What if we understood

We are at a time when information is everywhere. There is little that escapes the attention of the masses. We are also at a time when opinions are everywhere. Yet even with an abundance of opinions and information, understanding is scarce. 

Where is our understanding? Where is the humanity that says, one human to another, I understand? Our problems and opinions are not alien to one another. It is not that we can't understand, but understanding is a choice. 

What would happen if we began to understand each other? To know that what is human is something we can comprehend? What if we didn't care what flag someone waves, who they love, what they worship, look like, smell like, think like, talk like? 

What if on the street corner I said, "I see you." And what if on that street corner you responded, "I am seen." What if I said "I hear you" and you responded "I am heard." What if I said "I know you" and you responded "I am known." What if I said to you, "I get you" and you responded "I am understood." 

What if we took time to hear, to speak, to see, to know, and to understand? We may not like some humans. We certainly may not agree with people that think differently than we do. But what would happen if we sought to understand them, who they are, and what they care about? Would that really be such a bad thing? I think that would make the world a much better place. 

The challenge of tomorrow

When I wake up in the morning, before my feet hit the floor I am strategizing. I begin each day with considerations, concerns, and contingencies. Before I’ve brushed my teeth, taken a shower, and had my breakfast I have spent incredible amounts of energy trying to plan for, and avoid, anything that could go wrong. It is exhausting.

In the morning before my eyes have fully opened I have already started running. I’ll run from sadness, pain, disappointment, and discomfort. The intention, is that if I can avoid those things, then I will experience joy, laughter, excitement, and fulfillment. That’s not how it works. Progress is the only treatment for entropy. It is only when we stop looking behind us and start looking in front of us that we will ever get to where we are going.

Someone told me one time, “you know Caleb, there are people that get out of bed every day, get ready, and go about their business, without trying to control any of it?” I didn't understand how that was possible before, but tonight I watched Disney’s “Tomorrowland” and while I’m not sure the film itself is transformative, I certainly believe its message is. The movie is, in short, a story of what is and what could be. The core of what I came to understand the film to say was this; “Running from something will never get you anywhere, running to something will get you everywhere.

Running from something will never get you anywhere, running to something will get you everywhere.

The challenge with this idea, is that while hindsight might be 20/20, it is arguably the most common activity within the human experience. If we accept that there is not point, then what is the point? Entropy is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we limit ourselves to what we can see with perfect vision, then we will only see what has been, or what can go wrong. Then the things that we are focused on will become our reality, we will bring about our own death by accepting it's inevitability. However if we look at what can be, then we can move forward towards hope and what can be. What is more, if we broaden our perspective, then not only will we see what can be for ourselves, but also for the people around us. 

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said this; “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”

The world needs dreamers, and dreamers need each other. 

The world needs dreamers and dreamers need each other. The world needs people who are willing to rise above the confines of their today, and even their tomorrow. When you survey the state of affairs that we live in, you have a choice. On one hand, you can see death and destruction, on the other, you can see promise and possibility. The choice is not about focusing on one, and avoiding the other; ignorance only breeds foolishness. The choice is about seeing what is, and deciding how to respond.

I spent so much time each morning trying to control and plan because I was convinced that my failure was inevitable, and so I needed to minimize my pain any way I could. I was wrong. Inevitability is the birthplace of desolation, but it is an easy place to be, because what is inevitable only exists tomorrow, it doesn’t ask anything of you today.  

If you survey the world, you will see death, but you will also see hope. That is the choice I am going to make, to see both and to do whatever I can, however I can. I’ve realized I’m tired of waiting for someone else to do it for me. I will leave you with this quote from the film...

“Have you ever wondered what would happen if that smartest, most creative people in the world actually decided to change it?” 

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*NOTE: While I would love to take credit for all of these thoughts and ideas on my own, I can't. I have wonderful people around me that are much smarter than I am. While the impact, and realizations are my own, it wouldn't be without their help, love, support, and brilliant ideas that I would have ever come to any conclusions. They know who they are, and I cannot repay or thank them enough for their support. Seriously, they are some of the best people anyone could ever know. 

*NOTE: Pairing the MLK Jr. Quote with the concepts in Tomorrowland wasn't my idea either, again I'm surrounded by people that are brilliant. 

1+1=3?!?

Since when did 1+1=3? 

Over the past few months, I keep encountering situations where people are hoping against hope that if they will it strongly enough they can add 1 and 1 together and get a different result. That somehow, even though 1+1=2, if we try hard enough, believe strongly enough, and just think it's the right thing badly enough 1+1 will equal 3. 

Is this ideal a new human phenomenon? Or have we always believed that we could do the impossible? I am all for challenging yourself, I support perseverance, and I am not a fan of giving up. But 1+1 isn't 99% "3", it's 100% "2" - and it always will be. What is it that makes us believe the impossible and illogical? Is it our culture? Our humanism? Our faith? 

What makes us think we can keep doing the same thing and expect a different result?

What makes us believe that we can be anything more than who we are? That we can be smarter or dumber or prettier than the genes in our DNA dictate?

Where did we get the notion that people aren't typically selfish and proud? 

I'm really tired of playing games with people where they expect an impossible outcome, and I'm tired of playing them with myself. I know that I have unreasonable expectations, but how do we revisit our math and realize where we are trying to solve a problem that isn't solvable or get an answer that will never be true? 

