Cellar3Door

WOW!!! HE POSTS!

It has been awhile... Here is an update on life. The season of life has changed for me. And this was something I wrote while reflecting on what had it occurred. I am rethinking how to use this blog because I am writing quite a bit for our church community over here. I hope this finds you well.  

 I have spent the last 2 years recovering from that event by being forced through a season of healing, and it was drastically needed. Coming from the very odd faith background that I did (I grew up Catholic and left that faith family to join what was at the time the "hip" nondenominational church in my Denver suburb), my time at APU necessarily deconstructed much of the shallow theological faith life that had become part of my identity. Through APU you all helped give me the tools to engage in a more thoughtful and true ways of a life as a citizen of God's kingdom. However, when I left APU I took all that deconstructed piss and vinegar into a local faith community, where it was not well received. I will be honest and say that part of that was in my presentation, over eagerness and youthful pride but some of it lack of receptivity was because a lack relational trust and the congregation and me were speaking TOTALLY different theological languages. What I have come to see of that time is that my season of deconstruction that began at APU was continuing into the local and actual faith communities. Much of what I had learned in my "hip" evangelical ecclesiology needed to be undone, and it certainly was.

The following couple of years, I wandered quite a bit as to what the next steps in life were for my wife Aubrey and me.  I was, however, tied to living in Boulder because Aubrey was finishing her Masters degree in speech language pathology at University of Colorado Boulder. So, I gave up vocationally working for church and simply worked as a Barista at Starbucks (we needed health insurance). During my time at the starbucks I was introduced  to some local church leaders that were from my narrative of church (i.e. evangelical) and were desiring to be imaginative in how they went about church life in the post-christian culture of Boulder. For the sake of brevity, I will simply say that this group of people have been instrumental in my healing and my ability to trust "church people" again. This community of people disgruntled and frustrated Jesus followers has helped me remain sane. They confirmed that I was not alone in my frustration with the church's inability to be what it needs to be in our current context. Not only did they affirm me but they desired my voice in helping shape a faith community who could humbly be the gift to the world that we believe the Church is to be. So, they brought me on staff. I work 20 hours a week for the church, and actually we only have one full time staff person because we feel like our resources are better used to serve the poor of our city, so the rest of us work in trades though out the city. For example, when I am am doing all the adolescent culture, social media and arts community stuff for the church, I play music in our local music scene and work for Apple Computers. I could spend tons of time telling you about how proud I am of our church community and the beautiful dreams they are dreaming/living, but I will give you just a quick snap shot of some of the stuff we are doing:

- As we got fed up with the pop-christian worship music that we saw hegemonizing the churches around us, we began a process of writing all of our own worship music which encapsulates what the Holy Spirit is doing in the hearts of our local people, we are trying to have songs that are tied to local narratives... don't worry we also sing some hymns.... mainly by Wesley :)

- We sold our church building in order to launch non-profit ventures that help progress God's Kingdom. The main venture we have undertaken is called "iempathize" and it is an arts based grass roots organization that works for the absolution of the Sex Slave trade locally and abroad.

- We also are beginning a lot of work with the undocumented and spanish speaking community here in Colorado (we have a large migrant community and unseen supporting class in our fairly wealthy city). Our work in this area of the city is new, and I am excited to see where it goes. 

-  I now live a community house with 6 other people. We are exploring what it means to live a life of relational transformation, prayer and radical hospitality. We try to grow our own food, live simply and are giant progressive christian stereotypes (I try to have as much of a sense of humor about my self as possible...)

This is getting long so I will wrap this up by briefly letting you know about Aubrey and I's next steps. In the next year or so I want to go to grad school and get my masters in Theology or Biblical Studies in order to begin a process to teach in the academy. This might surprise some of you because I was not the best student (i was to busy "finding myself" or something like that)  but I think I have what it takes to make an impact on the theological conversation. At the bare minimum maybe I could have a similar impact on some idealistic students in some christian college somewhere like you all did to me.  If you have any advice on perusing higher education it is welcome.  I am going to continue to work for Origins, live in Boulder (I am hoping to climb all of colorado's 14ers in the next 3 years) and hopefully inject some kids into our family in the near future.

