Today

The sun rises each day, and again later darkness falls.
Each day.


Each moment we must inhale life giving breathe into our lungs, and yet also release it back out.


Each day we must drink our water and eat our bread to survive.
And each day we must rid ourselves of the excess and waste that our food produces.


Each morning we must open our eyes, rise, and be about our work in the world... Yet every night we must lay our bodies down once again and drift away, carried by rest itself beyond our control.


We are daily people.


Each day we must pray.


There is zero coincidence that Jesus teaches his disciples to pray in this way,


Our Father in heaven
hallowed be your name
your kingdom come
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.


How often do you think we should pray this prayer?

Everyday, hallowed be your name
Everyday, your kingdom come...
Everyday, heaven come to earth!
Everyday, our daily bread
Everyday, forgive us the debts we owe
Everyday, we must forgive
Everyday, deliver us!


Our Salvation is an Everyday Salvation.


Creation itself is designed to exist in daily rhythm, life is given a day at a time.
What makes you think that everything "spiritual" would be any different?
Every day I am rescued from evil.
Everyday I am fed.
Every day heaven comes to earth as God's will be done.
Every day I learn how to breathe and be and do again.


Perhaps what is left for us mostly to do, is let yesterday and tomorrow be...
and learn how to be grateful for today.

"To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us - and He has given us everything." -Thomas Merton

Desire Holy Week Woke Silver and Sugar

If you want to know how to train a 4 year old in my house... you get treats. Treat is not just some word you throw around in our house. Treat has the power to build up or destroy... the power to create or the ability to cause chaos. One of the things I love and struggle with the most with our beautiful amazing little 4 year old girl... is her pure desire.
Children have that in heaps.
But I think we do too. 

This Holy Week I'm caused to pause at the story of Judas.
In Matthew at the Passover meal Jesus announces that "one of you will betray me."
One after another come to the question, "Surely, not I, Lord?" ... "Surely, not I, Lord?"...
Finally Judas comes around and we see him asking as-well, "Surely, not I Rabbi?"

Really? Surely not I? ... Really? Earlier in the story Judas was cutting a deal with the chief priests to bag Jesus for them... Now he sits intimately with the other disciples and his "Rabbi" and asks, "Surely not I.." !? Jesus replied, "You have said so."

Now there are many I know that through their framework of reading Scripture say things about Judas never having had an option... "prophecies were foretold" etc... if you believe in that sort of pre-determination of a life. There are other camps who simply look at the Judas story as a fleeting thing that happened to get to the cross narrative and demonizes Judas...

We will completely miss what this story of Judas has to offer us unless we can see his humanity. 

Which brings me to sugar.  

I love sugar. If its sweet I'll probably eat it. If you want to talk prophecies I am currently fighting the prophecy of diabetes. Specifically sugary bread is my number! I'll ring that phone three times a day!
... (side note for anyone reading, if you want to get me something for my birthday this year I'm putting on the list Little Debbies and Lucky Charms) So I may have a problem.

Most of us though I think tend to be a little on the unaware side of our desires. Well, perhaps not unaware of them as much as unaware of how powerful they are in our lives.

This Lenten season for some reason I have felt a hyper awareness of my desires more than usual. Perhaps I am desire-woke for a moment. All my desires seem they have lifted to the surface and I see their heads rearing each moment.  Honestly, I feel a level of disgust by it all. A frustration that I have so many desires... and what's more that seemingly every decision made is a reaction of desire. Sugar. Sleep. Coffee. Burritos. (most of my desires are food and sleep related if you can't tell) Once you're desire-woke, you catch a glimpse of just how oriented your whole life is around your next desire.

There is so much that we want in life, so much we believe will bring us pleasure if we simply had it. 2,000 years later most of us are still playing the slot machine with Judas... Whether its silver or sugar, if it means pleasure... "I'll take two!"

