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Prerogative

I hadn’t heard this word since Bobby Brown sang about it in 1988 (I hear that Brittany Spears did a version more recently, but it’s always hard to top the original). I was listening to a book, there it was and all I could hear was Bobby Brown singing “My Prerogative”. Prerogative is about a person’s right, a person’s privilege and the power you have to decide. It also speaks of “a distinctive excellence” according to Merriam- Webster and it made me think about the things which we actually have control over. The original term has to do with voting in the Roman Senate, but I am not talking about the things for which you have a vote, rather I am talking about the things which are truly yours to decide.

On my most cynical of days I am not sure this includes anything, because even decisions about the furnishings of ones own home (which was the subject mentioned in the book I was listening too) while yours to make are dictated by both your means and the space. Then there are times when you make a decision and you are sure about it, but it can’t happen right now for any number of reasons. I suppose that doesn’t change your prerogative in making the decision, but is does steal some of your thunder in its implementation. Luckily for me, though I can be quite cynical, I am in general an optimist and I believe that we actually have much more power to choose in this life than we usually think we do. There are the little everyday choices like how we dress, what we eat (I have no problem with picky eaters, you may as well enjoy what you eat), and for the most part how we fill our time (yes there are things we “must do,” but we have some control there as well) and I think you do establish your own, “distinctive excellence,” your own prerogative in these things. You also have slightly bigger choices and for the most part control over what to be, how to live, and who to be with. You can talk all you want about fate, and it is there, I believe we are placed in certain situations and we meet certain people for a reason, but you still have to take the opportunities that are placed in front of you; you make a choice. Like I said before though, you can make an argument about all the external factors involved and reduce these choices to a kind of limited prerogative, but it’s still yours.

Perhaps the one thing that we truly have power over though and which is for me most important to us, is our mind. We choose what we think. We may be influenced by any number of things, from our families, to our education, to the situation at hand, but it is still our choice. No one can make our mind up for us unless we choose to let them. No one can make us feel bad or sad or happy unless we let them. No one can take away our hope unless we let them. In some ways prerogative has the connotation of being the thing which we take control of, not which we are given control of. When we decide that we will be in control of our own fate, our own decisions, when we decide to own what is distinctive and excellent for ourselves and about ourselves; that is our prerogative. When we say (to quote Bobby Brown), “I don’t need permission, make my own decisions, that’s the way I want to live. I can do just what I feel. No one can tell me what to do. That’s my prerogative.”
If we have no prerogative we have no self and we simply let the world dictate everything for us. We need to take control sometimes. We need prerogative.
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Thoughts on Solitude

I have perhaps been reacquainting myself too much with Thoreau and Merton and watching too many movies like “Into the Wild,” or maybe I am drawn to them because of my own inner need, but I am feeling constantly driven to seek solitude. This is not new, but I am somehow thinking of it in a different way. As I wander the streets of Seattle with my headphones on listening to book after book (currently it’s “Conversations with the Mann”) I close off and I manage to be alone in a city filled with people and noises, sites and smells. I am both a part of it and yet removed voluntarily from it. As I sit in a hospital room holding my infant daughter asleep in my arms, there are other babies, nurses, parents, alarms and a cacophony of other noises all around us, but somehow the rest of the world melts away and it’s just the two of us. Late at night I stay awake and it’s like I can’t sleep unless I have had my dose of solitude. There are days when I feel I could disappear “into the wild” and I think that for myself it could be incredible, but the problem is I care too much about people and about what’s going on in the world to leave it in that way. Instead I steal my time. I sometimes feel the need to slink off to my cabin in the woods, but for now there are more important places for me to be. Even Thoreau realized the need for friends and society and the balance of things social and solitary (he did have three chairs). I feel in some ways I am becoming more efficient in making moments count for more, but the trick I suppose is to take what each moment has to offer and let it feed you in whatever way it will.

When I was in high school I befriended the chief custodian/maintenance person and amongst the many interesting conversations that we had there is one that I have never forgotten because what he said was so profound and it’s always amazing how he saw something in me that I had never really thought about. This was a man nearing retirement who had spent most of his working life in solitude. He worked in the schools for 30 plus years, but to most of the students he was invisible, a servant to clean up after them if they even gave it that much thought, but he actually liked it that way. He appreciated the solitude. It was my senior year and he asked what I was planning to do with my life. I told him I was planning on going into the ministry and though to that point we had never talked about faith or anything like it, he laughed and said, “it figures.” I couldn’t leave it at that, so I asked him to explain and he told me about his best friend who became a monk. He said that he had never met someone so thoughtful, intelligent and comfortable with them self as this friend and that I had always reminded him of that friend so it seemed only natural that I would be going that way too. He talked about the ability to be present in every moment so that if you were with him you always felt like you were the most important thing to him, and when he was alone he understood that was a way to be important to himself in the same way he made other people feel when he was with them. This deep understanding of the need for solitude and the way it can feed you along with the desire to offer a sense of importance to others resonated with me completely. I won’t say that I am as good at it as he was trying to give me credit for, but I will say it’s a goal that I have been conscious of ever since.

