I’ve got 20 minutes.

Yesterday I was reading Dwell magazine. An article about “rethinking your bathroom.” They’d highlighted sentences for me, and had several callouts of “fun facts.” All I read were the highlights and the factoids. So I’m part of whatever problem I’m about to address.

Thought 1: most worth while data, insights, or truths boil down into 140 character blips (see my “fortune cookies” section at pulptheology.com for examples).

Thought 2: fun facts or insight blips flatten our world – giving us a breadth of data, with very little cohesion for the building of worldviews.

If we live in a world of trivia, triviology would include the study of the worlds we build upon trivia blips.

If I have a ton of “fun facts” in my world, each like a playing card, I can arrange them in any order I want. There is no need for them to be placed in any particular sequence. In our triviological world, we play the hands we’re dealt. (And our lives may feel like a house of cards…and when you build a house of cards, it doesn’t matter which cards you use.) When dealing with a deck of shuffled cards, the only meaning we encounter is the meaning we ascribe to the cards – the rule of the game we’re playing.

In my world of insight blips, there does not need to be any objective meaning – I can arrange the data as I see fit. Ultimately, reality becomes a reflection of whatever we choose to call it – which rules we want to use in the game.

While this is great for killing dead structures, it seems like it could have real consequences for relationships. I am who I am, and you don’t get to decide who I am, right? But if in your world you’ve grown accustomed to getting to label and define things of all sorts, and I don’t fit in or play your prescribed role for me, I won’t be a desirable relationship. I’ll be a card you’ll discard according to the rules of the game you’re playing.

That’s okay when there are so many other people – so many other cards – left in the deck. Okay in the sense that it works out. If you aren’t the voice I’m looking for, I can throw you back and draw another card. If you don’t behave or love me or give me quite what I want according to the blip-based description of the world I’m living in, I can find someone else who will be exactly what I want them to be. In many circles, this is called setting boundaries or “taking care of yourself.”

Addicts live to feed on this reality. (And by the way, I believe we’re all addicts.)

But what about God? There’s only one God card in the deck. And while He meets us where we are, and while He mingles with anything and redeems it, He is who He is – especially in the sense that He is a distinct being.

In a blip world, does grace become a blank we fill in – an “I get to be this and He has to call it good because I am the definer of what is real.” (And remember the verse about whatever you bind or loose on earth will be bound or loosed in Heaven? So this naming and labeling and creating of reality must be real, right?)

And if in my other relationships I get to make the rules (or a social quorum votes the rules of my world into place), and when people don’t measure up to those rules, I get to set a boundary that discards them, will I inevitably do the same with God?

How much harder is it to meet a person and get to know who they are in our trivialized world? How much harder to meet and get to know God? How much harder to meet ourselves and get to know who we really are – not just who we want to be or what stories we want to invent for our lives – when the trivia, and life, gets sorted where it gives us the neatest quick tickle?

What do you think?

But outside it was beautiful. 73 degrees. Sunny, with the sun angling to the west and buttering everything in its light. I drove with the windows down. West, into the sun. I was angry about my life, frustrated with my wife, and generally feeling the pain of non-control. I felt God asking to be the one to whom I’d turn, but in my heart I half-grumbled about feeling like He’d just reject and ignore me, too. I didn’t quite say that – instead I pretended He wasn’t asking for me…that way I wouldn’t have to risk an honest response to Him.

I ended up driving out of town until I decided to stop at the Mount Tabor Primitive Baptist Church west of Zionsville. Christine and I attended there once or twice when we were first dating, and I knew I’d be able to sit and watch the sun set.

I’d forgotten they had a graveyard. I parked the car and decided to walk among the headstones – always good for perspective.

There was a sunny rise with a large headstone facing west. It read “John Leap Revolutionary War Soldier: 1735-1845.” That was an old man, a long time ago. I sat down.

Today there were no flowers...I sat where they appear in this photo.

The headstone had soaked in the heat of the sun all afternoon, and it radiated warmth that was actually greater than the fading sunlight in my face. It felt like a welcome. Maybe even an embrace. A “there, there son – sit with me for a bit.” How much hospitality must grow in the heart of a man buried and silent for 165 years? I want my headstone to be warm that way for someone someday.

So I sat. And I knew that for as spun up as I’ve been, my anxieties about my life will be among the very first things to burn. So I let them slip from me, and I received the warmth of the sun and of Mr Leap’s headstone.

