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Did you say my name?

February 22, 2008 by stephbarrett

It’s a wet Sunday after a Big Game, and everyone is at Town Center trying to get soup and a hunk of bread at Panera. They are also trying to get a seat. I find one, probably because of the view it has of the overflowing trash can. But I’m not here for the view, I am here for the peace, which can be relative and to me means noise I don’t  have to deal with personally.

I have my bread hunk, soup and my book, and I am only somewhat aware of the stream of people stopping at the trash can. They stop, weigh the look of the towering stack of plates and napkins against their ability to add their own plates and napkins there like a backwards game of pick-up-sticks.

Eventually, I am deep into my chapter and the noise tapers off. The nearby door opens, swings shut,and whoever it is stops in front of the trash can. There is a  long pause, followed by an even longer sigh. It has started to sprinkle rain again. I glance up.

Everyone has gone and it looks as if the Big Game has been re-played at Panera, and a lone girl in an apron is left to deal with it.

I get back into my book, only slightly aware of her struggle as she attempts to get the bag out of the can. It goes against all the laws of physics and gravity and any other laws like that for this girl to get that bag un-sunctioned from that heavy, unwieldy metal can.

“JESUS!”

It is more of a statement than anything else. I wince in a way that is more an apology to Jesus than anything else. I take it personally, you see. Mid-wince I am interrupted by what feels like a hand, cuffing me across the top of my head.

She’s talking to YOU.

I get up in a hurry and go beside her and we get the bag out of the can, with the top of my head still tingling and both of us getting wet in the rain.

I go away thinking about who really needs to apologize to who here…about the fact that I am not here for the view, I am here for peace…and mostly about how, more than anything else, it’s time for me to start taking the name of Jesus personally.

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I Got Nothin’

October 26, 2007 by stephbarrett

On the sidewalk outside a Saint Augustine t-shirt shop, the kids are hot, clamoring for cool. Over their heads, my girlfriend, Martha, motions for me to take a moment, and she will take them inside. There are saint-this-and-thats everywhere in Saint Augustine. Now there is Saint Martha of Six Kids in a t-shirt shop.

I stand there, shading my eyes, watching people stream by. Saints, sinners, who can say. Unless you can believe their t-shirts.

This guy walks by—slightly gray, backpack, worn jeans, flip flops—a college prof, maybe.

In large letters, his t-shirt says:

I
Bring
Nothing
To
The
Table


I jerk around to see if Rich caught it. He and Drew are trying to explain a double-entendre to our nine-year-old boys. I opt to stand outside that hazard as well.

I
Bring
Nothing
To
The
Table

Prof is gone down the street. The words on his shirt are not.

You know that everyone is good at something. They preach it on the Disney Channel and in Oprah Magazine, and then there’s that parable about the servant left with the talents to put to good use. It’s our birthright, the indellible mark of God—creative and cerebral powers we get just by being created human.

And, just by being human, we have a mark, as well. You know what I’m talking about. You have one. Weird, how it morphs between the shape of an exclamation point and question mark. With the good comes the bad and the ugly.

IS
IT
GOOD
ENOUGH?

We wear it around like a t-shirt, one size fits all. Pride, the fabric of our lives.

There is always going to be, at some table, somewhere, someone who brings something better. Way, way better. Like Donald Miller can bring it, writing about stuff like this. He’s got this great analogy in Searching for God Knows What involving a scenario they discussed in schools in the seventies where people get stuck in a life boat together. Not all of them can stay in the life boat or it will go down. They have various personal powers as well as professional ones. Who gets to stay in the boat? (No wonder the seventies were so… seventies.)

This is why I get to stay in the life boat. This is what I bring to the table.

It’s in movies and books and TV dramas and Oprah keeps trying to make us feel as if it is good, and yet—

Is
It
Good
ENOUGH?

I’ve been a Christian most my life, and somewhere along the way, for me, “it” became about being spiritually cerebral—speaking, teaching, and facilitating groups, especially Bible study groups. I got that if you can “bring it” to women’s Bible study groups, you’ve got a place at the table, for sure. Being deep, I thought, equals being spiritual. Somewhere I forgot that pursuing “it” is not the same thing as pursuing God. Spiritualizing things—the iceberg I chose not to see.

Then, a circumstance comes along and rocks the boat. Someone comes along who is better at “it,” deeper. Powers a level above. Positive feedback fades. Hang on there… If you’ll just let me, if I could take a moment, you will see what I have to offer. I am worthy of the boat!

I run around trying to stick my fingers in all the leaks, and there is this loud, happy band music playing in the background and I realize it’s not happy, it’s sick, and holy cow—I am on the Titanic!

