No turning back

         

When  I logged onto Facebook this morning, I found myself scrolling down the friends of a friend…..people we used to attend a local church with.   

        It stirred up this feeling of being on the outside looking in….

        I felt like a little boy standing outside a store window @ Christmas time, with my nose pressed against the glass, watching  people shop.

     If you sense a hint of  bitterness toward that church  (small c) or the people in it, you would be wrong.    I’m not. 

      What I was (and still am) turned off by, is the  spiritual climate, the spiritual apathy,  served  there on a week to week basis…. 

 A.W. Tozer  puts it like this :

      “There is today no lack of Bible teachers to set forth correctly the principles of the doctrines of Christ, but too many  of these seem satisfied to teach the fundamentals of the faith year after year, strangely unaware there is in there ministry no manifest Presence, nor anything unusual in their personal lives.  They minister constantly to believers who feel within their breasts a longing  which their teaching simply does not satisfy.

      I trust I  speak in charity, but the lack in our pulpits is real.  Milton’s terrible sentence applies to our day as accurately as it did to his:  “the hungry sheep look up and are not fed.”  It is a solemn thing, and no small scandal in the  Kingdom, to see God’s children starving while actually seated at the Father’s table….” 

     It all started in 1998 my wife asked me a  few harmless questions (or so I thought)…

     “Where have you felt the most  refreshed spiritually?

     ”Think of the times when you  were most encouraged spiritually?  “

       I remember saying things like…

“At that  lay ministry  weekend retreat back in 1981.”

 ”Not always but on occasion in a small group get together.”

“That “body life service “we used to attend in New Jersey @ Gilgal.”

“Sometimes  AFTER  church when we are hanging around catching up with Leslie, or Lance, or Thomas…..” 

  Then we  tried to identify what was it about those times that made them stand out?

 Having a  genuine sense of connectedness both to people and to God.

 Masks were down.

 people  really listening to where each other was at.

 God’s word was talked about as it practically applied in our current situation.

  Then she asked: “How can we get more of that  in our lives?”

      and the rest is history

At  this point, we are part of a  small house church. 

As much as I miss those people we used to attend church (small c) with, I would never go back.

      I have no idea who might @ some point read this…but just so you know….

      I’ve spent years…literally years  in three  different local churches thinking we  could/ should  ”reform” them  from the inside out.   

      Finally came to the realization  that the pastor and leadership in a  local church casts a long, long shadow spiritually. 

        I only have one life to live…  Do I spend it settling for second best just so I have lots of friends or is there a point where I  ”take the road less traveled”?

     If   you get a chance, pick up a copy of John Fischer’s Dark Horse.

Our new Aviary

Last Sunday we went to visit  Helen.  She   lives in the Shady Rest retirement center. 

 As wife was  catching up  on the latest with Helen,  I wandered over to a large glass cabinet –  full of  cute little birds.

I think they were finches.

 Beautiful,  fine featured,  and varied…

Full of nervous energy.

Against the back wall of the cabinet   was a dozen  little straw nests 

 Many of the openings  had little heads peeking out.

An elderly lady wandered over to look at the birds with me.

“See that one over there?  He likes to slide down the wire.”

I stood there 5 minutes waiting for him to slide but he never did. 

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 Monday morning , both of  our chicken waterer’s were  frozen solid. 

 That did not bode well for the family budget. 

I  thought  to myself, if I  plug-in the electric  water heater, that will add  $30.00 a month to the electric bill, which makes  for some pretty pricey eggs.

Tuesday morning same thing-  frozen waterers….at that point  an idea began to  take shape  in my mind 

 Ideas often come to me in the morning. 

Why not build an aviary here on the farm?

instead of filling it with finches, I could  fill it with chickens!

We have a 140 yr old barn that would work perfectly!

Here are some pictures  of the final result .

It is a  green passive solar chicken aviary.

green as in, built with all used construction material. 

 Talk about being on the cutting edge of culture 

Exterior View of our new Aviary

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 View from the inside.   

