I’ve been back in Indy for a couple of weeks now, catching up on work and relationships. The next book is polished off, and I’ve begun work on a proposal for book three. Christine and I have been hosting friends for dinners, riding bikes (training the dogs to run alongside me without getting caught in the pedals or wheels), spending time with family, etc.

Daniel will finish his time at the Friends of Alcoholics facility on August 22nd, and it looks like several of us will meet him there to take him to a waiting house and roommate in Franklin, TN.

This is the blog entry I posted at the Samson Society site. Your comments for Daniel — emails or whatever — are welcomed via email to me.

…

I met Daniel outside a Whole Foods Market the morning after the Samson Road Cruise meeting in Winston-Salem, NC, June 11th, 2008. I was at the market to buy breakfast, and Daniel was playing blues guitar for tips at the bistro tables outside the market. The Jesus lyrics in his songs gave me the first clue to our divine appointment. After I ate my breakfast and listened to Daniel play a few songs, I introduced myself and told him about the Samson Society. I asked if he had any experience with addiction.

Ten years, it turns out, mingling crack and homelessness.

I told Daniel that the road cruise would be taking me to California. He lit up. He said God had told him to be ready to go to California as part of his street musician ministry. He’d even sold his bicycle — his only means of transportation — in preparation for the trip, even though he had no idea how he’d get to California. Everyone thought he was nuts.

But it sounded about right to a Samson guy. I told Daniel to wait at the market for me, and I hurried back to the hotel to get Nate and Kortland and Larry, the Samson guys with whom I was traveling on the road cruise. They were patient with me and came to meet this homeless crack addict I thought God may want us to invite on our journey.

It took about three minutes before the guys started trading nods to each other, and we invited Daniel to join us. A quick stop to pick up a shopping bag of clothes at a friend’s house, and we were on the Interstate heading across the country.

For the next 17 days, all the way from Winston-Salem to San Luis Obispo, Daniel and I shared the car, the credit card, hotel rooms, and an increasingly loving watchful eye for one another.

Scott Grissom got in the car with Daniel and me in Atlanta, and road with us to Phoenix. Along the way, we stayed at the Friends of Alcoholics facility near Jackson, Mississippi, where Scott had spent last summer to let the vodka pass through his system. Scott pushed Daniel pretty hard about returning there for rehabilitation from his crack addiction, but didn’t make any demands. He just spoke truth and offered love, and let those two forces do their work.

In San Diego, Daniel ate his first fois gras and tuna tartar (I told him what those things were after he’d tasted them).

It was San Diego where Daniel also chose brotherhood over personal freedom, after staying out very late and causing me all kinds of worry and headache, we had a very critical conversation that led us to a shared submission like I don’t think either of us had ever known before. It was at that point Daniel and I entered into something much closer to a mutual Silas relationship.

By San Luis Obispo, Daniel was pretty sure he was willing to head to the Friends of Alcoholics facility, but God had a few extra blessings for him before he left.

On the evening of our 15th day together, Aaron Porter (who started the Pastor Pirates) recorded a CD of Daniel’s music. You can download it for free at Aaron’s site [click]. (You can also download Aaron’s music, his REALLY GOOD book on marriage, and his interviews with me, Nate Larkin, and Tony Campolo.)

At lunch on the 16th day, a group of Samson guys took Daniel to lunch, and asked if he’d be willing to give up his guitar if his brothers would replace it for him. Daniel’s guitar had been his only valued possession — it was his mealticket, his everything — and he’d ridden across the country with it between his legs, both hands on the neck most of the time. He gave it up immediately. We all signed the guitar, and Daniel played a couple of farewell songs on it, and then he handed it over to Aaron (who has since hung it in the recording studio at his church). We drove across town to meet another Samson guy, a senior guy at a local bank, who gave Daniel a $1,200 Guild guitar. That night Daniel opened for Tony Campolo in front of 200 or 300 people at Aaron’s church.

The morning of the 17th day, Daniel and I led the staff devotions at the Parable Group (a chain of Christian bookstores) headquarters. I told our story, Daniel played a couple of songs, and we gave away copies of his CDs and my book. After the Parable Group event, I drove Daniel to the Greyhound station and we bought a ticket together. He spent three days on the bus getting to the FoA facility and has been there almost eight weeks now.

The whole trip, all Daniel could say, over and over again, was, “This sure beats the bridge.” It turns out he’d spent the night before we met sleeping under the overpass behind the hotel I’d slept in.

Here’s where you come in.

Daniel will finish his time at the Friends of Alcoholics facility on August 22. The plan is for him to go from there to Franklin, TN, where he will move in with Nate and Allie Larkin.

I want to see how many brothers can be there — at the FoA facility — to welcome Daniel out of rehab and into life with the brothers.

I am planning to leave my house in Indianapolis on Thursday, August 21. A group of us (I hope others will join me) will leave Franklin the morning of Friday, August 22. We will pick Daniel up and have dinner at Catfish Haven, spending the night in the Jackson area.

We will probably stop at the Dreamland BBQ in Tuskaloosa on the way back toward Franklin, where we will arrive sometime Saturday evening. Hopefully there will be some sort of welcome party for Daniel there.

If you’re interested, this will be a tour of celebration, and it would be GREAT to have you join us, either in person or by note, gift, call or whatever else strikes you.

A quick update for those of you who are checking in (thank you for checking in).

Daniel took a bus from San Luis Obispo to Jackson, MS, ten days ago, arriving in Mississippi seven days ago. He is staying at the recovery center where we stopped on the way west a few weeks ago. Scott “the Prowler” Grissom stopped in last Thursday as his family passed through, and reports that Daniel is really enjoying the place. He is not allowed outside phone calls until next week.

