East US-6, 8:30am

The morning arrives too urgently. Sleep was episodic, as the general tension of loneliness ousted comfort.

I suit up in my Wrangler work pants, take one more shit, brush my teeth, and make the ritual trek to my car.

I dread the war zone, which is the US-6/I-25 interchange, so I crank up the volume on “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath.

My work day is pleasant enough: mounting TV’s and building furniture. I’m due a good fee. That’s great. But there’s a knowing through my skin and tissue and bones that on that wage, I’ll scarcely ever afford a decent house of my own in Denver.

But even beyond that gripe is the despair of repetition without recompense: that this predictable, daily grind substitutes for throwing frisbees, long and languid lovemaking, a slowly-simmering spaghetti, masterly conversations, the laying back of a head on a stomach, and an arduous climb to reach the incomparable vista of a de Cristo peak.

Matthew Perry Died and Stuff

I was perusing the social(s) today and slowly realized that a celebrity died. RIP Matthew Perry. First off, I liked Friends. Second, I was never really a big fan. I was more of a Seinfeld guy. 

The reason I didn’t realize he had died was largely because my entire weekend was enveloped with my wedding. My second wedding. I am a divorced man who has faced pain and practiced resilience and currently count myself lucky to have found a beautiful woman who loves me for who I am - as opposed to who she would prefer me to be. Honestly, it was an exhausting weekend filled with family traveling from out of town, hundreds of logistical details to be worked out, and the pressure of creating a magical environment for the people I care about (I did that last one to myself). AND, it was a magical weekend. I am a fortunate man. I know it.

So as I was scrolling, I saw Mr. Perry pop up several times as I was selfishly devouring the comments people made about the photos I had posted about my wedding. I mean, how dare this celebrity steal my thunder with his passing! Listen, I know he was a successful actor. Well, actually I don’t know him for anything other than Friends. Still! I know he was the star of a TV Show. Mmmm…not THE star, per se, but he did share a five-pointed-star stage with four other stars. That sound fair? 

Sorry, I can get a little grumpy about how obsessed our society is with shallow things. I think Matthew would agree with me. I read a quote - one of the many posts I encountered - where he would have preferred people to know him for his work of addressing alcoholism. That is, addressing his alcoholism, and hope for others struggling with substance abuse. But he confessed that it was unlikely that our culture would remember him for anything more than being the affable (eventual) boyfriend of Courtney Cox. I got that right, right? Honestly, I mostly only remember the episode where he admitted being the one that peed on Monica’s jellyfish sting. 

Sincerely, I grieve his passing. As I grieve all who pass from this plane of existence to whatever is next. I also honor the work he did to face his demons and to share his light. He used his platform and creative gift to write a play (The End of Longing) that he intended to inform and inspire. He also wrote a memoir which tells the sordid tale of his struggle with addiction which at the time touted 18 months of sobriety. 

I’m really not interested in the details of his death. I’m guessing those who gobble up celebrity gossip, crime mysteries, and conspiracy theories might be more inclined. Nothing wrong with those things, I’m just not into them. Rather, I’m into beauty and anything that might inspire people to break free and find inner freedom. 

So as someone who has been through the gauntlet of divorce and the death of a vocation I loved and saw as my identity, I want to echo Matthew Perry’s deeper message. Yes, Chandler was hilarious. Yes, Friends was a great show that entertained. Yes, Matthew Perry knew how to make people laugh. And also, yes, Matthew Perry was a human. One with a shadow that he struggled facing and detaching from. He found fame. Or perhaps more accurately, fame found him. And it changed his life. Is he really that different from you and me? I assert that he was not. What makes me admire him is not his comedic timing or his boyish good looks. Instead, I applaud his efforts to face himself, to look in the mirror, and to use his gift to communicate to others the knowledge he was discovering. 

To you, Matthew (not Chandler)! As a fellow sojourner of life and passionate pursuer of truth, I honor you. 

A Lone Man, a Sabretooth Tiger, and a Long Walk Home

 Have you heard the following story? Ancient men provided protection and provision for women, who gave them sex and sexual fidelity in exchange. Women preferred a man who could protect them from danger and successfully hunt that sabretooth tiger to bring home dinner. Men demanded sexual fidelity from their wives, because they didn’t want to waste their resources raising a child who was not theirs.

