The Banzai Chronicles

Getting back on the journalling horse is oddly daunting. I've had the window open to start an entry a few times recently, but no go until now. Not that there's anything to it, just a nebulous inertia made stronger by regular forays into Facebook or Twitter that scratch the itch a bit. Not that that's real reflection by any stretch—and not that this will be, either.

Noteworthy current or recent past events:

• barlow_girl is away on our church's first women's retreat, at Sahalie Ski Club. Weather being what it is, we're praying for a timely, safe trip back. I'm pretty much over temporary bachelorhood.
• Upgraded our home theater to a Blu-ray system, which has been just plain fun. The weirdest part hasn't been the system itself, but the fact that we bought speaker stands via Craigslist from a former Playgirl centerfold. This should (but won't) teach me to beware of unnecessary Googling.
• Had beers with Merlin Mann and other folks last week in an impromptu meetup he initiated. Funny, energetic guy, which is pretty much as expected. And he picked up the tab, which is always appreciated.
• This Wednesday is the annual Pre-Thanksgiving Stomach Stretching Feast (my sixth) at Buca di Beppo, followed by Thanksgiving dinner with friends at our home Thursday. It's so great to have more space to entertain and enjoy, and many guests at each event will be able to get to know new people.

Bussing it to church today (we're just having one service because of the retreat), so I'd better scoot.

Mostly keeping my head down and nose to the grindstone of late—we're in the throes of event season at work, which is exciting but takes lots of attention and effort. Pushed a few things back a couple of weeks because, while I could fit the meetings in to my schedule, there's no way I could really be present at anything beyond an operational level. The biggest of the events is this Sunday (our annual vision dinner), and though next week is full, they're all "objects in motion," so I'm hopeful that momentum can help.

Got lots of simple odds and ends done around the house today, which left me feeling settled enough to take in the last few moments of dusk on the Seattle skyline. The quiet is peaceful and centering. I'm spending so much of my days doing things (many self-imposed), and when I'm not, I'm strongly bent to let God have none of the rest of my time, often actively running from Him. Part of me believes He's the one who takes rather than the one who gives (and surely both are true, yet surely not as simply as my insecurities lead me to believe), so I hoard whatever of my time and energy I can claim for myself. It's childish and selfish, telling me so much about what I really believe and where I need to be transformed.

That all melts away with the sunset, not because I feel better, but because He is trustworthy. It's a gift to be able to see it, and I write it down because I'll forget again, all too soon. It's true regardless of my memory, but oh, how much better I can rest when I remember. The breeze rustles through the leaves just for me, a gentle shushing that reminds me of my place and my Father. My grasp of the truth is a tiny, tiny seed, but He can work with that.

Hard to believe it's only Wednesday. Working hard to get and stay up-to-speed, which seems like quite a challenge. The re-addition of communitygroup into our weekly routines contributes to the feeling, but honestly, if it weren't that, it'd be something else, so it might as well be something that matters, right?

The projects also get me: this week it's finalizing catering for our Celebrating Grace dinner on 11 October and finalizing the quarterly Sunday volunteer schedule for October-December. At least "finalizing" is in both of those descriptions—you can tell I'm hopeful. There's also some serious proofreading and formatting required for our Introduction to Grace Seattle materials (which starts on 16 October), support items to provide for our Women's Retreat in November, and meetings next week with the Diaconate and with the landlords for the church building we use on Sundays for which to prepare. I really like what I'm doing; it just helps to realize that the reason I feel busy is because I am.

Did a fair amount of settling in yesterday, spurred in part by the fact that we're hosting the other Community Group leaders for dinner this evening. Feels good to have a bit of art on the walls again, and barlow_girl has a great eye for where things should go.

Had to bail on an evening full of plans Friday because we were just too wiped out to make a go of it. Glad we can do that when we need to.

Thursday's communitygroup was a little tough—we had a visitor who behaved in some ways that weren't respectful to others, which wound up being fairly disruptive and uncomfortable. That's one of the risks of having "open" groups, and I'm glad we take it. There's tension between fostering a safe place and being welcoming to whomever may come, and I don't thing there's a singular right answer to navigating that. For my part, I think the possible disruption is one of the risks we take on Jesus, and we try to deal faithfully with whatever comes out of that risk. It doesn't make us doormats or hostages to others' behaviors, however, and we'll be sure some boundaries are expressed before our visitor is welcome to return. It'll also be good to talk about what happened with the rest of the group so people can express what they need to, so we can listen to one another, and so we can be clear on what some of our boundaries are and why we take the risks we do.