Today the thermometer was reading 24 F.  Inside the aviary it was pushing 40 F

Here’s  Lori, Joy, Emily, one unnamed hen   and The Colonel in the middle.

 Nothing beats farm fresh eggs. 

 I’m talking real fresh 

 I usually get mine  right out of the nest….

I don’t want to bore you with construction details, but if you want to talk shop, feel free to drop me a note.   I did take into consideration things  like thermal mass, ventilation, insulating w/ bales of hay, lighting, etc

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update 11-28-2010  here’s a picture of Mrs DM checking out our birds….

financial stress

I got it….

Financial stress.

and so do 7 out of every 10 people you know

But no body is talking about it-  at least openly.

I’m going to.

To compound the problem .

 Where is the line  between trusting God and  my personal responsibility?

Then, at certain points,  “unhealthy” coping behaviors start percolating to the surface of my life….

know what I’m talking about??

things like over eating, substance abuse,  wanting to just sleep……

Anger…yep,  got that too.

Hate to admit it, but I’m angry with God.

I watch him help other people.

I know he can change the details of my life with a snap of his finger..but he doesn’t

Plus, he’s giving me the silent treatment again…

It drives me nuts sometimes

Shame…I might as well bring that one up…

it is embarrassing to find myself struggling financially. 

I love to work, I love my job….

  We’re not over indulgent ..A night on the town might be 2 sandwiches from a Subway restaurant.

So now what?

Would love to wrap this post up with 10 tips to help you overcome your financial stress…

Sometimes  things aren’t quite that simple.

I do know that suffering in silence is not a virtue.

as always, thanks for reading my stuff.     DM

Letters to my son

      

Dear J,                                                                                  11/6/2010

 

                I am excited to see a renewed interest in your relationship with God the past several months.  

     As I said to you last week,  Mom and I tried real hard not to  jam our faith down your  throat as you were growing up …nothing worse than growing up  with heavy-handed parents.

        Too often, Christians have a habit of answering questions, no body is asking  

       I hate it when I feel I am on the receiving end of a canned conversation…so that’s the last thing I want to do with you. 

   But now that you are asking some great questions, I do want to share with you what I believe.   

     As you know, I grew up attending a Lutheran church and mom grew up Catholic.  I won’t bore you with all the details, but to make a long story short, I decided to join the Catholic church once we made the decision to get married.  That meant I had to attend a series of classes on becoming Catholic.  The classes raised several questions for me, not the least of which, who is right?????
       Are the Catholics right?  Was the denomination of my childhood right? What about the Baptists, Methodists, Assembly of God, Nazarenes, charismatic, and the list goes on? 

     Who could I talk to find out who is right and who is wrong?  

 Everybody can’t be right.

And obviously, anyone I would talk with would be convinced that their belief system was right. 

  It was a very unsettling time in my life, I felt like I was in the middle of a  spiritual earthquake….

the very ground under my feet was shaking…but out of that time of sifting and shaking came a nugget of  insight for me…and  to this day, 3o years later believe this with my whole heart….are you ready?

    To the degree a particular church or denomination is in line with the Bible, to that degree it is right.

      Since this is first letter is going to be posted on my personal blog, I’m a little reluctant to go any further  in this conversation,  lest I be guilty of answering questions that nobody is asking myself.

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      If you are one of the handful of  regular visitors here  and are  interested in following along on this conversation with my son , you’re welcome  to click on this link   

  I’ve been  wanting  to share some of my more personal  stuff on-line for a while now  but have never felt like the  ”heart to heart” blog was the place.

Itsy Bitsy Spider

      I (DM)  came across this cool looking spider  a couple of weeks ago @ work.    We were reroofing an older home and when I peeled off the ridge vent, he came crawling out.  I did two things when I saw him..first I ran back down to my truck and grabbed the camera..It was so unusual I wanted to take a picture.  Second thing, which kind of left me mystified…I didn’t want to kill it.  Now, normally  I would have squashed it without a second thought, but there was something in me that didn’t want to.    Not sure why I reacted that way…although if you take the time to read the  Fulghum story at the end of this post, you’ll see I”m not the only one who has hesitated to kill a bug…

A marbled orb weaver

I (DM)  need your help again   

Anyone care to  translate a  poem by Walt Whitman  for me?  I know you probably think I’m kidding.     I have a  hunch he’s buried a pearl of wisdom in it , I’m just not what it is. 

