Of Stick Ball and Riots, Or, Why Am I Armed at a Protest?

It's been a while. But it hasn't been a that long.

I've been home for about a week. But I'm still reeling from what happened.

This is part of a text thread between me and a friend:

The One the Darkness Got

So I went to a funeral last week for a guy I hadn’t met.

Which isn’t important, that I didn’t know him. I decided a long time ago that funerals are important. I don’t just randomly show up to to funerals, but if there is one happening and I have some degree of connection with them, I will go. That is what I decided I would do in this case.

Objecting Conscientiously ,or, How Many People Can I Get Under the Constitution?

Mostly like Band of Brothers

So if the truth is going to be told, dear readers, I have always thought about entering the armed forces. For a long time, that just meant that I liked the idea of being in the military. Never thought much about what the job would actually require. And I may or may not have thought that I would be doing something similar to what I had seen in the World War II movies. Which is of course far removed from what military service is now.

I can’t be the only one who had those kinds of misconceptions.

Advent Is Coming! And There It Goes...

Happy (liturgical) new year! For those of you, dear readers, who come from less liturgically focused traditions, the season of Advent encompasses the four Sundays before Christmas and prompts us to prepare for Christ's coming as a baby into our world. It's officially the start of the next yearly rotation of liturgical seasons. And I find this season fascinating, because it's both the beginning and the end. It prepares us for Christmas, specifically to recognize that when Christ arrived bodily into this world, he was both the savior (big responsibility) and a defenseless, helpless infant (itty bitty operating capacity).

But Advent also points to the end. And yeah, I mean like that crazy guy on the corner with 'the end is near' on a sandwich board, end of the world type stuff. Advent also prompts us to prepare ourselves and be vigilant for that. Like the story of the ten bridesmaids in Matthew's gospel, we don't know when Christ will come into this world again, so we need to keep alert. And Advent helps us with that, but for me it's also a reminder that the encounter with Christ changes everything. Christ as a baby changes everything. Christ will come again with angels and loud trumpet calls and everything will change.

Did I mention that I'm fascinated by Advent? But I'm also really bad at it. I'm not usually in the groove of Advent until the third or fourth Sunday. And then it's basically over and we've got twelve days for the Christmas celebration. Yay! And I'm that jerk who will insist on saying "Happy Advent" while everyone else is fighting about "Merry Christmas," but I'll start saying "Merry Christmas" on the 25th of December and I'll keep saying it until the 6th of January, while everyone else is like "what is this guy doing? Christmas is over..."

So that's (probably) the end of the didactic part of today's blog...

Working through the Matrix, or, Struggles and Humility

It's odd, sometimes, to see the ways that life may form apparent coincidences. At times, I want to be like Morpheus from The Matrix and assert that there is no such thing as coincidence, only providence. And me being me, I might say only Divine Providence.

But I don't know that I can do that right now. It might be too audacious of me. But at the same time, I do sense a prompt based on this past Sunday's gospel reading and some of the commentary I've heard about it. I feel like those things are prompting me to take a look at where I am now and where I've been over the past five-ish years.

Bonsai! or, Seeking the Good, the True, and the Beautiful

Okay, so: storytime. But at the risk of killing the story, let me give you some background.

What I have discovered while training with the Army is that structures that the Army builds are uses are very functional, but seldom are pretty. In fact, there are very few beautiful things when one is training with the Army. Things tend towards function and uniformity, which makes sense, because it's the Army and that's kinda what we do most of the time. When you go downrange and into the trees, maybe you could look toward the foliage for something beautiful, but more than likely you will be counseled to smell the roses later, if any drill sergeant finds out what you are doing.

However, during training last summer, there was one jarringly beautiful thing that I remember. At Fort Leonard Wood, in the Central Iowa Chapel, there were huge stained glass windows in the worship space. I wish that I could find pictures of that stained glass, because it made me stop and catch my breath after all the camouflage and foliage that I had been looking at...

Here's where the story starts:

I don’t remember how far into training I was that I finally wrote to my wife and told her that we were going to go look at beautiful things when I got home. But I did write that and we did go find beautiful things when I was done. We went to the Como Conservatory in St. Paul. Took plenty of time in the greenhouse, and the zen garden, we walked through the Como Zoo that day, too. But what especially held my attention that day was looking at the bonsai trees.

New Year, But I'm Keeping My Goals

Happy new year! 2018 is only two days old and I feel like I'm standing on a threshold. I'm feeling self-reflective, but that might not be the new year, that might just be my disposition.

For those of you, dear readers, who I get to hang out with semi-regularly, this will seem like me doing my broken record thing. But regardless, I have had the whole gamut of emotions over the past four and a half months. I came back from Army Basic Training in August rearing to go for more training. I was frustrated through September and October that my orders were not getting moved up so that I could go off and finish. Some of October and November, I starting feeling listless, like I couldn't do anything to gain forward momentum (there could be a whole spiritual reflection there are about letting go of what I want to find serenity and providence, etc.) In December Amanda and I took a good hard look at where we stood; what were our opportunities? What were our resources? Where had we already committed our time, and what kind of time and energy did we still have in reserve?

The Journey Continues, or, Extra! Extra!

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Except that this is my life, not some iconic scene from Newsies...

No, seriously, this post has updates from this past week, so it is kinda hot off the presses. Well, I guess it's not hot, I let the news cool for a few days so that I can write about it objectively; as objectively as I can for something so personal.

The Journey So Far, or, This Might Just Be a Listicle...

Last Friday (20 Oct), my wife pointed out to me that it was the one year mark of my enlistment in the Minnesota Army National Guard. So to mark that, I want to share the posts, give some updates, and have some fun with Top 10 lists... this post might seem disjointed, but hopefully there's some fun because of it!

Here is what I wrote about it last year, accentuated by my wife's wonderful photography:

So Amanda has been my primary documentarian for the past 36 hours or so, and a lot has happened in that time. Shaved a beard, went to Ft. Snelling, took the ASVAB test, had the most in-depth physical of my life, and ultimately got sworn into the National Guard. I'm now a citizen soldier, so I will be doing drill one weekend a month, while still teaching at North Lakes (if anyone was concerned about that)
I know that I haven't shared this process with many of you, so let me try to get everyone up to speed and let you ask questions if you want:

Triptych Chaplains, or, Some Parts of BCT Didn't Suck

Two years is a long time.

Or, on the other hand, it can pass in the blink of an eye and you realize that you haven’t updated your blog with anything that resembles consistency. The latter is true for me, dear readers. There have been so many changes in my life recently and my wife and I are still getting ready for more. So many changes that change seems to be our new normal.

There are probably too many changes to describe in a single post. Probably too many changes to update you in a series of blog posts. So I’m not going to do that. The name of this blog is based on the story from the book of Ezekiel where the prophet watches the Lord reanimate his people. So the blog itself is supposed to be telling the story of resurrection that I witness. Therefor, I’m going to do my best with that by just jumping in.