As with so many things, it's very tempting to try to manage and lock down everything about how the church relates to one another and the world. That doesn't line up well with church history as we know it from Scripture and onward, however, so we either need to conclude that our differences result from being in a different cultural moment, or we need to leave room to take more relational risks, recognizing that our security is in Christ alone. That doesn't mean being boundary-free or having shepherds who do nothing to protect their flocks—by no means. But we can't make following Jesus together completely "safe" by every individual's measure of safety. That's weak sauce, for sure.

There's a nice fog between me and the Seattle skyline this morning, the buildings poking out like the tops of icebergs. The rest of the sky is mostly clear and blue, and the sun is now high enough to make me squint. It's a good enough start.

Lots of projects at work, so my margin has been tighter than I like. My secret (if it can be called that) to being effective is staying in the future relative to everything else—I don't believe failure can be avoided, and trying to do so all the time is both stifling and crazymaking, but if I'm far enough out in front, there's enough time to recover that I can take better risks. In theory. In practice, I've been coming in way too close to the wire for my comfort. Thankfully, the buffer has increased a bit from earlier in the week. Still, it's tight and busy.

Our second week of communitygroup for fall is tonight. At coffee with Chris earlier this week, I noted that I really wanted to learn how we're following Jesus, individually and together. There's so much diversity of personality and lifestyle in our group, so it takes some effort from all of us to be together in that way, and there's no simple checklist on how to lead (it's more comfortable and easier to settle for being a discussion group or social club). Look at Jesus—that's all we've really got, and as a leader, I need to avoid the temptation to add to or subtract from that. And I need to be willing to do it myself before I can lead, as well as being willing to admit I don't have it down pat.

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

—Hebrews 1:1-3

barlow_girl and I recently watched this TED talk on cymatics, the art of visualizing sound. It's just four and a half minutes, and at first I just watched with mild interest. But then it started to become clear: sound actually forms the shape of things. I think I've heard that before.

Since the sun is rising later, I'm getting more time on clear mornings to sit outside and write before being blinded by it. Would love to learn to use that time well, because I'm just better when I'm regularly taking the time to write.

Spent the evening at Paul & Jenna's yesterday. Kind of a tough choice, since we were also invited to an end-of-summer party with lots of church friends, but A) it's always fun to hang out with Paul & Jenna, and 2) hanging with church folks in larger groups often feels like work to me, especially on Saturday nights (with Sunday morning so soon on its way). It's easy for me to assign the latter feeling to the "grumpy old man" category, but when I really think about it, the picture becomes more clear:

• I'm an introvert, so bigger gatherings always take more from me.
• That kind of thing is also often filled with small talk, another thing that's not a favorite. I need to use as much small-talk energy as I can muster each Sunday morning (I often go over what other people are going to want to talk about—weather, sports, current events, etc.—before work starts, because I find most of it mind-numbingly boring, but it's what others want), so I don't need to be depleting it the night before.
• Sometimes there are games. Yeesh.
• Other than the small talk, what most church people know how to talk with me about is, not surprisingly, work. It's possible some of that would change if I spent more time with them, but a party isn't a good venue for that and has too broad of an audience than can realistically know me well anyway.
• I do like smaller gatherings—having dinner together, etc. When I thought of having dinner with nearly anyone I might chat with at a party, I realized I would probably enjoy that. This was really helpful, as that realization countered my internal accusation that I "just don't like people."

Part of being both limited and semi-public is that I'll need to say no more often than I can say yes, and I'm not abandoning my Christian call to sacrifice for others by passing on some things that just don't fit. Neither do I want it to be all about my "living authentically," because I've seen so many people go completely off the rails in pursuit of that pseudo-psychological goal that it makes me angry just to think about it. There's a difference between boundaries and narcissism, and as in all things, I have Someone to follow who won't lead me astray.

Look—brain scanning unborn babies!

Even though it's late-term, I wish this kind of science would, even for a moment, spur policymakers and the public at large to consider, even for a moment, the possibility that we've been doing something horribly, horribly wrong in allowing the termination of unborn lives as a legal option. They have minds! But science only matters when it supports what we want, and if that grotesque, destructive policy tells us anything, it's that we want what we want, no matter the cost. God, help us.