 If this story rings a bell, particularly as the preamble to a series of dogmatic claims about the nature of human behavior in general, human sexual behavior in particular, and, even more particularly, about how we ought to behave now, it’s because it’s the dominant narrative being bandied about these days. You have my permission to question it.

 Were men going hunting by themselves, miles from home, killing large game that they would then drag home by themselves, unmolested by other humans or beasts along the way? These questions don’t seem to bother those regurgitating standard fare of evolutionary psychologists. Would women even know who killed said animal? Also, who were these ancient women needing protection from? The other men of the tribe, with whom the aforementioned man just returned from a days-long team hunting expedition? Hmm. Don’t be too surprised if the thought occurs to you that relationship experts and psychologists who talk about the way we should behave because of how we’ve behaved for thousands of years maybe have never had these commonsensical contemplations.

 And speaking of how we should behave because of how we’re wired: how long do we need to persist in a behavior pattern as humans for it to become part of our DNA? That question persists. Are desires perhaps also contingent on historical context, as well as DNA coding? Again, these are not questions that get asked by the evolutionary-psychology informed advice crowd. These would distract from the lucrative activity of giving advice.

 While wiring is a good way to speak about some of our biological traits, humans may exhibit greater behavioral flexibility than we care to admit. And the inconvenient fact of our capacity to choose, even as far back as 100,000 years ago, what types of social and political and sexual behaviors worked best, does not figure in the standard literature and media milieu of today’s advice-giving industry.

 Not all authors, youtubers, seminar speakers, and otherwise self-anointed gurus are interested in multiple books and confounding research findings. Better to scan one book for the content you need, annoying as all that muddled anthropological and archaeological research can be. Of course we can know with crystal-clear clarity how humans were 50,000 years ago. Never mind that one tribe in the Amazon practices marriage and has a reputation for violence inside and outside the tribe. In the same Amazonian rainforest, another tribe exhibits almost no intra-tribal violence, also practices marriage, but allows for extramarital affairs for both men and women. And then there’s the Canela, who encourage if not demand extensive promiscuity within the group. Now, cobble these tribal practices into a single, coherent narrative of human sexuality. Better to look away at this point if you're well into a lucrative practice of consulting men and women on how to find and keep their spouse.

The Poison of People-Pleasing Pt. 2

With my history as a recovering people-pleaser in mind, I want to say something about my voice. You could replace the word “voice” with authentic self-expression. The problem, of course, is that while I was people-pleasing, I believed that I was already expressing my authenticity. I genuinely believed most of the stories I was telling myself. They were the kinds of stories I hear people tell themselves all the time:

• I love everyone.

• I don’t get angry.

• I’m a hard worker.

• I’m a good person, etc.

They were all stories that were, to some degree, true. But they were also not true. Do I love everyone? Hmmm. It’s a scary question. I definitely don’t feel love towards everyone. In fact, some peoples’ behaviors disgust me. Some people even make me angry. However, expressing anger might rock the boat and sabotage my people-pleasing agenda. So I learned to suppress it and maintain the image of an affable, all-embracing good guy. It was a lie. A lie I mostly told myself - a people-pleasing strategy. It’s called delusion, and the unfortunate reality is that when we lie to ourselves, we end up lying to everyone.

Like unearthing a boulder buried in the hard soil, it takes relentless spiritual work to dig up the stories we have told ourselves. It also takes courage because this kind of spiritual work hurts. A lot. Yet, I see it as a necessary, and even holy, process of pursuing freedom. Nowadays, I’m using my voice in completely new ways. I’m still learning, and I suspect I will make mistakes. However, I no longer feel the nagging self-doubt I used to feel when I was living a lie. I now speak with more clarity and I don’t worry about the waves I make by taking up space with my perspectives.

Some will say I’m being too hard on myself. “You are a good person, Joel! Stop beating yourself up!” I agree with them. But the work I’m doing isn’t self-flagellation. It’s self-emancipation. I’m removing ancient, rusty armor that has fused to my body. It stings to pull it off. It’s scary to feel the sun on my bare skin. Yet, strangely, saying yes to vulnerability and self-compassion fuels me these days. And this bolsters me for my greatest fear coming true: some people will not like me.

I still find it uncomfortable. But I’m getting used to it. :)

What to do When Doubts Begin

So, you’ve found yourself having doubts about what you’ve perhaps believed your entire life. Is there really a God? Is the Bible reliable as the ultimate source of truth? Can we take the story of Noah’s Ark literally? What happens if we don’t? Did Jesus really rise from the dead? And, perhaps most poignantly, is there a real hell I will go to if I go down this road of doubt?