I guess the point is that appreciating solitude doesn’t mean you don’t appreciate being with people too; in fact it can make you better at really being with people. I don’t like crowds or large groups, but I care about people. I need solitude and it is where I perhaps thrive the most, but sometimes it’s nice to have someone to walk with and talk with too.

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Sunrise sunset

I am in general a sunset person, but that probably has to do with my aversion to mornings and the fact that I live in the west where the sun sets over the water with a backdrop of the Olympic mountains. This morning however I was out for an early morning run and the glimpse of a buck scampering across a parking lot in the predawn light made running that early worth it. His silhouette against the trees as the sun was still just thinking about making an appearance and the full majesty of his proud antlers was something magical to start the day. It occurred to me as I watched the sun peek out over the trees that perhaps I am missing out by not seeing many sunrises (though admittedly I have seen more lately catching early morning ferries or trying to squeeze in a run on a day that is far too full).

As a metaphor I suppose both have their place, but I have to admit that the rising of the sun to greet a new day and to chase away the darkness has a certain motivational quality while the sun setting has instead a sense of something ending and invites a rest and a seeming closure to things. There is a constancy to the sunrise that you put your trust in and while clearly just as constant, the sunset just doesn’t project that same feeling. In reality there is beauty in both. The ending and the beginning, the beginning and the ending. The opportunities and possibilities of each new day and the invitation to let things go and rest at the close of the day. One can’t help but see the touch of God in the hues of gold, pink and purple as they shine through the clouds, shimmering across the waters like a road calling you to chase along after that glowing orb as it descends around the curve of the world or the coming of the dawn and the light that marches towards you, first kissing your skin and then enfolding you in its warm embrace. With each sunrise and each sunset I feel like I am being given a gift and I owe it to myself to appreciate each one for the beauty and the inspiration they offer. Perhaps we should all be more intentional about seeking the sun and respecting its gifts.
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Walking the world smaller

Hastings, Washington DC, Geneva, Rome, Paris in each of these cities I spent time this summer exploring on foot the things you miss when you travel any other way. Much of the time without a map or a guide (which is the only way to explore when on a voyage of self discovery) I wandered around these big cities and they really didn’t seem all that big. When Henry David Thoreau was asked why he walked instead of riding he put into perspective the scope of the universe and the reality that no two points on earth are really all that distant when you consider the vastness of the universe. With this philosophy the whole world seems much smaller, and infinitely more explorable. The true color of a place lives not in the center where all the tourists go, but in the the side streets where the locals hang out. I realized the other day that though I have walked these places all over the world I have never really done the same in my home town of Seattle…until now. With my daughter in the hospital and my trips into the city becoming a regular occasion, I have been spending hours each day walking my city and in some ways reacquainting myself with things and in other ways learning the city from a whole new perspective. I probably couldn’t drive the city any better than I did when I first learned, but I am learning all the ways to walk and it’s made me appreciate the place of my birth more than ever. The touristy places like the pike place market have a local flare that makes them less touristy and more just what we are, but the thing about walking is that you see the people more and a place becomes less about the places in it and more about who lives there.

I realized today that even in the pouring rain I would rather take the passenger ferry than drive into the city because it allows me my walk. Most people might think that you have more freedom when you can drive your own car where ever you want, but I think freedom is more about how you see the world than how you travel in it. When you walk the world smaller, you can think the world smaller too and perhaps those things which seem out of reach won’t really seem so far. It’s funny to think that after having taken planes, trains and automobiles all over the world, it was on my own two feet that the world opened up and invited me to explore it.
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The Photo book

The other day my daughter was sitting on my lap for something like 45 minutes to an hour looking at pictures in her digital photo album. It’s one of her favorite things to do and she seems to think that’s all a computer is for. She also has a photo book that tells the story of her entire life so far (all two and a half years of it) which she sometimes carries around and often demands that we go through together. You could argue that she likes looking at pictures of herself, but I think it is more about wanting to remember things that have already become blurred in her mind or about which she is still just beginning to understand. Our ability to record things has come a long way in just the past few years, but there is something about those printed pictures, whether in a box or a book, which makes the memories so much more real than anything else. It’s as if somehow touching the picture is like reaching into the past and we can almost feel as if we are physically transported to that time and place. When I graduated from high school my mom made a book of pictures and achievements and I suppose it was a lot like that book my daughter has with just a few more years of life to it.

