no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

http://www.biblestudytools.com/msg/1-corinthians/13.html

As we celebrate Valentine's Day, we are drawn to the subject of love.   It doesn't matter how elegantly we can speak or write.  It doesn't matter how well and adequately we know the Bible.  It doesn't matter how much power we have or how charitable we are, or if we are willing to die for what we believe.  Not of that matters without love.

 I know that in my life, I need people who will see me for who I really am and still want to be there for me.  Also, I want to be that kind of friend to you.  I believe where there is true love, people will have the courage to reveal what is really going on in their hearts, and others will respond with compassion for that individual because of that.

My wish for us on this holiday is that we may all experience true love, and through that love,  we will see God.  After all, how can we expect others to accept a loving God, if they do not experience God's love through us?  How can we show God's love, unless God's love is so flowing through us so that it overflows  from us into others?

Happy Valentine's Day.

Surviving Monsters

 "responding to the transgression  of fathers by dealing with children and children’s children, to the third and fourthgeneration.”

It was the early 1900's and a small boy's father had commited suicide.  The mother of the boy told him that he and his siblings were responsible for the suicide  and they needed to clean up the mess created by the gun shot.

The mother would remarry and the stepfather along with the mother were very abusive to the first dad's kids.  The stepdad was so abusive that at one point the KKK stepped in and took him ( Every in the family was white.) outside and bullwhipped him telling him that they were not going to allow this abuse to go on.  But the abuse did go on and did so until that boy who was now 15 stood up to the stepdad and fought him.  The fight would determine who would be allowed to stay, either the Pilkinton kids or the Stepdad would have to leave.  The 15 year old boy won the fight and the Stepdad had to leave.  The Mom at this point told the boy that he had won the responsibility to see that the family got fed.

The boy in the story was my Grandfather, C. W. Pilkinton (Papa) and this is the story that I heard many times as I grew up.  The story does not end there however.  He would continue his life as a farmer and move to Sunnyvale where he married and raised his family.

He moved on with his life, but the scars of the abuse stayed with him the rest of his life.  (As long as I knew him, he never could grasp that people could love him.)  He at one time found refuge within the legalism of church.  The church at that time followed a very strict rules of conduct and maintained a certain image and those who did not fall in line was driven out.  This was the culture that my Mom grew up in.

 Llewellyn Swint was my Dad's father.  I have been told that he was a good man when he was not drinking.  He did drink however and when he drank he became very violent.  He also became an alcoholic, which meant that the rage would be an ongoing one.  To top that off, he made his living making moonshine for people with stills, so he had a supply of alcohol, which fed his alcoholism, which in turn fed his rage, that he took out on everyone else including family.  This was the relationship that my Dad grew up with.

Dad's oldest sister married a man who made a good income and moved to Dallas where they started attending the same church that Papa attended.  Since her husband made good money and could blend in with the people there, so they were accepted in the church.  Uncle Ray along with my Dad also came to Dallas, but neither of them could blend in like my Aunt did, so they were ran off.

When my Dad first attended Wildwood and before he was ran off he met my Mom and they become engaged and then married.  Papa saw a lot himself in my Dad, and was glad to have him in the family, but the pastor who married my parents had some words for Papa after the ceremony and so the whole family started attending LongCreek(until I left there and went back to Wildwood at the age of 16, but that is another story).

Grandfather Swint died in a car wreck while I was in the womb, but I saw the ruins that he left behind.  I was born 9 months after my parents were married.  My Dad was only 21 at the time and really did not know how to be a father.  While I am sure my parents loved me, the affects of the abuses were there from both sides of the family.  The scars not only hampered the relationship that I had with my parents, it also hampered me in becoming friends with the kids that I grew up with and it also closed off any place for me to go when I encountered my own monster.

So as I entered marriage and fatherhood, I did so with the scars of a Great Grand Step-Father, Grandfather, as well as my own monster.  The good news was that the effects that each monster caused was being lessened by a Loving God, but they were still there.  While my kids were growing up, my relationship with them was better than the relationship that I had with my parents and the relationship that I had with my parents was better than the ones that they had with my grandparents.

You would think that Seminary train leaders with Counseling Degrees would aid in the healing of those relationships, but my experience with them is just the opposite.  What they did was to exploit those scars to build up their own ministry.  They tried to convince me that my Dad was a monster, but I would not let them.  My response to them was that he was a survivor and a hero for trying the best he could to overcome the abuse that he had suffered and to provide a better future for me.  I acknowledged that he did do a lot of things wrong as I was growing up, but that I had forgiven him of those things.  I also told them that if I was doing anything wrong then tell me as well as show me in the Bible where those actions were shown as wrong.  Did not even try to do that.  I decided that I needed to leave that church to attend another.  They told my that they would not allow me to go anywhere.  I told them that I did not care what they had to say, I was going to follow my God.  So I left that congregation, but they had convinced my family not to come with me and that my leaving just showed that I was a monster also.   That was about 11 years ago.

