Never underestimate the power of Jesus to speak via the iTunes shuffle algorythm
Posted by bryanzug - 2011/07/07
Here are a few of the best questions adrift in my head
Who’s driving this airplane? Did I live hard enough?
Is it gonna rain? How well have I loved?
How well have I loved?
…
Let’s walk through the jungle, put your arm in my arm
Should this ground start to crumble, we’ll come to no harm
Lean on me if you stumble, ‘neath the bright shining stars
and though the whole world may crumble, we know who we are
we know who we areQuestions by Mike Scott (of The Waterboys)
Roo & Tug —
It’s been a rough couple of months.
Jesus is teaching me to believe the best of the beautiful people around me, especially when we disagree on substantial important things.
He’s teaching me those ancient odd rhythms of being humble while not hiding from conflict — reminding me of who I am even when I am filled with doubt.
He is giving me the encouragement I need to dive deep even when it is very very hard and there is no guarantee that there will be short term happy endings all around.
And while that all sounds “worth it” in theory, I’ve found myself doubting whether this deep desire of mine to walk as a “poet + warrior + magician” is more than I can handle — whether this dream of mine to live a life alchemized of passion and grace is more pipe dream than possibility.
I wonder whether it is just a mirage that will annoy me until all the bent things are made straight in some far off age to come.
And just when I am about to get swallowed up in my doubt, Jesus shows up in the strangest of places — reminding me that these things are no illusion.
Just the other day He showed up in an iTunes algorithm when this song “Questions” by Mike Scott (of the Waterboys) shuffled into my ears.
I was heads down, cranking out the work, when all of a sudden I heard Scott’s familiar voice belt out…
“Here are a few of the best questions adrift in my head… Who’s driving this airplane? Did I live hard enough? Is it gonna rain? How well have I loved? How well have I loved?”
And then he followed it up with this ringer…
“Though the whole world may crumble, we know who we are, we know who we are”
Exactly the reminder I needed of a few important things…
1) These checksums of the self are very important inquiries.
Am I living as the best version of myself that Jesus has enabled me to be?
Am I at peace enough to risk?
Am I loving enough that the world around me gets a hint of the thankfulness that inhabits my heart?
2) A joy that trumps circumstances is real.
There is a peace that supersedes any scene I find myself in. Something beyond an identity of the moment, a transcendent unshakeable name that enables great wide living in this life.
3) That anytime I begin to doubt any of this, Jesus shows up.
He drops into the scene to remind me that there is a great deep immersive safety in this wild ride we are on.
My great hope for you both is that you would deeply explore these things on your own when the opportunity presents itself.
Much love —
Daddio
Questions by Mike Scott (of The Waterboys)
Written in London, May 1996, and appears on the album “Still Burning”Who’s the man with the potion
dressed in velvet and gloves
causing grief and commotion
talking ’bout love?
What on earth is he thinking?
Where on earth has he been?
Why do I feel like I’m sinking?
What does it mean?Let’s walk through the jungle
Put your arm in my arm
and should this ground start to crumble
we’ll come to no harmI once had a coat I was proud of
I wore that coat a long time
Just when the music got loudest
I left it behind
I could pretend that I’m dreaming
but one thing I just can’t see
Who on earth am I meaning
when I say me?Let’s walk through the jungle
Put your arm in my arm
and should this ground start to crumble
we’ll come to no harmWhat’s around the corner?
What’s around the bend?
What’s around the corner?
What’s around the bend?Questions upon question upon questions
crowding round the side of my bed
Here are just a few of the best ones
adrift in my head
Who’s driving this airplane?
Did I live hard enough?
Is it gonna rain
and how well have I loved?
How well have I loved?Let’s walk through the jungle
Put your arm in my arm
and should this ground start to crumble
we’ll come to no harm
Lean on me if you stumble
‘neath the bright shining stars
and though the whole world may crumble
we know who we are
we know who we are
St. Paul (Hewson aka Bono) on the difference between grace and karma
Posted by bryanzug - 2011/07/06
Roo & Tug —
One of my favorite missionaries of all time is a fellow named Paul Hewson. When he was a kid, his friend Guggi gave him the nickname Bono. That’s what most folks call him these days.
