abnormal.

“Map” by Jasper Johns, 1963

I know if I love you the way she (Mary) loved you, my heart will never be safe.  Someday you will unsettle my life.
-Ken Gire-
I used to be cool.  Then I met Jesus and he wrecked my life.
-Shane Claiborne-

A few months ago I sat at a bar with a new friend of a friend named Adam.  We talked about life in America.  The greed.  The excess. The lack of creativity in the American Dream (go to college. get a job. then a better one. make lots of money. buy lots of stuff).  It was the spring and there were parts of me that were starting to rumble.  I was looking at the way we do things in America, the way we, from such an early age, make plans to fulfill the American Dream.  It just seemed so empty and blank.  I couldn't stop thinking about it and talking about it and trying to find out if there is (please God) more to this life.  Adam is not from America so his perspective is a really great one to have.  Because he sees with a clarity that I cannot.  He has a world-view that I do not have.  He isn't judgmental.  He is observant.

As we spoke, he put into words all of the restlessness that was going on inside me.  He exposed the American Dream for what it was and wondered why Daniel and I would ever want something so boring.

Adam is a rockstar.  He is living a dream.  It is kind of magical to hear about.  But he has another.  I asked him what he would do if he could be anything in the world other than what he was.  A few months earlier he had visited a lake house with his wife's family in the mid-west.  He stood on the shore and watched a water-skiing team and began to dream of  moving to Wisconsin and becoming a water-skiing coach for a high school water-skiing team.  He wasn't drunk enough for it to have been a total joke.  No glitz.  No stage lights or adoring fans.  No chance to become wealthy.  Only a chance to be happy.  Just a lake and a boat and the ability to impact the lives of a few people.

Since our conversation I have thought a lot about who I am and what I want to be.  I have though a lot about how boring the American Dream is. How it seems so often to run so perpendicular the cause of Christ.  I have spent time in the gospels trying to figure out if Jesus meant what he said about the first being last and being a servant of all and all of that stuff.  I have wondered how that is possible when we are constantly trying to win/have/get/acquire/earn the best stuff/job/house/retirement/etc.  I have spent time looking at the characters in the bible who dared to think outside the box.  Who dared to follow a man that offered them nothing in the eyes of the world, but everything that mattered.

And as I search for my dream, there is only one thing that I am sure of.  With Jesus. nothing can ever be boring.  It just isn't possible.  In fact, I’m not sure it is even possible to have a “normal” life in the current of the Holy.  He is not safe.  And he has completely wrecked my life.