The Kitchen...

I like to cook. I love to eat good food. Food that is prepare well. Food Channel type food. I like the preparation, the design, the eating. What I love the most about cooking is being with cooks. I love the conversation. It is a small world but it is global. Every where has cooks, even the third world. That says something. Even where there is poverty someone's cookin'.

My grandmother Biaselli was a great cook. She would fix an incredible Thanksgiving meal. (Any meal was incredible but since she lived in Philadelphia and I live on the west coast, I only got out there for holidays.) It would last for two days. Thursday night was the Traditional, turkey and such. But Friday would be the South Philly Italian feast. That is where I discovered pepperoni loaf. A cinnamon roll type meal, where instead of cinnamon and sugar rolled into the middle, you put in an egg-provolone cheese-garlic-basil-pepperoni mixture. Let bake in a loaf then cut into slices. Maybe include a bowl of tomato gravy for dipping. We also had Braciola, a rolled stuffed flank steak cooked in tomato sauce, not to forget all the sausages, ravioli, spaghetti, bread, wine, antipasti, and incredible desserts...

But the best ingredients of any Italian meal is the conversation in the kitchen and then around the table. In the kitchen the conversation is a bit quieter, more intimate. "How are things?" type conversations. Relationship conversation. Not for the public but for the kitchen. Now the Italian dinner table is a different story. It is at full volume! Passion. Intensity. Laughter and opinions fly. Pillaging of the serving dishes is expected. You attack, get your plate full, then you eat and talk. Lots of laughing. Lots of arguments. Life. Forks with ravioli on the end pointed in accusation. Good theater.

Then back in to the kitchen to do the dishes. More conversation and the intimacy is back. Washing and drying, standing right next to each other at the sink kind of conversation. Topics that started before the meal or hinted about over the cheesecake. In the old days the kitchen was occupied by the women of the family. Now it is a combination of both sexes. Same conversations though. Even men can get intimate in the kitchen (don't go there). Lives shared between participants. It is more than the food that nourishes.

The kitchen...

Right Jamie? Right Dan?

Warning: Outside processing!!!

I am wondering about leadership these days. I was invited to be a part of a leadership weekend for some college students and it is causing me to think a lot about being an agent of change. I think that leadership should affect change. Can change take place and what does it take to make it last? It is easy to make changes. Run your car into the side of a building and you have made a change. But is it the kind of change that is needed. At what point do we make a change that causes a new course to be followed. Does it take new personnel, new facilities, new clothes, new location, new job, or what? I am wondering these things because I need a change, I am at the end of me again. I think Calvin Crest is at the end of me. Something needs to change in order for something new to take place. Does it call for a new person in my position or a new position in my person? Do I need to change? Do I leave and do what I do at a different place or do I change, by allowing this location to facilitate some of the change?

The easy thing to do is leave. But the change needs to take place within me first before it can take place outside of me. Maybe the outside doesn't need to change, only me. I will start there. I need to lose weight, so what has to change in order for that to happen? I can read books, go to seminars, talk about it with friends and family, but will that create the change needed? Change doesn't come from talk, it begins with talk. I have to begin action on my own.

Real change cannot be cosmetic I think it has to affect the DNA. We have consumed so much and have so much at our disposal that if we don't like something we quit and go to the next place until we find something we approve of. Moving on is easier than staying and making change. We find that the easiest thing to do is move on. Change the environment, location, personnel, menu, consumption, conversation, but do not change the behavior, the mind, or the heart. We need to change our hearts, align our thinking patterns, and reach deep into our soul to make real change. It requires commitment to do that which is best, that which is right. Virtue. Regardless of the cost. Am I still willing to pay the price of change.

A real fear in me right now is not change but decline. Decline into a cynic. A sideline sitter. A half empty philosopher. Put back on a suit. Take out my earring. Start a comb-over. Give up on the youth. Wear more polyester. Watch Dr. Phil and Oprah. Drink lite beer.

Today I read from 2 Peter 1 and I want to live a life of abundance in grace and peace. That means watching for the potential for change in me and seeing the potential of change in others. Believe in the second chance. Believe in the possibility of redemption. Peace is being in harmony with grace. Not fighting it but moving with it. As a body surfer moves with the waves. Harmony. It is different than conforming. It is having a place and allowing others their place.

