søren kierkegaard

I was just looking up a quote and found all these quotes by Kierkegaard by accident. When Judah was born we almost named him Soren cause we like him (Kierkegaard) so much. But then there was the whole thing about do we put the omelet or umlaut or whatever over/through the o, and does it sound too much like "sore end" and are we being precious by naming him such, and then Judah has such a good story behind his name that it won out. Anyway. I didn't find the quote I was looking for but I kept reading the pages of these quotes and loved them so hard I copied my favorite ones to put here for posterity.

It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.
Soren Kierkegaard

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
Soren Kierkegaard

Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.
Soren Kierkegaard

Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.
Soren Kierkegaard

Don't forget to love yourself.
Soren Kierkegaard


Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.
Soren Kierkegaard

Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.
Soren Kierkegaard

Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.
Soren Kierkegaard

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.
Soren Kierkegaard

I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this.
Soren Kierkegaard

I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.
Soren Kierkegaard

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations - one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it - you will regret both.
Soren Kierkegaard

If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.
Soren Kierkegaard

It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.
Soren Kierkegaard


It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.
Soren Kierkegaard

Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God.
Soren Kierkegaard

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
Soren Kierkegaard

Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.
Soren Kierkegaard

Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth - look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.
Soren Kierkegaard

Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.
Soren Kierkegaard

Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.
Soren Kierkegaard

Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.
Soren Kierkegaard

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
Soren Kierkegaard

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.
Soren Kierkegaard

Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.
Soren Kierkegaard

Once you label me you negate me.
Soren Kierkegaard

One can advise comfortably from a safe port.
Soren Kierkegaard

Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.
Soren Kierkegaard

Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.
Soren Kierkegaard

People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something.
Soren Kierkegaard

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
Soren Kierkegaard

People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.
Soren Kierkegaard

Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.
Soren Kierkegaard

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.
Soren Kierkegaard

Purity of heart is to will one thing.
Soren Kierkegaard

Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.
Soren Kierkegaard

Since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic; if it is pulled out I shall die.
Soren Kierkegaard

Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.
Soren Kierkegaard

The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.
Soren Kierkegaard

The more a man can forget, the greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can undergo; the more he can remember, the more divine his life becomes.
Soren Kierkegaard

The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo.
Soren Kierkegaard

The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.
Soren Kierkegaard

The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.
Soren Kierkegaard

There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life's highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death.
Soren Kierkegaard

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.
Soren Kierkegaard

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.
Soren Kierkegaard

Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.
Soren Kierkegaard

What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.
Soren Kierkegaard

the 30-day christian music listening challenge

I decided to take this challenge. They invite our responses so I'll be blogging about it here. Day 1. Morgan Spurlock, signing off.

have you ever touched...

Gregg and Simone came up with this game on a road trip and we played it on our last road trip down to San Francisco. It's called "Have You Ever Touched" and it's not as gross as it sounds. It really provides an opportunity for soul-searching and personal reflection. Here's what I came up with:

Have you ever touched...
A reflective circle on the road?
Powdered seahorse?
Your grandpa's license plate?
A cat tonsil?
A bottle of horny goat weed?
Raw lamb?
Your therapist's hair?
A Mexican's body piercing?
The backseat of a cop car?
An Oregonian?
Truck nuts?
A pager?
Bryan Setzer?

Here's what David came up with:

An enlisted man's haircut?
Not your own bunion?
A living bone?
Unpurchased cake?
The Red Robin mascot?
The inside of a football helmet?
A homeless man's shoe?
A colostomy bag?
A hockey puck?
A stranger's food?
A hooker?
A toupee?
A bail bondsman?
the inside of your own asshole?
A Big Mac?
A communion wafer?
A foam cowboy hat?
A black dildo?
A grandma's underpants?
A clubbed foot?
A cleft palate?
North Dakota?
A slug antennae?

the blue colored week of advent

I was so touched by this email from my friend Kara (a Presbyterian minister in Minnesota) tonight:

"Oh, I meant to tell you - our poignant and wonderfully honest blue Christmas ritual was the other night. We put our prayers on these balls and lit candles for people. I posted other pictures of it on the church's FB account, but I wanted you to know you and your church were held in prayer that evening. For courage to stay with the grief."