I left that place alone.  My family stilled lived with me but no longer would have any relationship with me.  The church leaders tried to manipulate my oldest son into fighting me, but before that could happen, I forced him to move out of the house.  He left, but not only did he completely break any relationship with me but with the church leaders also.  It was only after he met Jessica (Jay) a few years later and brought her home to meet his mother that our relationship started to improve.  I was there alone the day that he came by.  I asked them to stay for a meal and they did and so I went to the store and bought some steaks and bought them home and grilled them.

From that day own, my relationship with Jarrod, his wife and daughter have continued to improve, but that has been the only place where the relationships have improved.

I just told all of that to get to this.  The only way that I know of to break the influence that monsters play in our lives is only found in love, grace, & mercy.  It is about living in a relationship with no masks and with friends who will not think less of you when you tell them of your struggles, but will appreciate all the more.  It is realizing that God and God alone can heal those scars. When we live in a relationship where  nothing is hidden & love is shown, we open the door for God to really help us.

The lure of Trop Rock, The call of Eden

As I talk to Trop Rock people, as I read more about it, as I listen to the music of Trop Rock, I am drawn to it.  It identifies with a part of myself that I had already labeled as the call of Eden.  This call of Eden is not something exclusive to the church because people of many or no faiths also feel this call.  It seems that Trop Rock to me at least is very similar to it.

Let me point out the similarities as I am currently understanding them.  First there is the call to nature.  Eden was Paradise.  It was nature at its finest.  It had beauties and wonders for all to discover and behold. The call of Eden is a call to the beauty and wonder of nature.  Trop Rock does this with the lure of beaches, island paradises, underwater beauties.

Second, there is a call to a simpler lifestyle.  We were to take care of a garden that didn't need anyone to take care of it.  The perfect watering system, the right amount of sunlight along with there being no weeds to over take it, meant the care-taking was like telling someone that their responsibility would be to water a field that is on an automatic watering system.  There is not anything for them to do in this regards. I am constantly hearing within the trop rock songs of enjoying more with less, with getting out of the rat race, to work but to not work your self out of health or relationships.

Third there is the call to "unmasked" relationships.  The first two humans had nothing between them.  They had no need to cover up the details about themselves.  They accepted each other fully and completely.  There was not any shame, embarrassment, or superiority/inferiority  complexes.  There was a full intimate relationship between them.    The phase that I keep reading in Trop Rock says that we accept each other as they are.  They have relationships that goes beyond normal relationships.  Trop Rock seems to say, we accept you as you are because we know that the longer that you hang around us the more that you will be like us and that your differences are not a threat to us.  It even goes beyond that by the way that people care and look after each other.  It is a picture of what a lot of church groups claim that they do but fall short in actually carrying it out.

The one thing that is different as a believer being in this mix is the call of God as a companion.  Jesus when He lived on Earth loved to hang out with people.  They did not have to measure to His standards. (No one can ever measure up to that).  Jesus would hang out with people and dine/drink/party with them.  Jesus is the exact representation of The Father. To me that means when God walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the Day, He was wanting to hang out with them.  It would maybe be like the old TV show titled "The Courtships Of Eddie's Father".http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCF7Dnov8vA  As that show would open and close, it would show the father and son walking along a beach or somewhere hanging out together enjoying each other's company and the father answering the son's questions.  As a believer, I have the Holy Spirit with me always.  So I can have that same type of intimate relationship with Him.


Until I can hang out with you again...

My voyage into Trop Rock

It has not been that long ago that I only knew of 3 songs that Jimmy Buffett recorded.  I had never heard of Trop Rock and Parrotheads. With the exception of a Bret Burns song about living the life that Jimmy Buffett sang about, I had never heard of any other Trop Rock artists or their work.

That all changed with the alumni group and the renewal of a friendship with a girl (who still looks like she did as a teenager) from High School.  She introduced all of us to a world of Trop Rock and Parrotheads.  I was very intrigued by this and so I set out to learn more.

At this point, I know more Buffett songs than any other artist, with the possible exceptions of Michael Card and Rich Mullins.  I have phound one cd by an artist that has touched my soul in a way that few have.  That cd would be "Boat In Belize" by Kelley McGuire.

Now the closest  that I have been to all of this is a few vacations in Galveston (which I love to visit) as an adult and growing up watching Annette Funicello beach movies.  That did not prepare me for what I have found out so far.  I have only experienced Trop Rock at this point through songs, conversations, and writings and while I want to know more, I am planing on sharing what it looks like to me at this point in my life later this week.

