Just As I Am [January 17, 2025]

Posted on January 17, 2025 by awtraughber

This past Christmas break was the first one where I felt like all of the “unbundling” of the last few years of work and church could finally be felt.  There was a lightness to things for me, an appropriate size to life.  So one of my goals going into January was to see what things cluttered up the open spaces as things started back up.

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These past two weeks have felt like a month.  Strange to think that last Monday was a professional development day that brought with it multiple levels of conversation.  Then classes started and then Spirit Week (has) happened.  “The days,” Calvin said, “are just packed.”  Which is why a impending three-day weekend is such a welcome thing.

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It’s been something of an odd week for me.  Each afternoon I’ve made my way downtown to set up at Starbucks with a caramel macchiato and the hope of “sitting” with things: reflecting, writing, catching up on some reading.  It comes with an end today, but it has been nice.  I’ve benefited a little more intentional with Varden’s Healing Wounds, which has been good for me.  I’ve also tried to check back in with a couple of eateries downtown that I haven’t frequented in a while.

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While nothing like the weather that’s about to hit the mainland, we are about to take a slight dip in temperatures ourselves here.  I know it sounds funny, but waking up to the chill of the 60s is such a great thing.  And my weather app says that should happen every morning for the next week or so.  I have to confess, it’s makes getting to the gym just a bit more difficult.  But not impossible.

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This week Disney’s Star Wars: Skeleton Crew came to an end.  It was a great series, one that worked on multiple levels for me.  Word is that it’s also the least-watched Star Wars live-action series on Disney+, which is unfortunate.  It has a greatness of its own.  It also came to a satisfying conclusion, which is nice.  Revisiting the characters from At Attin would be great, but it’s not necessary.  It did open up the Star Wars story nicely, and all without bringing in any big names or characters.

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I’ve been trying to put together a couple of playlists, one for the morning and one for the afternoon/evening.  While putting things together, I can across this song from Indelible Grace.  I like it quite a bit.

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I am hopeful for the weekend.  I’ve got some work to do, which is fine.  It will help me work through the rest of the week (with is good since Monday holidays aren’t the best).  I hope to experience some of that “lightness” that came with Christmas break.  It’s possible, I think, and I’m hopeful for it.

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Managing the Stacks

Posted on January 14, 2025 by awtraughber

StacjsIt seems to me that a big part of daily life is a matter of managing the stacks.  Because things pile up.1  Lots of things pile up, which requires a lot of sorting.  But the sorting, however meticulous it is, still isn’t actually working your way through the stacks.  And so you have to choose what you allow to pile up (assuming that you have some agency there) and how long you allow the pile to grow.  And so maybe the “home” stack grows and grows while you attend the work pile (or vice versa).  Maybe it’s about the books you read instead of the movies you want to watch.  For a student it might be the games you play while the homework pile grows larger and larger.

And so part of the management of daily life that you likely have to learn on your own (and from experience, no doubt) is about working through the stacks as best you can when you can, knowing that the lower the stacks, the better and healthier you likely feel.  It’s difficult work, on some level, but it’s also the better way.

1  This is not the same as bundling/unbundling, which I talked about here.  That’s more about tying tasks together, which looks good in the short term but can be harmful and almost irreversible in the long run.

(image from latimes.com)

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Routines, Ruts, and the Groove

Posted on January 3, 2025 by awtraughber

Routines are good and necessary things.  At the very least, they can be scaffolding and safeguards.  Without care, though, you can fall into the unfortunate side of a routine: the rut.  The rut is a good thing turned into drudgery.  And the harder you work at it, the deeper in the muck you get.  At its best, though, you move to the other side of the routine life: the groove.  There’s meaning, purpose, and passion there.  The groove is optimal and should be something like the norm.  At least that’s the hope.

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Once More with Resolve

Posted on January 2, 2025 by awtraughber

While I don’t think big decisions should be made on little etymological nuances, those nuances are often intriguing.  Case in point: resolve and resolutions.

Counselor and author Chip Dodd starts his January newsletter with some thoughts on the terms:

Resolution literally means to “untie again,” implying that something has become bound or knotted, and needs to be loosened or freed.