I can remember as a child my parents bought a video camera and every Christmas we would sit with my whole extended family and watch the videos of the years before. The thing was, those videos didn’t speak at all to the people who weren’t there, they are somehow more intimate because of the detail and yet more limiting too. It was fun to watch them as a family and share the stories of all that you can’t see in the video, but it’s also like there was too much there and it took away some our ability to share what was behind the images on the screen. When you share a photograph it invites people in in a different way and the story becomes yours to tell in all the richness of the memories it invokes.
When I left the first church I served the youth made me a collage picture book and even though it has been more than six years, when I looked at the book the other day while moving some things around a shelf it was like it was just yesterday. When I walk through the halls at my parent’s house they are still filled with pictures of my brother and I as kids and while a part of me says that there is a time to take them down and move on, they remain a tangible reminder of some special times that otherwise might be forgotten. It would be nice if we could recapture the joy that is so evident in those adorable early childhood photos. Perhaps that is their greatest gift to us in reminding of us how much joy is possible when we refuse to allow it to be diminished by the pressures of life.
With every new experience our photo book grows and so does our chance to remember the things worth taking photos of.
Addendum- After I originally posted this I went for a run (in the falling snow which was beautiful despite the cold) and I was knocked right back into my nostalgia, because as I rounded a corner I was confronted by an old Ford truck painted fluorescent yellow. When I was in high school one of my closest friends, Aidan Kennedy (the “laughing loser” featured in the movie “10 things I hate about you) had a great big old Ford truck painted that same shade of yellow. It’s amazing how that one image called to mind all the adventures we had in that old truck. I don’t have any pictures of the the truck, but seeing one reminded me of drive in movies, late night adventures and a dislocated shoulder, plus lots of other things. I was struck by how powerful the flood of memories was from that one image, but I guess that was kind of my point anyway. It’s true what they say, “a picture (or a fluorescent yellow truck) is worth a thousand words.”
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Expectations

We are all waiting for something. Waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting for our prayers to be answered. Waiting for the next book in the series we really like to come out (I know it seems a little more trivial than the first two, but it is waiting). We are waiting for something to happen. Waiting for that thing, the thing which tells us what we are supposed to do, who we are supposed to be, where we are supposed to go. We sit with our expectations both great and small, good and bad and eventually we feel like we need to do something. The thing is, it’s the things we can’t control that eat away at us the most and sometimes we don’t know where to place our trust or where to look for answers. Hours, days, weeks, months, even years can go by in the waiting time and just when we feel like we can’t wait any longer something gives us hope, or maybe we even get our answer, the answer.

The struggle is that while we wait we often don’t know what we are really waiting for and yet we try to prepare in our expectational way for every eventuality. We need our expectations. They drive us; they keep us going, they give us something to look forward too, to work towards. We like to think that it’s not a matter of if, but when and perhaps how. The reality is we have to think that way because otherwise we end by giving up. Things don’t always end the way we expect them to, but that should never dampen our expectations.

How long are we willing to wait? How long is too long? Do we get to a point when the waiting has consumed us and we just want the rollercoaster to stop and let us out? Or do we persevere because the chance of something great is worth whatever we have to go through to get there and we want it to be great. Do bad days get us down or do they instead make us that much more thankful for the good ones. If days come when we can’t handle it and we just break down or want to lie in bed all day does that make us weak, or does it simply mean that we are human and that a part of us understands the need to take care of our self because if we don’t we won’t be ready, we won’t be able to enjoy it when (notice the when) great comes.

There is a point at which we must adjust our expectations, but only we ourselves get to decide when that point comes. The thing is, when we adjust we don’t loose our sense of expectation, we allow one thing to be what it is and we open ourselves to other possibilities and the creation of new expectations.

We are all waiting for something. How we wait can define us or break us. We need our expectations. We need hope.