Unless you experience the unpleasant symptoms of being wrong, your brain will never revise its models. Before your neurons succeed, they must repeatedly fail. There are no shortcuts for this painstaking process.

—Jonah Lehrer, How We Decide

Work day was promptly derailed by immovable printing problems, an external drive with wrong permissions, and a couple of lesser frustrations. Not what I'd have picked, but it didn't bother too much once I knew there was no way out but through (and found workarounds that could bail me out if not) and that the process wasn't likely to be brief. There's something soothing about the inevitable—scrambling and stressing don't make a lick of difference in such circumstances, so they're much easier to abandon.

On the other side of stonewalling, I've had some conversations recently that resurrect my fear of leading in a way that hinders others rather than helping and empowering them. Most of us have had the value of "thinking outside the box" affirmed to mythic proportions, yet sometimes "the box" is well-considered and in place for good reason. Resetting and reminding others of boundaries isn't fun for anyone after a while, so I second guess myself when I have to do it. Just a good thing to have in mind; there's no one answer that always applies, and the responsibility for others' experiences doesn't lie solely with me.

Woke to a "we're taking a hiatus from church" email in my inbox. Hate that. Feels a bit like a gut punch every time.

Not that I have any real concern for our church's overall health—we're growing, not shrinking, and more people are connected to Community Groups and the like than ever before. And it's not my role to shepherd the congregation; God has called others to that duty. It's hard to articulate well what bothers me when people "take a break." Some of it is simply the feeling of being left and/or not being enough (which varies, of course, based on how close to someone I am); some of it is because I believe "breaks" from fellowship miss the mark of what we're called to. And as I've said before, seeing someone leave in order to be part of another congregation isn't nearly so troubling as the amorphous walk-aways—at least you're still acting as if you're part of the Body, even if I'll miss you.

One of the ways being part of the Church is hard for me is that I don't want to care whether you stay or go. "Do what you do." But I do care, and I hate that others can make me feel like crap by breaking fellowship. I should probably be thankful instead—not that people leave or "go on hiatus," but that I still care if they do.

I'm just tired of having sadness be such a regular part of my experience with others in the Church. I have trouble even trusting relationships anymore, because part of me sees others and says, "No matter how good of a game you may be talking right now, I don't know if or when you're going to flake out on me. And if that happens, you won't even give it or me a second thought."

Back at Irwin's for rainy-morning coffee—if I can't enjoy our roof deck, spending a while here for old time's sake is a good alternative. Love the rain and the fact that I have no plans for the day.

Updated the Macs to Snow Leopard with a minimum of fuss yesterday (and huge savings of hard drive space, which makes a tremendous difference on my MacBook Pro), then went to Chris & Molly's place for dinner and conversation. They're such good listeners and friends to us, and I'd love to do that more often with them (and hopefully do more listening than talking this time!).

That's in tension with my regular feelings of overextension and the challenges of relationship with anyone beyond a surface level. As with so many other things, something inside me is just plain lazy and wants everything to be easier than it really can be. So I need to regularly remind myself that even my very best friendships have been fraught with misses as well as hits—sometimes because I'm being a jerk, sometimes because of things beyond my control, often just because we're all people and that's always a mixed bag. Lots of our connection with Chris & Molly comes naturally and easily, so I don't want to be thrown if and when it takes a little work to be friends. As usual, I'm anticipating, but I know me, and sometimes a preemptive strike is necessary to combat my laziness and perfectionism.

As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.

In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.

—Ecclesiastes 11:5-6

For someone like me who's always sizing up variables, options, and outcomes, this truth is humbling. Of course, it's always humbling to admit what I'll never know about God—indeed, that mystery is even comforting. Yet seeing how that should affect my everyday way of living and engaging the world brings it home in another way, also bringing strange comfort.

I can't figure it out. This affects my pride: I won't have it all together. This affects my laziness: I can't always take the shortcut. This affects my charity: I need to love and care well for others, because of all that I don't know as well as what I do. This affects my dependence: I need God, because knowing His plan might lull me into the illusion that I don't.