When you're fasting something, the lack of that thing will inevitably bring the desire of the thing to the surface. In a culture when we mostly just have desires and then immediately seek to fulfil them without question, fasting is pretty tough.
I believe Judas' temptation has more to say to us here in Western culture today than ever before... Judas was a man torn by desire. Contextually we see how Judas, being the keeper of the purse was continually keeping score, continually conflicted and struggling with the generosity of the Kingdom he was walking into with Christ. Judas I believe is somewhat of a mirror in the Gospels for the plight of Western Evangelicalism. (oh snap!)...Yet you can't spend that much time with Jesus and not be moved... are you with me?

I think that when Judas asks the question, "Surely not I?" ... he meant it. Even though he was with Jesus, his desires had festered subversively. Perhaps in the presence of Jesus much of his desire was even hidden from himself. Many of us are like vampires... our desire comes out at night, alone in the dark, and we are different. Just as the next time we see Judas he's with a more venomous group late that night... like a different person has come out.

So - I wonder, this week as we journey to Good Friday and the Crucifixion, when it seems even the best of disciples are running another way...
What is the Silver? What is the Sugar? What are the desires in our own lives that we just might rather have than Jesus?

Maybe the part most fearful of this whole story is, we may not really be that different than Judas.

...
A quick note, bodies and desires are not bad things. I'm pro-embodiment (in fact there is a great Liturgists podcast out about that). Most of us aren't even that in touch with our bodies.
Specifically what I'm simply attempting to point at in this brief reflection during Lent is that sometimes, we actually may not be that woke to our own humanity and level of desire.
It is when we fully receive our humanity, the ups and downs, falling and rising, in the person of Jesus, that we will also discover the actual enjoyment of all desire lies within. 

Happy Holy Week.

Jesus - Enneagram - Moose

I grew up with hymns, with altars, with choir robes, with stained glass and giant crosses. The God we worshipped was Great and Mighty and Holy and we were invited into that Divine Presence.

Nowadays the place where I worship looks more ordinary, a house, a living room, children dancing to the music, food shared in a kitchen, sweatpants and t-shirts… and we are invited deeper into the relationship with a God who we also know as Human.

The Divinity and Humanity of Christ are both fully and equally who we are as the church and so reflective of how we worship. The moment we find ourselves worshipping a Jesus who is solely Divine… we’ve missed it. We’ve missed the Jesus who eats with others constantly, who takes off His robe and washes dirty feet, and who hangs out with all sorts of people in all kinds of places.

Yet likewise, the moment we try and worship a Jesus who is solely Human, we have equally missed it. Because Jesus is The Christ. The Messiah. God Incarnate. He is The King of Kings, The Lord of Lords!
He is Creator of the Universe. Alpha and Omega.

Jesus is fully God fully Human.
The moment we forget one or the other… the moment we become the dualist… we are no longer reflecting the God of the Bible…. But some other god made in some other image…

This is why the church has fleshed out in such a multitude of ways over the years.
Because we have to.
We must.

If we are going to reflect our God…We must be diverse, we must be colorful and different. AND we must be cohesively the church. 

I love how the Enneagram has nine points.  There are a variety of types of individuals out there!  And even among each number there can be different variations of each one. It reminds us that we are not created to be this one type of person… but created to be different from the other. To give a different angle and refraction.

One of my favorite kids books we have is called Morris the Moose, It’s a story of a moose named Morris who mistakes a cow for a moose because he has four legs, a tail, and things on his head just like Morris! Solid logic! Then they go talk to a deer and the deer thinks they are both deer! Because, naturally, they have four legs, a tail, and things on their head… You see where this is going…

They finally see all their different reflections in the water and realize though they are similar, they are each different. Morris made a Moosetake!    (so good!)

