zugito

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 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, dealers

Lovers, depravers
Freers, enslavers
Clowns, wicked sayers
Kissers and betrayers

Bones and ladder
Somehow rhyming
Man of Sorrows hanging
Iscariot swinging
A curious polarity
Finders, weepers
Why have you forsaken me
Losers, keepers

Lovers, depravers
Freers, enslavers
Clowns, wicked sayers
Kissers and betrayers
Saviours, deniers
Prophets, impliers
Well wishers, liars
Killers, death defiers
Killers, death defiers

I 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-stokers

Lovers, 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)

1. Primer
   • Great summary of why Primer has become a cult classic.
   • An interview with writer director Shane Carruth where he discusses the questions that drove him in the writing of the film.
2. A Simple Plan
3. Magnolia
4. 25th Hour
5. Pi
6. Children of Men
7. Mean Creek
8. Thank You for Smoking
9. Frailty
10. In America
11. Holes
12. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
13. Fight Club
14. The Tao of Steve
15. Dexter
16. As Good As It Gets
17. Shotgun Stories
18. Do the Right Thing
19. Battlestar Galactica (the new one)
20. The Wire – Season 4
21. Finding Nemo
22. Return of the King
23. The Lion King
24. The Sopranos
25. Adaptation
26. Sideways
27. Monster’s Ball
28. Little Miss Sunshine
29. 12 Monkeys
30. Me and You and Everyone We Know
31. Mad Men

“Fuck Cancer” is a perfectly appropriate response

Posted by bryanzug - 2008/11/24

Photo courtesy of the talented sarah joann murphy

Roo & Tug –

A friend of a friend died last night of cancer. His name was John Spalding and he used to be in a few bands with our friend Mr. Jeff.

Mamacita and I didn’t know John — I do remember seeing him at a Raft of Dead Monkeys house show in 2000 or 2001 — but even though we did not know John, we’ve both had this visceral reaction to the disease that killed him yesterday –

Fuck cancer.

I want to say as your dad that you will have responses like this to some things in life — whether they come at you from the periphery or dead on — and I want to let you know that it is a perfectly appropriate reaction.

An important part of the big Story which surrounds us is that we are all dumbstruck in these moments by an intense notion that THIS IS NOT THE WAY THINGS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE.

Especially when someone is young and talented — or so very good and undeserving of untimely death (like your Grandpa Gordy or my friend Marc Kaser).

And I want to take this timely moment to encourage your future selves on some very important points.

When these sort of “FUCK CANCER” moments hit you — I want you to take some time to ask where these deep reactions of justice and fairness come from.

= = =

There are three books that have persuaded me that Jesus is the capital “S” Story of what life is all about.

In one of these books called “Mere Christianity” (written as an explanation of where God was amidst the devastation of the 1st and 2nd World Wars), C.S. Lewis has an amazing section about two chaps arguing in a bar over something.

The important point he makes has nothing to do with what they are arguing about.

Instead, he points out how quickly they appeal to a notion of “that’s not fair” in their discussion.

He uses that bar conversation to illustrate how deep and natural this idea of fairness is ingrained in us (and all of humanity).

I will go into greater detail on this later, but I wanted to take a moment to point out three things –

1. Your Mamacita and I believe that the only rational explanation for this sort of reaction is that God is real and good in the concrete and understandable sense found within the Bible — and that this Goodness is what we footnote in these viseral reactions.

2. I want you to look closely at the picture above of Mr. Jeff — look at that wicked smile — that grin is a book of systematic theology put in a t-shirt and walking around a club in Seattle — that smile contains one of the most important and juxtaposed truths that Jesus puts in the hearts of folks who follow him in spirit and in truth — it holds “FUCK CANCER” and “physical death is not the end of the story” in a dramatic and deep tension.

3. These are the things that poetic lives are made of.

Rest in Peace John Spalding.

FUCK CANCER –

Daddio

Bumps, bruises, and uncanny inoculations

Posted by bryanzug - 2008/11/13

All around us we observe a pregnant creation.

The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within.

We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother.

We are enlarged in the waiting.

We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.

