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

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

“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

What has you worried?

Posted by bryanzug - 2008/11/04

Roo and Tug –

A few of the values we hold as a family are those of service, creatvitity, and the examined life. I helped pastor Tim from church produce this video last week that interviews folks in the Financial District in downtown Seattle.

With the election, financial crisis, and wars going on right now, we figured we’d ask –

• What’s got you worried?
• What gets you through?
• Where do you turn when the shit hits the fan?

Here’s what people had to say…

Much love –

Daddio

(Note: I edited out the “shit” part cause we showed it in church on Sunday and some people can’t get past “colorful” language, even though Jesus and Paul used it a ton — I will write more on that later).

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