Francis de Sales, a sixteenth-century bishop in France wrote,

      “Each of us has his own endowment from God, one to live in this way, another in that. It is an impertinence, then, to try to find out why St. Paul was not given St. Peter’s grace, or St. Peter given St. Paul’s. There is only one answer to such questions: the Church is a garden patterned with countless flowers, so there must be a variety of sizes, colors, scents – of perfections, after all. Each has its value, its charm, its joy; while the whole vast cluster of these variations makes for beauty in its most graceful form.”

The Divinity and Humanity of Jesus Christ seems contradictory to our western minds. Its no surprise that we would find this a struggle. This is why every December we are once again baffled by the manger… It just doesn’t add up. Here’s the deal: The Kingdom of Heaven will never add up.

It’s not math its mystical. 

I see clearly a tension between a generation who came to know almost exclusively a Jesus who sits enthroned in heaven, and a generation who now seems to know a Jesus who sits at an ordinary table eating ordinary food with ordinary people.

There’s one who after 60 years of Sunday School seems to have mastered Personal Holiness.

There’s one who doesn’t go to Bible study at all and works with homeless and refugees in the name of Social Holiness.

Each one has concerns about the other. Honestly it’s a shame that we need further categories in what is all… Holiness. Indeed both… all kinds even, are required.

May the Person of Jesus the Christ remind us, as all of creation gives reflection of, that no ground is not sacred. That there has never been a this or a that. And that our worship of The LORD must continually take us to our knees and to our streets. Because as God said way back in Genesis, It’s All Good.

Ashes to Ashes and Candy Hearts

Ashes on your heart this year? Mortality got you down this Valentines day? Flowers looking a little wilty?
This February 14th our celebration of love seems to be overshadowed by the dust and darkness of Ash Wednesday. The day we might dress in pink giving giant teddy bears and chocolates stands in seeming conflict with ashes spread across our foreheads to remind us of our mortality. Yet of course if you happen to be single and wearing black anyway this really just works out for you!

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, our 40 day journey to Easter. It is the time we remember that from dust we came and to dust we shall return. It is the day we remember what it is that we are human...

It is the ashes that remind us that struggling is a part of the journey. That conflict is part of the story. Death finds us. Life is short. Skinned knees and bloody lips will happen. Things get broken. We break. We bleed.

With ashes on our heads and chocolates in our hands... how do we proceed forward then? Honestly it sounds like it could put are real damper on your Valentines date plans!

Have you ever noticed that every great love story are the ones that are dangerous? The ones that face down struggle and leave scars? And somehow the greatest ones are the ones that face down death...




Isn't it ironic that the most compelling love stories are the ones that break your heart?
Isn't it always the love that endures through the frailty of what it means to be human that we find most inspiring? Its why the Notebook will get you EVERYTIME!

(Just look into those eyes!)

Because in our aging... in our fragility... in our humanness... we enter into the narrative of love even more.

We learn even more what Hesed is... That love itself though beginning with a box of chocolate or some candy hearts is only fully received and understood fleshed out through covenant faithfulness... as we embrace the humanity of the other we are with and decided that together we shall until death do us part.

Caleb's top 11 things you can do to change your life and the world in 2018!

Here are my 11 things you can do in 2018 to absolutely change your life and the world! Some of these will be difficult, no doubt... but some easy. Some of these you will likely cringe or disagree... of which I don't care because its my blog. :) I've done quite a bit of research on these issues, yet this article is not intended to be a defense of anything, simply this is my personal reflection on what I believe is the Truth and what has changed my life.

So, here we go!

Eat beans not meat.
This is a big one.
I believe this is the single greatest thing you may do for your life and ALSO for the world.
One of the largest impacts on our changing climate today is the release of green house gases into our atmosphere. A ton of these gases come from massive cattle and livestock farms. The way we've chosen to farm has a deep and immediate impact on our planet. Because of the mass quantity of meat that is being consumed on a daily basis corporations have turned cattle farming into a horrible hysteria. Because of this sort of farming, to keep up with the high demands of meat and other animal products... the way we eat has a drastically higher impact on the Earth than even what we drive.

