Conan

Here is an article from Kitsap Counties homeless newspapers edited by Sally Santana. The article was written by Major Baker, a good friend who is the charge staff of Bremerton's Salvation Army.

From “Conan” as told to Major Baker

His parents were heavy drinkers and pill takers.
They abused him sexually, mostly through his
mother’s insistence and threatened to kill him if
he told authorities. His mother loved to manipulate
people. She would beat him with bamboo canes
until he was bruised from mid-back to his knees,
causing severe back problems. They made him feel worthless. He was terrified of authority because all authority was abusive in his eyes.
He began drinking at age 10 and got into drugs at age 12. He ran away from home
three times. When he was 15 his parents said if he tried it again he would be dead because he “embarrassed them.”
He was sexually molested by men when he was a 14-year-old runaway and again when
he was 23. At 18 he moved to Oak Harbor lived with a brother. He washed out of Navy boot camp because of a near nervous breakdown. Meanwhile his brother was trying to convert him to Christ through threats, manipulation and “holy roller” style preaching. He stayed four years trying to gain his brother’s approval and feeling brainwashed. He got married during that time but the relationship was mostly physical and immature. It ended when he discovered that she had been cheating.
At 23 he got deeper into drugs and alcohol. He would get jobs and then quit abruptly
and hitchhike to another town and another job. He drank and used drugs heavily for 30 years to medicate and quiet the memories.
As a homeless person he was constantly looking out for the cops and for the “jocks,” who liked to beat up “bums.” He has been shot at, robbed and molested. “The world is full of sharks,” he says. “[On the street] you cannot show any weakness. There is no security at all.” To survive he sold drugs or had a “sugar momma” or did fortune telling.
He learned how to set up a campsite from Vietnam vets. He kept his camp clean, had a
large backpack, 6’ x 6’ brown dome tent, fire pit, latrine and quicklime. He always bought food with his food stamps and never sold them for drugs. He only stayed in a campsite 3 weeks, because the cops would find it by that time.
His father died 5 ½ years ago and he was torn up. He loved his father because his
father taught him many work skills that enabled him to get jobs. But his preacher brother did not even call to tell him his father had died until two days before the funeral – not enough time to attend.
When his mother died of cancer, his only wish was that she had died more slowly.
“Conan” has made some good choices over the years. He used to steal but quit because
he knew it was wrong. Although he can’t hold a job he has never wanted to go on disability. He prefers to volunteer rather than ‘take.’ He has quit drinking and taking drugs because now he wants to face his demons instead of medicating them into oblivion. He is eating healthier and living better. And maybe, just maybe, he will be able to finally exorcise those demons.

taste and see

On a closed road beside the Coffee Oasis drive-thru we hosted the first annual Coffee Oasis Block Party today! It was hugely successful. Beautiful people of all shapes, sizes, looks, and colors came and ate together, watched together (3-on-3 basketball), listened together (very gifted rap artist from Seattle), and played together (traditional street games). In the music and conversation I heard Jesus spoken of and shared. I would guess around 350 people tasted the delicious BBQ.

Here is a effort at hymnody that I wrote today:

Jesus, Savior of the trembling hearted
Needing to hear Thy voice again
Daylong nights and dirty passions
Left too weak to love renew

Jesus, God in flesh abiding
Walk not by my sinking heart
We hold dim vision of Thy coming
But what Thou has none other can impart

Jesus, insatiable joy of man’s desire
Creation groans to release Thy name
Infant laugh and aging fondness
Morning dawn to evening flame

Jesus, Savior of all who call upon Thee
These rescued now proclaim
Infinite praise to King Immortal
Be celebrated now into eternity!

renew me

This life affords many strange feelings, strange experiences. One of those is the feeling of having to constantly catch-up, as if life has left you behind. Writing a blog affords that feeling. There are a thousand stories I have not spared the time to share and there is no way to regain them for you. Perhaps one day when someone goes through the scraps of our lives they will put the pieces together and tell the story, but no late night, sniffly nose, surveyed landscape, or humbled sinner waits for camera crews. Real life shared is irreplaceable. So I will try to share more with you, if...you share with me.

The lesson of the past blog-less months has been: renewed holiness. Though I was an athlete my memories of high school are not lettermans jackets and American made muscle cars. I remember holiness. A commitment to keep myself from worldliness. I knew I could not invent holiness, I simply must obey. And I enjoyed it immensely. Renew to me joy, O Lord.