A mosquito buzzed in my ear, and I brushed it away.

“Let it feed.” I felt something or someone suggest.

A moment later a mosquito landed on my crossed leg, and I let it plunge it’s needle in and drink. What a short and meaningless life a mosquito has. And how little blood it took.

The mosquito, puny and brief and asking little. Me, puny and brief and able to spare the blood, feeding on the warmth and the comfort of the headstone in a quiet and well manicured country graveyard. The headstone of John Leap, basking for years in the light and heat, and the cold and rain, under the sun and heavens of a God who smiles the same upon us all.

Two robins policed in parallel nearby, eating the worms that eat the bodies. Earth to flesh to wings in the heavens.

We all feed, and upon us all are fed.

It would be a simple enough “circle of life” moment if ours were truly a circular reality. It isn’t. There is One who is the Alpha and the Omega. He feeds us all. And for His delight.

“Feed my sheep,” is the command. And lately that’s felt heavy to me. Confusing. Draining. Depleting. And so long as the best I can come up with is the “circle of life,” the best I’ll find is the comfort of resource management. But I’ve not been called to feed as the offering may please me or be well-managed.

I’ve been called to offer myself up. To be fed upon as He will choose for me.

And I’ve been called to feed upon Him. His flesh and His blood – offered wholly to me.

I left the house today with a common burden – the desire and sense that I need to make something of my life. That it is my life to shape. That it is my story to control, to edit, to spin and to celebrate. It’s a popular notion, and deeply heretical.

I think there’s something much better.

The joy set before me – before us – is the same as the one offered to God’s Son. We may pray, as He did, for the cup to pass, but our stories are “written,” offered to us as gifts…perfection upon which we will never improve.

And journey as we may, strive as we may, our lives and stories belong to Him, and He will determine their greatness and the blessings He’ll bestow through us. And for whatever other rewards we may seek along the way, the best we can do – and the greatest joy we can know – is to offer ourselves to one another.

I returned home with new clarity – and I believe with a new business model that I’ll share in another post – and I looked up John Leap, the man upon whose grave I rested this evening, and this is what I found. Tell me he could have come up with the blessing he gave me today, or the reminder God may have for you in this post.

From the writings of Jacob Leisle:

JOHN WESLEY LIEB 1735 -1845: “John was born on the river Rhine, near Mannheim Germany, He was one of fifteen children. In his early teens he began his education to become a Catholic priest. During his education he secretly read the Holy Bible which was a rare thing in that country. However, when he was 24, he renounced the Catholic faith and was conditionally exiled from his mother country, either having to be burned at the stake, die beneath the guillotine or leave the country.

Traveling by night and hiding by day, the tall lanky youth left the county we know as Germany now and make his way though Holland crossed the English Channel into England. In April 1757, in Plymouth Harbor he boarded a ship laden with glass and so was bound for America as a stowaway. When he was discovered hidden in one of the small boats on the Vessel, the captain immediately issued orders for Leep to be thrown overboard. Other officers objected so the angry captain allowed him to work his passage doing odd jobs. John arrived in Baltimore, Maryland in June 1757. John settled in what is now eastern Virginia and became acquainted with the family and parents of George Rogers Clark, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, James Monroe, and other prominent families. He became the foreman of a large tobacco plantation. He was a skilled musician and played the violin for some of the social gatherings.

John joined the American Army in September 1775 as a private in the 4th Regiment of the Pennsylvania Militia, and later was made a Quartermaster General under General George Washington. He spent the winter with Washington at Valley Forge and was one of the parties that crossed the Delaware. Able to speak seven Languages, it was Leep, who on Christmas Eve, “tipped” the general regarding the Hessians at Germantown, New Jersey, for he knew their customs and knew they would spend Christmas Eve drinking and dancing. Washington acted on this advice and swooping down on them, captured that position and many prisoners. John served in companies under Captain John Jameson and Captain Arch McIlroy and was given his honorable discharge at Morristown, New Jersey at the end of the war. During his service, John was at the siege of Boston and witnessed the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.

John was fond of telling the story that while in the Army he headed a detail, which brought back a stack of hay from an Old Dutch farmer. Finding six big rounds of cheese in the hay where they had been left to ripen, the soldiers took the booty back to camp where their comrades quickly devoured it. The next morning the irate Dutchman made complaints to Washington, who ordered Leep to pay for the cheese.

