: Saving us or ruining us?

I had been seeing a really awesome counselor for over a year. He helped me work through a bunch of pretty intense and painful things. But then I left my job, and my insurance changed, thus ending my bi-weekly visits. A few months out and I've been reflecting on the role of a counselor in my life, and the role of counselors in our society. Here I'll wonder out loud:

Is our counseling culture saving us or ruining us?

Saving us: why we need these companions on the way

1.  Counselors help us work through some really tough stuff. They may not have seen and heard it all before, but they've seen and heard enough to sit there and take anything we can dish out. Deep grief? There beside you. Burning anger? Got it. Huge questions? Go ahead. Weighty depression? Understood. These trained professionals won't shy away when our going gets rough. In fact, they'll lean in and help us find a way through it, as much as they can.

2.  Counselors are safe. We know that when we share something with a counselor it won't come back to haunt us. It won't be shown sympathy today and then used as ammunition tomorrow. They won't collect our stories and then broadcast them to others. They're not a part of the gossip network. We can say what we need to say, and they will protect it.

3.  Counselors are, as stated in point #1, professionals. At least the ones that I'm talking about are. They are trained and continually monitored to ensure that they are doing good and not causing harm. There is not a lot of room with a professional for "good intentions." They have particular knowledge about how to listen and support their clients, and then know when they're in over their head and need to suggest different help for us.

4.  Counselors keep the focus on us. They make sure that we're doing work on the things that we can work on. Ourselves. There's no dodging our own crap, or ignoring our own goodness. We're constantly redirected to the next level of self-understanding, whether it's encouraging or hard.

5.  Counselors want us to get "better." They really do. I believe they have our best interests in mind. The counselors that I have known have an inherent belief that humans are good, and that even when broken, damaged, or failed, our human calling is to health and well-being. That health looks different for each of us, but our counselor never gives up on us.

Ruining us: why we should think more critically about our companions

1.  By saying that counselors are our "only" safe space, we are failing to cultivate the types of vulnerability required for intimate relationships. Why can't, and shouldn't, we have friendships that are equally safe? What does it take to have friends and communities of people that allow for such vulnerability? Why we are satisfied with and/or resigned to professionalizing our spaces of vulnerability?

2.  If we depend too much on our counselor, then we become lazy. We can get away with not asking ourselves the questions because we expect the counselor to ask the questions. We can stop thinking on our own because our professional will think for us. Yes, it can happen.

3. Counselors keep the focus on us. Here the downside is that we are reinforced in our already-present narcissism. The problems are about me. The struggle is about me. The solutions are about me. But very few if any things are ever so exclusively about me. Of course good counselors help us understand our systems, but they're always our systems.

4.  Counselors rely on our sickness to maintain their financial wellness. This reality is not meant to imply that counselors would keep a client on in ways that are not necessary, or that counselors are money-grubbers. At this point professionalism (and insurance companies!) step up for some checks and balances. But admit it: there is a whole, huge, economic system built on people's pain and fragility. Should our suffering and struggles be an industry?


5.  Counselors provide an excuse to divest from others. When confronted with the anguish and struggle of those around us, we can get away from it by asking, "have you seen a counselor? Maybe you should." Too often I hear this statement as code for "I don't want to deal with you and your stuff" or "I just don't have the time." Come back after you've worked it out with your counselor, and I'll see if I can work you back into my life.


I don't really believe that counseling and counselors are saving us or ruining us. I do know that mine has been a tremendous help to me, and I know lots of people who swear by their counselor. I also know a few people that I think should go see a counselor. In the end I support that counselors can and do play an important role in mental health.

But I also earnestly wonder what the impact is for our culture when it relies so heavily on professionals to help us address our emotional condition.

Maybe I'll ask my counselor. I just got approval from my insurance provider to go see him again.

Perceived enemies

"When things get bad, you create a perceived enemy, 

especially when there is already resounding endorsement from all quarters. 

The myth grows greater than the reality. 

All human beings do it -- personally and politically." 

 from The Music Room by Namita Devidayal, p 106

Things must be bad. We have created so many enemies.

