I Was Shot At

I know for a fact that we humans have sick little minds, hearts, and souls. I found this out at an early age when lying was amusing and a person dying was hilarious and often fairly pleasurable. You always feel better about laughing at serious injury because the word, “injury,” almost always infers that the victim will heal. I laughed pretty hard when Beth Gunderson broke her arm after she lost her “knee-pit grip” on the monkey bars. Her bone was sticking out and I remember thinking it was quite horrid, but at the same time found that bone more attractive than anything else happening on the playground.

But this carries over to my adult life. In fact, just yesterday I was cruzin’ (yes, cruzin’) down Lovejoy following a biker when she fell to the ground. She did that fall where you hit the ground twice; one on the initial impact and another off of the ricochet from the first. Her helmet flew off but her embarrassment adrenaline kicked in and she was on the sidewalk before I could get any words out. She was wearing a dress and I stared at her as I passed and she was bleeding all down her leg. I thought about pulling over but just then her friend peddled back to her with concern. I’m glad she had a friend because I was already laughing and it would be bad to be trying to catch my breath from laughter while cleaning the blood off her leg. Who am I kidding? I would never clean the blood off of her leg, that’s gross.

This carnal attitude made me remember this time my best friends and I went TP-ing in jr. high. I think TP-ing is an innate desire grafted into little children. I never had to be told what it was, I just knew what to do when I was looking at a pillar-filled house armed with a roll of toilet paper. Brilliant.

It was me, Alex Cassidy, Adam Mealey, Russell Goodwin, and Clark Henarie. We had seen this house before. In fact, it was on a walk home one day that we all decided that that Friday night we would bombard this poor sap’s house with stuff we whip our butts with.

The next thing I know, it’s Friday night and there I am in front of this stranger’s house. We begin the massacre. Nothing of much substance or to laugh about at first, but I think it was when Adam Mealey put the TP around the Gargoyle’s pelvic region that I let out a giggle. In the middle of my demonic chuckle I heard a door latch. Suddenly, the door was open and I heard God say, “What the hell are you little sh**’s doing?” This wasn’t God, and was in fact a very angry man standing at his doorway…with a shotgun.

Because I was concentrating so hard on the fact that this guy had the power of life and death in his right hand, I really couldn’t answer the very pertinent question he was asking. What the hell WAS I doing? I really could not answer that. I guess I was putting toilet paper all over his house…but that really makes me sound weird. I wish I had a better explanation for it.

“You better run fast,” he somewhat shouted. Good advice. We ran. Hard. But our little 8th grade legs had only made it about ten yards before he yelled again, “Actually wait! I want all your names and phone numbers.” This was a classic trick amongst parents in my neighborhood. They always wanted first and last names with our phone numbers. The impending threat was that they would “let our parents know about the trouble” we were making. I believe I fake names and fake phone numbers to about 25 different adults in Portland. I was prepared to do this again for the Shotgun Man.

But before I could say, “My name is Eugene Balls,” Alex and Adam just booked it. This went against anything we had ever done as a group. Ducks fly together! What were they thinking? I didn’t think at all, I just ran with them and all of a sudden we were all running.

That sprint was the most terrifying sprint of my life thus far. I was waiting for a bullet to hit my rear. I remember sort of thinking, as I heard him load his gun, that it would be kind of cool to get shot right then. Or maybe if Adam got shot…that would be better. If he got shot then I could carry him and tell a great story. Everyone would tell about the time they TP’d their principal and I can just whip out the trump card of TP stories. “We were running and next thing I know, Adam is on the ground, bullet in his leg.” If I were to ever tell a story like that, I would always eliminate all of the “there was’s”, and just use nouns with prepositional phrases. “Adam on the ground, bullet in his leg, I’m next to him, freakin’ out.”

I was totally ready to get hit. What would mom think? She’d better sue. To all of our surprise and delight, he fired his gun with a pffft and no affect on us nor its environment.

B-B gun. What a rookie.

Next Vote Wins

According to The Onion, it appears as though Democratic hopeful Hilary Clinton is proposing the "Next Vote Wins" idea for the approaching primaries.
This is about two weeks old, but I just thought it was great.

p.s. How great would it be to work for The Onion?

Where I'm Going, I Just May Not Come Back

Tomorrow I leave for Seattle with Johnny Boy to meet our great bro Seany Boy. We'll be attending Sasquatch Music Festival in George, Washington. Needless to say, if you check out the link, you'll know I'm...for lack of a better term, excited.