In 1768, John married Margaret Crow and moved to Mannheim Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In 1775, the family was living in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. After the death of his first wife in 1799, John and his children moved to Lancaster County where he married a French lady, Sarah Deleow. Soon after, his new wife and children moved to Greene County. In 1808 he went to Indiana to prepare a place for his family to settle in what is now known as Switzerland county, Indian. In about 1816 John Leap Sr. moved with his second wife and younger children to the new land. In 1832 the family moved again to Boone County, Indian to live on a farm near Fayette.

The older children of John Wesley Leap moved to Virginia. Gabriel and John Wesley II reached Monongalia County just after 1810 and are listed on the 1820 census there. By 1840, part of Monongalia County became Tyler County, and by 1846 part of Tyler County became Wetzel, Wood and Wirt Counties. Both Brothers and their children are listed in the 1840 and 1850 census.

Discipline had been severe in his father’s household, and John Leap would make no changes for the freer life in his new country. In 1812, in Moongalia County, Virginia, his son, Gabriel Leap, went to court to gain gentler treatment for the children. John was always close to George Rogers Clark and as a settler in southern Indiana, he makes two or three trips down the river by horseback to visit his old friend.

On his 100th birthday, his wife found him lying in the garden between two rows of cabbages shouting “Oh Mother, I was never so happy in my life. I want to be baptized in the Baptist Church right now.” So insistent were his demands that a messenger was dispatched and the Reverend David Keaney came by horseback to baptize John in the little stream of White Lick almost within a stone’s throw of the place where his remains now peacefully repose. The next year, John walked the twenty miles to the meeting of the General Assembly at Indianapolis to address them on a subject in which he was interested. Later he made the same trip several times to meetings of old soldiers, again on foot.

John Leap was 110 years, 5 months and 1 day old when he died on 16 September 1845. (Another source says he was 112 years old at his death.)

On 4 July 1898 the citizens of Boone County erected a large gray granite marker to the memory of John Wesley Leap.”

I spent the summer of 2008 traveling with the Samson Society, and am very close with a good number of Samson guys. Today I’m their guest on second half of the podcast.

This was a screened cabin. The bricks were a fireplace. Our weekends started here.

I’ve been in a strange sort of shock all week. Last weekend I was in Nashville for a men’s initiation weekend when the floods came. We evacuated earlier than I would have, but it turns out we left just in time, and we still lost a lot of stuff. If we’d waited until I would have left, people probably would have died.

I live in a flood plain, and frankly I’ve always thought floods were sort of cool – like I’d just swim or wade where I needed to go, and maybe it would be fun to canoe down my street. But on Monday evening, back home in Indianapolis, a thunderstorm rolled in, and I felt fear…after a lifetime of loving thunderstorms.

God gave me a pretty big brain, and a pretty loud voice. And I have built up a big body. I also have enough ego, enough vision, and enough determination that I tend to think big and strive for big things. All of this, this bigness and the feelings of control that come with it, was pushed hard last week.

Really, what’s happening is some more of the truth is coming into focus for me. God wants me to pursue “the little path.” I’ve talked before about my books not selling like I thought they would, but part of that is tied to my not feeling right about pushing too hard with them…I’ve known that being “big” would be bad news for my soul. Same deal with money in many ways – I used to think too much money would ruin me…but what God’s been showing me is to be content with less. There are blessings that come with littleness.

Of those blessings, the biggest seems to be intimacy with God. (I say God instead of The Father, Jesus or The Spirit right now because this week I feel so tucked away within the sanctuary of their love that I feel equally close, relationally, with all three in one. It’s a good feeling.) When I turn my attention to Him, and see my life reflected in Him, rather than facing my world as though it’s mine to make big or manage, I find a peace that is greater than the thrill of bigness. The little path is a good path. At least for me.

And now there is a new sadness within me, from the flood and from the feelings of littleness I experienced last weekend. But it’s okay.

Mike is standing on the foundation of what was a 2-story bunkhouse where the initiates slept.

I chose to start this post after reading, and being stopped to cry about, Ezra 3:11-13:

And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers’ houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away.