Not only have we created enemies, but we have turned our perception into a palpable vitriol, expressions of suspicion and hatred that rub across our skin like sandpaper and work their way into our soul like grains of sand. But those grains of sand do not turn to pearls. They become festering wounds, infected sores within ourselves, and between us. They become symptomatic of the harsh landscape of which we are a part.

To combat those sores, to fight the pain, to overthrow the "enemy," we turn to the powers we hold and unleash them.


When my wife was being treated for her severely infected gall bladder, the doctors pushed large amounts of strong antibiotics into her system. Through i.v.s and pills, they sought to overwhelm the infection with a violent force that would drive it out of her body, or kill it off. The problem is, however, that like in chemotherapy, the aggressive fight against infection can also damage the good cells and actually compromise the immune system. That is indiscriminate power.

We see such power unleashed every day in our world. Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Michael Smith, Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Patrick Zamarripa, and Brent Thompson.

Where have we gone so wrong? I wish I knew. I am tired of hearing that my black brothers are being gunned down. I am tired of hearing that police officers are being picked off while they serve to protect. I am tired of Chicago celebrating that we had "fewer" murders and "less" gun-related violence on this 4th of July weekend. I am tired of the toll of wars and bearing the weight, small as it is for me personally, of the rumor of wars.





But this movement in which a myth grows greater than the reality...... This movement is one I understand. It happens in my head, so it's not hard to imagine that it happens in much larger ways in the world. I am a worrier, so things often become realities in my thoughts even though they are far less (or far more) substantial in concrete life.





We perpetuate and feed these myths, but why? I wish I knew.

Actually, what I really wish I knew was how to stop them.

I wish I knew how to stop the myth that there are no structural barriers to racial equality.

I wish I knew how to stop the myth that to advance the cause of justice for one person or group of people is necessarily to dismiss, demean or devalue another.

I wish I knew how to stop the myth that power exercised by blunt force will produce sustainable peace.

I wish I knew how to stop the myth that everyone should be able to do "it" on their own, to realize that great American dream, to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

I wish I knew how to stop the myth that white people are superior to people with darker skin tones.

I wish......

          .........so many things.....

But wishing, no matter how bright the star, will not get me, will not get us, anywhere.

I wasn't a fan of the show "Myth Busters" the way many people were, but I do appreciate the effort to take things that are commonly thought to be true and actually test them. I am, however, a big fan of snopes,com and wish more social media users would take 30 seconds to check their stories before perpetuating them.

In fact, it's a simple place to start when we want to move beyond wishing. Start by asking questions.

Ask things like "is this factually true?" "How is it that I consider my sources trustworthy?" "What is an alternate point of view?" "What is the energy behind this point of view?" "What am I afraid of?" "What am I hoping for?" "What would the other in this situation say? Better yet, what do you say, victim, perpetrator, bystander?"

Ask things like "I wonder what it feels like to be _______ (in that position, or those shoes)?" "How am I feeling, and where did those feeling come from?" "Could I be wrong?" "What does it mean if I'm right?" "What more can/must I learn?" "What is my power, and how can I utilize it responsibly?"

By asking questions we challenge the endorsement of an unreality pointing toward the necessity of an enemy.

The myth we're living with these days is that things are getting bad, that enemies are lurking around every corner. Maybe instead of jumping on the bandwagon we might ask some questions and consider the inquiry of others.

Gus and me - photo by Samuel Sarpiya

Today I visited an amazing outreach in Rockford, IL. You can read about it here. The mobile lab was parked half a block behind a house in which there was a shooting last night. One of the kids in the lab saw it happen. And yet there he was today, working and playing games on the computer.

What is the myth? What is the reality? What are the questions?

For those of us who are Christians, getting beyond the myth has a definite God element to it. The reality we seek to uncover beneath the myths we have fostered has particular characteristics. They include things like compassion, reconciliation, justice, love, joy, sacrifice, and service.

What are the myths? What are the questions?

God, help us to see a different reality,

Personally. Politically.