Two days before Daniel grabbed the bus — and two weeks after he joined the Samson tour — Aaron Porter recorded a CD of Daniel’s music (including one song Daniel and I wrote together). You can learn more about Aaron, download Daniel’s music for free, and listen to interviews with Tony Campolo, Nate Larkin, and myself at Aaron’s site.

The day before Daniel grabbed the bus, he opened for Tony Campolo in front of a nearly full house at First Baptist Church in San Luis Obsipo.

The morning of Daniel’s departure, he and I led the staff devotionals at the Parable Group’s headquarters.

All along the way, he kept saying, “It’s a long way from the bridge.”

Such is brotherhood.

The plan is for Daniel to complete at least an eight-week program in Jackson (we’ve encouraged him to consider spending one month for each of the ten years of his previous lifestyle, but that’s a whole lot to commit to up front). From there, it looks like he’ll move to Franklin, TN and move in with the Larkins as he further plugs in with the Samson Society there.

How cool is that?

So, we had a teary goodbye, and I hit the road, listening to Daniel’s CD. Lunch with the Campus Crusade director (and his really cool wife) from Cal Poly. Dinner in Fresno with super-cool pastor Dave Wainscott and his family, followed by a fun radio interview with the Dave’s friend, Celtic Ken. The whole central valley of California was hazy with smoke, and the hotels were crowded with fire fighters. I was finally able to find a room in Modesto that night.

I reconnected with Nate and Allie in Medford, where I thoroughly enjoyed dinner with the Meer family and another Samson guy named Sam. The Meers and I caravaned to Eugene the next day, so Darren Meer and I could get some time together (and his wife and daughters could hit the Hollister store). A rich 24 hours with Darren.

Nate spoke in Eugene, and then I was hosted by a Samson guy named Rod, whose Chocolate Labs, Sable and Mink, were a great fix for me as I’ve missed my dogs. The evening also made me miss Christine and our world together even more than I already had been.

I left Rod’s early the next morning for Portland, where I made a beeline for Beaverton Foursquare and a coffee with my friend Mark, who is a pastor there.

Nate and I had an event at a bookstore that evening, followed by good time with some impressive guys.

The next day Christine arrived. It was so good to see her. We had dinner that evening with Nate and Allie, who left the next morning for San Francisco.

That night’s event was a cookout at Mark’s house with several good friends. Mark and Steve have been constant cheerleaders and friends since we met two years ago, at which time they introduced me to their friend and mentor, Ron Frost, who immediately set my hair on fire and caused quite a few of my theological loose ends to fall into line with my heart’s hunches and desires. Ron cut short a river rafting trip to be with us. I’ll mention one other person, Dan Merchant, because his movie project (Lord Save Us From Your Followers) is worth checking out.

After the delightful evening at Mark’s place, Christine and I got a good night’s sleep, and then hit the road.

There’s not a ton to say about the drive between Portland and Denver, other than that there are several great views and some amazing scenery. We had great conversations about our love and about our dreams and about our life together, and it seemed as though at the conclusion of each of those conversations, we’d head into the tail of a storm and see a rainbow. I’m taking the rainbows as evidence of God’s fulfilling of our marriage covenant, and the delight he takes in being with us.

Denver has been about getting some time with old friends. Skinny Robert is in the hat. David is the other guy. Danielle is still cuter than either of them. We saw them two days ago. I had breakfast with David this morning, and will see Robert and his wife Julie, as well as Jon and his wife Erin, for dinner this evening. We were unable to connect with other Denver friends for one reason or another, though we did run into an old girlfriend at lunch yesterday. She’s doing well, and I think she and Christine would love each other, but we didn’t do much but say hello and catch up briefly.

Tomorrow we head for Kansas City, where we’ll have dinner with friends. The next night we’ll be back in Indianapolis, in my own bed, with my dogs jumping around, and weeds to pull. A couple of days after that I think we’ll both head to Franklin, TN (Christine returning home on her own) before kicking off the southern leg of the Samson Road Cruise, which will last through the end of July.

It’s been a great adventure so far, just past the half way point. I’ve hit the wall several times, but am loving it nevertheless. Thank you for your continued support, and your continuing prayers.

Pete

Good morning from a bright upstairs bedroom in sunny Irvine, California. Last night, with the heavy white noise of the fan droning over me, I had the best night’s sleep of the trip, and I’m feeling great.

It’s Sunday. We left Ozona, Texas on Wednesday morning and arrived in Phoenix that evening. Lunch at a great little Mexican place in Van Horn, Texas. 105 degrees, and dusty, but it felt great — so dry and so different from home.

Our host in Phoenix works for the Arizona Southern Baptist Convention, and is a long time friend of Scott “The Prowler” Grissom. He put us up for two nights, and gathered several very interesting friends together for a cookout the second night. Daniel played guitar and I read a chapter from my new book, and the conversations all ran longer than we’d planned. A delightful, restful stop.

Daniel and I dropped Scott off at the Phoenix airport for his flight home to Atlanta, and then headed for San Diego. There were several points during the drive where traffic was funneled through border patrol checkpoints to be casually screened by law enforcement officers. Daniel’s comment as we passed through one of them: “This is the first time I’ve ever been glad to be black around a cop.” Classic.

We ended up staying two nights at a very nice place in the gaslamp district in downtown San Diego.

We had dinner at the hotel’s fancy restaurant on Friday. It was Daniel’s first time having fois gras, oysters, shard tartar, tuna tartar, and scallop ceviche. I didn’t tell him that tartar means raw until he’d tried some. He was a good sport. That evening Daniel performed on the streets near the hotel, and got his street musician called by God fix.

