Faith, Disbelief, and @$%holes

Warning: If you are easily offend by the use of "cusswords" then don't read any further. Below is an fairly accurate example of a real conversation I had today.

I met Susie today at a coffee shop while talking to my old friend Jon. Susie heard me talking about eikon and thought I was talking about an old club downtown. Sitting, separated by 5 or 6 feet of space we started a conversation across the coffee shop. We talked a bit about the old teen club ikon, that was downtown in the 80's and then we started talking about eikon, the community we are living into in these days.

Susie told us about being raised Hindu in Tulsa and then we dove into a discussion about faith, religion etc.

Here's a few quotes as I remember them from our conversation.
Susie: "In Hinduism, Islam and Christianity there are fundamentalist. In every religion there are a couple thousand assholes who ruin it all."
Jon:"I'm an asshole."
Susie laughs.
me: "Me too. Maybe if you declare yourself an asshole in advance it somehow keeps the asshole factor down and keeps you from being a fundamentalist?"

Susie: "My father taught me that faith is the suspension of disbelief. I think he's right. People who watch movies are having faith in movies. They choose to suspend disbelief and have faith in what they are watching."
Jon: "Yeah, like reality TV. All those people play a role. But we still watch it. It's faith in the show in some way."

We talked for 30 minutes about faith, Jesus, arranged marriage, and my family.
I look forward to more conversations with Jon and Susie.

Eikon's Blog

The community I lead in tulsa now has a blog.
You can check it out here.

or

http://eikontulsa.blogspot.com/

Trying to find rhythm again

I let Pam sleep in this morning as we recover from our vacation.
It was a great trip.
1 day travel to cali
1 day Sea World (10am - 10pm EST)
1 day at beach and out with friends
3 days at Disneyland and California Adventure
1 day at Legoland.
1 day travel to tulsa.
= a great time and tired feet.

Today I'm trying to find rhythm again. It will probably be a few days before I find it frankly. I was able to take a good solid vacation. I was more "off" than I thought I would be, which is good news. There was an emergency appendectomy within the Eikon community, but he's recovering very well, and the community seemed to take care of things well for the family. Also there I had a client with a need for advice on a bit of an emergency situation that had come to their attention. But this was solved in a phone call. So I really didn't work much while on the road.


I downloaded the new Alanis Morisette this week and am listening to it right now. I've loved Alanis' music for a long time. I'll let you know if I like it.

I'm sitting in Joe Mommas working. Free WiFi and good people around. (no pizza for me though, back on the diet i go.)

I've got a long list of things to do this week. Occassionally someone will ask me what it's like working for myself. They'll ask something like, how do you go to work, or get things done without deadlines from outside yourself, or sometimes they'll ask, "is there a temptation to be lazy and procrastinate?"

Of course the answer depends on the day. But today, there is a list of things that don't have to get done today, but actually do, if you know what I mean. Emails that need to be sent, that if I don't send them, few people will notice. Reading that needs to be done, that no one will notice if I do it or not.

This kind of thing isn't fun, or easy for me to do. I've got Eikon stuff, Riddle Group stuff, and a bit of "Inside the Mind of Youth Pastors" stuff to do in the next couple weeks.

so I'm off to see if I can find the beat....

Sending Out

So June 6th I and a team of other will be send out by a few area pastors to start a new church in the Tulsa area. It will be ultra simple and ultra meaningful to me. We chose to meet outside on the patio at Joe Momma's (owned by a community member) instead of a local church because we hope to a church that is with people from the beginning.

If you and I have lost touch over the years, or if you want to support me and this new initiative I'd welcome you to attend this gathering.

June 6th 5:45-6:45pm
Joe Momma's (61st and highway 169)

thanks for your prayers!