Upon his brothers voyage to Peru Jim Elliot wrote his mother: "Remember we have bargained with him who bore a cross....Our silken selves must know denial. Hear Amy Carmichael:

O Prince of Glory, who dost bring
Thy sons to gory through the Cross,
Let us not shrink from suffering,
Reproach or loss."

more again soon...

O blog how I miss thee!
Thou raiment is of threaded word,
and thy path along a pleasant brook.
Mayest I walk thine way again?

I am studying for a 15 page paper that is due in...11 hours! I must begin! Wanted to write and thank Mr. Lewis. I have read nearly 11 books and 7 journal articles--thousands of pages--for this paper and find in Jack's writing more clear thinking than most other Christian and non-Christian sources. God bless that man! I do not agree with everything and that is part of the beauty. We are both worshippers. That is evident in the way he writes and the way my minded-heart works.

lain there

"It is a delusion to seek a sort of ready-made perfection which can be assumed like a garment; it is a delusion, too, to aim at a holiness which costs no trouble, although such holiness would be no doubt exceedingly agreeable to nature. We think that if we could discover the secret of sanctity we should become saints quickly and easily. We shall the rest of our lives be making new and fresh discoveries of plague spots in our nature upon which the Cross must be laid." -Francis de Sales and L.E Maxwell

easter, homesick, peter, me

I find it the case too that "we have to feel the universe at once as an ogre’s castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening...Christianity was the answer to a riddle, not the last truism uttered after a long talk...it came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and divine captain. The only fun in being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners...[this] Christian optimism is based on the fact that we do not quite fit in…I had heard that I was in the wrong place, and my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring. The knowledge found out and illuminated forgotten chambers in the dark house of infancy. I knew now why grass had always seemed to me as queer as the green beard of a giant, and why I could feel homesick at home.” – G.K. Chesterton

Related closely with Peter on this Easter. Tired of my many personal denials of the Savior I love. Homesick.

Last Monday I started classes at Fuller Theological in Seattle. Working harder than ever before to preserve hours of time to study. Pray that I have a guarded mind. I never intended to use phrases like "the older I get," but find it a simple and true explanation (if not the only one that I understand). However, there is much more available to me now that I am older. Sin I talked clearly about in my youth I can now see tempting me. None of us are exempt. What will can be done? I cannot face it alone, neither can you. We must meet with the Lord in prayer. Prayer has not been easy lately. I love it more than ever, but find it hard to kneel. I even find great pleasure remembering the stories of people I have met or missionaries that I have read of that prayed instead of amusing away their days. And when the band of soldiers and pharisees come to capture Jesus in Gethsemane they find me sleeping, unprepared and unready to fulfill any vow I have made to stand by my Lord. But that Easter for Peter and this Easter for me only carries power if it is about the Lord. If the first Easter were a story of Peter it would have been quickly forgotten. The failure of a fallen man casts no shadow on the long awaited Savior. Regardless of me Christ will bring healing. Praise God I cannot hold Him back. What claim have I on a man that death could not contain and to whom angels adore? The Easter story is not about my claim, but about the claim He made on me.

Jesus, I thank you for not overlooking my stupidity. You addressed it, and I felt ashamed that you would take notice. I do not pretend to understand the cost you made. You know that I do not. Even more, You have seen the way that I have continued to take Your grace for granted. I am sorry. I have done so many things to limit the effect of Your good love on my life. I want to be a willing bride, but find my love constantly so weak, so unworthy. Is it not demeaning for you to love me? Is it not foolish of you to continue calling me your brother? Your wisdom is confirmed by a power greater than I understand. You will not be limited by philosophy or dissected by science. These tools were made only for us to praise certain parts of your creative expression. You want a relationship and that is exactly what I am bad at. Please help. I would love to be closer to You.