He returned to the hotel room around 11:00 to drop off his money and freshen up a bit. He said he wanted to go out again. There were a couple of people who he thought were working together as a scam team, but he wanted to go back out to spend some time with them. I told him that it didn’t sound like a very good idea to me, and that late night on the streets would present all sorts of temptations he’d be wiser to avoid. He insisted on going out anyway, saying, “That’s how I do.”

He was out until 3:00am, and I spent the hours worrying, praying, cursing, and playing out convoluted “what if” scenarios in my head. Everything had gone fine with him. I didn’t say a word about it that night, but yesterday morning we got into it pretty good. It was an important moment in learning something about brotherhood for both of us. There is a difference between being a worrying mother and being an invited, concerned brother. The experience shifted our relationship, and it also showed me how often I make choices just like the one Daniel made to go back out, and how often my friends, family, and especially my wife, have to deal with unfair rebellion and unwise selfishness on my part. I pray I can learn humility there. Likewise, it felt very good to tell Daniel (and have him respond very well) what I was feeling. I pray that I can learn to be more effective on the up front speaking of wisdom, and be a more compelling voice for wisdom when my brothers point themselves toward foolish destruction.

It’s not just destruction we choose, though. In fact, I would wager that destruction is a pretty rare choice — at least compared to our tendencies to work against ourselves by hiding behind symbols of ourselves, and idols of our own stylized selves. With Daniel right now, it’s his guitar. I understand why he’d want the security blanket, being in such a vulnerable position on this trip, after so many years on the streets. His guitar and his singing are universally accepted and applauded parts of the self he introduces to people (and people would rather hear him play than tell his stories). I get why he finds comfort and security there.

Daniel has a responsibility about presenting the real him, and about how much hiding he chooses. But the people around him, especially me (his closest contact and ally on this trip), have a burden to search out the man behind the shining guitar and talent.

I have the same tension, by the way. On this trip, my “guitar” is the label of “author.” It’s a shorthand way of sizing me up and managing me. And people respond favorably to me as an author, so it’s much more tempting to let that be all they learn about me than it would be for me to talk about my wife, my dogs, my family, my hobbies, my favorite movies, my prayer life, my joy musing with God and watching for miracles, my deep satisfaction of meeting God in my body as I take my vitamins, choose my food, exercise (or don’t), or any number of other things that are of more specific, more ordinary interest.

What I’m wrestling with regarding Daniel is how to encourage the music — the divine gift that is offered through him, to his delight — without locking him into that, or making a mascot out of him for his story and his music. It’s a tension I feel about how I present myself, but I feel that there is a difference between my “author” version of the tension, where I have some power and choice about what I share, and what Daniel experiences where his singing completely recasts the way a lot of people see him.

And I’m one of those people, by the way. If he’d been sitting outside of Whole Foods in Winston with just a cup, instead of playing guitar with a cup beside him, I would never have said hello…or at least I doubt I would have invited him along on this trip. The shiny beautiful idol in Daniel’s world is what caught my attention. For me it brings up some questions about what sort of person I am, and what sort of real love I am able to pass to my friend.

I thank my God that He is at work in me and in this adventure, and that He is the one who delights to spread His goodness in the world. I get to enjoy it, get to learn from it, and get to have it change me, but I don’t have to be the one who is ultimately responsible for how all of this plays out. I just want to keep playing.

Speaking of playing, here is Daniel with his guitar, performed in the kitchen downstairs last night here in Irvine.

I didn’t know where it was, either. We’re on Interstate 10 part way between San Antonio and El Paso, at a Best Western where the lady at the front desk has promised us great biscuits and gravy for their free breakfast.

This photo is of Scott Grissom, who has done the bulk of the driving since we picked him up in Atlanta. I’ve been giving him a hard time about the facial hair and haircut, finding names like “dirty boy” and “the prowler” to indicate his less-than-babysitterly appearance. In the photo with Scott is Tom Cotter, a youth pastor just north of Austin (and old friend of Scott) who met us for dinner this evening. Tom made reference to the “molestache,” and that won the prize for the best jab of the day.

It’s been a great trip so far. I was completely blown away by the generosity of the people we met in the Carolinas, the dinner in Atlanta, the peace at the Friends of Alcoholics facility, the fun of reconnecting in Dallas with a friend Christine and I met during our friend’s cross-country road trip a couple of summers ago, and at every turn new friends — all part of the same Body of Christ.

The Body of Christ is not a club, just as the Cross is not a logo. The Body of Christ is an organism enlivened by the same Spirit, and we thrive when we thrive together. We overcome when we face life together. We are contagious and we are not timid — or driven by our fears to a point that we become obnoxious to others — when we love.

Today we met with a loyal and faithful 60-something Baptist couple, and it was great. We went from that meeting to coffee with three guys who are exploring house church and emergent thinking and leveling gender ground. We drove straight from there across Waco to spend a little time with a pastor at the very missions-minded church where Christine worshiped in college (and where she stayed for a year of missionary training after she graduated). From there it was dinner with Tom from the photo above, and a younger and maybe different perspective on the Baptist world. Different people, with different takes on the world, but we’re all responding to the same voice, the same God. We are all part of the same Body. The only differences between us, really, have to do with what needs we bring to the relationship.

Tomorrow we’ll likely push all the way to Phoenix. I’m looking forward to New Mexico — it’s maybe my favorite state to be in because the land feels alive, and has always made me happy. I’ll see if I can grab some more pictures then. In the meantime, here are a few from the places we’ve eaten.