Our community of men in Nashville (and in several other cities, now too) has been going through big changes in leadership, in relationship, in posture regarding God, etc. For some, what once existed is gone. For some, what once existed is being rebuilt. For some, the community seems to be on a path of simple progression. For some, the progress holds a deep bittersweetness. Having the place where we’ve traditionally held the weekends be wiped away holds all of the same emotions. If the place is rebuilt, it will be good news, but it won’t be the same, and while some will shout for joy, others of us will still hold the sadness, and we will bring that layer, texture, and memory as our gift to the community.

Whatever happens, much like in Ezra, it will not be the old people who rebuild. It will be young people. New people. People who may feel like interlopers to some. Isn’t this the way in all of creation? The young lion who drives the old lion away from his pride. The young sapling growing brightly – full of brash freshness – from the bier of a fallen elder. The human race is really only one generation wise, isn’t it? Maybe that’s true of all of creation, too. And there is a beautiful sadness in the turning wheel of time, but if we choose it, we can soak it with love. We can weep unashamedly, and let our weeping mingle with the shouts of joy offered by people who are still learning the lessons of their littleness.

Today I will be little. And sad. And lovely. And today I will find shelter in the embrace of my Lord. May His peace be upon you as well.

::::::

Lately my dad and I have been having conversations about personal responsibility versus community.

There is a tension about community. Christians have been promised by Jesus that where two or more are gathered in his name, he is with them. For some communities, this means that if several voices in the group tell you something, you should expect that Jesus is saying something similar. For other communities, there is a hidden sort of cultural agreement that sounds something like “let’s be God to each other so that we don’t have to interact with him at all.”

Even the use of terms is telling. “Community” is a safe and nice word to a lot of people. To others, past experiences make “community” sound more like “group think,” “abdication of personal accountability,” “coy selfishness,” and flat out idealistic foolishness. On the flipside, the idea of “personal accountability” sounds good to some people, but sounds like “cowboy Christianity,” “defense for pride and blind spots,” “isolation that leads to failure,” and a rejection of the relational reality created by the Trinity that is at root relational.

Dad and I had lunch a couple of days ago, and he mentioned this Dateline episode. It’s full of Psych 101 experiments, and what it points to is how easily manipulated people are.

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This is scary for Enlightenment people who think the mind and the reasoning aspects of who we are define and guide us. The first question becomes, “So, is community and trusting a group a good thing, or a foolish thing? Am I better off listening to people and then making my own decisions, instead of trusting people, submitting and obeying?”

The reality, though, is that we’re not purely rational beings. In fact, our reasoning powers are no match for our appetites (passions, desires, affections).

In your ordinary world, this may not seem like such a shocking bit of news – this idea that your reasoning powers are so easily and thoroughly overwhelmed by your appetites. But in historical Christianity, this may be the biggest rub that’s ever existed, and the heretical perspective has generally won out.

Quickly – Aristotle wrote about God in the abstract, and he’s the one who came up with the idea of the “unmoved mover” and a god who needed to be capital letter ultimate expressions of things, and who could not have appetites or desires because that would somehow mean that he was incomplete and therefore not god. Scripture most certainly does not represent God in this light. Nor, frankly, do the living experiences of most people who feel the moving of the Spirit within them. Thomas Aquinas worked to harmonize Christianity with Aristotle, and scholasticism was born. At one point, Luther said, “If I didn’t know he was a man of flesh and blood, I would swear he [Aristotle] was the devil himself.” Luther saw the constraints and disease of denying God’s passions and desires (I will try to return to this in a moment). But Melancthon, who began in harmony with Luther, ended up moving toward scholasticism doctrinally. The same thing happened with Calvin, whose work was taken by Beza toward scholasticism. When the doctrinal wrangling moved from the continent to England, the same sort of debate happened with the affective theology of Sibbes vs. the more scholastic theology of Perkins. What’s at stake, here, in addition to the character and chosen revelation of God to man, is what motivation rules the day – both in terms of what we ascribe to God, and in terms of what we’re left to model. If God has no appetites or affections, we are left with only power – from him and in following him. If God is allowed appetites and affections (as consistently revealed in Scripture, in the life of Christ, and in longings of the Spirit for people and creation), we are shown a God who is motivated by love, joy, and – as Sibbes says – a delight in spreading his goodness. (For a far more qualified exploration of this material, visit the blog – or contact – Multnomah Seminary’s 30-year Church History/Ethics professor and Richard Sibbes expert, Ron Frost. He hasn’t reviewed this material, but he’s been formative in my understanding, and he can set you straight on points where I may be mistaken.)