 

The brothers graduation

 

Our community house (The Hawthorn Farm)

 

Playing a house show in LA

 

The view from the community house

 

The new puppy (atreyu)

 

Playing a house show here in Boulder... 

I would love to have more time

Aubrey graduated with her masters degree a few weeks ago and today starts her real Job. I am so incredibly proud of her and what she has a accomplished. She is going to be working for a woman  that is intentionally trying to "subvert the male dominated business model that has been propagated in the world." I guess that fits my wife. Aubs is going to be doing speech therapy with children birth to three the spanish speaking community around Denver. All of her cases will be medicaid cases and this is exactly what she wanted... she is amazing

we also took a trip to N.C. and saw some amazing friends. Catching up with this group of people continually reminds me that how fortunate we are to have people in our lives that push us to be better and more caring humans. We had a great time and got to see some of melissa and robby's life and seeing where robby does ymin was wonderful. His community there is very fortunate to have such a high quality youth guy. Plus we have fun when we are together. Oh and aubrey also joined the rank of us that are pouring ink into our skin. 

 

Also my youngest brother taylor graduated from high school two weekends ago, and I cannot tell you how much fun we had celebrating that with him. He even made it into the local paper.  It marks 12 years of shelstas being in that high school and I am sure the administration is glad that phase is over.

I am still working at the fruit themed company with most of my time but the rest of my time is taken up by working with Origins and it is these thing that give me life. I am more and more impressed with our church community. With the launch of iE and the start of a co-housing community in the works, I am drastically grateful for the community that I find myself in. I am excited to be part of something that stretches me. The strange thing is that Origins comes from an Assembly of God stream of church, and I am definitely not from that stream. But the people there are amazing... if you would have told me after graduating from college that I would be working for a forward thinking A.O.G. church, I would have asked you "Do those exist?"  But they do! 

We are in the process of of starting a group of musicians that write all the worship music for our community. We are about to embark on some education initiatives for the community that could start some some amazing transformative conversations. Our students are finding out what it means to be on mission in the world and how to live a life that follows hard after the kingdom but still defies christian stereotypes, not to mention they have awakened my love of frisbee golf. I am so ridiculously fortunate, and maybe blessed would be appropriate to say. Yes, Blessed. 

The months coming up are going to be as busy as ever. I have a student camping trip coming up in few weeks that will be fun. I am going out to be in Tyler Haakana's wedding in Mammoth at the end of july. I am going to see some good friends in L.A. at the beginning of august, and I am going to do my first wedding in seattle shortly after that (I will be marrying my father-in-law and his long time fiance... weird!!!). Busy up coming months, but I can't wait to see where they go. If they are anything like the last year... we are in for a ride. 

Things to do while being pseudo quarantined...

Aubs and I just got back from mexico city and Ihave a little bit of a cold/some montezuma but because of this stupid Pig Flu, everyone is confining us to apartment by not hanging out with us. If this trip happened at any other time... would just be complaining about having the sniffles and being more carefull about not drinking the water next time i am in mexico... STUPID PIG FLU! 

I canceled my youth stuff tonight and aubrey can't go into work for 7 days!!!! On the bright side though our pseudo-quarantine lets us do other things... like get pictures up on to facebook (see here, here and here),play video games, clear out some space on hard drive and get caught up on our netflix (Milk and Madagascar 2 are on the horizon). 

Only bummer is that I still have to go into stupid fruit themed computer company job.... there is no rest for capitalism.

We are going to the doctor today to make sure... but come on ... what are the chances?  

I am pretty sure i don't have the pig flu... but if i did i think it would feel like this:

Marissa Cooper aka Jay Cutler.