A week and a day into the trip, and I’m finally getting a few minutes to post a blog entry about this summer’s trip. Here’s the itinerary:

June 8 - Charlotte, NC
June 9 - Greensboro, NC

June 10 - Winston-Salem, NC

June 11 - Columbia, SC

June 12 - Greenville, SC

June 13 - Atlanta, GA

June 14 - Jackson, MS
June 15 - Dallas, TX

June 16 - San Antonio, TX

June 17 - El Paso, TX

June 18 - Phoenix, AZ

June 19 & 20 - San Diego, CA

June 21 & 22 - Irvine, CA

June 23-26 - San Luis Obispo, CA

June 27 - San Francisco by way of Fresno, CA

June 28 - Medford, OR

June 29 - Eugene, OR

June 30, July 2 - Portland, OR

July 3 - Seattle, WA

July 4 - Missoula, MT

July 5 - Salt Lake City, UT

July 6 - Moab, UT

July 7-9 - Denver, CO

July 10 - Kansas City, MO

July 11 - St Louis, MO

July 12 & 13 - Indianapolis, IN

July 14 - Franklin, TN

July 15 - Birmingham, AL

That’s as much as I have memorized right now — I know from Birmingham we move through Florida and back up through Georgia before I return home July 28 or 29.

The Samson meetings and the community of guys have been amazing. Broken people (perfectly able to hide in church and their ordinary worlds and seem just fine, by the way) who are experiencing the healing of Christ in His Body. There are anecdotes and wonderful stories at every stop.

We were hosted for dinner in Atlanta by my friends Radford and Emily, and had a magical evening of gentle discussion, song, reading and kids there.

We spent the night in Jackson, MS at the Friends of Alcoholics farm, and the simplicity and honest purity of the place made me want to stay.

The prayer and theme for this trip is something I lifted from Puritan Richard Sibbes: “God delights to spread his goodness.” I’ve been watching for it, splashing in it, spreading it, and feeling it fill me and change me.

Here’s the throughline for this trip, and for that prayer. His name — given to him by God — is Daniel, which means “God is my judge.” I know what his family named him, but it’s more fun if he remains simply Daniel. We met by divine appointment on Wednesday morning in Winston-Salem.

On Tuesday night, in my hotel bed, I remember thinking that the thunderstorm was keeping me awake. It turns out that Daniel was in a folding chair, under the bridge of the Interstate, about 200 feet from the hotel. We experienced the storm differently.

He was under the bridge because he didn’t have a place of his own, and he didn’t want to go to the houses of friends who would offer him drugs. He’d quit smoking crack on Sunday. It was a stewardship issue, brought to the foreground for him by a woman who gave him a Bible and prayed for him.

The money Daniel was stewarding came from playing guitar in front of the Whole Foods Market. He was called by God to be a street musician and to bless people with his songs, and he was taking the money he earned from that work and spending it on drugs.

If you change the details around, but keep the ethical failures in place, you can transpose the dilemma to most people in the world.

He’d sold his bike about a week before we met, because God told him to be ready to go to California.

The Saturday before we met, people with whom he was doing something illicit drove away with his guitar, straw hat (for tips), and wallet. He was crestfallen; God had put that guitar in his hands through the generosity of a believer.

So on Sunday he smoked crack. On Monday he went looking for the people who’d stolen his things, but couldn’t find them. Monday night he determined that he would get a new guitar on Tuesday.

On Tuesday he took two pieces of posterboard and drew the shape of a guitar on them, with the words “Guitar stolen. Need help.” Then he sat in front of the Whole Foods Market and played the paper guitar and sang as though he was playing a real one. In five hours he’d earned enough money to buy a replacement.

That night it stormed, and he slept under the bridge while I slept in the Comfort Inn.

The next morning I had a great conversation with my wife, Christine, and when we hung up I took the vitamins she packed (in love) for me, slipped into my walking shoes (in love) for her, and headed into the bright morning light, feeling God’s goodness (offered in love for all of us) and looking to be a part of it.

I stopped by the Christian bookstore. My book was in stock and I introduced myself to the sales people. Samson and the Pirate Monks was sold out in advance of Father’s Day. I kept walking, humming some worship song. I noticed the Whole Foods Market and knew that I could make a healthy food choice there for breakfast.

I decided to eat outside at one of the tables. There was a guy playing guitar, and I noticed a couple of Jesus lyrics in his performance, so I sat at the table next to him. I drank my electrolyte-enhanced water, my Acai smoothy, ate my sushi (it was late morning) and one of the two South Carolina peaches I’d picked up, and as the guitar player picked through Just a Closer Walk With Thee, I knew that when I finished eating, I would turn to the man, move to his table, and we would experience our divine appointment. I saved him my second peach.

I told him about the Samson Society (http://www.samsonsociety.org ) and about the summer trip. We talked a bit about addiction. He played me a song (the one inserted in this post). He told me God had told him to be ready to go to California. He told me that he’d been telling his friends that he was going, and they thought he was nuts. I told him I needed to bring the three other Samson guys with whom I was traveling back to meet him before I could promise anything, but I asked if he might be interested in going with us. He was. The Samson guys met Daniel, and an hour later we were all headed to Columbia, SC together.

Here’s what I love, love about the Gospel, and about the way that the Samson Society has recovered it. Sin is not the contagious thing — love and goodness are.

Love is contagious and it spreads faster than any disease.

If you want to speak in categories, Daniel was a homeless crack addict. Not the “type” you invite into your car to travel across country visiting different ministries…for a variety of reasons.