your unworthy, Daniel

pleasured by whom

"There is a pleasure in philosophy, and a lure even in the mirages of metaphysics, which every student feels until the coarse necessities of physical existence drag him from the heights of thought into the mart of economic strife and gain. Most of us have known some golden days in the June of life when philosophy was in fact what Plato calls it, 'that dear delight'; when the love of modestly elusive Truth seemed more glorious, incomparably, than the lust for the ways of the flesh and the dross of the world. And there is always some wistful remnant in us of that early wooing of wisdom. 'life has meaning,' we feel with Browning--'to find its meaning is my meat and drink.' So much of our lives is meaningless, a self-cancelling vacillation and futility; we strive with the chaos about us and within; but we would believe all the while that there is something vital and significant in us, could we but decipher our own souls. We want to understand; 'life means for us constantly to transform into light and flame all that we are or meet with'; we are like Mitya in The Brother Karamazov--'one of those who don't want millions, but an answer to their questions'; we want to seize the value and perspective of passing things, and so to pull ourselves up out of the maelstrom of daily circumstance. We want to know the little things are little, and the big things big, before it is too late; we want to see things now as they will seem forever--'in the light of eternity.' We want to learn to laugh in the face of the inevitable, to smile even at the looming of death. We want to be whole, to coordinate our energies by criticizing and harmonizing our desires; for coordinated energy is the last word in ethics and politics, and perhaps in logic and metaphysics too. 'To be a philosopher,' said Thoreau, 'is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.' We may be sure that if we can but find wisdom, all things else will be added unto us. 'Seek ye first the good things of the mind,' Bacon admonishes us, 'and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.' Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free." - Will Durant in The Story of Philosophy

"I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened... What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is a cross... You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don't expect faith to clear things up for you. It is trust, not certainty." - Flannery O'Connor

Both these paragraph are quoted in full to hopefully splash more than a little water from the ocean of truth onto you. I do not quote them to endorse everything written in them. Both of these writers wanted to point at something that they saw from afar. Jesus said that even Abraham "rejoiced to see [his] day," though he saw it only by way of a hopeful excitement that comes from understanding a clear promise. Will Durant writes in another place: "when genius speaks to us we feel a ghostly reminiscence of having ourselves, in our distant youth, had vaguely this self-same thought which genius now speaks, but which we had not art or courage to clothe with form and utterance." This is the beginning of healthy admiration. It is the far from verbal feeling you might have when you see a elderly couple walk hand-in-hand under the quiet repose of a spreading spring sky. I believe it is their bravery we admire. Seeing their "togetherness" we admire it because of the sure assumption that they have through enduring love and faithfulness won the ability to understand and appreciate each other. What keeps us so long only testing the waters of truth with our toes? Why do we not jump in and be immersed in everything true, feeling the press of pure reality on every part of our being? Durant, Bacon, and the others quoted are helpful travel guides, but are limited where everyone, without exception, is limited in understanding the "infinity within and the infinity without" (Pascal). It is revealed in the text that both Durant and Bacon misquote, Matthew 6:33, "But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." Durant and Bacon are still playing the philosophers game of Marco Polo when the text speaks clearly concerning not just the "what" but "WHOM" we must seek. We hide behind the most beautiful words and courageous expressions. You may think that this is limiting. Perhaps you are at the point of thinking the whole blasted thing is limiting--philosophy, the mind, Christianity, me, yourself. If I where to tell you that the whole law and prophets could be summed up in two commands, loving God and man, then you would be skeptical. It is the answer that a child could give. Where is the wisdom and genius in that? The game of mocking begins. "if you are the Christ, then come down from the cross," was the favorite of those who watched a defeated man perish. Under the current pressure of health care reform, economic depression, and the coming of spring how can how is it not pithy or limiting to say "Seek first God." How is this important when you may be jobless, heartless, homeless, hurting? On top of that Flannery O'Connor adds that you should by no means "expect faith to clear things up for you." There is a yes and no to her statement. It is correct that faith will not give what the self-absorbed individual what they want, which is complete control of the present and understanding of future events. If this is what you are expecting than faith will most certainly seem narrow and uneventful to you. I say, narrow me down and confine me to the love of Christ! I love wisdom--that fleet fox chased through the ages by the ever pursuing hounds of philosophy--in all her proverbial glory. But understand that all men alike have great unexplainable deafness to her constant call (Proverbs says that she "calls aloud in the streets"). The limit of mind is not due to build-up of greenhouse gases or the way we were treated in our childhood, but because our spirits are blind and have lost all attachment to Home. We are in the sad place that we do not understand our own longings. The philosopher and scientist apart from grace will always distrust God because of this, like a lost child distrusts every approach. We are trained in the art of distrust. The most wonderful arguments that are beating back the ranks of militant "New Atheist" of our day will never substitute for the handful of dirt and spittle that Jesus used to open the eyes of the blind man. Even while we can point to a miraculous, singular beginning to the universe that produced strategic and irreplaceable natural laws allowing life to thrive on planet earth, we can never by these same means explain the wonder, excellence, and vulnerability of tender love. Confine me to Christ! Faith in the Father, seeking His kingdom first, feeds our sense of wonder, because we are not just discovering more about a "what" or an "it" but the knowable WHOM who sits enthroned above it all; through whom, for whom, and by whom all things were created and find the meaning for their existence. Jump in!