Yay for Christmas and hope!

my husband will be on NPR

That's fun to say! David's short story "Things We Knew When The House Caught Fire" airs on NPR's Selected Shorts over the next week! Here is the schedule.

Nashville, TN WPLN-AM 1430 Sat Dec 18 5:00 PM
Dallas/Fort Worth, TX KERA-FM 90.1 Sat Dec 18 7:00 PM
San Francisco KQED-FM 88.5 Sat Dec 18 8:00 PM
San Luis Obispo, CA KCBX-FM 90.1 Sun Dec 19 6:00 PM
New York, NY WNYC-FM 93.9 Sat Dec 18 10:00 PM
New York, NY WNYC-AM 820 Sat Dec 19 1:00 PM
Austin, TX KUT-FM 90.5 Sun Dec 19 5:00 PM
San Francisco KALW-FM 91.7 Sun Dec 19 5:00 PM
Seattle KUOW-FM 94.9 Tue Dec 21 10:00 PM

1954's house of the year, and "who you finna try?"

Drooling over this house in Portland. It was 1954's house of the year, I guess.



Cracking up at this poor guy just trying to watch tv. He did handle the situation effectively.

an irishman tells it like it is

yerger house

This house makes my mouth water. I have that response to certain inanimate things and it's weird, but my mouth will water over wedding dresses and diamonds and mid-century design. The portfolio of this house is one of my super happy places!

the pain spans the atlantic

My internet friend Hugh (whom I know through my blog) lives in England - he has grown children and his church that he's been at for 30+ years has recently made changes weirdly similar to the ones my church is making. The parallels are very strange, but it's nice to have someone who understands even if they live across the ocean. I got this email from him today and it warmed my heart, I wanted to share it and also have it here for archiving purposes so I can go back to it and remember.

Stephy, I was just on Facebook looking at nothing in particular when my thoughts turned to you and, this is the freaky bit, I felt your pain! I don't know how or why but just for a minute or 2 I felt it and it was like being crushed inside. It didn't stay with me because I suspect it's not mine to keep but at least I can now share just a tiny bit of it. When I pray I can now pray about that pain. I don't think I'm nuts (depressive - yes, nuts - no) and I do know that sometimes I hear things from God that I know can't be from me. This, however, was a first, totally out of the blue and, oddly, something to treasure. God bless you and, as always, prayers from across the pond.
Hugh

i want a yacht and really that's not a lot

I told Judah the other day that I didn't want anything for Christmas (him: "Why not?" me: "It's how I'm rolling." him: "You roll terribly.") but I think I lied. On second thought I think I want this necklace


and this dining room table would be nice too.



And maybe an electric kettle. And that's all.

my xmas 2010 mix

Almost all the songs are retro, hope you like it. Click the picture to download. xoxoxo

sadness update

The waves of grief over church come and go. Today I felt new grief after a few days of feeling better. TheRapist says this sort of thing is cyclical. So at least I know it's normal. But I've been crying so painfully I've had to pull the car over, and stop and walk when I get to thinking about it when I'm out running, and lock myself into a bathroom stall while I'm at work for five measured minutes doing the the kind of sobbing where your mouth is just open in the ugliest possible way and your stomach convulses from dry heaving/hacking and tears are running down your face but you can barely make a sound. The grief feels like it's right under my skin over my heart. This is the part where I feel my heart kind of shrinking and getting small and hard. I have this cartoony visual of slushy liquid concrete pouring into my chest to protect my heart from this happening again because this is the most painful thing that has happened to me since my parents disowned me. I want to fight against my heart getting hard though. I have to feel this pain and believe it will be redeemed because if I don't do that, I believe I will have to kill off a vital part of myself and I think I have to hold out this hope. The most painful part could be that my young children are asking why this has happened. This church has been their family as long as we've lived here. So I'm holding this while I'm feeling this crazy pain in my chest cavity, me peritoneum or pleura you could say (I see those words all day at work) and trying to grieve this well and with heart and hope.

Bollocks.

things david said while watching the SECOND oprah's favorite things giveaway

Look, she’s wearing her favorite color, that Penis Shaft Beige.