Also eating animal products ESPECIALLY processed meat has been directly linked to all sorts of diseases... cancer, heart disease, etc.. Actually, processed meats are listed as a carcinogen! Come on ya'll! It's right up there with cigarettes...
Much study and research has been done on the health benefits of eating vegan... in several cases individuals have had total remission of cancer and other illnesses just by not having animal products in their diet. On the flip side, beans have many rockin health benefits such as being one of the top foods associated with longevity.
If you only decided to Eat Beans instead of meat you would change your life and the world.



Hang Dry Your Clothes
Alright, I'm posting this one even though I know many of you are probably rolling your eyes. Eight years ago after we got married Emily and I decided not to have a dryer. It may sound crazy but its something really practical you can do for the Earth and yourself. Dryers use a lot of energy... every year you burn ridiculous amounts of coal just drying your clothes. Not to mention how much longer your clothes hang around when they aren't beat up in the dryer every week. (pun intended) Also, it definitely has saved us a lot of money over an eight year span.

The only way we've really been able to do this is by not having a dryer in the house... Remove the temptation completely! We've also been known to baffle mostly all women over the age of 50... I've personally witnessed jaws drop and eyes get a little teary... and you would be amazed how many sweet older women have tried to buy us a dryer!
No doubt we have a lot of first world perks here in the states... but I know our lives and the world is better without this one!



Drink Fairtrade Coffee
Really there are two huge products that if we changed the way we consume them it would change the world. Coffee and also chocolate. The world consumes an unbelievable amount of both of these products every single day. It is estimated that the world consumes about 2.25 billion cups of coffee in a day! ... and most of it is NOT fair trade. Which basically boils down to much of the coffee we consume... someone is not getting paid, or barely getting enough money to live on, and in many instances it can be the equivalent of slave labor.

In a market so huge as coffee we may not realize what a big deal it is to purchase fair trade. Companies such as Folgers and Maxwell House have the worst company ratings you can get on websites such as Better World Shopper. This means many of these big coffee companies willingly engage in the destruction of the environment and the exploitation of human beings for profit increase... that these businesses succeed at the expense of future generations and the natural world. So in the end I think coffee tastes better without blood in it.


Purchase your Veggies from a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)
We live in an age when instead of living out of our own gardens we eat from "gardens" halfway across the country. Most of these typical grocery store vegetables are doused in pesticides and are mostly genetically modified. (Not to mention the unseen back door where all the non-uniform veggies hit the landfill) This sort of eating generates tons of green house gases into the atmosphere just by sheer transport, increases the landfill, hoards the wealth, and prohibits our ability to eat the very substances that should bring us the most nutrition.
One of the greatest joys for me is getting to support a local farmer. For the past few years my family has been getting all our vegetables from a CSA in the area. For most of us we generally don't know where our food comes from. Despite much of what we believe about the future of food... our future as humanity depends on small local farms not huge corporate farming! (See the documentary Tomorrow. Literally its the best thing.) 

Live into what you already own.
Give away 100 items. 

I am lumping these together because it mainly has to do with our STUFF. Many of us who are able to even sit and read this blog likely already possess much of the stuff we need in life. The greatest temptation for Westerners in particular is to own everything, to possess, to accrue... I believe shopping and spending money is literally an addiction that many have... Spending money, purchasing something... it makes us feel good. It releases endorphins. After the Holidays many are having a shopping hangover.

Many of us even have multiple coats and pantries of food going stale... you know just in case.
But what might it look like to live into what you already possess? 

This is a big one for me having worked in the "trash industry" now for several years. It is one of the sickest things in the world to see the type of stuff we throw away. We've been desensitized by stuff. And most of us don't see where it goes after it leaves us...
(a box of stuff I was called to throw away...)
Basil of Caesarea wrote, "When someone steals a person's clothes, we call him a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat hanging unused in your closet belongs to those who need it; the shoes rotting in your closet to the one who has no shoes. The money which you hoard up belongs to the poor." 