Full day of work capped by a Mariners' game with our communitygroup leaves me a tired guy. Since the sun beat me to writing in my journal on the roof deck this morning (once it's up on a clear day, there's not much hope of doing anything but squinting), I'm going for a couple of lines up here tonight by the light of the half-moon.

Sometimes the nature of my work gets to me—I love the overarching purpose of what I do (and too few of those of us blessed enough to have jobs can say that), but there are days like today when that means trying to navigate financial and legal labyrinths without many outside resources. Add to that the fact that the stuff I'm trying to wrap my head around is connected to ventures we're excited to launch into boldly, and I wind up feeling like the killjoy who's slowing things down, applying brakes when everyone would (understandably) rather be hitting the gas (and often have been, so I'm playing catch up, too). It's just a weird but probably necessary spot to be in, and I have to remember that I'm not as alone as I feel when I'm in it.

The quiet of the night does wonders to quiet me inside, too. I love looking out over the city without all the noise and voices and questions and requests.

We had a great visit by quiltlady (barlow_girl's mom) this past weekend, affording us the chance to play tourists in our own hometown. Friday we toured Theo Chocolate and rode the Ducks, and Saturday was mostly downtime for me while she and Amy went to the farmer's market, checked out some yard sales and fabric stores, went for high tea at Queen Mary, and attended Susan's baby shower (in the meantime, I checked out the anniversary sale at Comics Dungeon, where I met mercuryeric). Sunday was much more packed for me, starting with work and worship, then a dash to the Chapel of St. Ignatius for Connor & Sara's son's baptism, then back over to Volunteer Park for our annual church picnic. We dropped Amy's mom off at the airport early Monday morning, and I've been getting back into the standard groove since then.

What is a standard groove, anyway? Think I'm trying to figure that out—since (at least) when we decided to move earlier this summer, I've been shuffling things around and often just trying to keep up. Now that our busy season has hopefully passed, I'm hoping to find some better and more sustainable rhythms. For example, it's great to be able to do lots of my work from home, but I haven't yet been settled enough to bring good discipline or focus to the table on a regular basis. Likewise, we'll be restarting weekly meetings of our communitygroup soon, and I don't think either of us have a great grasp of what we want the rest of our weeknights to look like (they've tended to just be stuffed with stuff for the summer). By no means do I want a locked-in routine, just a better sense of what life looks like beyond doing the next urgent thing.

We moved back into the bedroom yesterday, which also allowed us to reclaim the living room and set up barlow_girl's new desk (she hasn't really had once since before we married, which is a total shame). Feels so good to have things shape up and stabilize a bit.

John returns from sabbatical this week. It's been good for him to rest, which also makes it good to have him return. With the ministry year beginning soon and our West Seattle church plant getting underway, it's exciting in a "back to school" sort of way. With all our home stuff, I'm still feeling behind with work, but hopefully I can get a good chunk done today.

Amy's mom, quiltlady, arrives this Thursday to visit, too! We've been looking forward to her visit for a while and it's a relief to have so much of the house done before she gets here (just so it's a welcoming and stable place, not to impress or anything). Amy has lots of great ideas of things we can all do as well as things for just the two of them, so it should be a great time.

With as much as we've got going, looking at the week ahead can be a bit daunting, but it's a lot easier to feel like we can handle it when we're sleeping in our bedroom and not picking up a paintbrush or roller anytime we're not doing something else. Not that we're done, but at least we can tackle projects at our pace now rather than having them hurtling at us out of necessity.

Enjoying a communitygroup overnight at velouria73's family beach home on Camano Island. As is usually the case, it's challenging to stop (painting, of course) and rest, but it's also been so rewarding—not because of any amazing shared mountaintop experience, but simply to be with these friends. They're so wonderful, and spending time like this is part of living our lives together in Christ, even in the fumbling, stumbling steps we're able to take.

( Struggles with 'community' )

Thankfully, those aren't struggles I'm wrestling with in our Community Group—the contrast between what we're doing here and what I hear others go on about is just striking enough to bring them to mind. We're learning and trying to love one another as He has loved us, which may not be that sexy most of the time and will certainly be fraught with failure (and hopefully repentance and forgiveness). But it's what He commanded us to do, what He prayed for us to do (John 17), and what His Spirit is empowering us to do. And we're trying, which I have to believe is better than high-mindedly talking about it while turning our backs on the people God's placed in our lives. Perhaps this choice seems mundane, but I believe it's a faithful one.