He and I share a deep affection for a faith of Mere Christianity that plays itself out in the narrative of the public square. We identify with a circle of friends like G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Mother Teresa, and MLK.
One of my favorite riffs of his concerns how the natural way of the world around us is completely upended by Jesus — how the reap what you sow rule of the universe known as Karma is completely turned on its head by the Grace of Jesus.
I’ve pasted the full quote below.
I especially like the part where he describes how love interrupts this natural devolution of things.
That’s pretty cool.
Much love —
Daddio
Excerpt from the book “Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas“
Bono: …the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between Grace and Karma.
Assayas: I haven’t heard you talk about that.
Bono: I really believe we’ve moved out of the realm of Karma into one of Grace…
You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics–in physical laws–every action is met by an equal or an opposite one.
It’s clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I’m absolutely sure of it.
And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that “as you reap, you will sow†stuff.
Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.
Assayas: I’d be interested to hear that.
Bono: That’s between me and God. But I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I’d be in deep shit.
It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace.
I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don’t have to depend on my own religiosity.
How I came to follow Jesus Part 1: A Funny Start
Posted by bryanzug - 2011/02/21
How can he walk across a field salted by the retreat of the last glacier with countless stones and pick out arrowheads?
Why can the human eye detect a tiny artificial form lost in nature’s torn and turbulent cosmos, a needle of data in a haystack of noise?
It is a sudden, sparking connection between minds, he supposes. The arrowheads are human things broken loose from humanity, their organic parts perished, their mineral forms enduring—crystals of intention.
Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon
: : :
Roo & Tug —
The story of how I came to follow Jesus has a funny start, a puzzling middle, and what I imagine will be a chuckling eye watered end.
First you should know this about how it began:
God tricked me into the whole thing. And here’s how He did it.
: : :
I was eight years old and I hated doing yard work. Really really hated it.
We had a big yard and lived in the desert, so the work was hard. But mostly I hated it because I was lazy. Television and fort building were much more interesting to me than subduing my particular section of creation.
My best friend at the time was Doug Maddi. I always liked his name because when you reverse the first two letters it sounded like “mug daddy”. This is very funny when you are eight.
Growing up, no one in my family practiced any particular kind of faith (a phenom that Richard Hughes, one of my Pepperdine professors, would later identify to me as ‘civil religion‘). While a vague sense of God, justice, and the golden rule floated around the house, I had never been to a church of any kind.
But when I’d spend the night at Doug’s house I would go with him to Sunday School.
This is funny when you think about it, because Doug’s parents did not go to church either. But his yard was a lot smaller than ours, so I don’t think the yard work thing figured into his motivation.
So on Sunday mornings, we’d walk to the Methodist Sunday school a few blocks away, the one with a 1960’s hippy Jesus “One Way to God” finger painted on the chimney of the Sunday school house.
When I realized I could get out of more and more yard work, I began going on my own every Sunday morning.
: : :
I should also mention here that there was a girl involved.
Her name was Mim. I had had a crush on her for the longest time and she was best friends with Doug’s sister. Her parents taught some of the Sunday School classes in the hippy Jesus building. So when we went to church, I got to hang out with Mim and her parents.
It didn’t really matter that Mim was not into me, because I was pretty good at memorizing passages of the Bible.
In her parent’s class, if you were good at that, they’d compliment you a lot and take you to Knott’s Berry Farm a couple of times a year.
There weren’t a lot of compliments floating around my house at the time, so I’m pretty sure that figured into my motivation as well.
At Pepperdine, when my sociology professor, Larry Keene, later pointed out that we tend to like people who first like us — something he called the junior-high-do-I-like-you-I-don’t-know-do-you-like-me law of love — I wondered whether I had started following Jesus for the wrong reasons. I’ll riff on that one later.
But at that time it’s safe to say I was in it for the trifecta of laziness, a girl, and some compliments.
If it weren’t for the white haired old lady, I might have gotten away with it.
: : :
Before we broke out into the group with Mim’s parents, all the classes would gather to sing those songs — the ones that introduce you to big themes that you never really doubt as a kid.