I don't know if this makes any sense but I wanted to get it out of my head for a little while. I posted it last night but it was too confusing so I retrieved it and worked on it for a while this afternoon...

A new season begins...

I went back to work yesterday for the first time since summer. Still a bit pneumoniatic but it was so good to be back with my friends. I truly missed them. I missed the conversations that we have. I miss the smell, the walks between the office and the dining hall. I missed thinking in a certain way that had to include the Kingdom in to my thoughts.

When I was home, sick and wasting away (actually I gained 10 pounds because I ate a lot of ice cream), I couldn't engage my thoughts with anyone else's. Blogging is alright but it doesn't provide any stimulus because it is a one way conversation. Thoughts need to co-mingle with other thoughts and build a corporate thought. A monster thought. One with wings. Thoughts that causes others to think. Thoughts that have a control room ready to launch the action.

Many thoughts are going to the Gulf Coast. I went to Von's yesterday to buy some ice cream and cookie dough to make some "pazuki" for dessert and some non essential items like vegetables. Out front there was a table with four or five women sitting around and behind it selling baked goods for relief for the flood victims. They had great smiles on their faces. Thoughts turned to action turned to smiles. I bought a cupcake. I helped. I gained another pound for the flood victims.

I wonder what thoughts we have today will turn to anything tomorrow...

Medical update...

Went to the doctor's office today for a follow-up. I am on the mend and now he has recommended that I see another specialist regarding my sleep behavior or lack there of. Been down that road before. It is time to lose the weight again. Not in the mood to start right now but will shortly when I get back into the swing of a consistent schedule.

I also spent some time with my friend Sherri Weidenhoefer. This is always a time of sharpening. I am profoundly grateful for our friendship.

Well time to go to bed. See you in a few hours...

Every summer we choose an MVP...

This summer it is this guy!

Every Friday night we end the Junior High and High School camps with a dance. (Yes, Presbyterians believe you are not going to hell if you dance, only if you support Israel.) And we would start off the dance with a few songs to attract the campers, they would start milling around and a few would dance. But when we played The Numa Numa Song (Dragostea Din Tei) people would go crazy, everyone dancing! And every time someone would come up to me and tell me about some guy on the internet who danced to this song. So it took me a few months to find him and when I did I watched it over and over again.

Mai ya haha!!!

Now that we have the waitresses loving us again...

I don't want us to get caught up in the issue of how we are at restaurants, that wasn't really the point. (Although it is a simple thing to change!) What the point was and hopefully is how do we live our lives. "By faith" is how. But what does that mean. What is the difference between living by faith and living by knowledge. Many of us spend a lot of time learning about being a christian. If we start doing what we have been reading about we should at this point in Christiandum we should be purpose-driven, wild at heart, romancing the heck out of the sacred and our spouses, keeping promises, asking what would Jesus do, emerging as a new kind of christian, not being left behind, knowing what orthodoxy is and being generous with it, listening to blue jazz, drinking pura vida coffee, telling our stories. But we aren't. We aren't. We read, we talk, but we don't do anything different after we have read a book. We are a culture based on what the culture tells us we are rather than doing what we know to be right. We do not live out that which we know to be true because I don't think we have faith in what is true anymore. Many know the vocabulary, but they don't know the heart or the voice.

If you are in some kind of leadership role where you have influence into someone else's life what would your goals be for this year? How did you arrive at that goal? Does it seem like the right thing to do or is it what you are hearing God telling you to do it? If we step out because we think we are hearing God's heart for us then we are walking in faith. Are we just going to continue doing the same old and know that it didn't work the past five books we read so we should read the next hottest thing that someone is getting paid a lot of money to come up with this one because his or her last two book people bought and people will usually buy the next two if the first one is any good but the next one is usually not as good as the first but we still buy it anyway because he is a nationally known writer and is very successful so he must be a tool of God or at least by Zondervan.