We really don’t like being knotted up or captured by something. A resolution is actually rooted in a desire to become untied and freed from the constrictions. Resolutions are about freedom, like a cast being removed or manacles being unlocked. We think they are about being bound and determined. They are not. They are about wanting to be “untied” or free!

It’s clear that Dodd wants to go a specific place with this approach to resolutions and the New Year.  And it’s just different enough from what we expect that it resonates nicely.  I spent some time a couple of years ago attempting to “unbundle” responsibilities and tasks that I had “wound together” in an attempt to be efficient and effective (but that left me unnecessarily exhausted).  I did check the Online Etymological Dictionary, by the way.  Dodd’s take is definitely there, but it is far from the only one.  I’d also be interested in seeing someone tease out the idea of “resolution” as it relates to images and clarity.  There’s some good stuff there, too.

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Speaking of resolutions, here’s one more classic Calvin and Hobbes strip on the topic.  Typical Calvin.

Calvon Snow Resolution

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This morning I realized that Steven Curtis Chapman’s Still album from 2022 is a perfect “New Year’s” album,  From start to finish, there’s a great sense of the big picture of life as it can be lived in God’s Story.  It’s honest in its assessment of life, the good and the bad, and is a great reminder of God’s faithfulness.  Here’s the video for the title track.

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I’ve got a few days before officially reporting back to work.  But I’ve got much to accomplish, so getting back into the swing of things is just around the corner.  I’ve already answered a few work texts this morning, a precursor to being more intentional this afternoon, I suppose.  I came back to slightly rainy and slightly cooler conditions on the island, which is always nice.  There are still a few Christmas decorations still up, which is nice (my own tree stays for a few days more).   This morning I splurged for breakfast with a caramel machiatto, a rare treat for me.

Posted in Faith, Holidays, Music, The Long Story | Leave a comment

Resolved But Never Solved

Posted on January 1, 2025 by awtraughber

img_2291I’m sitting in the A-gates area of the Denver International Airport.  I’ve spent the last nine days in Tennessee seeing family and friends, and it was a really good trip.  I learned some time ago that the only way to get away from work was to leave the island (and even then it can creep in).  I’m grateful for the good work I get to do, but I’m also grateful for a chance for food, sleep, and familial/friendly affection.  So now I’m about thirty minutes away from boarding my flight back to HNL.

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I’m not much for resolutions, mainly because the work of change is constant.  Part of it is the mess of me, of course, but part of it is also the state of things around us.  Those two things live in constant tension, really, and only find resolution in the work of God through Jesus and the sending of the Spirit.  With that comes great freedom and a sense of great responsibility (both its weight and its sense of excitement).  I think it’s okay to exist in a place of “resolved but never solved” because that’s the way life is, both by design and by dysfunction.  Some things, as Steven Curtis Chapman sings, are just unfixable.  Maybe “okay” isn’t the right word, as that sounds like too much acquiescence.  It’s the nature of things.

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I think for me, times like this are an opportunity to check on the scaffolding of life.  That’s both long-standing habits and practices but also the addition of new things here and there.  I’m looking forward to more from Erik Varden, the Bishop of Trondheim (I just like typing that), both for his new book on the crucifixion but also for his year-long look at the lives of the Desert Fathers that starts up today.  I start the new year the same way I ended the old one, with a sense that the monastic movement and the recovery movement have a lot to offer the window of life we call now.  They are key to finding a healthy groove in which to live, I believe.

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The time to head to the gate to board has come.  I’m well aware that landing in HNL will bring with it a list of things to take care of, especially for work.  I’d like to think that I’m returning in a better state than I left in.  It’s a matter of “resolved but never solved,” though, so maybe it’s more about both time and timing.  And that’s a good thing.  Happy New Year!

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Institutional Enchantment (or not)

Posted on December 27, 2024 by awtraughber

I’ve done a decent job of being in “break mode,” I think, but this recent post by Richard Beck unexpectedly took me back a few weeks to a meeting I was in.  The article, for which I am grateful,  is about how you can find both enchantment and disenchantment in any given congregation.  That’s not something I disagree with at all.  It’s true of any Christian institution or organization.  But it’s interesting to see where people “draw the line.”