 I feel your pain. I’ve been down this road, and it’s not easy. I hope you find kindred spirits along the pathway of doubt, but be prepared to be alone. You may be in a church, at a university, or in a community where this skepticism is not encouraged. “Who can I really share these questions with, and explain the upheavals in my soul, to?” you wonder. You will likely find un-looked for friends, along with frustrating isolation, along this journey.

 I can’t recommend it to you, for I went down this road by an irresistible, internal force. I simply don’t know another way to live. I live by a preference for doubt, investigation, and a studied disdain for impenetrable dogma. Show me certainty, and show me to the nearest barf bag. Avoid this road if you can, unless you can do no other.

 Andy Dufresne, the lead character who escapes his prison cell in The Shawshank Redemption, says to his friend Red, who is on his way to Andy’s new digs in Mexico, “If you’ve come this far, maybe you’ll be willing to come a little farther.” I hope you find friendship and community along this road. I’m trying to foster a piece of it if I can. We who have left/are leaving faith communities need not to isolate ourselves, but to share our stories with others who are risking the journey. So come along, if you dare…

The Poison of People-Pleasing: Part 1

Somewhere in my childhood, I chose people-pleasing. I don’t mean that I was aware of a list of options - like a menu of maladaptions that every human is required to select from when they start school. Hey Joel, it’s God. You’ve reached the age where you now must decide whether you will be an aggressive bully, a lying manipulator, a manic overachiever, or an anxious isolationist. Pick your poison. Naw, I believe the choice was unconscious. Like all children, I adapted to my environment the best I could to experience the love, attention, and care that we all crave at that age. 

Side-Note: It’s a whole other blog post, but I see personality as a container that every human necessarily creates when they are young. The spiritual path is to stop over-identifying with that persona and to break free from its constraints. 

Back to people-pleasing. Like all maladaptive strategies, it worked. Honestly, I was really good at it, so it actually worked for a long while. Until it stopped working. Then I started to notice the logical consequences of my behaviors:

• Only expressing ideas that I intuited others would agree with left me feeling inauthentic and frustrated.

• Focusing on the happiness of others created anger - and sometimes rage - when the people I cared about didn’t seem to care about my happiness in the same way.

• My efforts to maintain harmony by subtly manipulating everyone to like me through my litany of codependent tactics depleted my energy to the point of exhaustion and, eventually, depression.

• The conflict that I was so carefully attempting to avoid ended up happening regardless of my intentions.

I’m in a new space now. I have toiled for decades with inner work - breaking up the hardened ground of my psyche and cultivating something alive and authentic. I had a friend once call it my “secret garden.” I think we all have that inside of us, a sort of individual Eden, providing sanctity, dignity, and freedom. A place to relax, and to be. However, to abide in this paradise, we must abandon the shanty towns our egos are so fond of inhabiting.

To be continued…

On Loving Yourself

My body is a sovereign nation. It will be defended, strengthened, and nourished. It hears the claims of other nations and agrees when it can, but it will not be dissolved or annexed.

Its history is proud and rich; it has a culture. I love the story and song of my nation. I do not hate yours, but the light from my rugged shores shines brighter.

I may linger in your lands, dance your dances, and puzzle at your crumbling temples, but I will leave you at last. Charity alone will not move me to grant you asylum; enchant me, and I will make you a citizen.

Voice

Why are so many people uncomfortable with microphones? It’s a thing. Have you ever noticed? Maybe not. Perhaps you are one of these people. Not trying to be a jerk, but there seems to be some sort of allergy that gets agitated when people hear their own voice projected out beyond normal parameters.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been at a random event where the speaker asserts that they have a loud voice and prefer to not use the microphone they are holding. The speaker drops the mic to waist level, “You guys can hear me without this thing, right?” Then they don’t even pause for a response. “Right. We’re good.” With their anti-amplification agenda in place, they continue to speak to the front half of the audience while the people in the back give confused looks to their neighbors. “What did she say?”

The point of a microphone is to magnify our voice. Yet, we immediately shrink back the moment we hear it happen. Our subconscious squirms: “Oh, I don’t like that.” It’s like when we hear our voice on a recording. Have you ever thought that your voice sounds weird? Like somehow the recording is faulty. “That’s not how I sound, is it? It sounds off.” I suspect something similar is happening when a speaker pulls the mic away from their face. They are reacting to the unfamiliar strength of their dulcet tones. So they naturally yank the mic away from their pie-hole and consequently cause massive issues for the audio technician.