Man, look at some of these haircuts.

That lady looks like she’s in pain. Did you see that? That woman has a giant horse mouth! She’s got like eighteen extra teeth. Was Oprah laughing at that woman who was in physical pain? Do you see that?

Oprah's yipping and circling around that iPad. Maybe she’ll go poop in a corner and bury it.

Those people don’t even know what an iPad does, they just know it’s an iPad.

Gross. I don’t want to hear her talk about how her Oprah app moves and grooves.

Oprah: I got a Scrabble score of 384! *cheering* David: Those people don’t even know what that means, they just respond to her tone.

This is such a mockery. You know what I mean? There’s nothing relational, nothing family, but there’s a giant Keebler elf mascot high-fiving people who just got a bunch of shit from Oprah.

SHE JUST SAID “JOY TO THE WORLD, IT’S MY FAVORITE THINGS PART TWO.” She SAID that!

Oprah: This is the third show in 25 years that Stedman has been to. David: Yeah, he’s usually too busy laying around in his underwear and investigating his mustache.

Oprah: My best friend Gayle is here! And Stedman’s in the control room watching. David: Because he doesn’t trust Gayle!

Oprah: You know that I am passionate about the power of a good bra. David: Oh Lord God! *pinches bridge of nose and squints*

An herb saver! We'll cheer for anything!

Ugh, that lady’s eyebrows. It looks like her face is under attack.

Diamond earrings, audience! You’re going to make your ex-husband wish he never divorced you!

(Oprah gives away a book on how to have the life you want by someone named Mark Nepo) Mark Nepo backwards is Kram Open!

Oprah's just a disgusting combination of Buddhism and retail.

Oh, they’re diving into those croissants. I want to see Horse Teeth get on those. She could take a whole tray down.

(Johnny Mathis comes out.) His hair went away a long time ago. I guarantee you that’s not real hair on there. It’s like packing material. What race is he? (Josh Groban walks onstage singing.) Oh goddammit.

Look at Johnny Mathis’s cd cover. He’s looking longingly into that horse’s eyes and massaging its snout.

Oprah: I call it my VW Bug my Toodle Car because I toodle around town in it. David: Yeah, as if.

That lady’s hair is just...dynamic.

Shoot me in the face PLEASE.

things david said while watching the first oprah's favorite things giveaway episode

Oh God. Did you see that black man leaping? That’s the gayest, blackest man.

Are these like, homeless people, or…?

I think if Oprah asked them to eat her out they all would right now. But she has Gayle for that.

Look at all these giant people. I hope she’s giving away treadmills.

Are these people selected cause they like, need stuff? It would be better if it was random cause you know how grace is random.

Yay. You get a diamond watch. Now you can get mugged in broad daylight.

Two little O’s on the face! Also, the sun has an O. That’s because of me.

Retails for $2500? You’re all going to make a killing on eBay 3 hours from now.

Thora Burch? I like Thora Burch! Oh, Tory Burch. Who’s that? Ha, they just got unwearable shoes.

Oprah: Guess who took these photos. I did. David: Obviously.

Did you see that lady’s shirt? It said “cancer”!

This is a good way to get this crowd exercise for once.

Why are the elves wearing purple hats?

Oh my god. They have medics standing by. Those poor medics. Have to give mouth-to-mouth to a retired teacher who eats hamburgers all day.

She picked that color because it reminds her of her dog Sadie? That’s the color of a penis shaft, that’s what it is.

Those earrings are the color of yellow snow.

I’ve never seen more ugly people in one place at the same time.

Did you hear the clip-clop sounds? They’re making horse noises!

Ew, did you see that lady’s eyes? They’re swollen shut from crying.

Where do people put this stuff each time the elves come out? Do they put it under their seats or do they whisk it backstage during commercials? Is it just for effect?

I hope that the medics have to be used and they go into the audience and pump somebody’s chest.

The Black Eyed Peas are coming on? That should be funny.

Ew, they’re talking about Oprah’s Love Sandwich? That’s gross. That’s like saying Oprah’s Love Pie.

Why are they cheering wildly? It’s a brownie pan! I don’t like the edge, I like the middle. How about an edgeless brownie pan? Seriously, that’s the worst part of the brownie.

