reyes-chow :: FAITH

Trying to maintain some kind of balance

I met with my spiritual director today and she asked me a couple of really good questions, "What is God's word for Bruce today?" and "You sound a little off center, what's going on?"

First, let me say that I know life is crazy for most everyone.  Sometimes it is good crazy and other times not so much.  These past few weeks I have been able to stay just this side of the good kind, but I can just tell it wouldn't take much more to get me to the other side.  Sometimes this "in-between" is the worst place to be because, lets face it, it is not as easy to figure out.  That whole self-reflection thing has to happen and that is never fun ;-)

As many of you know, this whole moderator thing has been taking a toll on me and the family.  Not that we do not think it is totally worth it, but it has been like taking on another job without really having the space to do so.  Folks have been great in all aspects of our life to build a "net" of support, but still, it has been a challenge.  It has been an exhilarating challenge, but a challenge nonetheless.

What I have discovered is that I must be more disciplined than ever in claiming my Sabbath, my center and my grounding.  When I am not disciplined, I feel off-kilter and am not able to maintain any kind of focus on the big picture.  And while that may be good for short periods of time, with a church, family and self needing to maintain some level of health, my meanderings can't last too long lest I give up my responsibilities within these contexts.

The word for me from God has always been "Balance."  And I am reminded of this by my family.  Over and over again, I am drawn back to a place of balance by my understanding of God in the midst of my family.  Family is my center and my grounding.  Through the lens of my family I best understand my relationship with God.  Moreover I am driven to be a positive presence in the world because I am so grateful for the gift of my family.  As I watch my kids grow up, I am amazed at the immensity of God's willingness to trust Robin and I with these three gifts and am humbled by the responsibility to raise them. 

I stumbled upon this picture from a few Ash Wednesdays ago of Eldest place the ashes upon my forehead, "From dust you came and to dust you shall return."  As I reflect on the past few months and the months ahead that may get even crazier I not only rest in that humbling understanding of God's power and presence, but I am given energy and strength by the blessings that send me out.

Just take your day off already

TODAY - my theoretical turned hypothetical day-off -  I am not:

• plugging in
• engaging in moderator stuff
• thinking about MBCC
• working at my kids' school

Today is for ME ME ME ME ME ME!

I was in a meeting this week and the devotional question for us was, "What relationships in your life have you been neglecting because of your busyness?" 

Get in line.

I am not complaining.  I have made my choices and I like the pace I have been at the last few months.  I have been able to stay just this side of crazy and it has been incredibly energizing and joy-filled.  But . . . the next few months will only intensify as the Moderator journey heats up, MBCC finalizes its facility situation and, oh yeah, the family needs tending ;-)  In the midst of it all, I know that the relationship I have neglected the most has been my relationship with God.  I used to slip in a movie, tackle a home project, and generally make good use of the flexible pastor schedule.  Lately there has not been the easily identified Sabbath moments, so I guess I have to rip some Sabbath time from the claws of the accomplishment monster and rest.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, You have heard this before when I tried to unplug for 24 hours and then tried to justify the way my time is scheduled, but this time it's for real, at least for this week, God is-a calling and I am-a answering.

So after a movie, some yard work, a little reading and a big ol' nap - see you on Saturday!

Oh wait, how do I find movie listings again?

What the bleep is going on at MBCC?!?!?!?

First coffee in the "sanctuary" and now this?!?!?!

And this?!?!?!?

As part of our Series "Re|Creation: Meeting God in the Here and Now" we added a few elements to our "normal" worship experience.  In order to expand the ways that we might experience God, we invited folks to participate in any or all of the following activities during the course of the service.  Basically, as the service progressed, as folks felt called they could sit at their table/pew/couch and create or join in one of the communal projects.

• Community mural creation
• Community prayer creation
• Clay sculpting
• Pipe Cleaner Chenille Creation
• Lego creation
• Journaling
• Live Blogging - [Tiffany's Post] [Ryan's Post]

It was a tad bit chaotic and it was certainly was not neat.  We have certainly learned a great deal about ourselves and have discovered some amazing gifts of imagination and artistry.  So far I think the experience has re-affirmed our willingness and ability to be creative and open, while remaining focused on creating a sacred space.

I am proud of us.

[more pictures]

That knittin' pastor

Everyone once in a while I get a message because of an old Yelp review on Imagikit.  It starts off with these five lines:

Yes, I RIDE A MOTORCYCLE
Yes, I HAVE BEEN ARRESTED
Yes, I AM A PASTOR
Yes, I am an ASIAN MALE
and YES I KNIT!