But the truth is that God, love, mercy, healing — God’s spreading goodness — incarnate in the flesh of the Body of Christ, this is the contagious element. We are exactly the right place for Daniel, and as it’s turned out, Daniel has been exactly the right person to be with us. This is God’s tour, not ours and not mine.

He’s loving the meetings. Last night he mentioned that he’s feeling a little clumsy because he is unsure about many “social graces” as he called them. All he really meant was the subtleties of conversation and taking turns telling stories. Yesterday morning he mentioned in passing that he thinks maybe God’s working on him to quit smoking cigarettes, too.

These were not his thoughts a week ago.

We’re traveling together, experiencing God’s goodness, and it is a delight. There is another Samson guy, Scott Grissom, who’s been with us — doing the bulk of the driving — since Atlanta. Scott will be with us until Phoenix, and then Daniel and I will travel alone to San Diego.

I don’t know where in California Daniel will jump off. I also have misgivings about how much service or love it is to help a man transplant himself 2,000 miles away from home, if that’s what happens. I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know how this will unfold. But I do believe that God’s telling a great story with this experience, and I’m excited to see how it turns.

A quick note on the song. A woman from Daniel’s past got pregnant, she said by him. She wanted to have an abortion. He pleaded with her not to. Said he’d take the child. But then he got arrested, and while he was in jail he spoke with her on the phone and she’d had the abortion. Anger. Blood on his hands. And a huge sense that his failure led to her final decision. The experiences of the song have helped him heal.

There’s a Buddhist phrase/phase that has to do with “wanting mind.” It is characterized by an insatiable hunger - in this photo it’s hungry ghosts, who find food or drink, only to have whatever they put in their mouths turn to fire. The solution, in Buddhist thinking, is to be free from wanting. To detach.

There are aspects of this in Christianity as well, at least in terms of what are commonly called “earthly things,” but there is a crucial, huge difference. A Christian is called to engage. And a Christian is called to be driven by desire.

The difference between desire and wanting pretty much boils down to the cost a person is willing to pay to meet an objective. Want is low-cost, immediate, consumption-oriented. Desire is any-cost, any-time, relation-oriented.

Want says that you need something. Desire says that you may change your condition.

Want orders delivery. Desire sows and harvests.

Detachment from want, in non-Christian contexts, is a compassionate alternative to disappointment. It urges a person to be still and forget.

Detachment from want, in Christianity, is a compassionate alternative to distraction. It urges a person to be still and know He is God (Psalm 46:10).

And the knowledge of God produces motion. The word used for the Holy Spirit’s “wooing” is the same word as is used for the drawing of water from a well, or the dragging of Paul into court - it is a pulling against what is a physically natural state. If a person seeking to be free from the hunger and pain of want sits still and forgets, the person will remain there. If a person seeking to be free from the hunger and pain of want is still and knows God is God, they will move.

And even in their moving, there will be a stillness within them - the stillness that comes as the scratching of want fades.

This whole deal about wanting vs. desiring is huge, and because it is rooted in something rather than nothing, and because that something is the person of Jesus upon the Cross in all of his supernatural and ultimate power, wanting vs. desiring may be one of the most profound differences between a truly Christian worldview and a non-Christian worldview.

Pain and wanting are decent starting points. Admitting them is critical. It’s what we do from there that makes all the difference.

Pain and wanting, and feelings, all bear witness to the way we think the world works. Pain and wanting and feeling are always valid in the sense that they are predicated upon some structure within us.

And that structure is built from our experiences and the conclusions or impressions we draw from our experiences. Our structures are therefore also valid in the sense that they come from objective data points.

The trick is that our ability to build truth from objective data points is more than a little broken - we filter everything through subjective lenses.

It’s a bit like doing a crossword puzzle in pen, this condition where we build structures from data points we’re unable to process in full objectivity. We fill in “1 Across” with a seven-letter word that seems like it could be right. We see that “4 Down” intersects it, and our guess works with it, so we ink it in. Some puzzles we solve this way just fine. Some days we have the energy to discover, track down, and rewrite the mistakes we make, and we solve the puzzle in messy but correct fashion that way too. On some instances we finish a puzzle and later discover that we were able to complete it with a couple of wrong words in the blanks…it functions, but it’s not right. We give ourselves partial credit for those. But now and then we start a puzzle and it gets so muddy that we stop before it’s finished - the mess isn’t worth the nerdy reward, and we set the puzzle aside.

Those are the life experiences where our structures end up built cockeyed. That’s where pain lives. And error. And we keep building on top of it and we see how a few mistaken words here or there screw up the whole puzzle.

And a quick reminder for you Focus on the Family types: our lives are more than one puzzle. We’re more like giant 3D balls of puzzle, played on every plane and from every angle, and solving one doesn’t solve the whole, nor does it necessarily mean that we’ve gotten every word of our one puzzle correct.

Our feelings are valid because they are the objective outcomes of structures we build from objective data points with our subjective perceptions, tools, appetites, capacities, and limitations.

And nothing causes us to build lousy structures the way sin does.

I don’t mean the sins perpetuated against us. There is no question that the evil of others creates really goofy data points for us to build around. In fact, the data points - the objective experiences we’re forced to try to process - are very often more than we can manage on our own.