We sang “Jesus loves the little children” and I got saturated with the idea that God is good and loving.
We sang “Father Abraham had many sons” and I got initiated into the notion that God had been up to something intentional for a very long time.
We sang “The horse and rider fell into the sea” and I got steeped with the sense that God is a just protector who does not abandon His children.
The lady who led the singing was the white haired great-grandma flavor of old.
In between the songs, she would tell us the basics of the faith — the things C.S. Lewis calls “Mere Christianity“.
She said that we had all shaken a fuck-you-fist at God when we did things that were wrong (my paraphrase), and in that we were at an epic impasse with this holy just Creator.
This was news to me because I thought I was only shaking a fuck-you-fist at my brother and my parents when they acted like idiots.
Was this grey haired old lady actually calling out as arrogance something that was merely an observation of the obvious?
How could I be the one on the wrong side of the equation? I was the good son. The one who went to church. The one with straight A’s. The one with all the cub scout badges.
But the story did not stop there.
The grey haired piano playing gramma told us about how Jesus died on a cross and rose from the dead to pay the debt owed to God for our rebellion.
She told of Jesus as a great rescuer who had come to save us from ourselves (and not primarily from external forces or others).
: : :
Over the course of about 6 months in 1978 I was an eight year old who wrestled these angels.
As we built up to Christmas, I began asking more questions of my family — why we celebrated Christmas when we didn’t really believe in this Jesus as rescuer.
That was the first time I remember asking my dad questions he had no real answer for.
But it was obvious to me that something had happened millennia before that had caused entire cultures to orient themesleves to the events in question.
If the baby Jesus was able to stock my shelves with this many Star Wars toys, there was definitely something afoot at the root of the story.
These are the connections an eight year old makes. These are the pattern recognitions of a light saber obsessed boy.
So on Christmas Eve, having just turned nine, I remember praying something along these lines…
“God, I’m not sure how all of this fits together, but I figure that if a world who does not really acknowledge you gets as worked up as Americans do at Christmas, then there may actually be something to this King of the Universe deal.”
“So I figure I’ll hedge my bets and ask you to be my Lord.”
“Good night. I’ll see you in the morning amidst the wrapping paper.”
More soon about that puzzling middle.
Much love —
Daddio
Sing through seas
Posted by bryanzug - 2010/09/26
Far too far for us to wander
Will this tempest last much longer?
Much too much for us to weather
Sink or swim we’ll go together
Without warning without reason
Out of breath and out of season
Summer rain and Winter warming
Hold on tight the worst is forming
Far Too Far, Stenobot (with Jeff Suffering)
Roo & Tug —
I am up early and find myself weeping for someone I’ve never met — A baby who was due to meet their mom and dad right about now.
It’s one of those times —
when words
fall
so very
short.
: : :
Sometimes I encounter these situations where the only response that feels remotely appropriate is a deep, ground shaking, visceral reaction — These moments where my heart cries out and my eyes leak.
At times, this is a response of great sorrow. At others, it is a response of great joy.
And the only thing I know to do in these moments is sing.
So that’s what I do.
: : :
Through grief,
Through joy,
I stand on cliffs and sing out storms.
Through famines,
Through feasts,
I cling to a staff that sings through seas.
: : :
The soundtrack this morning comes in the form of Stenobot from our friends Andy and Mr. Jeff.
That song, Far Too Far, is an electronica ass kicking wail — a gut wrench mnemonic reminder that midnight is where these days begin.
I won’t be hitting shuffle any time soon.
Go click play on that track right now.
Can you feel it?
My hunch is —
This is what it looks like to mourn and rejoice with those who.
If I were you, I would practice singing like this whenever possible.
Much love —
Daddio
: : :
Far Too Far, Stenobot (with Jeff Suffering)
Far too far for us to wander
Will this tempest last much longer?
