Wading through life

“Real Men of Genius,” formerly known as “Real American Heroes,” is one of the greatest ad campaigns in recent American history. I can’t back that up with revenue numbers; but purely from an entertainment standpoint, it is hard to beat.

The link: http://thefuntimesguide.com/movabletype/archives/2004/10/bud_light_real.html. A lot of mp3′s of the commericals are posted. Some of the links go to other pages that host the files, but many are linked directly.

Today we salute you, Mr.Commando of Commercial Collecting…

The aforementioned collisions and train wrecks come with this explanation, in case you couldn’t make much sense of it. And I wouldn’t expect anyone to have made much sense of it, since it all came together in my head a few minutes ago.

It appears the kingdom of Joel is on a collision course with the Kingdom of God right now. And if our two locomotives have not struck quite yet, then they are surely WAY past the blow-whistles/horns-at-each-other stage and within a football field’s distance of hitting…errrr…colliding.

This was the beautiful collision dancing in my head when I first heard the David Crowder song I posted lyrics of. Collisions are devastating…but they are also darkly beautiful. And the beauty Crowder spoke of in his song rang true with my perception of my current collision. My interpretation probably shares little with Crowder’s, but that’s the beauty of art; it transcends the artist.

When a kingdom is about to be wrecked, or, in more consistent terms, is under siege by another kingdom, the threatened kingdom sharpens its swords and spears, assembles new arrows, straps on its armor, farewells loved ones, strikes a battle stance, screams at the top of its lungs, and prepares to defend the fort.

That’s basically what the kingdom of Joel is doing right now. Over the past 26 years, my kingdom has grown FAR too powerful. (Not that any kingdom could ever be too powerful for God’s; Saul’s kingdom was pretty mighty before it was destroyed along the road to Damascus and gave rise to Paul’s.) It has been fortified with lots and lots of defenses like intelligence, logic, creativity, craft, leadership, skill, ambition, passion…yada, yada, yada. Lots and lots of stuff that allowed it to become effective, influential and powerful–a force to be reckoned with.

And now that the kingdom of Joel is under siege, it’s fighting for its life. Never mind the promise that its fall would enable the rise of a much more glorious and powerful kingdom. Life as Joel knows it…is all Joel knows. Who would blame them for putting up a fight to the bloody death?

So…what to do, what to do? Raise the surrender flag now, before it gets really nasty? Not sure if the king is humble enough to do that yet. Some warning shots have been launched from catapults, some thatched roofs have been set ablaze by fiery arrows, food supplies have been cut off and are running low. But those are only the early parts of a siege.

How much blood must be shed before this thing is said and done?

A Beautiful Collision
David Crowder Band, A Collision

The breaking makes a sound I never knew
could be so beautiful and loud,
fury filled and we collide.

So courageous until now,
fumbling and scared.
So afraid You’ll find me out,
alone here with my doubt.

Here it comes,
a beautiful collision is happening now.
There seems no end to where
You begin and there I am now
You and I collide.

Something circling inside,
spaciously you fly, infinite and wide,
like the moon and sky collide.

Here it comes now.

Maybe this is the right context for the term "warrior poet." I see it thrown around here and there, but I’ve never been sure exactly what it means. If I were to ever guess the type of person a "warrior poet" was, it would be Erwin McManus.

I have only two things to go from on this: what friends have said about his book The Barbarian Way, and the interview I just read between him and Relevant Magazine.

Key passage:

…In the modern world a great preacher was a person who could teach you
the information of the Bible. Now people want to know, has that book
taken you anywhere where you’ve met and experienced God? It’s
different. It’s really sharing your life through the Scriptures that
becomes a part of what people hunger for—and people do hunger for it.
 
RM: The only reason I learned how to play jazz music is because
one of my teachers actually took me to experience it live in a smoky
jazz club. After that, I was hungry to learn more and practice.
 
EM: That’s exactly the point. People are coming, and they learn
how to hear from God and how to access the Scriptures by being in
that—if you could say that—in that smoky room. It’s a great analogy.
That’s the way I learned how to water-ski. They tried to teach me how
by putting me in the back of a boat, and I almost drowned. I couldn’t
quite understand what they were saying while drinking water at 50 mph.
Then I worked SeaWorld—at the ski show—selling Coke, and every day I
watched these professional skiers. The next time I tried it—two months
later—I could slalom, simply from watching them all summer long. I
somehow learned the rhythms and movements of what was going on, and I
absorbed it into my being more than I even knew.

This is SO what I believe. I’m fine and dandy with good solid truth and believe it goes a long way in transforming a person’s life. But  I also think you can drown a person in it–just like Erwin water skiing. It has to be combined with something practical, something tangible, something that supports its authenticity.

Top on my list: living the life before them like the jazz musicians and the slalom skiers. And for this very reason, I often find my own life personally devastating because I repeatedly don’t offer the enticing mystery of the smoky jazz club. I more often resemble a rouge cigarette in a non-smoking section–where someone thinks the situation is great until her or she sniffs the smoke and eventually starts gagging on its disgust and toxicity.

Read the whole article here: http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god_article.php?id=6989

My fantasy football teams are flourishing just about as much as my faith is right now. They’re both 1-1, about to be 1-2 after Monday Night Football, have lost a couple games at the last possible moment, and are across-the-board underachieving.