She’s giving away a book on weight loss? I hope it comes in a syringe. That’s the only weight loss plan they’re gonna follow. “Hey fatties, here’s a brownie pan and a weight loss book.” Yup, here they come, trays of brownies.

That lady is saying “thank you” and crying over Netflix? Please.

They go through this full range of emotions, from surprise to disbelief to comatose to hungry and back to comatose.

They have raised over $100 million to lift people out of poverty? That’s like 1% of her fortune.

EW gross, ew so yucky! Look at those models wearing that Oprah shirt and those dumb pants! Ew!! Those are the worst colors too. EW! Those pants cut your butt in half? Oprah needs a pair that cuts her butt in quarters. That’d be a start. She needs different fractions.

Free Nikes! Start jumping, fat people!

Yup, here come the elves again. Seriously, where are they putting this stuff, in the aisle?

What if Oprah’s favorite thing was “I’m setting you all on firrrrrrrre!”

Her cleavage is like a big buttcrack.

That cruise ship is a menace to the earth. It’s just like taking a dump in the ocean wherever it goes.

They’re not going to have the time of their lives, they’re going to be puking the whole time. Really though, that’s these people’s life goal, to finally get on a cruise ship.

I think it would be funny to name a cat Dollop.

(The Black Eyed Peas come out.) There’s nothing more honoring to Jesus than the Black Eyed Peas and a pitch-correction vocoder Christmas.

This audience is all old women and an occasional gay man sprinkled into the crowd.

things organized neatly

This site pleases me. I find it very pleasant indeed.

wanda sykes prank call

How had I never seen this one before? "Oh, I love America." hahahahahaha

adam carolla at his most brilliant

I'm having a hard time today, my heart hurts so much that relationships at our church are negotiable and referred to as collateral damage. Church is supposed to be the place of all places where people are not disposable to one another and relationships are fought for and strategy and business and such pale, PALE I SAY, next to community.

Since this is not the case much of the time on this stupid planet, Adam Carolla's rant on the underpants fire/dignity waiver distracted me nicely for about seven minutes. Enjoy!

letter from nikki visel

My friend Nikki wrote this letter to the leadership of our church to explain to them why she's leaving the congregation. She said she considers it to be public domain and gave me permission to post it here. She expresses so well the struggle against literalism that goes with faith and how that struggle is worth fighting, and reading this gave me a lot of comfort while I'm grieving this so hard.

***

To the Session of Grace Seattle,

Over the course of the last four weeks, I have decided that the time has come for me to leave Grace Seattle. While I’ve never pledged my membership at Grace, I have called it my home for over 10 years and feel compelled to share the reasons behind my decision.

In my experience, worship is not a place of escape, but rather a place of reality. A place where the seen and the unseen mingle. A place where the rough edges aren't smoothed out; they’re explored. A place where we don’t have to hide. Difficult ideas aren't simplified so that we feel better, but are allowed to stand openly in their complexity. To worship is to engage both imaginative thinking and concrete thinking. It is both formulaic and intuitive. We must practice worship and also wait for it to happen. Worship is demanding.

For most of my life, I've had to shut down my "intuitive knowing" in order to sit in church, because my intuition can smell untruth about 30 miles away and while technically every intellectual idea and construct presented may be true there is also a falseness, a shallowness that makes itself known and unsettles me.

By intuition I mean that my physical perception interacts with a "felt" inner sense of something: its truth, its presence, its beauty. Thoughts arrive on my peripheral awareness, and I feel the edge of an idea, but can't find the whole thing – like trying to recall details of a dream. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, since we all rely on intuitive thought in one way or another. For me, intuition is essential. It’s how I relate to the world, how I process ideas, how my creativity emerges.

For years, the only way I could make it through church service was by turning off my intuition and sticking with the facts, which is pretty depressing for someone like me. In fact, it’s debilitating and maybe even spiritually deforming. But since that was the only way I could worship, I sort of thought that must be what God wanted me to do.