That poor audio technician. They stand back there with all those buttons and knobs. And the moment something goes wrong – everyone turns and looks at them. Meanwhile, they are actively trying to enhance the sound of a person against their will. Pulling away mic + turning up volume = feedback. You know the sound. Have you even twisted your torso to glare at the nameless human standing innocently in the sound booth? They’re screwing up the experience! But if they had a mic, they would likely be saying, “It’s not my fault the person you are listening to is uncomfortable with their own voice.”

It makes sense to me that we feel fear when our voice is amplified. It’s a vulnerable thing to hear ourselves thrusted onto a larger stage. Especially when our voice is being thrown out into the expanse of strangers who will all develop opinions about what we are saying. I get it. Still, that doesn’t mean we should pull the mic away and try to talk louder. Instead, trust the mic.

It’s true that a microphone will amplify our mistakes. It will catch all our “um’s” and “likes” (vocal fillers as we call them in the biz), but it will also catch your brilliance. That little piece of technology will wrap its arms around your authentic voice and give it room to breath and fill the space. People outside of your immediate circle will find themselves impacted by the sound waves of your message.

I am not afraid of mics – largely because I have tons of experience using them – but I am afraid of rejection. I don’t like it when people disagree or disapprove. So sometimes, I censor my message to make it more palatable for the masses. That is my version of pulling the mic away from my face. And I can see the universe standing innocently in the sound booth shaking their head. “Dude, just speak your truth.” That image makes me smile. It reminds me that my presence in life is not only to bring joy and happiness. I’m also here to bring reflection and consideration. One time, Jesus said that he did not come to bring peace, but a sword. I think that’s what I mean, too. If I pull the mic away, I dull the edges of my presence. I rob others of my unique perspective. Sure, it reduces the risks that vulnerability creates, but it also dilutes my authenticity, my integrity, me.

Aspiring Samaritan

If I couldn’t be a Christian, I’d at least want to be a Samaritan. I’d wanna be the one who notices the one who isn’t loved. I’d wanna care more about questions than answers. If I couldn’t believe all the stuff of the Levites and priests, would you be okay if I did the stuff?

Moralism

When I was a kid, I was a sponge for moralism. Whether it was Sunday School, overhearing adult conversations, or watching PSA’s about reading books or abusing drugs, I was all about it. No discussion needed. There is something so intoxicating about knowing you’re right. We all want to believe we’re on the side of the good guys.

But if Game of Thrones has taught me anything, good guys and bad guys don’t exist. Because the “good guys” often have done some shady shit. And the “bad guys” always have redeemable qualities. And it all makes us human. 

When I say moralism, I mean someone not only believing something, but subsequently projecting these personal morals onto others as if their perspectives are justifiably prescriptive. In other words, to believe I’m right requires that I make others wrong. It’s a hard thing to let go of, but I’m working on releasing my childhood instinct for moralism. I’ve been noodling on a new way of seeing things: there is no right, there is no wrong. There is only love and harm. And everything in between is just flavors of ice cream.

What if there is no right or wrong, but only love and harm? I find it hard to admit that there may not be any right or wrong, but practices of self-reflection have revealed the audacity of my ego. And it’s quite clear that my ego has one primary agenda: to be right about itself. 

I like the word “preferences.” Most things I was taught as a kid really are best described as preferences. For example, this college football team is better than that one. Truth? Or an opinion based upon preference? And it goes on. My church’s style of music is better than the one across the street? Apple versus PC? Chipotle versus Chick-Fil-A? Do audiobooks count as reading? Yes, they do. A truth that causes zero harm.

However, it gets stickier when we start applying this principle to issues with wider consequences. Are gay clergy wrong? Which political party is right? Is abortion wrong? In my opinion, the lens of morality is unhelpful. These issues are too nuanced to be put into buckets of right and wrong. While the lens of love and harm doesn’t resolve the issue easily, I find it to be a much more productive thought experiment.

Have you ever experienced someone making you wrong? One time, I was at a party where a somewhat inebriated man learned that I was a pastor but that my views had become far more progressive than his. He was apparently an attorney by trade and was wearing a very nice suit. He then tried to use 1980’s apologetics to back me into a corner so I would admit the truth about Jesus Christ.