may you be made to wonder

"It was a marvelous night, the sort of night one only experiences when one is young. The sky was so bright, and there were so many stars that, gazing upward, one couldn't help wondering how so many whimsical, wicked people could live under such a sky. This too is a question that would only occur to the young, to the very young; but may God make you wonder like that as often as possible." - Dostoyevsky in White Nights

Please pray for fresh, true, excited thinking this week as I lead and teach a group of college students during their spring break vacation.

"Why I Write"

"I am not able, and I do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in chiildhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself." - George Orwell, "Why I Write"

titus is two and a following church

Titus's second birthday today! He can now identify by name all the train and freight cars on Thomas the Tank Engine. Because of a whooping cough none of his small friends were invited so it was only the family that enjoyed the milestone event.

Preached on Colossians 2:8-15 today. If I could pause time I would. Not for selfish reasons, mind you. I would like to stand in front of the church at the Coffee Oasis and see all the people without speaking or singing (what I usually do when I am in front of them). The last several weeks we have had a growing number of kids from teen night coming to church. We also have a growing number of young professionals that come from healthy homes. I would estimate that 75% of the women in the church are single moms--most of which have gone through painful divorce. We also have healthy young marriages as well as aging ones that have not stopped blooming. It almost goes without saying that we are a group that needs each other--in a very healthy way. On days like today I feel like I am more affirmed and supported in my calling as a minister of the gospel than I am able to encourage. A day does not go by that I am not learning, but I also do not doubt that I am loved along the way. Someone might come in and ask how this happens, what is our "church model"? I could probably not explain it better than Paul could in Acts, Titus, or Timothy. This is not to say that we are THE Biblical model. I believe that a people led by God can take on many forms. It could be the hip church down the road that has as many televisions and "helpers" as the local Best Buy; the Spirit could be found in the Church with a steeple and bells who look like they are waiting for Paul Revere to ride again while they go on singing the same hymns that warmed the souls of those stepping off the Mayflower; I do not doubt that the Spirit can inspire the group of 10+ who gather for Christ-centered teaching in a cozy home where the women have risen early to bake bread and the sons memorize verses while milking the cows. Yes! The world is greater than my experience and the Holy Spirit more active than my imagination. Ha! Does that surprise you? It should not. I believe God was only getting started when He created the world. His creating does not stop there, He goes on to create praise in His people--people from every nation, tribe, and tongue. What is not optional is Christ being preached and taught in a way that honors and glorifies Him. If you were to marry a girl (ha! I am obliged to speak from theory at this point) my best guess in knowing how to honor her would be to seek to understand her. Being close to her would give me an idea of what she likes and dislikes. I would hear what she said and think of loving ways to respond to it (to be sure it is that easy, ha!). For example: if she liked chocolate you might think of surprising her with a spur-of-the-moment trip to Switzerland to try their exquisite dark chocolate (or you could just take her to Poulsbo). There is much in the Bible that concerns the pleasure of God. I find that instead of doing the obvious, we, like Cain, offer whatever we desire and then get grumpy because it was not accepted as worthy praise. Did we forget that our hearts are viewed. This is not to say you can go to your local bookstore and find a book on making your church purpose driven and then "wallah!" God gave a beautiful variety of personalities and I believe he can redeem them in different and peculiar ways (hence the difference in appearance between a godly Quaker and a godly emo kid). It reminds me of Jesus' last words with Peter in the book of John, after Jesus had explicitly told Peter the way his life would be used: "Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. When Peter saw him, he asked, 'Lord, what about him?' Jesus answered, 'If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me'" (John 21:20-22).

“My idea of God is [a limited idea.] It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of his presence? The incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins. And most are ‘offended’ by the iconoclasm; and blessed are those who are not.”- Lewis in A Grief Observed