When I came to Grace over 10 years ago, I slid into a pew and was stunned by the fact that the music awakened part of me with its truth. A song written in 7/4 time might not be the easiest to sing, but its structure acknowledges that we live in a broken world. A tune in a minor key might feel dark and scary, but that's how my interior life feels much of the time. The lyrics we sing are sometimes simple and sometimes difficult to understand, but their poetry is honest and has often withstood centuries. So there I sat. ALL of me fit into that pew, and I felt the corset on my heart begin to come unlaced. For the first time in my life, I took a full breath during church. Years passed, and over time I decided it would be ok to let some people at church actually know me. My relationship with God deepened, and Grace became my home.

After my last letter to the Session, I have hesitated to speak again, because I believe that the Session has the best of intentions. I hesitate because leading a church is difficult, and I have watched members of the Session rearrange their lives to help individuals understand and process the decision that has been made. I’ve witnessed the Session taking ownership of the ramifications of their leadership. These things are the marks of good leaders, but my heart aches and that sick feeling I get when I "know" something that I don't "know" won’t leave me.

I have spent a great deal of time reading and re-reading the Worship Vision and new Worship Arts Director job description. I do not use hyperbole when I say that they made me nauseous and I wept over them for days. The very format of these documents is of rigidity and their language demands conformity – but not a conformity to God, a conformity to human made power structures. And suddenly my intuitive knowing became very concrete and with those documents I felt my heart’s corset begin to tighten again.

I am heartbroken that Phil is gone. But that's not what is eating at me. I don't want to see the worship music dumbed down so that people can sing it while mentally mowing the lawn. But that's not what it is either. It's the part of me that spent the first 30 years of my life trying to squeeze my head and my heart into a pew and not die in the process that has reared her head. It is the part of me that reads the new "Worship Arts" job description and sees a church using the word “Art” and then describing a technician who will create only a world that the Session can see, thereby minimizing the gifts God has given the artist. I suspect that we are now a church moving in a direction where efficiency is key and effectively reaching goals is the primary objective. And I cannot ignore my intuitive knowledge just to fit into the new Grace paradigm.

I beg you to consider one thing as you move forward. Is a nine-page outline, lead by a “goal statement” the best way to describe how Grace will approach worship? The way we frame ideas shapes the way we respond to those ideas, the format will play a large role in determining how the document “works on us.” How would a contemplative approach the same task? What would it look like if Annie Dillard wrote it? Luci Shaw? Thomas Merton? Perhaps the issue of “format” seems a small issue to you, for me, it’s huge. I cannot have a “goal statement” govern the way I worship God. I do not want business language, linear measurement, footnotes, or technical textbook language coloring the way I approach the Creator of the Universe. Nor do I want those elements to impact the person who is helping to lead me into worship.

Some of you have encouraged me to stay at Grace, and while I am grateful for your expressions of hospitality, the truth is that in order to implement the Vision at hand, you need me to leave. You need people like me to be part of the collateral damage that comes when a church body makes changes to integral parts of its DNA. Perhaps God has called Grace to a bigger, broader future, but I suspect that He has prepared me for small things. For the places of God where people who have a hard time sitting in a pew might find a place to worship and be transformed.

As I leave Grace Seattle I ask you to please pray for me; pray that God will use me and that he will not let me go. In turn I will pray the same for Grace – and I will always be grateful for the home that it provided me all of these years.

Blessings on us all,

Nikki Visel

by the powers vested in me, i digested mc's

It's that time again! An onslaught of what I've loved on the internets today.

Haunting version of "Creep" with equally haunting dolls acting out my high school years.

Creep (Radiohead) - Scala & Kolacny Brothers from Alex Heller on Vimeo.

I like this New York Magazine article on the best rap lyrics.

Here is how Taiwan saw the US midterm elections.



Don Draper says "what" a lot:



Here's an introduction of a mobile phone from 1978, and here is my Joel McHale telling Hoda and Kathie Lee why their show sucks.

holding pattern

I'd like to post my thoughts on the stuff that's going on at my church because that part of my community is huge for me, and also because people have said they don't know what to do with their grief over this and that it helps them to read they're not the only ones grieving. We need a fallout shelter of some sort. One thing I'm glad about is the pace at which this is going. It's been a month since the firing and the first congregational meeting (aka town hall) about it will be on Sunday. Then we'll know more. But since I consider my group email correspondence to be public domain, I'll share what I've sent the leadership of my church since the firing and introduction of the new worship vision. I want to share it because it sums up what I'm feeling and the core questions I have about what is actually going on. I hope it helps some people. I feel the need to talk about this out loud and on purpose for the same reason many people would choose not to. So anyway, here is the first email of Oct. 18.

