carbonated joy

One of my favorite biblical people is John the Baptizer. There was a wildness about him that appeals to me. He was a rebel, a nonconformist. He was a wild eyed, bug eating, bearded, wild man.
He really was born to be wild.
In fact, in Mark chapter one, it says that “John the Baptizer appeared in the wild”.
There is something about “the wild” that speaks to me.
Then a few verses later in the same chapter, Jesus shows up. He is baptized by John and then the Holy Spirit came down and filled Him up, how’s that for wild!?
Then, it says “at once, this same spirit pushed Jesus out in the wild.”
The Spirit empowers Him and THEN instantly pushes Him into the wild!?
Why?
Why the wild?
What happens in the wild?
Why is time in the wild important?

The wild is the place of “un”. It is uncultivated, undomesticated, unscripted.
It’s in the wild places that we are undone.

That’s scary because the wilderness is, well, wild. The wild is weird. It’s full of unknown and uncontrollable.

We need the wilderness.
Grace seldom grows in sanitized environments, it’s not needed there. It shows up in the wild places.
Wild stuff happens in the wilderness.

The children of Israel wandered in the wilderness for forty years. They had been freed, but, It took four decades of wildness to get rid of the sludge of slavery. They had to learn to live free. In the wildness, they learned to trust, depend, believe, hope, and really live.
They needed the wilderness.

We need the wilderness.
The wildness exposes the subtle ways we have become slaves to the system and wrong thinking.
In the wildness we are taken back to the basics, in the absence of OTHER things, God becomes the ONLY thing.

We need the wilderness.
The wildness exposes the tameness.
It unleashes the wild in us, and drives out fear and timidity.

We need the wilderness.
In order to walk IN wholeness, we have to walk THROUGH wildness.
We try to run from it, we run to the known and comfortable.
But the “same spirit” keeps pushing us into the wild.
Because THAT is where the shackles fall.
We are born in slavery. We are slaves to sin, self, and system.
We need the wilderness.
That is where we are freed from slave thinking and slave ways.
That is where we learn to live, love and lean.
That is where we become a free people.
If you haven’t, go ahead and answer the call of the wild, it’s the only road to freedom.
And now, let the wild rumpus start!

Today, I learned a new word and I REALLY like it!

I’m adding it to my list of favorite words.

It’s a fun Latin word.

The word is “hilaritas”.

It means cheerfulness, merriment, good humor. It’s where we get our word, hilarious.

It’s a fun word, a happy word, a word that lightens.

It’s a word that doesn’t seem to get associated with “religious” folk much, and THAT is sad!

It seems that if you are spiritual you are hardly hilarious.

We seem to equate true spirituality with a sour expression. If you want to appear “holy” you must be serious and somber, arrogant and a little condescending.

Can you take yourself VERY seriously, act constipated and seldom laugh? Then, you too can be a Christian!!

We equate deep with serious, and people who laugh are shallow and lightweight.

That’s not hilarious at all!

This way of thinking hasn’t always been the norm.

“In the days when the Roman Catholic Church was in the business of canonizing certain of our brothers and sisters in faith, giving them the honorary title ‘saint’ and indicating thereby that they had lived an exemplary life of faith, one of the standard items for qualification was evidence of hilaritas – joy. The proposed saint had to be a hilarious woman or a hilarious man, capable of laughing, of praising, of enjoying.” (Eugene Peterson, As Kingfishers Catch Fire)

I love that so much!!! A holiness measured by holy hilarity!! A faith marked by joy.

Real Saints smile!

The Saint test: Do you love Jesus? Do you you know how to laugh?

Why are we surprised by that?

God is the designer and distributor of joy. Laughter is His idea.

I think that sometimes the One who said “let there be light” also says “lighten up!”

He gives us joy to make us strong in this sometimes UNhilarious world.

Apart from God, joy loses its fizz like a carbonated beverage that is left sitting open too long.

We need carbonated joy!!

Hilaritas.

My prayer: may we be a hilarious people today!