As you watch this video clip, you’ll see an example of a human who has the reasoning faculties in tact, but who has lost the emotional faculties that can give context to his thoughts. As you consider that, also watch the couple through this lens: the wife is like a Christian who wants to know a God who loves her, while the husband is who scholastic Christianity (which absolutely rules the day today) has insisted God is. See if you hear your own heart’s ache about God in the words of the wife.

The Emotional Brain, taken from the PBS special The Human Brain from Pete Gall on Vimeo.

For a more thorough treatment of this theological discussion – about the context for rational belief in God – written by someone qualified to cover these subjects in ways that aren’t really just about lunch with his dad and some Dateline NBC episode, check out James Peters’ The Logic of the Heart: Augustine, Pascal and the Rationality of Faith.

As to areas where I am more qualified to comment, here’s the gist of what I see with the group vs. individual, reason vs. emotion, sheep and shepherds conundrum.

It comes down to love vs. power. The reality is that people are, for however stubborn we may be in resisting the idea, sheep. It’s only a power-greedy worldview and culture that has taught us to think this is a bad thing, rather than the source of a great many blessings.

We are vulnerable to manipulation. That’s because we were wired for relationship, for love, for trust, for sacrifice and for delighting in things like a spreading goodness. It’s exactly the “God-shaped void” within us that makes us susceptible to being misused.

And for people who are driven by power, this reality has been great news for a very long time. I guarantee that wherever a person learned shame, the source was motivated by power…because God’s love doesn’t speak that language.

So, what do we do with the injustice of power wielded against people who are looking for love? And what do we do about the injustice pursued by people who too readily abdicate responsibility in their own lives?

The solution is not power. And it’s not forcing change by arguing for some objective “better way.”

It’s love. That is what we’re wired for. That is how we see and engage truth.

We’re created to abide. To insist that Jesus – the only King with either power or love enough to let justice roll down – be recognized in our midst.

He shows up wherever he’s invited, even if he’s invited by people we wish he’d ignore because we see how much injustice their incorporate into the rest of what they do. Even where there is legalism, he shows up if he’s invited. Even where there is parasitic health and wealth culture, he shows up if he’s invited. Even where grace has gotten so cheap that the chosen are more frozen than ever, he shows up if he’s invited. And there is so much love and so much delight in him, and in his arrival, that he swamps the injustice and love flows anyway.

In a group that is full of broken people, the brokenness is not more than an invited Jesus can work with. Same with congregations and nations. And me.

So, where you are a part of the group, do you choose to insist on the perspective that Jesus is there with you, or do you relinquish this reality to the “powers that be”?

And where you lead a group, do you function by principles or by lordship quickened by a Christ who is in your midst whenever he is invited?

And when you feel scared about the abuses of those around you, how are you doing with the choice to remember Jesus?

Jesus is always, always good news because love is always, always about delight, spreading goodness, and celebration of glory, where power is always ultimately focused on fighting, like someone trying to dig straight walls down into dry sand, for control in a losing battle…and power always grows more desperate while love always celebrates in increasing peace.

That, it seems to me, is the only way for us to do community. What do you think?

Hello! Assignment number 5 in the Look Again game – a game to help us pay attention to life as it passes by: Make a Necklace out of Dandelions. Did you ever do this as a kid? You just make a slit in the stem of one dandelion (I use my thumbnail) and slide the next stem through it. If the yards in your neighborhood are like the yards in mine, the raw materials abound. Other flowers and weeds work just about as well…give yourself a break, or a lunch break, and spend a little time in the sun on this craft kids love, but grown-ups forget about. The kid within you will be thrilled you did.

If you do this, just email your picture to pete@petegall.com and I’ll add it. As always, there is no time limit on the assignment, and you’re welcome to send content from any of the assignments – please just add the assignment number in the subject line of your email so I know where it goes.

I am not asking “how big a deal do Christians make of sin?”
Nor am I asking “how big a deal is sin in the world?”
Nor am I asking “do Christians sin?”

I’m asking: How big a deal is sin to a Christian?

Ah, man. As soon as I wind up to start responding to that question, I get snagged with the question of “what do you mean by ‘Christian’?” And from there I have to look at the “how big a deal do Christians make of sin” question.