Hey guys,

I just want you to know that my heart is heavy for you and I can only imagine what you're feeling, and I'm sorry you have to go through this. This bullshit has been happening since Acts, so know it's nothing new and is in the grand tradition of the ancient church. The ancient church was a mess and it still is a mess but God pursued it and cherished it then and he's doing it now.

So I just wanted to say to you I guess, that there's nothing new under the sun. God has given me things to say and it's scary, and I have an idea you have the same feelings, that it's scary to do what God is calling you to do. But God will protect us through it all and he hasn't given us a spirit of confusion but of a sound mind and I've been praying that for Grace Seattle as we're muddling through this.

You are dealing with so much and the powers and principalities are unfortunately all too real but I like what George MacDonald did when he saw a demon sitting on his bed, he said "Oh, it's only you" and went back to sleep.

I've been feeling for almost exactly a year now that I'm on the cusp of a big change, that something big and huge is coming up like a swelling wave and I don't know what it is but that it's going to be good. And I think that this church stuff is part of that big change. I just want you to be encouraged and to have rest in the midst of this somehow. I will pray this for you. CS Lewis said in Letters to an American Lady, "Underneath are the everlasting arms, even when it doesn't feel like it."

Love you, dear brothers!!
stephy

Here is my second email of Oct. 29.

Hey guys,

it's me again. The situation at Grace that's unfolding from the new worship vision has been weighing so heavily on me but I haven't been able to put words to my feelings beyond what I sent to you guys a week or so ago, and then last night I was reading something by Eugene Peterson and came across these three paragraphs that describe my concerns for Grace Seattle so well, I thought I'd send them along to you.

"Americans talk and write endlessly about what the church needs to become, what the church must do to be effective. The perceived failures of the church are analyzed and reforming strategies prescribed. The church is understood almost exclusively in terms of function — what we can see. If we can't see it, it doesn't exist. Everything is viewed through the lens of pragmatism. Church is an instrument that we have been given to bring about whatever Christ commanded us to do. Church is a staging ground for getting people motivated to continue Christ's work.

This way of thinking — church as a human activity to be measured by human expectations — is pursued unthinkingly. The huge reality of God already at work in all the operations of the Trinity is benched on the sideline while we call a timeout, huddle together with our heads bowed, and figure out a strategy by which we can compensate for God's regrettable retreat into invisibility. This is dead wrong, and it is responsible for no end of shallowness and experimentation in trying to achieve success and relevance and effectiveness that people can see. Statistics provide the basic vocabulary for keeping score. Programs provide the game plan. This way of going about things has done and continues to do immeasurable damage to the American church.

This way of understanding church is very, very American and very, very wrong. We can no more understand church functionally than we can understand Jesus functionally. We have to submit ourselves to the revelation and receive church as the gift of Christ as he embodies himself in this world. Paul tells us that Christ is the head of a body, and the body is his church. Head and body are one thing." — Practice Resurrection, Eugene Peterson, p. 118

Here is my third email of Nov. 2.

One more thing I thought I'd pass on. Our friend Pete is a Presbyterian pastor in Oregon and he told me this recently:

"I told Eugene in August that his books annoy pastors. He was surprised (which surprised me). But his books annoy pastors who want to create their own little empires — even while being completely self-deceived into thinking that they are really wanting to build the kingdom of God. But as Jesus showed us in his parables, the kingdom of God is already all around us for those who have eyes to see a mustard seed and a wedding and a field and a guy playing cello. But pastors and pharisees are too busy looking at stats and charts and wishing for a better demographic."

*****

So for whatever all that's worth, this is where I am and these are the questions I'm holding. Very much in a holding pattern and trying to let myself feel all my grief and fear of what will happen. You know, the usual.