Much too much for us to weather
Sink or swim we’ll go together
Without warning without reason
Out of breath and out of season
Summer rain and Winter warming
Hold on tight the worst is forming
Bracing for the Western Wind
Torn apart and wearing thin
Take me away
To the edge and back again
No beginning and no end
Take me away
Fight the storm from deep inside us
’til the chaos has subsided
Come tomorrow hope will find us
Breaking over the horizon
Conquering the Western Wind
To the edge and back again
A Good Friday / Easter diversity challenge to my friends from other meta-physical (or materialist) tribes
Posted by bryanzug - 2009/04/10
Roo & Tug —
It is Good Friday / Easter weekend here in Seattle and I wanted to invite some of our neighbors to church. Not to be converted to Christianity, but to gain a deeper understanding of the the big “S” story arc that informs who we are as a people.
This seemed like as good a place as any to post it.
Much love —
Daddio
: : :
A Good Friday / Easter diversity challenge to my friends from other meta-physical (or materialist) tribes
Amigos and Amigas —
It’s a very humbling experience when someone graciously lets me know that I don’t know what the fuck I am talking about. There is a kind of love wrapped up in that sort of exchange that runs deeper than most of the surface levels we usually connect on.
One context where that has happened to me in the past is when I’ve made drive by comments about tribes and sub-cultures that I really have never spent any substantial time interacting with or trying to understand.
Gay tribes. Muslim tribes. Online community tribes. Blue tribes. Red tribes.
You get the idea.
I’ve learned a ton and become a much more generous person by meeting and getting to know real people (with real names!) from tribes very different than my own.
And since it is Good Friday / Easter weekend, I thought I’d issue a little challenge of my own.
If you are not a Christian, go to church for a Good Friday service and an Easter service.
Most Christians agree that Easter cannot be understood if it is divorced from the horror of Good Friday. And if you have no appreciation for the horror of Good Friday, and that Christians believe that we are personally responsible for that horror, well, as they say, you don’t understand much.
So please come. Seriously. 4 hours over 1 weekend doesn’t seem like a lot to ask to me.
The Zug’s will be at our church in downtown Seattle on Friday at 7 and on Sunday at 9. Look for the geek film crew with the tripod in the front and come say hello.
Much love to you all —
Bryan
Notes from our community gathering: How do we submit to ungodly authority?
Posted by bryanzug - 2009/03/08
Roo & Tug —
Here’s my mind map notes from our community gathering this AM. On how we submit to ungodly authority. Very important and rich topic.
Much love —
Daddio
Taking notes is my hack for paying close attention
Posted by bryanzug - 2009/03/01
Roo & Tug —
I’m always trying out different ways to take notes.
Note taking, for me, has always increased my retention of information. It’s one of the hacks I do to make sure I’m not just being passive as I sit in a seminar, or lecture, or sermon, etc.
One of my favorite ways to take notes is with what is called a mind map — a visual way to map out information and show how various ideas and bits are related to one another.
I’ve been using a new mind map tool the last couple of weeks called MindMeister, that let’s you share your maps via the web (kinda like a YouTube video).
So I thought I’d show you the notes I’m taking this morning at our church campus in downtown Seattle.
Here they are.
Much love —
Daddio
Jesus takes a holiday
Posted by bryanzug - 2009/02/15
Roo & Tug —
This is one of my favorite questions —
What do you suppose Jesus’ favorite holiday is?
It is fun to ask in a group and watch things play out.
Almost every time, someone quick hands the buzzer — Christmas! Easter!
“Naw”, I say, “don’t think so — Those are work days for Jesus. No way he’d pick those.”
The adults usually look at me with some variation of an “OK smartass” grin — but the kids are different.
“Really?”, they ask, leaning in with all sincerity.
“If it’s not Christmas or Easter, then what is it?”
That’s when I tell them it has to be the 4th of July.
: : :
After the guffaws die down, I continue.
The 4th of July is obviously Jesus’ favorite holiday — not because of the fireworks or a “God bless America” twinkle in His eyes.
Nope.
The airtight proof that the 4th of July is jesus’ favorite holiday comes down to one indisputable fact —
God loves to BBQ.
The most arresting story in the entire Bible is that of the prodigal son — the boy who squanders his inheritance, is knocked to his senses while grazing in a pig trough, and turns back home.
The story up to that point is standard issue Sunday School 101, but then God throws in a twist (just to make sure we are paying attention).