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Perspective

William Blake: “To see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower,

hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.”
It’s all a question of perspective. We have to expand our perception and begin to consider, maybe even to understand the relationship between that grain of sand and the world, between that flower and heaven, to believe in our ability to hold the infinite and to make that one moment last an eternity. At the same time we have to understand the opposite. The sand is the world and yet is in the world and just a part of the world. The flower is heaven, but at the same time is not heaven and is rather a glimpse at what could be or of the unfathomable which is so much better, so much more beautiful and incredible. When we grasp the infinite we become limitless and at the same time we limit it and often find we need to let it go. A moment, an hour, a week, a year, a lifetime is an eternity in the moment and yet only a moment in eternity.
When we fail to see both perspectives we become truly blind. When we miss the world in that grain of sand we loose the significance of that single grain and when we see it all in that single grain we can loose everything else. If we fail to see heaven in the flower we may loose hope and if we see heaven as the flower we may miss the heaven in all that surrounds us. If we hold infinity and become limitless we may loose direction, but if we limit ourselves we have no need for direction because we aren’t going anywhere. If our eternity is wrapped up in a moment we may become stuck, but if we don’t live as if each moment could be the most important in our lifetime, we fail to live.
To see the world and heaven we have to have our eyes open, to hold infinity and eternity we have to be willing to grasp at them.
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What makes an expert?

Is it some degree, or title? Is it an experience? If you have done something does that make you an expert? How many times do you have to do it? When you become one does that mean you have nothing left to learn? If your source material is from 20 and 30 years ago are you still an expert or just an expert on how thing used to work (admittedly there is much to be learned from the way things used to work and we often wish it still did)?

A few months ago I was teaching a class on preaching to a group of people who had all been preaching longer than I have, but who were eager to get better and wanted to hear a different perspective. I am not a well recognized or published expert on preaching, but I was asked to share how I prepare and how I preach and I think we all (including of course me) got something out of the experience. I guess that’s the thing that separates the person who sees themselves as a teacher and the person who thinks of themselves as an expert. Good teachers are often experts in their field, but more than that they are those who know that they don’t know everything and are excited about the process of learning together by bringing collective knowledge into a form so that it can be both useful and insightful.
I was sitting the other day and listening to an “expert” say a lot of things that seemed really obvious and I would have much rather spent the time talking to the other people around the table about what they were doing (this may have something to do with my learning style, but I was not the only one who felt this way). The person talking certainly knew the subject and had great things to share, but there were disconnects for the way it had worked for him and the way it might work in our contexts. Sometimes we try really hard to listen to the right consultant, to take the right class or read the right book so that we will know what to do, but the problem is you never really know until you have tried it. I love teaching and I love learning, so I am certainly not saying we shouldn’t take classes, read books and attend lectures. I know that sometimes we do benefit from the “expert” and their experience and knowledge, but sometimes I also think we sell ourselves too short. The “non-expert” who has tried something will often have insights that an expert for whom everything worked (they are an expert after all) would never have noticed. There is so much which can be learned from the person who is experiencing something for the first time, that the person who has done it a hundred times has already forgotten.
I believe that there is something to be learned in every situation and that everyone is an expert on their own experience. We have to be open to every opportunity, every experience that’s presents itself. The person who doesn’t understand something is most significant to anyone who seeks to reduce the amount of misunderstanding and ignorance in this world. If we ignore the “non-expert” we loose an opportunity. If we leave behind the person who wants to understand, but doesn’t we have failed. When something seems perfectly clear to you, but doesn’t to someone else it should force you to think about it in a different way. If you want to be an expert, teach and never stop learning. If you want to be an expert become an expert in helping people erase their misunderstandings. All that is wrong with our world has at its very core the seeds of misunderstanding and ignorance and an unwillingness to learn or to try.
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An Oryx and a Zebra

I was reminded of Yann Martel’s “Life of Pi” and the concept of Zoomorphism when the first animals my daughter and I saw at the zoo were an oryx and a zebra standing side by side eating grass together. Zoomorphism is the concept of one species learning to see a member of another species as a part of its own or as a god. In the book he focuses on a lion seeing a dog as a mother figure, but his point is about a relational need. The lion cub needed a mother and the dog was willing. When I see these two animals sidling up to each other it’s inspiring. I wonder how their families feel about it? They occupy the same “savannah” so why not get along? Why not do more than get along, why not hang out? Maybe the two of them eating together will inspire the other animals to eat together too. At the very least the other animals will start to ask, “why are they hanging out?” If they ask that question maybe they will even try it.