And while I have been keeping up with my Asian maleness, motorcycle riding and pastoring, I have not been so good with the getting arrested and knitting.   Forced to choose one of those in which I will re-engage, I think I'll go with the knitting. So this week, I pulled out the knitting bag and started another trusty scarf for one of the girls. I had forgotten how therapeutic it is.  Good times, he says with a manly motorcycle-riding grunt.

When dad makes you cut school

Monday morning Robin and I woke up and thought that the girls and I could use a mental healthy day.  These MDS's are a long standing tradition in our family.  Take a day every once in a while and just hang out and play.  Of course, uber-responsible Eldest was worried that she would get in trouble for "cutting" school.  Ahem, I do think that it is not "cutting" when your dad is with you.  Unfortunately mom has one of the jobs thingy's that require a 9-5 corporeal presence so it was just dad and the girls.

This is how the day went:

• Lounging in pajamas
• Lunch at Fuddruckers complete with yummy plastic cheese.
• Pretend to fall into the fountain
• Horton Hears a Who
• Eat Candy
• Pose with Kung Fu Panda
• Stop off at the church
• Jamba Juice break
• Thift store shopping
• BBQ leftovers

We teased the eldest a bit and told her that someday she would appreciate the fact that her parents where not so intense about school and that we highly valued re-creation and play .  I don't think she believed us.

Too much time on my hands

This trip to the Kansas City area was weird.  Unlike my last trip and most that are coming up, I was based in one place and there was a good deal of down time.  I had significant time to be on my own, to take some time to rest and even sleep a full night.  Rough I know.

Still, the trip reminded me of a few things:

1. I like hanging with my family.  I thought about all these place to go, but then realized that it would be more fun with the crew.  When I am back in SF, I hang at coffee shops to get outside of the rest of my life, but where the rest of my life is absent, it is just not the same.
2. With more time does not come more efficiency.  Like I said, I had these blocks of time, didn't really get anything done.  Yeah, I know one does not NEED to be efficient all the time, but it would be nice to know that I got a few things done with some of the extra time.  I am not on vacation for gosh sakes.  With me, I am either on vacation and or working.  Limbo, this was.
3. Talking about life, faith, culture and church give me energy.  Some great people here in the Kansas City area.  I think I would like to come back when all that white stuff is gone, snow that is.  You can see more about the conversations here, Reflections from the Heartland.
4. I totally want to come back here when it is not snowing and I can catch a Royals game.

In the mean time, here are the things I have Yelped about while here, because when all else fails, you can call for Yelp ;-)

• Heartland Center
• Magazines and Coffee
• Caribou Coffee
• Homer's Coffee House
• Southminster Presbyterian Church
• First Presbyterian Church of Liberty
• Parkville Presbyterian Church
• The Power Plant Restaurant
• Central Presbyterian Church
• Lucky Brewgrille
• Village Presbyterian Church
• Dos Reales Restaurant
• Gates BBQ

Cultivate the slashes

Pop on over to the NYT Article, 5 Time-Management Tricks by Marci Alboher and you will get some pretty basic stuff.  But, since I am sucker for new phrases that capture my imagination, I glommed onto Tip #5 and the call to maintain healthy boundaries in the midst of so much that can go on in one's life.

5.  Say no. I spend a lot of my time encouraging people to cultivate the slashes in their lives (entrepreneur/screenwriter/mother). But you need to recognize when it’s time to focus on one area and decelerate in others.

Let the slash cultivating begin.

[h/t: Lifehacker]

Does your religion dance?

Darn!  And I thought I was original.  Nope, just the social/cultural hack that I have always been.  In any case, my sister-in-law sent me this link in response to my post on the death of the PC(USA).

From Mark Moford's column, Does your religions dance? Behold, the most dangerous issue facing modern faith: Its inability to evolve, nakedly.

It's a topic that jumped up like a stunned ferret from God's own hot plate three separate times recently — indicating, I think, that I'd better pay some sort of attention to it — the topic being the obvious but still desperately under-discussed idea that perhaps the most dangerous problem facing man in this modern age of radical technology and dazzling scientific conundrum and otherworldly raspberry vodka and ever-expanding notions of love and sex and human interconnection is the sad and treacherous fact that, well, religion and belief as we know them in America are, by and large, far too horribly stuck, limited, fixed in time and place and stiff karmic cement.