Ok... so I only have about 15 minutes to explain my feelings about Cutler leaving the Broncos and I will do it via analogy so here we go. 

My Senior year in college some friends of mine and I got really into "The O.C." and I mean really into it. I would come back from a full day of class and pound through as much homework as I could in order to watch a few episodes every evening. After reading Bath, Moltmann, Hauerwas, and Wesly I would go to experiencing the lives of Marissa, Seth,, Ryan, and Summer. To be honest sometimes... well o.k. most of the time, i would skip read theology's grates in order to see if ryan would get marissa out of that crappy bar in mexico where she O.D.ed on paint thinner or whatever drug she was doing at the time. 

As the show progressed marissa became the most frustrating character in the cast. All the teen characters save marissa were slowly progressing, changing as people, and dealing with their issues like normal human beings. Marissa character would change as predictably as the summer would change into fall. She would make progress, then something tumltuous would happen in her, and as a coping mechanism she would do some stupid thing to act out against her "terrible" situation that was almost always detrimental to her community in someway.   "My mom is marrying a 70 year old man. THAT IS SO MESSED UP... I am going to cope by become a lesbian, or dating a psychopath or doing drugs or drinking to much or dating a psychopath...." get the picture. 

Marissa was a fairly helpful and  necessary device in the show to help keep things interesting among the characters, but slowly I grew tired of her lack of personal progress and subsequently tired of the drama she created. As integral as she was to the show, marissa became boring, predictable, and frustrating. I think the writers were starting to feel something similar in the back end of season 3 (look at all the parallels) and eventually killed her off in a car accident in the season finale. To be fair ... they had to kill her off if the show had any chance to progress beyond what it had been doing for the past three years.

Though in the post Marissa era the season 4 of the show had potential to pull through it ended up not delivering and viewers became disinterested and the show was cancelled half way through the season. 

Here is the parallel: When Marissa died I was kind of relieved. I was tired of all the ups and downs. The lack of character development and all the frustration a static character type brings to a drama. THAT IS EXACTLY HOW I FEEL ABOUT JAY CUTLER LEAVING. He was a static character... he had some progress one game (3 touch downs and 350 yards passing) and then throw 4 interceptions the next, completely imploding the team. Not to mention the up and downs in this off season were drastically reminiscent of 90210, The O.C., Gossip Girl or just name your teen drama series. 

Overall, I was sad and a little frustrated to see jay go... i had drafted him in ever fantasy draft since he came into the league and he treated me and the denver broncos pretty well. But recently i am just moving into a place of relief because he would doom the Broncos in to the worst place you can be as a sports fan, always a promise of a good season but never the the follow through... he would doom us to seasons of the better part mediocrity. 

Jay good luck on being the bears marissa cooper...

now can the "writters" pull the broncos through... or is this season going to get cancelled half way through?  Let us see.... let us see.  Because God knows people here are going to be pissed if thesis anything like the "Alien" episode in season 4. 

Goodbye Sky Harbor.

I have had two revelations in the past few weeks...

Revelation 1: I don't think that I have worked harder than I am right now. I am working full time at apple, about 20 hours a week at the church, and trying to build bikes when ever I have a couple extra hours (aka today this afternoon) and I don't think I have could imagine anything better.

I think this really occurred to me yesterday when I was asked by a few people how life was going, and all I could say was "good." I don't have many complaints. I was excited about what I had to do that day and the conversations I had that day (ranging from:  the ethical and communal good and does it exist outside of God's metaphysical nature or is it intrinsically intertwined ... to "holy crap Jason on the bachelor is such a douche and I can't believe that Jillian is going to be the next bachelorette") were formative and life giving. 

And it was this first revelation (along with a the Clarity concert I recently attended) that brought on the second revelation. If you would have told me that I would be bi-vocational and living in boulder when I was in high school i would have told you that you were full of it, I had much "bigger" plans.  