But the real problem in our worlds - and the reason we feel like crap, in hunger of want, in pain of confusion and fear - is our own sin. We don’t like how an objective data set impresses us, and we choose against it. It’s a natural defense mechanism, and it makes sense for immediate coping, but there is only one objective reality, and so long as we build the structures of our worldview from irrational coping escapism, our perceptions and our feeling will always remain off-kilter. Our coping mechanisms are helpful for moments when our circumstances overcome our sense of self and place in the objective world, but our coping mechanisms are falsehoods we tell ourselves to cope. In fact, our coping mechanisms serve to substitute a filter of our choosing over an objective reality we find intolerable. In that moment, we create a false world - perhaps unavoidable in some moments, but nevertheless false, and inadequate to build upon. When we engage a false world, we wrest dominion from the God who is adequate for the objective world (whether we feel it or not). When we retain control of that false world and when we build upon our protective lies to make structure in our worlds, we sin.

Sin begets neurosis. Life circumstances do not.

That sounds incredibly harsh, like blaming the victim, until you consider what it means.

1. Circumstances do not “outrank” us. We outrank circumstances.
2. God lives in the real - not just in the ecstatic. It means He’s there when the pain is enough to drive us into hiding.
3. And because He is there, and because He retains all true dominion over all moments of objective reality - without ceasing to be God in the moments of horror - there exists some path for us to rebuild our structures upon Him, rather than upon the falsehoods we use under extreme duress.
4. Because He is real and is adequate for the building of reality, we can let go of the falsehoods that have protected us in moments, but been built into neurosis as we practice those falsehoods rather than practicing Him.
5. We can experience deliverance from all neurosis.

We begin by asking Him to show us where we have built upon lies rather than upon Him - and then we repent of choosing the lies over Him.

“I’ll ask Him to forgive me when He asks me to forgive Him for the horrible things he let happen to me.”

I totally get it.

That’s the voice of want, though. Not desire.

Do you want to have life again? Do you want it to get better, or would you rather choose the neurotic option of living an increasingly messy, muddy ball of failing crossword puzzles?

Desire is about a change of condition, rooted and culminating in a change of relationship [with Christ].

Screw what feels fair to you - the perception comes from a conclusion that’s been built on a lie. Do not choose the lie over life.

Choose desire, and let it lead you.

We are ALL masculine AND feminine, and those traits and associated duties are not assigned merely by gender. It’s killing me to see so many of my male friends in pain because they cannot tell their wives the truth about who they are as men, and it kills me to see my female friends warp as they bite their tongues in some sort of perverted submission to male leadership while they wait for men to unravel the riddle of the vision and hope my friends have. It’s wrong, and it makes us deaf to Jesus.

We are all masculine and we are all feminine. Masculinity, broadly defined, is the initiator. Femininity, broadly defined, is the responder. Jesus is the supreme example of each - initiating with humanity, responding to the Father.

Moment by moment we have choices to make about how we weigh our worlds - long-view or short-view. Long-view requires an initiator approach, while short-view is immediate and by definition requires a responsive approach. Deciding to drive to Tuscon is an initiator move. Packing, getting gas along the way, and arriving well is all about response to the immediacies encountered because of the motion begun by the initiation.

Initiation is masculine. Response is feminine. The masculine end of the extension cord is the one with the metal pieces jutting out - to bridge the gap. The feminine end of the extension cord is the one with the holes - to allow connection. There’s obviously some parallel in our physical design, but every woman makes a thousand masculine choices each day, and every man who reaches a door and makes the series of choices required to pass through it (unlocking it, turning the knob, etc) is filled with feminine choices. All of us respond to God - we are ALL, male and female, part of the Bride of Christ.

God looked at Adam and said it was not good for him to be alone. He created Eve - drawn from the same stuff as Adam. We are flesh from flesh, bone from bone. We are the same stuff. There are differences in the balances and tendencies between us, but we are not so foreign to each other as the popular Christian lies would have it.

And the lies are hurting my friends.

Remember the movie, Pet Sematary?

It’s been maybe 15 years since I saw it, but I’ll never forget one line from it:

“The soil of a man’s heart is stonier…”

Here’s what I heard in that…
- Men can look upon hard things in life with an objectivity that women don’t have, and men will not be spoiled by hard things as women will.
- Men can make harder choices than women.
- Men are dirtier, more perverted, harsher, somewhat forsaken, and are left with something of a martyr’s role as compared to the role granted women (warrior mindset, anyone?)
- Good things do not grow in a man as readily as they grow in women.

The movie quote continued, “…a man grows what he can…and tends it.”

You know what comes from that bullshit?

Sweet boys are left with only the poison of “boys will be boys,” and the order of things is made monstrous.

And by the way, I’m not writing this for pastors or professors or Christian radio preachers who feel like being argumentative; I’m writing this for the pastors and friends who get the sorts of email and stories I get - stuff about addiction, suicide, depression, cravings for adultery (a Father’s Day gift certificate from children and a wife who want to send dad for a massage, and he’s depressed - legitimately tormented - that it’ll be another massage where the therapist won’t reach under the towel to offer a “happy ending”).

To those people I say Risk Everything to Kill the Lie. The soil of every heart is stoney. And it is only made worse when we hide that fact from the people who have been brought into our worlds to make us more able to love God. You’ve heard the phrase, “he who is alone in his sin is alone indeed.” It’s true.

I am all for same gender groups - they do great things for people. But there is only so much they can do, and one of the most critical things they can do for people is to send men back to their wives with the whole truth, and wives back to their husbands no longer willing to role play lies. I say Risk Your Marriage to Kill the Lie. The covenant is God-initiated and God-fulfilled - you be Adam and let Eve see beneath the fig leaf, or be Eve and let Adam see how strong you really are, and see if that doesn’t remind you that we’re not put together for the sake for the sake of being together; we’re put together for the sake of what is good for each of us before God. If you can’t be yourself - fears and cravings included - with your spouse, you serve the idol of marriage more than you love to Father who already sees it all.