Clearly Christians who position themselves as gatekeepers of the word and religious proxies for access to Christ, especially Evangelicals, have made a very, very big deal out of sin. It’s the primary lever pried to prompt people to pray the “Sinner’s Prayer.” For these gatekeepers, a person’s very Christian status is defined by sin. And for many of these gatekeepers, and the cultures that grow around them, sin and sin management are the primary compulsion of life.

As I read Scripture and as I get to know God in life and prayer and theology that flows from these things, I don’t see this perspective being the one that the Father, Son and Spirit have. Sin is not the problem. The problem is humanity’s consistent refusal of relationship with God. Sin is really just the evidence of that misguidance.

Geez. Maybe I am asking the second question, too. Because it’s important to acknowledge that sin is very real, is alive within us apart from us (Romans 7 – it is no longer I who sin, but sin dwelling within me) and it is a very big deal in the world. But it is still not the focus, and the solution to sin is not to focus on sin, but to focus on Christ.

Sin scatters for sin-hunters to chase in a million directions, always with increasing angst and always with increasing fragmentation within the chaser and the cultures that build their efforts around sin. How many denominations are there now, anyway? (According to Christianity Today, there are at least 38,000.) Sin will lead any sincere person to madness.

More often, the focus on sin leads people to insincerity. Church people call that “nominal faith,” or “the 80%” who are carried by the efforts of the 20% of congregants who represent the seriously faithful. My bet is that the percentage of people involved in church who are actual believers – not just people who have prayed the Sinner’s Prayer and who have become dedicated to some flavor of sin-fighting social interaction, but who have encountered Jesus and who seek to “abide” in him – may be lower.

So I guess I may as well address the third question I wasn’t asking: Do Christians sin? Absolutely. However, the Blood of Christ washes the sin away and it is forgotten.

I don’t just mean in some end of days accounting ledger, by the way. I mean this.

Our failures and our sins argue – accuse – an identity about us. They fragment us. They say “you may be okay over in that area of your life, but man are you a mess in this area.” And we look, see our shortcomings, and we have to admit that, yep, we suck there.

From there, some of us focus on the suck areas, where we scratch for small reclamations and redemptions, while sin tracks our failures and slices that area smaller and smaller – or has huge wins that claim the whole area for a while.

For others of us, we focus on the non-suck area, the space where we’re doing well. That makes our clean areas feel even more important to us, and we cling to them with a warping grip, and we lament any ground lost there. All the while, abdicating the suck areas and conceding ground about our worth, value and identity.

Either way, living with a focus on sin is like trying to scoop a straight wall in sand.

Jesus is the big “yeah, but.” Yeah, I sinned and yes I am a worm worthy of eternal damnation, BUT my heart is turned toward Christ and I choose the identity he offers me instead of the identity my sin seeks to shatter me into accepting. Yeah, I did that, BUT what I did is not who I am. Yeah, I feel the temptation to do that, BUT I would rather find my comfort in Jesus. Yeah, the arrows are real, BUT he is my fortress and refuge.

So, back to what I thought was my only question: How big a deal is sin to a Christian? Here’s what I think.

To a Christian, sin is only as big as Jesus is small.

I’m going to talk about something in this post that will need at least three caveats for some people. The first is that I know the Enneagram is rooted in Sufi mysticism, though it has been adopted and well-embraced by Christians, especially in contemplative Catholic circles. Secondly, I know the diagram looks kind of spooky. And thirdly, I believe that one of the enemy’s primary objectives is fragmentation – of communities, of selves, of everything – while the Holy Spirit is all about wholeness, and I also see how very often therapeutic approaches and labels tend to underline fragmentation in people and sometimes forget that the therapy is ultimately only successful to the extent that integration and wholeness occur.

All of that said, I’m having some fun seeing how I tend to work, and how I operate from either a positive flow or a negative…ultimately I think of it as either being moved by love or by power. I’m sharing this because my bet is all of us work this way, and I believe organizations can make similar choices in the ways they operate.

Here’s how I’ve been using the Enneagram in my world. I think I’m a 7, meaning my basic self, and the place where my choices point me to either love or power, happens at the 7 (dreamer/enthusiast/epicure) place. (There are books and online tests that will help you figure out which one feels right to you.)