Revelation 2: life has not been turning out at all what I thought it would be like... it is much messier and much much better. 

First thing is first... The clarity concert was amazing. But mainly for two reasons... it sounded AMAZING and was just of such high aesthetic quality that one can't help but just be amazed at how good they were. Second, the company i had while watching the show (Jama, Brandon,Lizzie, Jared, Aubrey, Amy, Beth, Drew, Gina... sadly Jason and mark GOT KICKED OUT because jason didn't have his I.D. and they didn't believe he was 16!!!) made every moment of the show that much better. That album basically defined high school for us and seeing it with them all made it that much sweeter. Not to mention that my wife walked down the aisle to "for me this is heaven" so seeing it played made me happier than ever. 

But in the midst of all that I realized that the life I/we all live now is so much different than I had anticipated. I am not the "it" youth pastor of 400 kids in a megachurch in orange county, or the giant worship leading sensation that completely revolutionized everything. I am not concerned with that large meta-narrative anymore. I am concerned with my friend caleb feeling like being a christian in his environment is worth while, or helping my friend taylor trying to be the best version of herself so her friends who do insane amounts of drugs feel like she is a safe place. I guess this is just another way to say that I have been continually transformed. 

I feel like when people in movies get confronted with this same situation aka... where you are presently is contrasted with what you thought you would be doing in a younger age, you have some magnificent moment of self realization where you have an identity crisis, start freaking because you have not accomplished anything you thought you would have and be ultimately frustrated that you have not accomplished what your young self expected you to accomplish. But here is the deal: My 16 year old self thought that getting laid was going to be the ultimate experience that transformed existence and was more concerned about getting in the senior superlatives than about making sure people who are starving have food. Frankly, my 16 year old self doesn't know anything... so why is he dictating what life should look like presently. 

my past nostalgia is not going to hang over my head. Life is better than that.

Lenten experiment and "lucky denver mint"

Many people give things up during lent... but for the past couple of years aubrey have tried to do things for lent that are hard at first (and thus lent is used as a catalyst for life change). Last year aubrey and I went vegetarian for lent and that eventually stuck for the rest of the year and for the foreseeable future. 

This year aubrey wanted to try what these people live out for lent. 

So our lenten vow is to live on thirty bucks a week for food (this includes going out for eat but excluding going for "drinks"). Right now it is easy because we are still eating some of the food from the student retreat last weekend and some food that we had pre-lent. But the real test is going to come in few weeks when we are all through our stock pile of food. 

OUr favorite local grocer:

Aubrey getting excited:

Counting to see if we are under:

$20.67 = $4.43 for the rest of the week

Here is to actively remembering sacrifice. 

On a completely unrelated note:

I posted that jimmy is going to be playing through Clarity for its 10 year anniversary a few months ago and tonight i am ultra stoked to be going. Not only that buy I get to check off one band on my list of bands that I have never seen that I want to see ( I though the Jimmy Eat World circa 1999-2001) would never have happened). Thank you pseudo time travel... 

Also, we are having a mini reunion around the evening, and many friends are getting together to have some fun reminiscing about the crazy stuff we used to do and playing some music that we all had written during our younger years. I am excited... and i am sure i will post on it again in the coming days. 

oscars... ugh!

Real quick... I was on a youth retreat the night of the oscars so I didn't get to see the oscars but when I saw what swept the evening I was disappointed. I can't stand that Slumdog won so many oscars. I thought that movie was way better and drastically less hegemonic when it was called "The City of God." In the words of some friends when we were talking about how we didn't like the film... "man that Danny Boyle, such a humanitarian." Ugh. 

where do i live!?!?

Last night we had a dusting of snow here in Boulder, CO, and it made the mountains look amazing. But i was running a little bit late so I cleared my front and side window and left for our staff meeting. 