Jesus has saved me from myself in this. I have had an awakening that began with, “Help me!” I have heard His words and listened to His life in a way I never did before, which can only be attributed to His promise to answer such a cry. Louie Giglio’s i am not, but i know I AM, the analogies and observations of Donald Miller, the small but mighty Humility by Andrew Murray, music from Passion, the spiritual mid-wifery of my soul-sisters, and the holding-of-my-hand-all-the-way by my husband have been a part of my resuscitation.

And yet, Jesus said there would be days like this—times that I lose sight, begin to forget, and walk around with that vaguely familiar sinking feeling. So, on one of these days outside a t-shirt shop, Prof walks by with his t-shirt, and the grace and truth of it speaks to me in buzzing, popping neon and I want to tell everyone. Which is what I’m doing:

I
BRING
NOTHING
TO
THE
TABLE!

Behind my sunglasses the tears come. Relief floods me, and yet there is no sinking. There is floating, there is bouyancy.

I bring nothing to the table. Nothing that can save me. Or you. I can’t even take care of my own pride problem. Left to myself, I want humility so I can feel good about being humble. I’ve got nothing—nothing of my own.

It’s all Him. It’s all about Him, for Him. What was I thinking? My creative cerebral powers are not who I am. I am His. I can even lead Bible studies, free.

I am free from myself. I have peace at the table and grace for my fellow humans there, and rest for my soul, and even the hope of glory. He is Good. And being His is enough.

I
Bring
Nothing
To
The
Table

As Prof walks down the street, I can almost see it, written on his back—on the back of the stark truth—uproarious grace.

And
It’s
Gonna
Be
All Right.

Saints, sinners… who can say. Unless you can beleive their t-shirts.

“I got nothing of my own to give to you,
but this light that shines on me,
shines on you…
And it’s gonna be all right…”
from Stars
David Crowder

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Don’t Be That Monk

May 23, 2007 by stephbarrett

The kids and I were reading about monks and their ways not too long ago. The kids were unfazed. For them, times of silence and contemplation are associated with crimes committed against Mom’s sanity. I, on the other hand, was giddy.

Quiet. Study. Contemplation. Quiet. Study. Writing. Quiet. All by candlelight.

When I actually began to chant, the kids asked if we were done here, and they exited to play XBOX. Loudly. I kept reading.

It seems that the first of the monkish breed decided to live away from everyone and everything else in places like deserts and even up in trees. This way, they were fully accessible to the things of God. They couldn’t be distracted. This, they believed, was the way to be good God-followers. Of course, this made them inaccessible to anyone or anything else.

I am that monk.

Different times, different trappings, but a similar belief. I feel sheepish admitting it, but sheepish is a good place for me to be for awhile.

Not long ago, I believed that I had discovered the inside track on being a good God-follower, too. It was really very simple. Knowledge of the things of God is good. So all the studies and all the classes taken and taught and all the time logged at church and my familiarity with all topics spiritual translated into my being good—a good God-follower. Nobody ever said this was the standard by which you should measure yourself or that one even existed. I picked it up all by myself. And if I were honest, I would have said that this made me deep.

Now, I would say, this belief made me dangerous.

Could “too much of a good thing” apply here? It’s Bible knowledge I’m talking about, after all. No. More likely, it’s just not enough of the greatest thing that is the problem—love. God Himself says that I could know everything there is for me to know and still miss the point of it all. Knowledge without love…

The perk of the whole knowledge thing was that it came easily to me. Loving God—I can do that. But loving people would be easier if it weren’t for the people. The neighbor across the street who’s a lot like me—investing in her isn’t hard, it just the time factor. The neighbor down the street who really pushes my buttons—that invokes the “I don’t want to invest there” factor.

This is where knowledge and love need to mesh together to move things into the realm of the extraordinary.

Look at what happened with those monks up in the trees. Somewhere along the way, their idea of being good God-followers was transformed. They came down and got together in communities. They still did all their monkish things because they loved God and wanted to know Him. But they started doing them in a way that said they were accessible. The idea must’ve been communicated that, even if you hadn’t been up in a tree or weren’t anything like a monk, you could still be around a monk. You could feel invited in and helped, maybe in ways beyond your original intention—maybe in ways that led to your own transformation. The history books say that these former tree-dwellers changed history and rescued many in a very dark time. Extraordinary.

I need to be part of a community of God-followers where love, the greatest thing, is the driving thing. Where knowledge is turned into action. Where God’s sweeping search and rescue mission is taken up and owned. Where everybody is invited, included, and important. Where love for God and people moves things into the realm of the extraordinary.

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