He relays the reaction of the father, his response when he saw his son coming from a long way off. And his reaction was this —
He was overjoyed.
But, he was not “overjoyed” in an abstract, disembodied sort of way.
Not at all.
His joy was made manifest in this — He said, start the BBQ.
: : :
I once told that story in a small church my ex-wife and I were a part of in Cokedale, Colorado. (Yes, I was married once before mom — more on that later).
Folks in the church would measure out bits of Scripture and Story before we took weekly communion — framing that small meal we would share together with some particular rhythm of the Gospel that God had brought to bear on whoever was up there on a given week — reminding us of the practical ways God goes about hammer and tonging a people unto Himself.
Many months after my little table story, Doris Berry came up to tell me how her kids were still talking about Jesus’ favorite holiday — and how they had been convinced that it surely had to be the 4th of July.
: : :
I am some miles outside of Trinidad this morning. It is the summer of 1999 and I have a shovel in my hand.
Pastor Ed had suggested it, after I asked what I could do to help.
The message he left on July 5th said eight-year-old Stuart Berry had been killed. Hit by a car while on vacation.
My understanding is that Stuart died on the 4th of July.
: : :
I always feel helpless in times of tragedy. What do I do? What should I say?
I had a teacher once — in public high school — who would tell us things he probably shouldn’t have. But he was close to retirement and I don’t think he really cared if he got into trouble.
We were talking about what to do in times like these — and he said that the best thing he’d ever come across was to say this —
I know. I care. I am praying.
The instant he said it, I recognized the pattern — mourn with those who mourn.
Don’t try to solve. Don’t cliche it away.
Just weep with those who weep.
So when I heard about Stuart’s death, I sat down and wrote a letter to Dan, Doris and the kids.
I recounted the silly speculation — that inside story we shared about how Jesus is most at home at a BBQ — and how I imagined a place setting for a little boy at a picnic table with a checkered table cloth — where God was saying hello to my friend Stuart.
May the God of BBQ attend your sorrow.
: : :
It is funny how we do not know the effect we have on other people. “It’s a Wonderful Life” is Cliche with a capital “C” for a bunch of really good reasons.
A couple of days after helping dig Stuart’s grave at the church cemetery outside of Bon Carbo, I went to his funeral at the blue roof church in Cokedale.
I had not seen the Berry’s for many months. My first marriage ending had made my participation in that community too painful. So, the first time I had seen Doris for a long time was after the service.
The receiving line was very long. I felt really awkward.
I never know whether any of the stories I tell are a good use of time — or whether other people are just nodding along politely.
But when I got to the front of the line — I got a hug from the frailest of women.
I got a hug that felt like I was getting tackled by the starting center for the Broncos.
Doris wept and thanked me for the letter.
She said, “Thank you so much Bryan, I just read your note yesterday.”
“I was starting to forget Stuart’s face, and you reminded me what he looks like.”
: : :
I’ve got some other “that didn’t really happen, did it?” stories, that I will write down later. God has a way of kibutzing with my rational mind exactly when I need it most.
Keep an eye out for this in your own lives. I am pretty sure He is still active at coordinating Coincidences (with a capital C).
Much love —
Daddio
My Mother is an engineer, My Daddy is a healer
Posted by bryanzug - 2009/02/08
Roo & Tug —
There is a common theme to the works of art that move me. One that goes back to this notion Blaise Pascal wrote about ages ago.
Man is neither angel nor beast; and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the beast.
Blaise Pascal, Pensées (678). 1670
Whether it is a masterpiece like Magnolia, a song like Bruce Cockburn’s The Burden of the Angel Beast, Andrew Bird’s recurring theme of the Noble Beast, or The Choir’s rollicking list of the multiple personality disorders of our humanity in Kissers and Killers.
Peter Kreeft has a wonderful exposition on this idea of Pascal’s in his book “Christianity for Modern Pagans” where he writes —
The two fundamental human heresies, the two banes of modern philosophy, are animalism and angelism. Man has lost his place in the cosmos, the place between angel and beast.