Put another way: We as a culture just might be suffering a slow, painful death by spiritual stagnation, by ideological stasis, by cosmic rigor mortis. It has become painfully, lethally obvious in the age of George W. Bush and authoritarian groupthink that our major religious systems and foundations don't know how to move. They don't learn, adjust, evolve, see things anew. They don't know how to dance. And what's more, this little problem might just be the death of us all.

Amen brother, amen.

 

pastoring a church in my world

Sometimes I feel like churches or pastors that are "plugged in" have to apologize for being as such.  There is this assumption that because we are technologically proficient, we lack understanding or connection to other ways of being church and community.  Boo.

Now I have posted on this phenomenon before and some reactions to the whole technology and church thing, but this first few days of the week has provided me with some good examples of how folks are and get connected to our particular church community.  This is just Monday-Thursday @ Noon and covers everything from MBCC Administrative issues to global mission to personal crisis.  Tech friend or not, this is pastoring in my world.  I LOVE and THRIVE in it!

• IM'ing Conversations: 5
• Facebook Events: 2
• Blog posts written: 4
• Blog posts of MBCC'ers read: 7
• Facebook App interactions: 35
• Organizational eMails sent/received: 33
• Pastoral eMails sent/received: 21
• Coffee Talks: 5
• Hours in a Cafe: 12'ish
• Link suggestions from members: 4
• Conversation about faith in secular setting: 3
• Traditional Meetings: 2
• Cups of coffee: 3 hot, 6 iced
• The New Visitor Plan: Someone meets me via a blog, we have coffee, he blogs about us, visits us, yelps us, friend knows him, contacts us, we IM, he comes to church . . .

Now I know some folks will see this list of my pastoral duties and think, WTHeck?!?!?  This is NOT church!  This is NOT pastoring!  This yahoo has sold his soul to the technology Gods!  Release the hounds!*

If this is your reaction, it's okay. I'll survive.

The purpose of this post is not to defend pastoral leadership in my context, but to give voice to a growing way mainline church has and can be done.   While some can find the same energy and nourishment in more historical/traditional church contexts, I know I would not be a good pastor in that setting because it would be a bad fit or "call" if you will.   We would be fools to think that in today's world there is ONLY one legitimate or even ULTIMATE way to experience Christian community and thus only one true way of being a pastor.  That is just crazy talk.

An openness to a variety of church contexts that foster appreciation and solidarity should be an easy step to take for connectional mainline churches.  One way to get there is to be able to fully understand that, even if this would not be your way of being church, you can appreciate that folks will hear and be connected to God in different ways. 

If we can do that imagine the possibilities.

It's not all about Austin

UPDATED 10.15.07 w/Other's Austin Reflections

• Ladyburg
• Monte

First let me say that I have really fallen in great "like" with the wee hamlet of Austin*.  For those of you that know me, that is about all the straying that I will do from my beloved San Francisco.  You hear that God!  No other cities shall come before SF . . . seriously.

As wonderful as Austin is, the best part of this week has been reconnecting with fiends and colleagues who in so many ways give me life.   Affectionately known as the Young Urban Pastors' Gathering, we have met in some great cities over the past seven years.  Each year we pic a different topic and gather around food and fellowship.  Good stuff, great folks, fantabulous week.  This year we explored issues of the body using the  "Practicing Our Faith: Honoring the Body."   The heart of this group and in many ways what informs my understanding of ministry, church and faith are these few learnings about meaningful community:

• Sometime you just get each other, if I need to explain it . . .
• "Fixing" each other sucks, listening and being present is much better.
• The need to impress by boasting about what one DOES is replaced by authentic expressions of who one IS.
• Time and geography mean nothing.
• Growth includes laughter, tears, inquiry, support, challenge, risk and this year, Yoga.
• It is difficult when parts of the body, for whatever reason, don't quite fit at one time or another, but isn't that when we best witness to our faith in action?

* Some of the great Austin experiences, including links to my Yelp Reviews:

• Mozart's Coffee Roasters: from where this post is being written.
• The Spider House 
• The Shady Grove
• Amy's Ice Cream
• The Continental Club
• Parts & Labor
• Bohemia
• The Hula Hut
• Guero's
• Saba Blue Water Cafe
• Aziz Salon
• The Broken Spoke

And for my colleague from this year, some of the more memorable/moving "inside" thoughts that are appropriate to share in light of future developments.  I couldn't remember them all, but got a good giggle thinking back.

• "Why in the hell would you . . ."
• "Does anyone know what you put in . . ."
• "I share my heart, but not my guts."
• "Tube"
• "Crazy as a rat in a . . ."
• My tomatoes . . ."

And finally, my FLICKR pictures.