The dreamer is a good thing to be, if the dreams come to action. If they do not, I get stale. I am learning that for me, the most important trigger to get me going in the direction of love is to take action, offering something to myself or to the world. Looking at the diagram, if I follow the lines clockwise – from 7 to 1 to 4 to 2 to 8 to 5 to 7 – I flow in love. If I flow counter-clockwise – from 7 to 5 to 8 to 2 to 4 to 1 to 7 – I operate in power and frustration. Here’s what that looks like in my world…take my Monday night mens group as an example.

As a dreamer, I have a vision of what could be. If I fail to take action in pursuit of that dream – offering my dream in the form of a gift to others – I will instead move to observation (from 7 to 5 on the diagram). I will look at the men and their (our) ongoing sin and I’ll get frustrated, feeling as though the community isn’t “working” because the sin is still around. That frustration will trigger the command and control bad leader, and as I move from 5 to 8 on the diagram, I’ll slip into tyrant manipulator mode. Once I’m there, I’ll make demands on the men and leverage the “rules” of the community to command action, which is taking rather than giving, and is hardly charitable…so I move from the 8 to the 2, saying I’m providing some sort of “tough love” or “prophetic” leadership, but really I’m moving from power rather than love. I get from 2 to 4 when I start lamenting what the group once was or what it could have been or how it’s not what other groups are – the unrequited romantic stuff. And once I’m there, I’m impossible to please because my perfectionism (1) is demanding perfection rather than celebrating what is offered in love. And when I’m feeding perfectionism into my dreamer (1 to 7) self, the dreams are hostile, feel exhausting or impossible, are rooted in power and manipulation, and even though it is possible that some measurable “good” result may come from them, ultimately I’m left to be nailed by the Apostle Paul’s “but if I have not love…” reality check.

However, if from my starting place of being a dreamer, I choose to offer something, a celebration of love or life, almost regardless of how it works or is received, things go differently. When I move from dreamy 7 to offer a gift, it is the joy and the love that makes it excellent, and the perfectionist 1 grades with a different filter. The perfectionist 1 is happy to pass the gift along because of a romantic (4) vision of “wouldn’t it be cool to share this,” which immediately passes the dream as a gift (2) to others. And sometimes people are touched by the love and want to experience more of it (here we may have a leader 8 in the mode of Paul saying “follow me as I follow Christ” – with his leadership being all about making introductions beyond himself). And when a leader 8 is leading because of love, he will observe (5) the dynamics and the needs of the people he serves, and this perspective on love will be the fuel for his dreamer 7.

One thing I’m learning – and maybe this applies to other personality types as well – is that I cannot flow in love (which feels much better) in isolation. I must have some place to offer my gift. This most certainly happens in my worship to Jesus, but I think he also intends his love to flow through me to others. When I am isolated, it doesn’t take long before I lose sight of what to do with my gift, and I begin to flow the other way, critiquing and manipulating and operating from power (which is always a form of frustration in the person wielding it, and to the people upon whom power is exercised). I can operate from power among people if at deeper, more honest levels I remain isolated, and I can get out of that isolation by offering my gifts of worship to Christ (instead of praying about frustrations and complaints without surrender to him).

The choice remains before us to choose life or to choose death. Life is so much more fun. I’m choosing it today. May you be drawn likewise.

I’ve got Fight Club on the brain this week. Ten days ago one of my best friends was taken to rehab. Another friend is recently divorced – and is more recently taking a break from friends to isolate. Several others are exactly where they want to be…dying. And one, the friend who showed up in My Beautiful Idol as Stephen (the roommate who battled against unwanted same sex attraction…whose problem wasn’t that he was gay, but that he was an asshole) developed pneumonia, which revealed previously undiagnosed HIV, and he actually did die just a few weeks ago. In less critical, but just as pressing, news, my freelance work is very slow. Tomorrow I’m heading to Chicago to spend a writing weekend with a man for whom I have a great deal of respect, working on a project my agent doesn’t want (that could just be poor pitching on my part, we’ll see). I don’t know what is going to happen with my life – if I’m doing the right things, if payoff is supposed to be a reflection of having done the right things…blah blah. My point is that friction feels high, and I find myself clenching my jaw a lot. I would love to fight someone.