What if the relational need is as simple as, “I want someone to spend time with?” Or I need a friend? Or, “we live in the same place why can’t we get along?” We live on the same planet, why can’t we get along? (you had to see that coming) Eventually you have to think it goes beyond just spending time together into a relationship of support, friendship, care, maybe even love (admittedly I may be reading a lot into an oryx and a zebra standing next to each other at the zoo, but often an image, a quote, a person inspires what it inspires regardless of what was actually there). For me every example set by those who are willing to see past differences is a good one and has that very potential to inspire. I have written about it before and I suppose I just get excited when I see it being lived out. It makes me wonder who the zebra is out there that I have never thought to stand with and it reminds me of how much simply standing together can do and how much more there is to learn by being together. I hope I never miss the chance to get to know those who are different from myself.
My daughter has a book called, “What if Zebras lost their stripes?” and it makes the case that even if they separated into some being black and some being white, “zebras are much to smart to let that come between them.” The story is told over and over again through things like this and the classic Dr. Seuss book “The Sneetches.” The fighting, the arguments the separations always seem silly when we’re through, but then we come back out of the story and into our lives the walls are still there. They are there and will be there until someone is willing to climb to the top and stand with someone from the other side of the wall for all to see so that the wall becomes a platform instead of a barrier. The walls are there until we are willing to look past it.
The oryx and the zebra give me hope that the walls won’t always be there and they remind me to climb up and to see beyond. Maybe it’s the zebras; I hope we can be as smart as the zebras.

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Fashion-a lesson in the superficial and why sometimes even the superficial is worth being intentional about

I must begin by saying that I do not presume to tell anyone how they should dress. When I was in High School I was chosen by my peers for the award, “most uniquely dressed” for wearing leisure suits and tuxedos on every Thursday and for a general flamboyance that I seem to have at least partially lost somewhere along way. I am not sure this qualifies me to talk about fashion, but for some reason I am feeling compelled to do so. I still have my own style, but I suppose that perhaps my creative energies have moved into other arenas. My point in writing this is not to judge anyone or say one thing is better than another, but to simply make note of the fact that clothes do make a statement that for me is more self reflective than it is something to be projected onto others. As with everything for me it comes down to intentionality.

My family was playing the game, “Imagine if…” on Thanksgiving(this is a game where everyone votes for the thing which most fits a person and the majority wins) and one of the cards directed at me was, “imagine if Darryn were an article of clothing, which would he be…” the options included: a tailored suit, a sports jersey, a thong bikini, Carhartts and work gloves, a grungy T-shirt and I think the last one was pajamas. The vote came out in favor of Sports Jersey with tailored suit as a considered second choice. The game is interesting so play with people who know you and sometimes even more interesting to play with people who don’t. This was a question about what type of clothes best express who I am and it made me think about how much your clothes can say about you. I have always been an athlete so I understood my family’s choice. It wasn’t about the things I actually wear, but rather about a personality that is conveyed by the clothes. Jerseys have a purpose and most of the time they are worn by athletes participating in a sport, but it is interesting to note that the sale of sports jerseys to the general public is a billion dollar business. This made me think about other articles of clothing that get worn in general, but which were created for a specific purpose.
The other day my daughter and I saw a woman in full equestrian gear. It made sense, since she was in fact riding a horse (though even in this case I am not sure it’s a look that works for everyone). My daughter liked the boots so later when we saw someone else wearing the same (or very similar) boots she pointed them out as “horse boots.” This second set of boots was being worn by someone who was not riding a horse so naturally my daughter asked, “where’s her horse?” A fair question given the circumstances. The person wearing them actually looked good in them and perhaps she does ride horses or should take up riding them, but the boots did seem out of place at the time. It made me think that, in a way, all clothes are like a uniform, they say something about who we are, what we are doing (or planning on doing), our faith (I don’t wear clergy collars as a fashion statement), formality and informality and all sorts of other things.

People spend a lot of money on clothes so that they can look a certain way. The other day I bought a shirt whose suggested retail price was $185. It’s a nice shirt and I like it a lot, but I wouldn’t even think about paying that much for a shirt, so it makes me curious about the people who do. It’s not about money or the ability to buy certain clothes, it’s about priority and choice. Why do you dress the way you do? What does it say about you? If you don’t care about how you look, do your clothes say that? Again it’s not about judgement for me, it’s about a form of expression. People should wear what they want to wear, what they feel good in and what makes sense to them. I get that we are sometimes limited by circumstance, appropriateness, affordability and other factors, but as someone who believes there is a reason for everything (though we rarely understand those reasons) I do think there is a lot of room for intentionality in what we wear. No matter how much you pay for something or how good it looks on someone else, if it isn’t you it isn’t you. I realize that clothes are superficial and just like you can’t judge a book by it’s cover you can’t judge a person by their clothes, but sometimes the superficial is all we show people, so I think it’s worth considering what image we show and what we want people to see. Like I said before if you want people to know that you don’t care what they think, you can say that by your choices, I just hope it’s what you mean.