More painting today. Readers can simply insert that phrase whenever I'm not updating, because that's what I'll be doing. We've got great help (Brian & Carolyn are coming over today, Carrie is helping Monday, and Jenna and the Verschuyls are up later in the week) and are making good progress; it's all simply a reminder that I don't want more than one job if I can help it. The painting itself is pretty easy, but the constant project management—figuring out and communicating about what's next, doing everything in the proper order, coordinating volunteer help, etc.—gets heavy and doesn't relent. Since that's the same energy and work as my job, it's taking a toll. Don't think there's an easier way (and trying to find one is yet more work along the same lines), so I just limp forward until I'm back to one job again. It's not that big of a deal, I remind myself, and it's true. I'm just really, really tired and won't have actual rest until the house stuff is done. The end of the month is my hope.

On the "good stuff" side (actually, it's all good stuff, there's just a lot of it, all the time), we had fun at Linda's annual bonfire last night at Golden Gardens. Been a long time since I did anything like that and it's great celebrating Linda's birthday while seeing her do something she absolutely loves with friends. We also finally had a breakthrough with Comcast (after a month) and are going to have cable and internet installed Tuesday. The latter is by far the most exciting for me (as we've been unreliably mooching from the landlords for all this time), but it'll also be fun to get the TiVo HD up and running (which we ordered just before deciding to move, so haven't used). Another good thing running through all of this has been the weather—much milder with regular cloud cover. It's made everything so much easier for me, and I'm thankful every morning.

Next weekend is a Community Group retreat, which I'm at once looking forward to and too overwhelmed to think about. Coordinating another project puts a knot in my stomach, but that's what it means to love others well right now. And yet again, it's not that big of a deal; I just won't be able to deal with it as soon or as completely as I otherwise might. barlow_girl has been doing the lion's share of the planning and communication, and what remains will be OK whatever form it has to take (since everyone has directions, food plans, etc.). If it's not OK for me to model what it means to be limited, then I'm being an awful leader.

Off to finish my scone and get to painting—second coat on two walls and some trim, then taping things off for priming, then priming, then cutting in on two walls, then painting them with their first coat. Poor Amy has to go into the office today in addition to hearing me whine, so she has the harder part.

It's chilly enough that we had to close all the windows. Awesome.

Really looking forward to using our home as a home. That feels like a long way off. We've got three rooms left to paint (the first one is off to a good start, but the ceiling painting—my least favorite—feels never-ending due to patchiness), furniture to pick up (not that I'm complaining about free!), and I still can't get Comcast to transfer/install our service for TV and internet (been trying for nearly a month). I've mostly given up on any sense of "done," but that kind of sucks, and I don't want my unsettledness to be a downer, because that just slows everything down more and makes being done further away.

Fact is, we're doing what needs to be done as fast and as well as we can, and that just takes as long as it takes. I just don't like when there's not a workaround. I'll feel a lot better after diving into it some more, no doubt. And really, when I get over myself a bit, it's such a blessing to be able to do this, work, and have good stuff on our calendar all at once—I don't like having to "check out" of life (in part because it usually works badly), and we don't have to do that.

Best thing I can do right now is spread the word that we're looking for help to finish out the home stretch, so that's what I'll do.

Though we're far from the miserable temperatures of last week, it can still get pretty stuffy in the afternoons. This morning, however, I'm wishing I'd worn slippers to breakfast on the roof deck. If that sounds like a complaint, you don't know me.

Paul & Jenna stopped by last night for dinner at Murphy's and gelato at Fainting Goat. We really enjoy their friendship and company.

It's nice to be done with fighting a two-front war on our move. Now that everything is in the house, we face the next challenge of finding a place for everything and everything in its place. That involves not only our current stuff, but finding new furniture and painting our last three rooms (to my relief, the attic bedroom is getting a pass). Even with so much new space, it's tricky to move things around for the next step and to do those in the right order. barlow_girl found a whole living room set for free from her boss' sister, so that's yet another Godsend, even if we have to retrieve it from Monroe (which we do). But our den really needs painting before we can get it. We also want to find a desk for Amy, but it's hard to tell just where it will go until after we paint and furnish (which also affects its size and style).

Settling in is good, and will be even better. Even when it's hot and I'm whiny.