This paragraph from the post captures the tension well:

Like a lot of churches, our church had to make some budgetary adjustments after COVID. During these conversations the enchanted/disenchanted divide emerged among our leaders. On the one side where the leaders who approached our fiscal issues in a wholly disenchanted way. The Excel spreadsheet was front and center and the tools we used to address the issue were the tools of corporate finance and accounting. But on the other side were the more enchanted leaders. Fiscal issues were to be addressed with spiritual and miraculous means. The issue wasn’t money, the issue was faith. We handle financial shortfalls by getting on our knees in prayer, asking the Lord to act.

This could easily be a false dichotomy, an example of the either-or fallacy.  And Beck admits that his church handled it accordingly:

Of course, we can do both. And we did both. But imaginations tend to gravitate toward one solution or the other. What is going to save us? Prudent budgetary cuts or the Lord God Almighty?

Yes, imaginations might tend to gravitate towards one more than another, but not without some nudging, some prompting from experience.  And it might also happen because of a lack of honest conversation (which is why his medical example might prove the point a little better).  Prudence is a classical virtue and wisdom is writ large across the Scriptures, as is trusting in God to do what is beyond our means.  Enchantment that is only institutional, primarily life-or-death, is tricky at best and dangerous at worst, especially if it is not experienced in the little, mundane things.  God can be (and is) at work on all levels.  But if there isn’t bleed over from one level to the other, people easily labeled as “disenchanted” probably have multiple reasons for any learned skepticism, especially if “enchantment” is used as a way to belittle fellow believers and to stop conversation like a “mic drop.”

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“The Blue Back in My Eyes”

Posted on December 26, 2024 by awtraughber

One of the nice surprises of these last few weeks has been the chance to hear some new/old U2 music that’s rooted in their How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb phase.  I already shared the link to “Country Mile.”  Here’s another song from the recent 20th anniversary reissue of HTDAAB: “Luckiest Man in the World.”  A quick glance at the comments reveals that it’s a “redone” version of an older, never-released song called “Mercy.”  That version is also worth checking out.

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A Short Poem for Christmas Day

Posted on December 25, 2024 by awtraughber

“Xmas Day” by G. K. Chesterton (an early poem)

Good news: but if you ask me what it is, I know not;

It is a track of feet in the snow,

It is a lantern showing a path,

It is a door set open.

From Chesterton’s The Spirit of Christmas

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One Season Turns to Another

Posted on December 24, 2024 by awtraughber

And so one season turns to another, the the folks in Frazz are right, time tends to blend things together in weird ways.

Frazz 12 Days

Twelve days for Christmas can be nice, though difficult to hold together when things in the world move on.  Here’s my annual post of one of my favorite Christmas songs, “I Will Find a Way” by Andy Gullahorn and Jason Gray.

(image from gocomics.com)

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Advent and “The World’s Last Night”

Posted on December 23, 2024 by awtraughber

Lewis Worlds Last NightAdvent, as I understand it, helps us consider two truths: the birth of Jesus (His first coming) and the return of Jesus (His second coming).  That’s a lot to hold together, I think, especially with the strong pull of Christmas Day and all that comes with it.  But that second truth still stands, which is why I often think of “The World’s Last Night” by C. S. Lewis.

The essay starts with the doctrine of Jesus’ second coming and the frustration that the doctrine can bring to people, especially those with a strong desire to pinpoint exact time and location of that event.  Lewis does a solid job of reminding us of a number of truths surrounding the second coming, including an interesting section on the place of apocalyptic literature in the first place:

. . . our Lord’s production of something like the other apocalyptic documents (of first-century Judaism) would not necessarily result from his supposed bondage to the errors of his period, but would be the Divine exploitation of a sound element in contemporary Judaism: nay, the time and place in which it pleased him to be incarnate would, presumably, have been chosen because, there and then, that element existed, and had, by his eternal providence, been developed for that very purpose.

Lewis also deals with the knowledge of the incarnate Jesus: what did he know (or not) and how did he know it.  It’s a theological question that lots of people ask often, and I think he handles it well.  Near the essay’s end, he asserts:

What is important is not that we should always fear (or hope) about the End but that we should always remember, always take it into account . . . What modern Christians find it harder to remember is that the whole life of humanity in this world is also precarious, temporary, and provisional.

And so what Ash Wednesday does for the individual, this facet of Advent does for all of humanity and all of our history.  Both are good and necessary reminders, particularly as Advent gives way to Christmas.

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