I’m turning my barely-standing alley garage into a place where my Monday night group can meet. It looks like a fight club setting (I may post photos another time). And on some weeks that’s pretty much what the group feels like. I think it’ll be cool being out there together. Today I put down padded gym flooring. It’ll be good for the group, and it’ll also be good for working out – I’m down about 45 pounds, but the P90X videos arrived, and I’m about to learn (Monday) just how far I have to go. I know it’s going to kick my ass – but I’m ready for a fight and don’t really care how much I have to bleed for a while to move forward. I have enough friction to inspire action.

Pain does not exist in this dojo, does it?

Okay, here comes the God and life part. The other day I came across a line in Paulo Coelho’s The Pilgrimage that said “Going to war is not a sin. It is an act of love.” He wasn’t talking about Iraq (at least I don’t get there). He was talking about engaging the friction and fighting the good fight – fighting for life.

I grew up in a culture sick with a serious case of Mr Rogers pre-chewed Presbyterian (PCUSA) easy cheesy mushy grace. The case was so bad, and left such a mark on me, that I can’t hear any rule or structure or suggestion of discipline without flinching – wanting to argue about grace. But really what I’ve been trained in (and now see in full flower in the sick dramas embroiling the church where I caught this version of grace) is wallowing and idolatry. And it pisses me off.

About as much as the cheap slogan-y pith I see from my Baptist bootstrap brethren…all game and shame. Actually, right now I could go through just about every strain of faith or spirituality and spew vinegar with equal vigor, so I’ll just stick with the PCUSA cheap grace garbage I’m fighting back against recently.

Going to war is not a sin. But in the culture I’m from, working, striving, fighting, pushing, getting knocked down and getting up again, and killing for victory is all very, very impolite. People respond angrily as though one person having an opinion or a passion is condemning to others. There is a snaky argument about rejecting Jesus’ sacrifice by battling sin…as though my efforts could ever make Him less the victor.

It is an act of love. Rejecting Christ, or going to battle because of shame or self-hatred, these things are sin. But nobody really goes to war because of those motivations – they may go break some things and dive into some pain for a time, but it’s not really war. Love is the only thing that actually draws us into the fight…and it is an imparted love that draws us to itself. To God.

I love my friends enough to feel the pain of their pain, and to break under that pain – and to hand them back to God in prayer, repeatedly and often. It is my love that connects me to them enough to be angry, and for that anger to grow strong enough to realize that the only victory I’ll have is the one I obtain when I drag the battle before the Cross, or the Throne, or under the Blood, or whatever flavor of “abiding” hits me in the prayerful moment.

I’m not a prayerful guy, by the way – I’m just hurting enough and pissed enough to have no other choice.

And right now, a lot of my friends are teaching me that the least I can do is also the most I can do…pray.

But the war is not just about my friends and their crap. The war is about me. It is about meeting God on the battlefield – on the treadmill, in front of the fridge, while turning off the stupid iPhone to pay attention to my wife, or hacking dust from my now adobe lungs so my friends and I can have a place to meet and fight, and especially in choosing to acknowledge the fact that keeping track of how I’ve been rejected in the past has never stopped me from being who I am…so I may as well follow and quit worrying about how people respond to me. Set before me – before all of us – every day, is the choice of life or death (Dt 30:15). I’m still Presbyterian enough to say that I’ve been chosen. But I’m pissed off enough to insist there’s a shitload more choices to make if this life is going to be about life.

Are you choosing war as an act of love? If so, what does that look like in your world? Is it as awesome – and grueling – for you as it’s become for me? Do tell.

Until next time, I am Jack’s flexed bicep, bent elbow, clinched fist, and raised tall man.

Peace. And war.

This time, Share Your Favorite Vacation Photo (and story).

I’m writing on my phone in Phoenix, during a layover on the way to vacation in San Luis Obispo, with Christine asleep with her head on my lap (we got up at 4:00 this morning).

Normally this would be a moment I’d ignore, grinding my way through the discomfort, grogginess, and boredom of transit, but really, this is the good stuff. I want to notice more moments like this.

So, do you have favorite vacation photos? Maybe great and beautiful ones, and maybe just ones that remind you of something good? I’d love to see them and read the story that goes with them.

As always, you can respond to these assignments any time – not just when the assignment is fresh. Just email me at pete@petegall.com, with reference to either the assignment name or number so I get it right.

Enjoy your day – it is a gift, no matter what it entails!