No more of this crap where the man is supposed to go off and fight a dragon so he can haul the slain head back to some bitch brushing her hair in a tower. No more being the woman who has to feel like she’s too much or not enough, depending on which voice from self or from church she listens to on a given day. Enough. Stop. Quit showing off, men. Quit being coy and condescending, women.

Risk Everything to Be as Matter of Fact With God and Your Mate as You are With the Mirror When You Get Out of the Shower.

Chaos and confusion don’t hurt nearly as much as despair and lies. I promise.

Browning verse is sent sprawling across the page, stranger from an earlier year,
Aurora Leigh hangs with the meth kids now - and love seems lost to its true language.

Crystalline words of today flee me and fail me, so weak then is my mirror for you,
How to tell of the prize that eludes my eye? - Must Kant own my heart too?

Art too real is futile, when nearby reclines the thing itself - and you smile,
there is so much more to be savored, perchance to be shared by an outstretched heart.

And in that you are less a thing than a place, believe so this drifting pilgrim,
When a man leaves one home, in his soul is already the next - the navigator sails on.

My nights whisper of Terr-a-nog, my home and my heaven entwined,
Lotus at El Dorado, Argus pines for his bird, and then I catch Happiness on the wind.

You pour in upon me, bright morning light and summer birdsong kissed in dew,
as my last sweet dream slips away, I awake to the pools of your eyes - and am known.

You, the place where laughter issues forth in tulips, and your touch is a downy bed,
where the gentle lunatic is pulled in from the rain and caressed - his senses restored.

Where love and devotion are shared with one greater, spring showers danced as two,
sunsets spread to night, your lids knit together in rest, and I stand by you till dawn.

Could ever I earn such a place? Where to rest is to rest in God and grace and you?
Haran and Caaan together, rapt like me in your eye? - I pray it could ever be so.

A couple of weeks ago I read Nate Larkin’s book, Samson and the Pirate Monksand was impressed enough with the character and the content of the man and the message that this week I visited Franklin, TN to see what it was about.

I was nearly weeping before it was ever my turn to say anything in the Samson Society meeting. There were 16 or 17 guys there - just ordinary guys, hairy and bawdy, ready to tell truths or - if the lesser need presented itself - rumble. There was a feeling not unlike recess - do you remember recess? The bell rings and you fly out the door to the playground for kickball or…who cared what. There were 16 or 17 of us sitting in a very simple little church, all of us quite accustomed to carrying a load, doing our homework, sitting politely in rows and raising our hands when we have questions…maybe even asking for permission to use the bathroom. That’s what being a grown-up man feels like a lot of the time.

But we were there for a bit of recess. It wasn’t some he-man woman-hater thing at all - but there was a guiltless enthusiasm for being able to speak without the accent and vocabulary of mixed company…sort of like how it felt to return home after my trip to Egypt. I love the Egyptians, and I’m a big fan of woman - and of what I have to learn from both - but sometimes there’s a special joy in simply speaking my own native, unfiltered, “you know what I mean” language. That was this.

And the shit grown-up men carry through the rest of their weeks makes for great entertainment, engagement and joy when it’s drawn from the darkness to be kicked around in the light for a bit. We told secrets. I told secrets. And I told them to my brothers - and that’s exactly how they received me.

I have the blessing of knowing exactly where my most obvious addiction and junk can be found, being as heavy as I am, but there are other people who don’t know where that thing is - they simply know something hurts and they simply know that looking for it will cause chaos. Speaking it is out of the question. If you’re a man like that - someone who’s doing “just fine” but you still think you’d enjoy the company of men (and not weird or angry or platform- or profit-driven men…this isn’t a political group) who are frank about their junk and who will receive you as a brother, you should see if there is a Samson Society meeting near you. If there is not, you should start one. Either way your first step is to buy Nate’s book.

Besetting Sin is Bad, but there is something even more heartbreaking…

One thought that deserves to be associated with the Samson Society because they had me thinking in this light.

A besetting sin is one that has wrapped itself around a person and gained control. It is the difference in the Bible between drinking and being “given to” drunkenness. Besetting sins are the ones at the helm when our lives slam into “rock bottom.” Besetting sins are dark places over which we discover we are powerless, and besetting sins are often the final and sufficient reason to hand ourselves over entirely to the care of Jesus. It’s that last part that stirs some hope into the reality of a besetting sin.

Over the past week I’ve seen something worse.

“Onsetting Sins.” I took a little time on my drive down to Nashville to have some tea and watch people play in a park in a tiny southern Indiana town. I read a bit of the “big book” from AA (which OA also uses). I drank tea. I sat. I enjoyed the sunshine and the air conditioning mixed with the open windows. Then I headed back through town toward the Interstate, feeling the sweep and sway of life and thinking it quite rich and grand.

I drove past a 12 or 13-year-old boy with a skateboard, clumsily rolling a couple of feet, hopping off, then trying again. Over and over. He was significantly overweight. He was alone. His hair was greasy. His shirt wet with sweat. His shorts were falling down. He looked miserable. And it was absolutely clear that by the end of the summer the boy will have put the skateboard away, and will never ride one again. The besetting sin of his weight and the addictions thereof have just…about…reached…around him. The embrace is nearly complete. And he’ll be 13 when the onsetting sin gains the winning hold and becomes a full-blown besetting sin.

From there it will be years of pain. He will try diet after diet, and he will fail time after time. His personal credibility will erode, crumble and collapse. He will feel the sting of rejections. He will learn to negotiate some sort of comfort trade - something that boils down to “love me…anyway,” if he is strong, but it will probably sound much more like, “please, just tolerate me. please, I will do whatever it takes for you to tolerate me. I will agree that I am a punchline. I will manipulate. I will steal. I will lie. please, just don’t turn me away. don’t make me have to be alone with my sins, because of my failures. please.”

