being intentional

While I was in Australia this year, I had some interesting thoughts running around in my head. It's funny what you can think about when you have 24 hours of nothing but one-way air travel on your hands. I've been reading quite a few blogs over the past couple of years, and with many of them I keep hearing this recurring theme of communities being authentic and being intentional. Authenticity I have thought about in the past since that is a key trademark of my generation; we love authenticity and the feeling of knowing complete honesty, but we absolutely despite fake-ness (terrible word, but inauthentic is kind of redundant) or doing something with a hidden agenda. However, the concept of being intentional is something that has really started to click with me.

Let's start with what being intentional in this context really means. To be intentional implies that one has determination to bring about something by design or plan. In other words, doing something you set your mind to doing. I think this is such a great concept because it applies to everything in our lives, and sometimes we can let that slide a little too much with our faith.

We need to be intentional in our relationships. Not in who we form relationships with, but in forming them period. People like to say that marriage is hard work and that you only get out what you put in, but I think the same applies to every relationship we form. Being part of a community means forming bonds with the people who comprise it, and skirting in and out along the fringes does not build up that community. So to that end, we have to take time and be intentional about forming relationships with people: our neighbors, friends, families, co-workers, and especially people we worship and fellowship with. I don't know about you, but I know the world always seems a little brighter and friendlier when I visit a place where I know someone. And to be honest, I'll be the first (since I'm writing this anyway) to say I fail at this all this time because often I'm not intentional in the way I handle relationship building. This is partly because sometimes I don't feel it will be worth the effort, partly it is because I am not willing to invest the time, and sometimes (or often, depending on your outlook) it is because I don't feel I have the time I feel I would need to genuinely build that bond.

We need to be intentional in our commitments. I've sort of touched on this topic in the past, especially when it came to the early planning stages of ReGroup. I find it odd that we can so easily over-commit ourselves at work, and under-commit ourselves to the things we enjoy. Things can get so bad that we eventually cannot add anything new to our schedules, because to do so would leave us with the feeling that we have no time to relax or no time to ourselves. I know I can get this way, though I do try to avoid it. I think being intentional in our commitments is a huge step to take, but one that can benefit us. First, being intentional about commitments means investing ourselves in tasks we are passionate about. At work, if I am passionate about the security of our infrastructure, committing my time to maintaining and enhancing the security methods we employ does not feel like a burden. I am passionate about ReGroup, so by the same logic the energy I am investing in trying to get it organized and the time I am willing to set aside for gathering with people does not feel like a sacrifice. Secondly, it means committing ourselves to endeavors we feel called to be a part of. I've experienced the opposite of this at work and it drives me nuts; you meet people who are perfectly matched for a particular assignment, but they refuse to step to the plate because they have already stretched themselves so thin they couldn't commit to the task if they tried. Which sort of leads to the counterpoint, that sometimes being intentional about commitments means being intentional about refusing commitments; this way we have time when something truly important does come our way. And yes, I know, there will always be something that we do not truly enjoy that we cannot refuse, but we take those in stride when we must. Overall, we shouldn't make commitments we are not willing to give ourselves over to, it just cheats us and the other people involved.

We need to be intentional about prayer. This one is a bit more obvious, and yet I still struggle with it. What really drives this home for me, is that being intentional about prayer directly relates to being intentional about our relationships. Prayer is part of our relationship with God; it is our most intimate form of communication. If we are not determined to pray, then we are not determined to build our bond with God. Praying intentionally is also about commitment; if we are not willing to commit time to conversing with God, it exposes a gap in the passion of our faith. And let me tell you, writing these words is painful; like I said, I struggle with prayer, so it hits home... hard.

I've written about how working with ReGroup is going to take patience and how it will require the people involved to foster an environment of authenticity and love, but the one thing it will truly take to get it off the ground is intentionality -- and people who are passionate, committed, and prayful.

simple yet difficult

I'd apologize for the lack of posting, but unfortunately I have no excuse save the lack of new ideas and new progress on the various things going on in my life. On the book front however, I have finally gotten around to reading Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell -- suffice it to say, it is an awesome book. I am consistently amazed at what I perceive as God's influence in shaping the appropriate times in my life for me to stumble upon information that directly impacts things I am thinking about or experiencing. And as you might have surmised, Velvet Elvis was a book filled with ideas and concepts and stories that directly related to a lot of stuff going on with me or around me lately.

I think that if I were to take all of the information that I have absorbed from various books, including another perspective as added by Rob Bell, I could boil down my current insight to the following statement.

Being a Christian - following the way of life that Jesus taught - can be, more often than not, a difficult life... but it is very simple.

I know, I know... that sounds so contradictory and confusing, but let me give a quick illustration from my Christmas holiday. We gave my aunt and my mom a small puzzle, it consists of 9 squares that you must arrange into a 3x3 grid. The puzzle when completed will look like a Pennsylvania Dutch quilting pattern. Each square forms a portion of the pattern, and in order to connect to squares into the 3x3 grid that reveals the pattern, you need to match up some pictures. The squares' four sides have each have 1 of 8 images: the bottom or top of a blue "tulip", the bottom or top of a blue "rose", the bottom or top of a red heart flower, the bottom or top of a red "rose". There is only one solution to the puzzle. The concept is extremely simple, arrange the squares in a 3x3 grid so that the sides of the squares that touch form a complete flower (matched tops and bottoms). Would you guess that even after having 2 medical professionals, an engineer and computer scientist, a teacher, an environmental manager, and 2 quilters all try separately and teamed together in various combinations, we still haven't been able to solve that stupid puzzle! The game is simple, solving it is difficult. There are many combinations that nearly solve it and come up short by one square; also, there are times where you think you've gotten it licked, only to realize that you mismatched one element by mistake. However, there is an upside to this simple yet difficult puzzle -- we spent time together, we laughed, we talked while we played with it, we helped each other, we pointed out mistakes each other's mistakes when we noticed them to save future frustration. In short, no one got it perfect, but by simply knowing the guiding principles and giving it our best shot, we had some fun together.

The way of life that Jesus taught is an extremely simple life, but actually living it out everyday can be extremely difficult. Love your neighbor. How much more simple can it get? It's a profound statement with wide ranging implications, and yet we screw it up all the time. Certainly, we could ask what has already been asked; who is my neighbor? But there are even more complex situations that make that principle difficult to live out. I know my neighbor includes everyone that I come into contact with throughout my life, but how could I possibly love someone who wrongs me deeply? Say a loved one was killed by a repeat drunk driver; could you suppress your grief, anger, rage, loneliness, and utter sense of loss and love that neighbor? What if you were the victim of identity theft which then resulted in your house being foreclosed on, car repossessed, and required you to file bankruptcy before they caught the person responsible; could you love that neighbor?

Such a simple way of life, and yet so difficult to live it....