I recognize the fact that I haven't had any observant, pithy anecdote to tickle your funny bone and that shames me. My hope is that hanging out at Sasquatch would provide me with a multitude of anomalous and witty stories.

I hate cloudy days in the suburbs...I normally don't mind working out here, but today I just want to go home. Why do I love the city so much? Or maybe I just hate the suburbs. Why do I even care?

Well, it's going to be nice to get away from all of it and fall face first into whatever Sasquatch holds. I've found that taking total advantage of my days off by leaving entirely is quite successful. Whenever I'm home I find some excuse to get the loads of work that is always lurking over me in some fashion. When I leave the laptop and books and documents and people behind, I have really one option: chill. So Sasquatch will accomplish that immensely. I've only heard stories, and as long as the guy behind me isn't singing along to "What's the Frequency Kenneth?" toward the back of my hair, I'll make it a good time.

Another bonus of the trip is seeing this one girl while picking up Seany Boy in Seattle.

"What Must We Do?"

Then they said to him, "What must we do, to be doing the works of God?" Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, the you might believe in him whom he has sent."

If you don't get who God sent, it was Jesus. Let's just make that clear right from the start. This passage from John 6:28-29 could be one of the most important things Jesus says in his recorded words. His response to the crowd separates him from all other religious ideas then and now.

Isn't this question they ask still pertinent to us today? Even as a follower of Jesus who sits under his authority and word, I ask this question: What must I do? A common prayer is asking God what we should do with our lives, where should we go, what we must accomplish. Our individualistic Western minds surely do not help, and spend a night on any college campus and students are seriously searching for what they should do and are never content with what they are doing.

But Christ doesn't answer the question the way maybe I would have. You see, we are to do something. We are to believe. Why? Because the work of God (the only work that really matters in the end) has been accomplished through Jesus Christ. He is the work of God, he has accomplished what had to be accomplished. He has conquered the darkness, and now, calling us to be lights to the world, we are to push that darkness back by calling on his name: Jesus Christ, the work of God.

Monday Mornings and John 1

It's the root of much evil. It is the sign of the beginning of long suffering. It IS long suffering. It is pain, anguish, and most often depression.

Monday, Monday.

Morning.

I went to bed last night a little disgruntled because I was up late reading Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, two prominent atheists. They are part of a group of people who are really passionate about what they do NOT believe in. I have to give them credit for being unique.

But that's another entry.

The point is, I was looking at another week, and while this one could prove to be one of the most exciting weeks in a while, tomorrow was Monday and that means another week of school, work, and the drill. You know it, I'm sure.

I finished my small escapade through the Psalms and Isaiah yesterday, so I was thinking about what I would read in my "Daily Bible Reading Time." (Frick, I really don't know what else to call it, so I'll use my grandfather's vocabulary). I went to bed last night and could not stop thinking about the gospel of John. No idea why.

So I read the first three chapters of John a couple times. Just soaking in those first 18 verses and the rest of the sections. The calling of the disciples, the wedding at Cana, prophesy of the temple, and our good buddy Nicodemus.

But in re-reading those first 18 verses I always remember that I am so small. In the beginning, there was the Word. But the Word didn't just sit in the heavens and help us out. He dwelt among us.

The Greek word for "dwelt" actually means to "pitch a tent." Jesus came to us.

Being a minister, I often think I need to get people off of their butts and toward God. But maybe that's not the best thing for me to do. Sure, I can yell at the flock all I want, and I can tell them choose Jesus, choose life, choose truth, but maybe the best thing to do is pray Isaiah's prayer in his 64th chapter for an unrepentant nation:

"O that you would rend the heaven's and come down!"

I should pray like that for our church, for our city, for our nation. I have to stop setting up strategy for how I can get myself to God and how I can get others to God, and start praying that God would come down and wash the city with the blood of the gospel. Because the way people meet God in Scripture is just by surrendering...that's worship.

Sometimes I get scared that the call of the American church is the same call of Isaiah found in chapter 6: that we're going to tell them the good news, but they won't listen or accept any of it, because more and more I'm resonating with Jesus' weeping over Jerusalem at the end of his life in Matthew 23.

"...how often I have longed to gather your children together...but you were not willing."

John 1 give me hope though. My job is not to bring people to God. That is the work of the Spirit. Our battle is not of flesh and blood, but one of spiritual things. He dwelt among us. He came and pitched his tent in flesh, because we could never go and pitch ours in spirit.

The story of the Bible and humanity that is seen over and over again can be stated like this: We sin, God seeks. God is on the move, I need to live like I know he is.