 I remember  in 7th grade , Miss Burns had us  read Jonathan Livingston Seagull.   For the life of me, I did not  know what to do with that story.  

Here’s that poem:

By Walt Whitman

1819-1892

---

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to
connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

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I’ll close with this short meditation by Robert Fulghum .

“Meditation on the Death of a Fly”

         The first warm day of onrushing spring rallied the dormant bug population of my house.  As school locker rooms spill teams of amateur athletes onto practice fields at this season, the egg sacs in the darkest corners of my study burst forth legions of tiny spiders onto the floor and launch waves of minute flying midges onto the wall.  No cause for exterminating action for me.  Experience has taught me patience.  Within hours the baby bugs will be lunch for a small team of freshman lizards.

      On a slightly larger scale, the Dispersal Committee of the Housefly Commune has already assigned one juvenile fly to each room of my house.  These newly licensed pilots move with maniacal speed, zooming erratically here and there, practicing upside-down landings on the ceilings, crashing into the clear window glass, and corkscrewing through the air in acrobatic shows of skill- but seldom landing long enough for me to get a shot at them with my Great Yellow Swatter of Death.

      There are also a few tenacious survivors left over from the end of winter.  For two days now a fat, elderly fly has lived out his last hours on top of my desk.  His airborne adventures seem to have ended.  Slowly he walks from one end of the desk to another, pausing at the edge, and walking back again to the other end and another edge.  He does not bother me.   I do not bother him.  It is in his favor that he has lost the urge , the will, or the ability to launch himself into the air.  As long as he does not enter my No Fly Zone, I am content.

      Once he even heaved himself up onto the Great Yellow Swatter of Death, walked its length, tumbled off the end and walked on.  Fearless.  Dignified. Senile.

     This morning he is still present, though moving ever so slowly, a centimeter or two at a time.  At this moment he rests between me and the computer screen, scratching and patting his head with his two front feet.  Perhaps he is reflecting on the distance to the far away edge of the table.  He sighs and plods on.

     I worry about him.

      What is there for an old fly to eat or drink on the hard brown desert of my desk?  Will he fall off the edge the next time he gets there and break his neck?  Or try his wings one last desperate time before he nose-dived into the tile floor?  Do his children know where he is, or care?  Can he see me, the possible agent of his fate, and is he afraid?  Does he anticipate the coming of the Great Lizard, or is he comforted by knowing that, like mutton, he is too tough and stringy to be eaten now?

     I can’t ignore him-  there he is, creeping back and forth.

      I can’t push him off the table-  too cruel.

     And I can’t quite bring myself to smash him dead too easy.

     So I put a jar over him and peered at him through a magnifying glass.  Unlike other insects I’ve investigated, he did not panic- no mad rushing about or trying to escape.  He looks tired and gray.  Slowly he wrings his hands.  When I removed the jar, he resumed walking toward the edge again with great dignity and purpose.  Just before I turned off the light to go to bed, he was walking in circles, slowly, slowly, slowly….

      This morning I found him lying on his back.  Dead.

      With respect for his dignity and mine, I took him outside for burial.  With a teaspoon I dug a small grave for him beneath a weed that is just coming into bright red bloom.

      A unique event, however trivial.  This first fly funeral I had attended.  I pondered the sense of mercy that stayed my hand from the Great Yellow Swatter of Death.  What kept me from automatically smashing the life out of the vulnerable senior fly?  Soft-hearted folly or seasoned wisdom?

     Being culturally wired to detest flies and kill them at any opportunity, what got into me?  Briefly we were the only two living things in the room.  Struggling on as long as possible.  The spark of life in him and the spark of life in me was the same.  We were connected.  Live and let live.

       Now I understand what it means when people say: “He wouldn’t hurt a fly.” 

      That can happen.