And for years that will be the voice of his soul in the world. For years that will be the bottom line of who he is. There will be areas of confidence against which he will over-leverage. He will try, as we all do, to comfort himself, to argue his worth, his utility. He will have moments of success, and when the sin determines he’s had enough success, it will squeeze and he will crumble that much further.

He will do this again and again. How many times? How many times have I done exactly those things? How many times have the blinds spots, lies, and repeated failures gouged and scraped themselves against the portions of my soul that were created to be strong and permanent? I was eight when I found my first stretch mark. I asked my father what it was. He said, “That’s a stretch mark. You get them from being too fat.” I finally started Overeaters Anonymous when I was 35. That’s 27 years. Every time I stand up and have to hitch up my pants. Every time I feel the urge to suck in my gut. Every meal. Every snack. Every motherfucking Diet Coke and that rancid flavor as homage to the desire to be healthy by avoiding the Coke (and the scolding glances that come with not choosing Diet). You want a list? You want the truth? Even Jack Nicholson can’t handle this one.

And that boy with the skateboard is on the same path. The onsetting sin just about has him. It is almost - catch this - too late. It sounds awful - “too late” in the life of a 13-year-old - and it is awful, but it will be too late. We all know it. We all know that once an onsetting sin becomes a besetting sin, it’s there until there’s no more sky - just rock bottom.

I didn’t “get it” until my wife delivered my “rock bottom” to me - saying she was no longer willing to be married to an addict. It was a choice of changing - toot sweet - or getting the fuck out. I would rather have had a heart attack.

The vast majority of the people who’ve read my book don’t get it yet, either. They’re still too young. They’re mostly still trying to slug it out, buckle down, whatever. I don’t think any of my friends in their 20s get it yet. About half of my friends in their 30s do. Pretty much all of my friends in their 40s or older know exactly what I’m talking about.

It’s a tragic thing.

Except this. If older men can become aware of their besetting sins, and if older men can begin to speak of their besetting sins, and can open doors to life “beyond the inevitable,” then maybe younger men can make changes a little sooner - or can at least have some sense of what’s coming. And if younger men, who still think the disgusting image of an older man hitting rock bottom can be chosen against, make an effort to choose against such besetting perversions, maybe 13-year-old kids - fat and alone on skateboards - can be engaged and protected and guided before the onsetting monster closes its grasp.

I think that’s part of what’s happening in Franklin, Tennessee these days. The Samson Society is working together to hear what God said in Isaiah 55:2…

Harken diligently to Me (here is a man who will be around)
and eat what is good (there is a best way to live)
and let your soul delight itself in fatness (which means joy…what if in my world, “fat” and “joy” could someday mean the same thing?)

Christine’s job comes with two or three different “awards points” programs, with which we recently acquired our latest family member. Or is he a pet? We haven’t decided.

We spent half an hour watching the little guy do his magic the first day our little Roomba lived with us. He’s very cute - and he plays a sort of “charge!” tune before he leaves his docking station and launches into his wall and chair-leg-bumping routine.

We watch him run into things, cute as he is, and we say, “Oh, Roomba!” There’s a Roomba song we’ve developed, too - it’s actually just an adaptation of the song Christine sings to our dogs when she dances with them.

Suddenly Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang makes so much better sense.

“High, low, anywhere we go
on Oh Roomba we depend
Boomba ba Roomba
our bumpin’ beeping friend…”

Today I let him out to play (and to little Roomba even work is play), and he mooped and meeped and bumped and buzzed his way through the dining room and down the hall. I returned to my laptop in the front room. I could hear Roomba get closer, wander into the room, then make his way back into other parts of the house. It was very much like having a polite and mess-free two-year-old toddling around the place.

And that’s when it hit me - I have a vacuum that provides me a sense of companionship.

Seriously, if you have very old grandparents, don’t buy them a cat; buy them a Roomba and let them create Roomba-Cozies to dress it up. It’s so much less mess, and nobody minds taking in an orphan Roomba when the time comes, you know?

The dogs don’t really like little Roomba. He doesn’t make sense to them. But as I was working I felt like there were three little pets wandering around the house, each doing their own thing. At one point I watched Roomba chase one of the dogs, and I had to remind myself what makes a dog different from a robotic vacuum in terms of ultimate value.

I know it sounds weird. It IS weird. But there was that moment. If the thing is not me, but is moving by reason of something I don’t control and can’t quite predict, it feels sort of alive.

Is that how I can tell something is alive? I see it, and it is not me, and it moves in ways I can’t control or quite predict?

Is that what I expect of God if he wants me to think he’s real? Is that the lens through which I’ll admit his existence?

And with little Roomba, it’s all cute and fun and song-worthy until the batteries die, or he gets caught on a pile of socks (hypothetically of course - my house is IMMACULATE, always) or functions in some way I don’t like. Like this morning when one of the dogs was going nuts trying to catch a squirrel, while the other dog was laying on the pants I’d laid on the sofa, licking her paw and totally slobbing up the crotch (I wore them anyway, cuz who really cares)?

I want God to exist. I want him to prove that he’s real by being around and doing something I can see - something that is not just in my imagination. AND I want him to behave, you know, not do anything that upsets the apple cart or causes me to have to react to his choices. I want a God who is as useful as little Roomba (there are plenty of praise songs for such a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang God), and who is a little more obedient than my dogs. Less proof, or more demands upon me, and God becomes a lot less desirable.

How’s that for weird and Pete-based reality?