I am hearing God say, "come to Me like you did when you first fell in love with Me... Come with a broken and repentant heart and worship Me in spirit and truth." I am going to ask more questions, as I did in the beginning. I want to come with an expectancy of awe instead of a callous and jaundice agenda of out-do Yourself than what I have experienced in the past. I want to come humbly and worship with what I know to be true rather than what the latest praise song is telling me to say, I want to bow my head for a while and listen instead of having an opinion to give Him about the way things are going. I need to sit next to someone I don't know but don't like and listen to their story. I going to quit pretending...

Faith is messy...

I know many do not like Annie Lamont because of her messy theology. She is out there. I agree with some of her thoughts and disagree with others, but I also do that with many others. I am thankful I can do that and not be fried a heretic, though I fear I am becoming one.

The Annie Lamont’s quote about faith in uncertainty reminds me that I use to think I had the answers and with pride could take people on in debates and conversations. I loved the debate. I studied the answers. I got into arguments in coffee shops and blogs, to get people to know Jesus. It was mostly so that they would know that I knew my stuff. Not Jesus. It seemed love lost to being right.

It is nice when all the answers fit neatly in the little box, it doesn’t take any faith to do that. The problem lies when we start having questions that don’t fit quietly into our box. I realize I didn’t have enough questions. That is when faith comes in. I have gotten pretty comfortable in my life until new things started to come into it and I didn’t have the answers to the new questions starting to arise. I didn’t start questioning the Bible I started questioning the teachers. I heard small minds with large vocabularies speak of the things that began to exclude people. People that because of circumstances and spiritual issues were deemed outside of the Kingdom. Easy answers such as, “if they are going through that they cannot be Christians.”

Being right isn’t necessarily being righteous. I remember once sitting in a coffeeshop having a “Bible study” with a group of men, talking about faith and works. One guy was saying that we are only saved by faith and another guy who was Catholic was talking about faith without works is dead, therefore it is works that brings faith to life. Scripture being thrown about like it was undercooked pasta. Emotions heated, voices raised, coffee cooled – a great evangelistic experience. At the end of it nothing was accomplished except we spent all the answers we had and no glory was manifested. We just argued. Lives were not changed, no one was edified, I don’t think love was ever given, just answers. Knowledge exchange. I thought we were doing something mighty until I talked to the waitress later who said she hates waiting on men having Bible studies because they demand more and leave less tips. She wasn’t impressed with the knowledge sitting at the table. That conversation did nothing to the waitress except tie up a table for an hour and a half. I know many of my friends love to “get into it” but I cannot do it anymore. When the conversation becomes about the conversation I don’t want to be a part of it.

Faith is messy. Its when we know with certainty it gets tidy. But trust, when it has been violated, leaves tattered edges. When bad things happen to good people, we have to walk in faith. Faith is walking with poop on the souls of your shoes and continuing to step boldly with Jesus. Faith is an old slave spiritual sung without any evidence of change in the landowner’s heart. We walk in faith that God so loved the world… even after we get ripped off from Christians again.

Faith, hope, and love have very little to do with knowledge, they requires commitment. Sticking it through to the end even when it is tough and you don’t like your boss.

Sleepless in Coarsegold...

I am having a hard times staying asleep these days. The time-stamp indicates that.

I think I like the early morning over the late night. The early morning seems to be telling the truth, not as much humanity but more rocks and trees crying out to the glory of God. His creation speaks of the truth instead of the fickleness of humanity. The night time is filled with the activity of people looking for something to do, the morning is filled with truth about who we are. The morning brings potential, creativity, and mindfulness. Possibilities and planning, promise and devotion, "what ifs" and dreams dawns light on another day.

What wonder, relationship, terror, peace, healing, sickness, idea, death, creation, life... will begin today?

Two quotes stolen from Jamie...

"The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns." --Anne Lamott

"But you have to pray. You have to listen to the voice who calls you the beloved, because otherwise you will run around begging for affirmation, for praise, for success. And then you're not free." --Henri Nouwen

Both are very relevant to me right now...

Chest pains...

Well, the good news is that I didn't have a heart attack, the bad news is that I have pneumonia, which meant I couldn't go to Pepperdine this weekend. Bummer...