When it came time to name the generations, we got a letter…
X.
Generation X…
We are the generation raised on Tang, Wonder Bread and Count Chocula.
That seems to have us given magical powers.
We seem to possess a special magic that has helped us, in our time on planet earth, see the unbelievable.
We are the wizards who have witnessed unimaginable change.
We grew up with Mr. Rogers AND the Cookie Monster. One taught us the magic of kindness, before we realized that the world was a scary place. One taught us the magic of sugary gluten, before we realized that we were probably allergic to it.
We were the original latch key kids. We survived big hair, Hammer pants, and Cabbage Patch Kids.
We saw the cutting edge video gameness of Pong evolve into the greatness of Frogger, Pac-man, and Galaga and way beyond. Magic only cost a quarter!
We ate Pop Rocks and Rocket Pops. We drank New Coke,Fresca and Tab.
We used plastic rotary dial phones to call on “party lines”. Then, it happened! We saw the first cell phones! They were as big as a loaf of bread, and people actually made phone calls with them!! There were no apps or texting, we’ve seen that all happen in our generation. We watched our phones get smart. They now contain more information than our public libraries…Strange cellular magic!!
We remember when social media meant a friendly newspaper reporter.
We saw video kill the radio star. We were there experiencing the magic of MTV when it actually played music videos!! We knew Madonna before she had a British accent. We knew John Mellencamp when he was a Cougar. We’ve seen some stereophonic stuff! We watched albums become 8 tracks, then cassettes, CDs and downloads! We watched the magical morphing of music. We remember Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson, Joey Ramone, Whitney, David Bowie and Prince when they were prime. They have left the dance floor, but we still hear the beat because it’s magic.
We remember life before the internet. We had to copy reports straight from the encyclopedia on college ruled notebook paper, we somehow managed to get through school without google…magic!!
We remember the moonwalk, and the Space Shuttle explosion, and Casey Kasem telling us to keep reaching for the stars.
We remember theaters with TWO screens! We remember John Hughes movies. We remember seeing Star Wars for the first time and how it changed everything. We have witnessed that galaxy explode in story. Magical, it is!
During our time on this globe we have experienced both Herbie the love bug AND Hamilton the musical. How lucky we are to be alive right now!!
We have witnessed three TV channels and foil covered rabbit ears become five hundred channels of entertainment, sports, and news choices in high definition. And, you usually still can’t find anything good to watch.
We didn’t wear seat belts and we drank water out of garden hoses. We survived…magic!! We have seen airbags and bottled water come into being.
We have lost people we love to bullies like cancer and AIDS. We carry the magic of memory, it makes us stronger.
We carry a strong Gen X magic with us into the second half of our lifetimes. We aren’t afraid.
We have seen, heard, tasted, experienced, hurt, laughed, cried, and danced.
These are all very essential ingredients to the magic of real everyday life.
Everyday magic is made by surviving, and sharing our stories.
It’s a strange magic.
It’s amazing Gen X magic!

Get an ungrip.
Live with your hands open.
We try our hardest to keep a tight grip on life, situations and other people, but it always backfires!
We try to control and manipulate.
We get a grip.
We are determined to put people, circumstances, and things in what we perceive to be their place.
We try to take care of every detail and we hold on so tight that we aren’t able to grasp the things that really matter.
Maybe it’s time to get an ungrip.
We should get a pretty strong clue from the Creator who chose NOT to be a control freak. Instead, he gave his creation free will.
That lead to failure, and really bad choices.
It also led to unforced love and choices that really matter.
You CAN build something BIG while holding onto everything. You can pound with your closed fist and build big, impressive things, BUT, you will never build anything deep.
Deep requires you to relinquish control and hang out in the places where you can’t reach. It demands that you let go and go with the uncontrollable.
You can’t receive with a closed fist, you can only hold or punch.
We end up punching ourselves in the soul when we live with a closed fist. When we hold on too tightly to people, position, or process, we inadvertently tighten our grip on other things too.
We hold onto pride, self righteousness, hurt, anger, unforgiveness, offense.
We have to let go.
God can’t put anything into a closed fist. Our hands have to be open to receive from him. We have to be out of control, we have to let go, trust, give up. Relinquish control, live with your hands wide open so that you are able to receive.
Life and people were really never meant to be controlled.
It just leads to frustration.
You can let go or get dragged.
Get an ungrip.

My seven week old granddaughter eats one thing now…formula.
Every meal is the same…a lovely little cocktail of purified water and miracle baby growing powder, shaken, not stirred.
I’ve tasted it, and honestly, it’s not very tasty. It’s bland. But it’s what she needs at this time in her life.
So, she consumes the same basic thing again and again, every two or three hours.
BORING!!!
It’s a good thing that she doesn’t know any better, she hasn’t tasted anything else.
But she will!!!
I CAN NOT wait to introduce her to tacos, corn dogs, pizza, Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream, butterscotch lifesavers, black jelly beans, and macaroni and cheese from a blue box.
But, for now she can’t handle that stuff. She is on a strict formula diet. It’s what she needs to grow and become.

Sometimes, life seems like formula. We need to be reminded of basic.
Some spaces and seasons are formula. Some days, or years, or places seem so boring.
May I suggest that sometimes that is a completely healthy thing.
Some places are all about us getting the same miracle growing powder AGAIN, because, apparently, we need it.
Those times are more function than flavor, more about formula than flash! It’s all about growing and becoming.
Most of the time, we need remembrance more than revelation.
We can’t quite handle what’s next yet. We need time to grow into our next chapter.
The bad thing is that we have tasted the different. So we get impatient. We want to revisit the flavors of the past, when our Maker is preparing flavors beyond what we can imagine for our future.
I will be honest, I don’t like formula, I like flavor.
But sometimes I need formula more than flavor.
I have to be patient.

Grow where you are today.
It can all build you.
Embrace it all, the bland and the buffet!
It can ALL contribute to your growing.