Romans 8:22-25 (The Message)

Roo & Tug –

Again — hindsight years from now will tell you how these tilting at windmill notions of your Mamacita and I have turned out.

Just yesterday, out of a simple question to Roo, about who you had eaten lunch with at school — we moved from a standard issue “how was school today” debrief into a war zone of “why can’t we all just get along” race relations.

Seems a girl at school said you could not eat lunch with a certain group of friends because you are white.

This prompted an unkind reaction in your heart, and with that that, in one fell swoop, the weight of the knowledge of good and evil had fallen heavy on the household.

And you are only 5.

And this is only kindergarten.

Mamacita and I jumped into action — conversationally digging into an incongruent comment — emailing your teacher for her help on getting to the bottom of things — working through what it means to be generous in the face of horrible actions.

We talked through how God woos us to Himself through his kindness in the midst of our fuck-You-itiveness.

This is where we’ve chosen to put down roots — and time will tell what fruit this approach bears.

It’s the sorta thing that makes us, as your parents, turn in our sleep — Are we doing the right thing? Shouldn’t we be shielding you more from such a world? Isn’t a mashup of “Charlotte’s Web” and Rodney King a little over the top?

And right now, the best answer we’ve got is that it seems wiser to us to work our way through these things as they come — to not sequester either of you from the sorrow and reality of the world until some far off day.

Instead, we’re struck by the uncanny inoculation offered by a life of bumps + bruises + a large dose of loving and protective oversight.

Here’s hoping it all works out.

Peace –

Daddio

Matrimonial Expectation Pyrotechnics

Posted by bryanzug - 2008/11/08

Tug & Roo –

The coolest weddings we get to go to have a line where the officiant sets fire to the “happily ever after” expectations that we all tend to smuggle into such gatherings.

These matrimonial expectation pyrotechnics often go something like this –

Officiant — “I’d like to take a moment to point out the only problems that exist with this marriage…”

Crowd thinks — “WTF? Why talk about problems on what is to be such a happy day?”

Officiant continues — “The only two things that have me worried about this marriage are…”

Long pause (this draws a crowd in)…

“Him,” pointing to the groom.

“And, her,” pointing to the bride.

At this point, the crowd always laughs — and those who have been married for any length of time laugh harder.

One of the reasons we are followers of Jesus is because the story of Christianity makes the most sense to us in explaining the big story of what life is all about.

This is what we call the Meta-Story — or “The Story” that frames all other small ’s’ stories.

A core element of this Meta-Story that Jesus is pretty persuasive on is this –

Responsibility for the problems we see in the world (from daily relationships to the grind of work to natural disasters) is, first, to be laid at our own feet.

Before we go pointing fingers at any “other” person or entity, we need to take a very hard look at ourselves.

Only when we have begun to look at our part in any problem can we hope to make any real sense of any conflict or situation we face.

That’s all for now. More later on how mud pies figure into the equation.

– Daddio

Rejoice with those who rejoice

Posted by bryanzug - 2008/11/05

Love must be sincere.
Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.

Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.
Honor one another above yourselves.

Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.

Be joyful in hope,
patient in affliction,
faithful in prayer.

Share with God’s people who are in need.
Practice hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you;
bless and do not curse.

Rejoice with those who rejoice;
mourn with those who mourn.

Live in harmony with one another.

Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.

Do not be conceited.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil.

Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.

The letter from Paul, who had been a murderer,
to the Believers gathered in Rome.
Chapter 12, Verses 9-17

Roo & Tug –

Years from now you will reflect on the dawning of this day, when a black man was elected president of the United States, not because of the color of his skin, but because of the infectious content of his character.

One of the funny things you will eventually notice about your old man is that I tend to overflow with intense hope coupled with intense skepticism.

In times when everyone is criticizing one another, you will likely find me calling for the spread of gracious dollops of “benefit of the doubt” (which is, in many ways, the ancient wisdom of Ruth).

In times when everyone is dancing in the streets, you will most likely find me cautioning against the unexamined zeal that glorifies something just before crucifying it (which, in many ways, is the ancient wisdom of Thomas).

But I think today is a day to stave the skepticism, and join others in calling this a time to rejoice.

Much Love –

Daddio

Search