Discipline: Rediscovering My Love For Pastries

There is certain terminology in the Christian faith that is beautiful, unless you've grown up in its thick normalcy. Then they become stale, like if you've eaten rich pastries your whole life, they are bound to become bland. Then you want something radical. But maybe you didn't realize the glaze and the speckled saccharine and the fluffed bread and the syrupy, sweet, staining filling and the searching grease. What is our "mundane" made of? I'd say divinity. One of those pastries to me is "being a disciple" or "making disciples." I have felt here recently that if I take one more bite of that confectionery bomb, I could not hold it in my system.

I can often be found in the Friday evening, at a sincere little home in a municipality called Locust Fork where several young people will meet under the guidance of two people who have been finely tailored by God for his work, and that I have come to admire very much. The last time I showed my face around there they had just pulled out of the oven the very dish I was procuring an allergy for.

"What is the first thing you think of when I say disciple?"

I believe this was the first question. I wanted to say, "Bake Sale!" but I kept my mouth shut. I subconciously filtered my answers through my aural pickup, until one answer squeezed through the screen. Something like, "I think of the root word discipline." Now there was something. Discipline was a man word. Sounded gritty. Discipline meant struggle and going against the grain and denying one's self. I perked up. The present emcee took the discussion in the desired direction.

"When you think of discipling someone do you think of those who are saved or those who are not?"

The response was mixed, my sentiments lied with those who are saved. I teach a class at my church and I always talk to them about how Jesus' last command on earth was to "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" and how a great many people like to think this means to go and tell people about Jesus and maybe pray a prayer with them, or coax them into accepting Jesus as their Lord. I like to say that making disciples goes much deeper than that. It is time consuming and requires a relentless love and staying on there back to run the race before them and really doing your best to nurture them. (I also explain that people also want to stop at that and leave off the baptism, but that's another soap box). Oddly enough those pastries were starting to have a pleasant scent. I wafted the fumes my way and the conversation continued.

We took a look in the gospel of John in the seventeenth chapter. A touching scene just before the climax. One of the greatest vocalizations of love in the Bible to me. Jesus is praying:

I have revealed you to the ones you gave me from this world. They were always yours. You gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything I have is a gift from you, for I have passed on to them the message you gave me. They accepted it and know that I came from you, and they believe you sent me...My prayer is not for the world, but for those you have given me, because they belong to you...During my time here, I protected them by the power of the name you gave me. I guarded them so that not one was lost..."

I've skipped around, one should read it all to feel its power. But here's the theory: if we culture and teach and guard and give everything we have to mold those closest to us, and release them to do the same thing to those closest to them, then we've fulfilled something great. We've accomplished the Jesus method of winning the world for Him. He poured his life into these disciples for months and months. He taught them in word and deed and never stopped believing in them, even when they lacked all faith and decency. This is what we are supposed to do isn't it. We can't just say "hey buddy, Jesus is the Son of God, here's a Bible, make sure you memorize John 3:16, pray with me, amen, goodbye." If that is what we are doing we aren't making disciples at all.

I co-instruct a martial arts class and one of the things we hammer in the students' heads is discipline. Self-control. I had a discussion with them about disciples and the root of the word and what Jesus meant with his last commandment. Like me, none had connected discipline with disciples. It changes everything. Going against your nature is tough. That's what Jesus taught. Back in John 17 he made it plain that "the world hates them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world." We're different because we've been disciplined.

As the study kept up its good work, I came to a realization. We were being discipled. That's why we were there. The notion inspired me. If we could get together with this thing we could change the world. If we could take this all blisteringly serious. We would be a threat, we would be a task force, we would be a base of operations. It would take every one of us wrapping our minds around the situation. I looked around at each face with wonder then and I could not have imagined a more unlikely group of people, but is that not what the disciples were? They were one silly mix of characters. Then I was excited. We just had to stick together and take this to heart and build a bond and be disciplined, and we would be following right in the footsteps of the pioneers that Jesus pulled together.

It was one tasty pastry.