And if you think you don't have 100 items to give away... I think once you begin counting you'll be shocked. One of the greatest secrets of "happy" living is simple living. The less stuff we have I believe the more Kingdom we possess.


Don't Buy One Time Use Plastics
I do have to take just a quick minute to mention plastic. (If you haven't watched Plastic Paradise it is absolutely worth a watch! It may still be on Netflix.) Here's the deal, every straw you've ever drank with... still exists. Plastic does not biodegrade. Yes, it does eventually break off into smaller and smaller pieces... but that is mostly the issue as it leeches into the earth and more importantly
our water. If you've eaten fish in the last year there's a chance you've eaten plastic. Also, if you've ever thrown away (or washed) polyester... same issue. Polyester is made from plastic.
This may seem daunting... and it kind of is :) ... but the good news is together this is totally changeable. Stop buying things wrapped in ridiculous plastic packaging... don't throw the plastic you already own away but do your best to repurpose it. If it is thrown away (it should go without saying) but recycle it as best as possible. Even most plastics that do get recycled are only something like 20% recyclable!! The BEST thing you can possibly do is avoid One Time / One Use Plastics... such as water bottles, plastic bags, lids, etc. Just take your own mug to get coffee, take your own bag to the store... its doesn't have to be complicated! :)

Give to Charity Water

If you give to one non-profit this year, my personal pick is Charity Water. 1 in 10 people lack access to clean water... its 2018... there's no reason we can't fix this. Charity Water is amazing in that every single penny you give goes to giving Clean Water to those in need... you can see it for yourself! One of the great ideas that's fun to do is give Charity Water your birthday. Instead of getting more stuff you don't need this year... change a life.





Read a book by Richard Rohr
Alright, on another note, Richard Rohr is by far my favorite author right now. You could just search on Amazon and point your mouse at any given title, read that, and your life would be better! But my personal favorite is The Naked Now. He has many others though and I absolutely recommend checking him out. One of his more popular ones is Everything Belongs, many start there.

Yet with a word of warning, if you are not open... you will be tempted to close further or open wider.
If you read to get something rather than encounter something, you'll just be frustrated.
If you believe you've already got it figured out... you might as-well do like the rest of the world and read something that already affirms that which you believe.
But if you're hungry, if there's something underneath and behind the wall... trying to get out... if there are things you've been longing to put words to in life and the universe but haven't been able to... if you really want to grow out of the façade of dualism...
Take the plunge!

Take a Sabbath
I'm not going to expound on this right here anymore than... It's for you, it's part of your natural rhythm, it will make the other 6 days phenomenal, and I've been doing it on Saturdays for 10 years now and there's no going back!

Alrighty then... This last one will probably sound a little old school. Millennials are now facing this issue in droves... and with increasing anxiety and depression everywhere you look I believe this is more important than ever.
Find a Faith Community
I know first hand how religion in the last century has left a generation just wanting to be left out of everything that resembles "church." I get it. It's no mystery how we've ended up with the Rise of the Nones. Also now we've filled our lives with a pretty much constant stream of stuff and media and work.... to the point that when it comes to "carving out" more time to be a part of a community like this... it sounds exhausting. Now what's happened is we've filled our lives with a bunch of things that don't matter and everything that does matter doesn't seem to fit.
If we will make the choice to be a part of a faith community and reorient our relationship to work, stuff, and Sabbath... we will find that what we've needed all along was healthy community. Life is not meant to be lived isolated but in the sharing of all things and with purpose.

I believe there is no such thing as real community outside a Jesus oriented community... if you are jiving with any of the things said earlier in this article... I believe you're jivin' with Jesus! That is what the gospel is about... Loving God... and so Loving each other. Loving the World.
We were actually created to do that together.

Have a great 2018!