the article, that goes with this headline:

Spanish king denies shooting drunk bear

Subject: until God’s realm comes…

a prayer planned for the end of communion, but used at the end of a nosh…

maybe in this there has been a glimpse of the kingdom
a foretaste
a hint
a promise
let it hold you and let it send you
so you will never be at peace
until all are fed
until all know home
until all are free
until justice is done
until peace is the way
until grace is the law
until love is the rule
until God’s realm comes
until God’s realm comes
until God’s realm comes…

Amen.

~ Cheryl Lawrie

(ht to bob carlton)

last night, at the canadafire event in vancouver, i had to punt, big time. i’d planned a talk based on my understanding that the audience would be a split of youth workers and high school and university student leaders. well, for whatever reason, they didn’t have as many youth workers this year. and “student leader” was, well, maybe, a loose definition. at least it wasn’t quite what i expected. mark yaconelli (also speaking at the event) and i joked a lot about how many 12 year-old youth ministry leaders there must be in canada. the moment i walked into the auditorium and saw the crowd, i knew i was in trouble (with what i had planned). and when the female emcee roled (literally) out onto the stage and starting whooping it up, i instantly stood up, walked to the lobby, and started pacing, while trying to think of an entirely new talk i could give, 15 minutes from that time.

oh, and yesterday at the airport, i had another random encounter. i was standing by the airport exit, chatting with darian, the event host, when chris seay walked past me (chris is the pastor of ecclesia in houston, founding pastor of university baptist church in waco, ys author, many-time ys speaker, husband of a former girlfriend of mine). we had a manly hug and a nice short chat. the world just trips me out sometimes.

now, after a 5am start and two flights, i’m in minneapolis, getting ready for the wedding rehearsal of my friend.

ok, this is just sick and wrong, and no one should get any pleasure out of watching this awful, awful little video. really. wipe that smirk off your face!

when liesl (my daughter) and i were in london a couple months ago, we took a little trip to greenwich, and bumbled about in their wonderful market. i found a booth with beautiful hand-paintded t-shirts with chinese caligraphy. the old chinese lady in the booth told me her husband painted the shirts (who knows?). i considered many of them, and ended up buying one that, in big gloopy jackson-pollocky caligraphy says “calmness”.

well, that’s what i was told it says. it could say “i’m a stupid american”, and i’d still be smiling.

my wife laughed when i showed it to her. people at my office laughed yesterday when i wore it for the first time and told them what it said.

i explained that i’m hoping it has some power of suggestion.

today i’m off to vancover, to speak at canadafire, a cool gathering of youth workers and student leaders (high school and college). then, friday i head to minneapolis, to officiate the wedding of one of my best friends and a former ys-staffer. a ys wedding! they met at one of our conventions, when my friend was hanging out with me, and she was working the event. then, sunday, i head on to grand rapids for a monday morning meeting about our spanish ministry. home monday night, wheezing and spent, i’m predicting.

in resonse to my post the other day about exuberance and the disconnect between what churches say they want in a youth worker and what they really want, marty estes has cooked up a little variation on the graphic from that post. hilarious:

everyone’s heard of the stages of grief as described by kubler-ross:

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

they seem so self-evident when you see someone go through the pain of the death of a loved one.

but i noticed last night that i was cycling through a mini version of these stages, faced with the pain associated with the rape of the teenage daughter of a friend of mine (which happened yesterday, in full daylight, in the parking lot of a target store).

after a blindingly quick “no, please tell me that didn’t really happen” hope that the initial report wasn’t accurate (denial), anger was clearly the initial response. i suppose that’s also somewhat tied to my choleric personality. i suppose, to some extent, anything that’s clearly out of my control can bring a response of anger. that sounds pretty crappy, i realize; but it’s probably true to one extent or another. i’ve been learning to notice that initial response in me and address it quickly — not stuff it, but address it for what it is, just a reaction, and not reality, and not usually worthy of acting on.

normally the ‘bargaining’ stage is described in personal terms (”i’ll try to be better…”), i found this showed up in my a more legal way: i spent a bit of thought time trying to wrestle with why god allows crap like this to happen. back to my ‘problem of evil’ problem. a little job-like cross-examination of god on the witness stand. of course, that doesn’t get me anywhere. and, ultimately, i do believe that god was and is grieving over this pain alongside me and my friends. but there’s that lingering tension between my belief that god could have intervened, but god rarely does intervene. the ‘helpful counsel’ that we’re just not aware of how often god does intervene isn’t very helpful in a situation like this.

unresolved on bargaining, knowing there’s not likely to be a deeply satisfactory resolve to those questions during my life on earth, i quickly slid into the depression stage. again, i can see how this is tied to my personality. the awareness of my complete lack of ability to exert control over a situation often leads to a modified state of depression. i’m not talking ‘clinical depression’ here: more like deep frustration, or exasperation.

and that’s where i sit this morning. the cycle was pretty quick up to this point, but no acceptance yet.

on the way home from the hospital, the girl asked her parents if they could stop by our house to have me pray for her. i was blown away that she asked for this. i believe, in fact i know, that god was present with us in that time. our hugging and tears and prayers and love for one another is what the body of christ is supposed to do in the face of pain. and a little sliver of hope kicked in: hope for healing, hope for protection (that one’s difficult, i admit, but i hold onto it), hope for justice.

click on the link (where it says “here”) in this article.