The Cure chapter 2

I am reading John Lynch's book, "The Cure" and I am finding to be insightful and helpful.  It is really can be frightening in the way the writers seem to know what I have been going through in my life.  The following is a quote from the end of Chapter 2 that I thought was very insightful.  They are talking about masks that we wear, why we wear them & how(and why) they always start to unravel as life goes on.

"All of us wake up one day to the pain of realizing we can't control our lives the way we thought we could.  We're still stuck with unresolved issues, symptoms we're trying to fix, without anyone's help.


Only that sort of revelation will free me into the stunning, life-giving hope of this next statement:  "What if there was a place so safe that the worst of me could be known, and I would discover that I would not be loved less, but more in the telling of it?"


That place exists. And when you reach it, unresolved issues will begin to heal.  You'll gather up stacks of masks and toss them in the dumpster, brushing your hands together as you walk away. Then, you'll walk into the daylight, your skin feeling the morning air for the first time since you can remember.  You'll drink in the beauty of flowers and earth, free from those nauseating fumes of epoxy holding your face to a mask."

The Christmas Mask

How can I make (insert name here) happy?  In the buildup to Christmas that is the question that everyone builds on.  We are told so often that it is in the giving of the right gifts that people are made happy that we are brainwashed about it.  Now I am not knocking the giving of gifts, but the reason that we give them.  There is nothing wrong with giving someone a gift.  It can be a wonderful experience for both the giver and the receiver.  But, as I sit here I am wondering how many people were needing a hug, a conversation, someone to spend time with them this Christmas and what they got was "Here is this (insert type of present here), now go off and leave me alone because you are not worthy of my time and love".  Now I really doubt that people were actually told this orally, but this was what the actions of the giver said to the recipient.  I believe that when you give a gift without love for the other person, you are using the gift as a mask to hide behind as you pretend to love that other person.  It is a mask that only fools the person who is hiding behind it.

I realize that this happens all year, but it seems there more stories of this happing at Christmas time than any other time.  I know that we live in a society where there so many things are demanded of us, that we do not have time to do everything that we want to do.  So we substitute gifts for love.  That is where I think that we miss it.  You see I really believe that love will give meaning to gifts, but gifts will never give meaning to love.  I believe that love must always be there first.

I believe that this starts with God.  God is love.  Everything that He does or says comes from love.  There is nothing that comes from Him that does not come from Love.

So, I believe that one of the things about being made in His image is that we always need to start with love.  Everything that we do or say must come from love.  If others know that we love them then that love will give everything in our relationship meaning.  However, I believer that whenever we do not love, then nothing that we do or say will give meaning to that relationship.

Now take this a step further.  If we as believers really have God within us, then we have his Love within us, so everything that we do or say should radiate that Love.  If that His Love is not showing, then how can we truly say that we have God within us.

So I hope that we truly all love each other and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Hiding in Spirituality

What does the phase "hiding in spirituality" mean?  Is there any difference between "hiding in spirituality" and being spiritual?  I think that the answers to these two questions would depend on who you ask.  Each person could and would answer based on their experiences and prejudices.

For me there is a difference between hiding and being.  I think that people who are "hiding in spirituality" do so out of fear.  They either put up a front believing that if the truth about them was known, then they would not be accepted.  Church leaders do this all the time, because if they admitted that they were not perfect then they would be kicked out of the church.  Churches have preached "Be you perfect" and then expected people to live that out in their own efforts.  The best that anyone can do along that way of thinking is to be a Pharisee.  We can discipline our actions to look perfect, but we can't discipline our hearts.  Our hearts can only change by Christ working within us.  It is His working to change our hearts that produces genuine change in our actions.

Others hide because they are scared of the "secular".  They are so scared of being drawn into something bad that they put up walls to stay behind so they will feel safe.  That is why most rules and traditions within the church are there.  It is staying within those rules, that creates a feeling of being safe.  A person who has grown up in an abusive home can find safety within the rules of not drinking.  The old rules against dancing, swimming together, dress, etc were put there to protect against marital breakups.  People who hide like this are like the people that put bars on their windows and doors to feel safe, not realizing that they placed themselves within a prison of their own making. Again, I think that people who do this are acting out a faith that is produced by their own works and not trusting God to change the hearts of people.

To be spiritual is the answer and separate from this problem.  I think that being spiritual is just being in a relationship with God.  This is a relationship that is a lot like the relationship that we have with our friends and loved ones, just more so.  This relationship does not hide you from reality, but makes it more real.  It allows you to give mercy and grace to others because of the mercy and grace given us.  We can love because we are loved.  This does not mean that we are perfect, but that we trust God to work in our hearts to change us and we can be honest with friends that will not think less of us for admitting our failures, but loving us all the more.