It was such a strange experience. He was actually a great debater. Very persuasive. But forget that I already knew his arguments and ironically made similar ones when I was in my 20’s. Forget that I was the actual expert in the conversation based upon my academic studies and experience as a teacher of the Bible. Also, forget that his hot boozy breath was far too close to my face. What made it so uncomfortable was his fierce commitment to making me wrong.

This is the problem with believing our truth is the truth. It urges us to defend our view by making others wrong. Our activated egos don’t know how to do anything else. It’s not that I want to be silent about my views. I have valuable ideas to share that could potentially inspire others or widen their perspective to include more truth. So do you. I love it when people choose to share their experiences. Their authentic voice matters because all human beings have dignity and deserve to take up space. So beware of the hallmarks of making others wrong: accusing, blaming, shaming, defensiveness, and dismissal. It’s folly to believe you can make yourself right by making someone else wrong.

Reflection: How do you feel when someone else tries to make your views wrong?

Sameday

We wake up at the same time. We drink the same coffee, put on the same outfit, and drive the same car. We get mad at the same kind of drivers as we drive the same route to work.

We do the same tasks at the same job in the same office to make our same salary. The same shit annoys us.

We drive home at the same time with the same hunched shoulders to the same people doing the same things. We eat the same food as we watch the same shoes and repeat the same conversations.

The same bed welcomes the same bodies for a night of the same fitful sleep so we can do the same thing again on Sameday.

Speak Your Truth

“Speak Your Truth,” I used to despise that phrase. To me, it sounded like a blanket approval of people’s opinions. “I don’t care about differing views or so-called scientific evidence, it’s MY truth.”  I don’t like that. In my opinion, people’s opinions vary greatly in quality. Many opinions I run into are at best boring. It goes downhill from there.

So. Many. Opinions. (mine included)

Can’t we all just collectively decide to chill out about opinions? You like shopping at Whole Foods, I like shopping at Walmart (and also complaining about the blind privilege of people who exclusively shop at Whole Foods). It’s fine. I go to Whole Foods on occasion. I love Trader Joes. But I also love shopping among people who live in a completely different economic strata than at Whole Foods. It reminds me that humanity is diverse, that everyone is spending hard-earned dollars, and that marketing is bullshit.

Anywho. I currently don’t mind the phrase, “Speak Your Truth.” Yes, I changed my mind about it. My reason is primarily pragmatic in nature. I don’t mind the phrase largely because there is no way to speak anything else. The clue is in the phrase. TRUTH is the noun. MY is the adjective. I am drawn in by the qualifier. It’s not THE truth. It’s MY truth.

So if I edit my speech because I’m afraid of what other people will think of my raw perspective, that is still “my truth.” It’s a truth of fear and restriction. It’s my truth because it reveals what is really happening inside of me - even if I’m the only one who knows about the edits.

If I said something in a sermon years ago that I have now changed my mind about (which has happened several times), then I can relax. It happens. I used to carry shame about the things I asserted in my youth. I struggled with accepting that I believed something that I no longer agreed with. Now I see that as natural evolution. In the New Testament, St. Paul once said to the Corinthian church, “When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.” Life progresses. Circumstances change. We change.

Do I believe there is such a thing as “THE” truth? I do. The problem is that I can’t fully see it. In the philosophical branch of epistemology (how we know things), I resonate with the idea of critical realism. It’s pretty heady as it tries to distinguish the difference between the REAL world and the OBSERVABLE world. If I had to boil it down, I’d say that we can see glimmers of THE truth, but we don’t see it clearly. As humans, we are naturally hindered by the limitations of personal perspective. My way of seeing things is highly influenced by my personality, my trauma, my beliefs, and my desires. Whatever I see is part truth and part me. And in my opinion, it’s mostly me. I think St. Paul said it better, “we see through a glass darkly” (also to the Corinthians, apparently they got all the good nuggets).

What I’m saying is this: please, speak your truth. Just remember that your truth does not equal the truth. And that’s okay. No one’s truth equals the truth. Our humanness requires imperfection. I’ll say it again differently: we are supposed to get it “wrong” at times. There is no such thing as arriving in this dimension of reality. As hard as Wesleyan purists may argue, perfection is an illusion (they call it holiness). It’s a myth. As far as I’m concerned, God’s design of the human experience intentionally includes mistakes and growth.

So speak it. Express your words. Own it. And then let it go. Because odds are your future self won’t agree with you anyways.

Reflection: Can you speak your truth knowing that it is likely not the truth?