As I was just finishing parallel parking in the neighborhood just above our church (so i didn't have to pay to park) I suddenly heard and saw my back window getting scraped clear of all the snow. At first I thought it was homeless man needing some money, and I was a little bummed because I had no cash to give them. I was preparing to say "thank you homeless person for clearing my car but I am sorry that i have no cash to give you." But as I get out of the car there is a 60 year oldish man in a snowsuit looking at me very sternly. The conversation went something similar to what follows:

Snowsuit man: How old are you?

Me: uh... 26.

Snowsuit man: Then you are old enough to know that it is illegal to drive with your back window covered with snow! If there was the right cop around he would have pulled you over.

Me: Umm... yeah thanks for letting me know.

Snowsuit man: I have been following you since you pulled out of your parking spot and could not believe you were driving with snow on your car.

Me: Thanks for looking out for me... i didn't know it was illegal

Snowsuit man: you didn't know it was illegal to put other peoples lives in danger?

Me: err... uhh?

Snowsuit man: next time clear your car and think about others!

A man in a snowsuit followed me from my home just to clear my car of snow... and yell at me in the middle of the street. Now he can go to his bridge club to talk about how the youth of the day don't think about others and are completely self centered. Honestly, I didn't clear my whole car because I was only driving 10 blocks because my bike is unridable (the cranks are slipping) until I fix it this afternoon.

Then I got to our staff and read this: Boulder High students want to rename school Barack Obama High. 

Where do I live... serious!

best date ever 2k9.... don't think just answer

Because some friends of ours canceled on us to go up to the mountains last second, Aubrey and I had the first day off that we had nothing to do and were not on some family oriented vacation since July. So, we decided to go on a Boulder date. The premiss of the day was this question: "Don't think just answer... what do you want to do right now." This is the out come... 

Pt. 1 Coffee and Movie (Frost/Nixon)

If you have not seen frost nixon yet think about it as a very wordy version of the mighty ducks but instead of "the hawks," "Iceland" or "the varsity team at their prep-school" insert Richard Nixon and instead of coach bombay and the mighty ducks insert tabloid british talk show host and his wise crack team of political analysts. 

Pt. 2 Brunch at "Burnt Toast"

If we had a "central perk" it would be Burnt Toast accept they serve a lot better Juevos Rancheros. Also, all the waiters look like they are out of an american apparel catalog, and the management hung some great guilt free art to remind you that even though you are eating other people are not. 

 

Pt 3. Painting Coffee mugs at "color me mine"

This may sound extra affeminent of me but I was always jealous when ladies went to the pottery coloring place because "I WANTED MY OWN PASTEL COLORED MUG!!!" now i have one...it has a heart with a gun and Bob Dylan quote that reads:

"Deomocracy don't run the world,
 You better get that through your head.
 This world is run by violence,
 But thats better left unsaid."

I also found out that aubrey has the steady hand of surgeon... the writting on my mug looked a 2nd grader wrote it but Aubrey's looked like it should go in a typography book. 

 

Pt 4: buy a board game with lots of dice that takes place in a different time and play it in a coffee shop.

We bought a game called Stone Age... and it is nerdy and sweet. It is like a really intense version of the game of life but instead of getting children in your car after you buy a house... you get level three tools to hunt with so your tribe doesn't starve but that is right after you invent music and pottery each getting you 6 points... you know standard. 

Pt. 5 Get dinner at a restaurant in boulder of someone who is on the current season of top chef.

That happens to be kind of easy because there are two food establishments with cooks who are on top chef (Hosea is at Jax Fish House and Melissa is at Centro) Centro is less expensive so we had our answer... mmm shrimp tacos. 

 

Overall it was one of the best dates we have had... try it: "Don't think just answer!"

a hole in my nose

I got my nose pierced. Funny thing is that most people don't even notice. I guess I am a totally predictable hipster cliche ... fixed gear and all. 

on another front: make sure you check out my friend shauna's blog. She is putting up a picture a day from her life and it is goodness.