How do we move forward when all we have is 1+1 and all we need is 3? 

Common Unity

"Community" 

​What a strange word. It's a word that elicits images of Church on Sunday morning, Friday night at the bar, Thanksgiving Dinner, a romantic walk on the beach, water cooler chats at the office, and a sitcom about college by the same name. Each image is completely different from the others but each shares a common thread, in community you are not alone. In community loneliness flees. 

Perhaps that's why people crave community so much. Maybe it's the pain that loneliness brings that drives us to community. Loneliness and being by yourself are very different things, the latter is a choice, the former an emotion. 

Community needs to be more than an escape from loneliness. Escaping loneliness is good, but often when the time for community ends the pain of being alone can feel so much worse. "It is better to have loved and lost," does not always apply. Community is fueled when there is a goal. Even if the goal is to invest in others, community needs a mission. 

There, as always, is a catch. The mission can very quickly overtake the people, and the goal of the community can destroy the "common" that support it. The only thing worse than being lonely by yourself, is being lonely while you are surrounded by others.  I think that's what's started happening to us. 

We are so ready to not be alone, that we pick up a banner and start waving in hopes that people come join us. Our loneliness is sated only briefly and so we keep chanting louder, trying to rally others to our cry. Like an addict and a drug we dance with this idea of community, this lie that we are loved by the people shouting with us. Eventually the high fades, but our addiction to the cause only swells, because after all - it's all we know. 

Sooner than later the cause eclipses the community and our passion the people. Our tea parties, sidewalk prophets, extremists, legalists, conspiracy theorists, vigilantes, and protesters rise out of the ashes, the people forgotten, and the charge their new drug. 

When did we become so addicted the sound of our own voices? When did our hunger for relationships dovetail into a hunger for "rightness"? 

We have to redeem community. It's not going to come from an organized weekly meeting, or even a common goal. Community will come back if we start paying attention to each other and ignore our tenants and decrees. If we put aside our piety and politics, then we can be whole again. Then we can stop being so terribly alone. 

Religious Persecution

Religious guilt. More and more I'm reading news articles and seeing stories about how people's lives have been flipped on their head due to self imposed quasi-religious morality. It's really starting to become a wide spread tragedy. 

Ten minutes ago I read an article about a woman who was a virgin until her honeymoon but because she had worked so hard at not "being bad" and having sex or sexual thoughts that for the next two years she hated having sex with her husband. Something that she should have found incredible enjoyment in was agonizing and full of guilt and shame.

Let me be clear: I am not making any sort of judgement call on virginity or the lack thereof. I am hardly qualified to pass judgement on such things. This woman's story is just a single example of how Americanized Extreme Evangelicalism and "religiousness" is really screwing up people's lives. 

Personally I have spent my whole life trying to "be good." I've done the right things, said "yes ma'am", and minded the speed limit. It hasn't been until recently however that I've realized how much weight I've carried around. My religious, moral or social obligations have made me absolutely miserable. I've strived to do "what's good" and yet instead of climbing Jacob's ladder I've buried myself in self righteous guilt and obligation. 

This isn't about Christianity itself, this is about the mountain of guilt Christians and other hyper religious people bury themselves and the people around them under. Enough is enough. It's not sufficent to say "it's not a religion, it's a relationship" or some other "shoot Christians say" catch phrase. That isn't the point. The point is that until we, as people, as #firstworldproblem Americans, and as a collective group (insert your church here) stop holding everyone else to our self imposed righteousness. Notice I said self imposed - not divinely ordained or democratically enacted. 

Casting Crowns is a contemporary-Christian band and in one of their songs they say "Are we just shiny plastic people, under shiny plastic steeples, with walls to hide our weakness, and smiles to hide our shame? Well if the invitations open, to everyone that has been broken, maybe then we'll close the curtain on this stained glass masquerade." The problem is that we pretend to do that all the time. Gospel tracs on the Roman's road have turned into Papyrus font laden stories of "finding Jesus." We've replaced forgiveness of a scarlet letter with a tattoo covered worship leader, and we've exchanged our suit clad sidewalk prophets with graphic-t's and rectangular wire-frame glasses. 

We don't allow people to be real with their lives today, we only let them confess yesterday. If their today doesn't meet our expectations we have a litany of programs, books, and seminars to help them conform by tomorrow. It has to stop. We need to stop fixing each other, and fixing ourselves, and trying for all manner of moral elitism; and we need to just breathe. 

The world would be a drastically better place if we just left well enough alone. What if we allowed people to love each other because they genuinely care about each other, not because they are that month's community service project? What if we went to church, or "fellowship group" because we liked the people there and wanted to be with them, not because we liked (or thought we were expected to like) the people there and didn't want them to think less of us for not showing up? 

What if we let people show their spots realizing that some spots never change, and many are never supposed to? What if we stopped declaring whatever made us the most comfortable and conformed as "absolute truth" and started to just listen to the truth of people's hearts and lives? What if we put down our venom to keep Santa out of christmas, evolution out of science class, and gay people out of government/church/ect? What would happen if we saw ourselves for who we really were, and then could take the people around us at face value? 

I don't know about you but it sounds pretty good to me. I think we would find that the world, our faith, and our families were much more like we wanted them to be in the first place.