Kevro the Valentine's Day Hater

"Don't count your money in front of the poor"

I have this friend who hates Valentine's Day. Actually I have it least 25.2 friends that hate Valentine's Day, but one in particular that gave me an insight or two. The tagline at the forefront here is his annual adage and we can see the immediate metaphorical relationship that's going on here and--

STOP!

It is rude to stop reading once you have started a blog, if you find my prose unbearable, at least skim over it. After all this is not another lament. This is a connectionary cable telegrammed to you via the human emotion and heart.

And so the subject of this interview alternated between lying across the green carpet floor and angling his arms into a propped position for the serious, "this-needs-eye-contact" statements. My role, in the grand imaginative tradition of Snoopy, was the world-famous interlocutor. This was aided by my literal props: a dwarfed microphone and stand, and a stool. The audience was a silent Samantha tearing up at the emotional parts (that's not actually true, but she was there). All this besides the obvious radio listeners.

Valentine's Day is a celebration, that's a fact. I mean pretty girls bat their lashes at their fellow, there is gift getting and real moody dates and poems and love letters and songs and red and pink and lace and hearts and candy and oh boy. But it's a dichotomy. Everything has two sides. It's a reminder that someone loves for you or has some mushy romantic feelings for you, but it's also a reminder of what you don't have. It's like a oppressed Cuban in the middle of a 4th of July celebration. It stinks to watch.

Well at least it does for many, I've never really minded. After all, it was kind of sweet to watch a bunch of goofies run around with dopey smiles and hazy eyes. It was a celebration, no problem being single. But by gosh, look at me, I'm seventeen years old and I haven't had time to wonder why my mailbox resembles Charlie Brown's every February 14. In the Candy Land game of ages I'm back at Plumpy (did you know they took him out of the game?!) and Kevro the Valentine's Day Hater is way up at Lord Licorice. I have to wonder if I feel any different five or ten years from now. Kevro the Valentine's Day Hater says that it makes you wonder what's wrong with you after so long of not having someone. He says that you know that God has that perfect someone out there for you, but at the same time, you're human, you have emotions, and those emotions take a beating when you have to wait.

And then there's the real killer. The story. No one has a Valentine vendetta without a story behind it. This is no different for Kevro the Valentine's Day hater. It doesn't have to be woven in the Valentine's Day quilt. The holiday just gives it a good solid jolt. He tells this story to the world famous interlocutor and the audience of one as if it has just happened with a permeating pang in each detail. The tale has all the classic cringes, like the affectionate crescendo and the fork in the road between two dreams and the sudden realization that the someone you've chosen hasn't chosen you back. Kevro the Valentine's Day Hater says there is just something about someone choosing to love you, with your good and your bad and just everything. He says there's something about someone saying each day, or each hour even, that they choose to love you and acting upon that. Behind every distaste for the day there is a story to be told.

It's rotten for all the sincer-ites out there. Kevro the Valentine's Day Hater is like that. Sincere I mean. He's a good looking young man with talent and passion and dreams and the drive to get there. What's wrong with him? Nothing really. He, among other faces, are waiting, and when the wait is over it will be a celebration. There are a bunch of good-hearted Valentine's Day Haters strumming guitars and practising pirouettes and writing poems and hunting stags and taking strolls and thinking about there future someone. They're all riding on their art and praying to their God and waiting for someone to share it with in holy communion. Kevro the Valentine's Day Hater says that in a nutshell Valentine's Day is a reminder of what they want most, but feel like they'll never have. It's that wretched feeling, I suppose, that makes Valentine's Day so tough. The stories come back like shark attacks in sloshing water, dream flashes. This day stands for what you could of had. They have it, you don't.

There are some wealthy, wealthy people out there and may God bless them all. But have a heart. Don't count your money in front of the poor. If you are penniless, it's going to be crummy when everybody else's wallets are laced, but it's a kind of twisted advantage for you. I don't know how to explain it, but maybe if you're there you know what I'm talking about, and if you don't maybe you can talk with Kevro the Valentine's Day Hater and he can tell you what I'm talking about. So keep playing your songs and painting your pictures or running your miles because one day you're going to run into someone in a supermarket or something cheesy like that.

And it's going to be awesome.

*sigh*

Happy Valentine's Day




(And by special request of Kevro the Valentine's Day Hater)