Chesterton says, describing St. thomas’ philosophy of man, that “man is not like a balloon, floating free in the sky, nor like a mole, burrowing in the earth, but like a tree, with its roots firmly planted int he earth and its branches reaching up into the heavens.”
Some examples of “angelism”, which ignore the concrete earthy, embodied nature of man, are Platonism, Gnosticism, Pantheism and New age humanism. Some examples of “animalism”, which ignore the spiritual nature of man, are Marxism, Behaviorism, Freudianism, Darwinism, and Deweyan Pragmatism.
The two most life-changing revolutions in modern times were the scientific-industrial revolution, which taught man to live and think abstractly, like an angel; and the sexual revolution, which taught man to live and think like an animal. the first knows onlyt he head, the second knows only the hormones. Neither knows the heart.
The angelist reduces the world to a projection of the self; the animalist reduces the self to a species in the animal world. thus angelists find Pascal’s Christian man too animalistic, to earthy, to wretched; and the animalists find him too unearthkly, too idealistic, too hopeful.
Chesterton (in Orthodoxy) says:
Suppose we heard an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to his fatness, some lamented his leanness… One explanation… would be that he might be an off shape.
But there is another explanation. He might be the right shape. Outrageously tall men might feel him to be short. Very short men might feel him to be tall.
Modern philosophy has lost its sane anthropology because it has lost its cosmology. Man does not know himself because he does not know his place in the cosmos; he confuses himself with angel or animal. He is alienated, “lost in the cosmos”…
This is the main pattern I look for in life. The one I am always drawn back to. This question of right angles or curves. This idea of male or female. This notion of love or logic. This pitting of design against functionality.
And wherever the conversation starts to move beyond the words “either/or”, I stop and listen very closely.
When the answer begins to whisper the poetry of “both/and”, I stop to pitch camp for a bit.
When the question of “is it God” or “is it man” is answered with a distinct yes, well — it’s a pretty safe bet that you will find me smitten and hanging around.
Soooo, when you come across this pattern, ages from now, when your mother and I are gone — you can rest assured that we are in the room, nodding along and saying — hmmm, this here is something special.
Much, much, love —
Daddio
: : : : :
“Kissers And Killers” by The Choir
You know I love you
I think you’re so good
I like the people in my neighborhood
My mother is an engineer
My daddy is a healer
And everybody gathered here
Wheelers, dealersLovers, depravers
Freers, enslavers
Clowns, wicked sayers
Kissers and betrayersBones and ladder
Somehow rhyming
Man of Sorrows hanging
Iscariot swinging
A curious polarity
Finders, weepers
Why have you forsaken me
Losers, keepersLovers, depravers
Freers, enslavers
Clowns, wicked sayers
Kissers and betrayers
Saviours, deniers
Prophets, impliers
Well wishers, liars
Killers, death defiers
Killers, death defiersI light a candle
Well before dark
They tell me jesters hide out
In the park
I never was a cautious man
My brother is a broker
And everybody in the band
Jokers, fire-stokersLovers, depravers
Freers, enslavers
Clowns, wicked sayers
Kissers and betrayers
Saviours, deniers
Prophets, impliers
Well wishers, liars
Killers, death defiers
Killers, death defiers
My top movies of all time
Posted by bryanzug - 2009/01/31
Roo & Tug —
Was thinking this AM that I have not written a list of my favorite movies of all time. So I thought I’d jot it down.
You can tell a lot about a person by their lists.
Much love —
Daddio
(This’ll change over time, but I think I’ll always make this the reference location.)
My top movies of all time (2009-01-31)
- Primer
- A Simple Plan
- Magnolia
- 25th Hour
- Pi
- Children of Men
- Mean Creek
- Thank You for Smoking
- Frailty
- In America
- Holes
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- Fight Club
- The Tao of Steve
- Dexter
- As Good As It Gets
- Shotgun Stories
- Do the Right Thing
- Battlestar Galactica (the new one)
- The Wire – Season 4
- Finding Nemo
- Return of the King
- The Lion King
- The Sopranos
- Adaptation
- Sideways
- Monster’s Ball
- Little Miss Sunshine
- 12 Monkeys
- Me and You and Everyone We Know
- Mad Men
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