Holistic Hippies Pt.2

Jesus lived a FULL life. He lived a PERFECT life. He lived a WHOLE life. From the moment he arrived in a manger to the moment he ascended into those clouds, he was combatting and rectifying this broken and separated reality that human beings and all of creation seem to be completely subjected to. Jesus' ministry can often be hard to pin down on what was his primary objective. We often want to pick one expression of his time on planet earth as the most significant.

Often we find that this primary act of Jesus was expressed through his death on the cross, and rightly so, this was significant. This issue of sin and the suffering it produces is settled in this wonderful and beautiful act.

Some people look more at his teachings and his acts of compassion as a man as the primary expression. His wisdom and mercy become the guiding principles in how we should follow him.

Some people find that his death was only the beginning of something great and that really his resurrection was the primary purpose of his life on earth. Everything else was just a lead up to the moment where he defeated death itself and overcame the devil once and for all.

If your anything like me, reading through the Gospels in particular and trying to clarify with absolute certainty what the main thing is... well, it can be really exhausting. The moment I find myself settled and secured that I finally "got it", that I have complete revelation on this stuff, I find myself being painfully and excruciatingly humbled by another aspect of who Jesus really was and what he really came to do. I start to wonder in these moments if I'm missing the point. What if Jesus came not just to be glorified on how he put some things back into place by a few scattered events throughout his life, but what if everything he did was a massive, all encompassing expression of God's love that we will never, EVER be able to get our minds fully around?

Jesus' ministry to the world was HOLISTIC. Body,soul,mind,heart... he literally made it possible for us to be whole in every single area. How did he do this, you might ask?

Through his...

LIFE

DEATH

RESURRECTION

My proposition then is how do we learn to appreciate the breadth of his ministry in all that he did? How do we encourage a broad and HOLISTIC approach to following Jesus where we don't allow ourselves to get too pigeonholed into only focusing on one of the areas mentioned above?

You can see this quite a bit in Christian ministries. We get really focused on one of the amazing expression of Gods love and grace to the world through Jesus.

We get a revelation of Jesus' compassion on the sick, poor, orphaned and widows. We allow ourselves to be consumed with his heart and mercy for anyone who is in any kind of need. We see how he provided for the masses with fishes and loaves. We see how he ate and fellowshipped with the rejected and despised. We read about these things and we are inspired to go and do things like set up hospitals, aids clinics, shelters, counseling centers, orphanages etc. We see how Jesus responded to the physical needs of this world and we are compelled to follow.

Then we get a revelation of Jesus' radical and miraculous authority over spiritual and dark afflictions of the soul. We read about how he commanded a legion of demons out of a man and sent them into a pack of pigs. We read about how he spit in dirt and touched people's eyes with his holy mud. How he got words of knowledges about people he had only just met. As we read these things, of course we begin to be inspired on how God might want to use us in similar ways. So we set up whole schools and programs to train us in the supernatural. We desire to have access to this supernatural authority Jesus walked in, in both his life and through his miraculous resurrection.

Then we get a revelation of Jesus on the cross. How much pain and affliction he went through... all for us. How be hung and bled and eventually died to free us from our own self inflicted misery. We see the destructive power of sin and the bondage it holds us in, in both this life and the next. As we truly understand the mercy of God through this act of Jesus we are overwhelmed with a sense of total gratitude and appreciation. So we go about trying to convince the world through whatever means necessary the urgent and compelling truth of the cross. We set up schools, ministries, programs, outreaches etc. with the sole intent of learning how to preach this beautiful Gospel.

Now, obviously all of the above mentioned revelations are God breathed, scriptural and profound. I asked myself recently if I were to sit down with Jesus now, interview style, and try to get him to nail down once and for all his crowning achievement, that his response might leave me somewhat hanging. I wonder if he would be almost confused by the question. I wonder if his answer would come across more like this...

"I did nothing apart from what the Father was saying to me. In those acts of obedience and dependence on him I was near to him and whole. From the brightest to darkest moments of my life on earth I experienced a WHOLE and FULL life in him. That is my crowning achievement."

As I grow in my life and calling I want to be blown away by the FULL measure of Jesus manifest in and through my life. Sure, there will be seasons where I focus more on certain aspects of what that fullness really looks like being expressed in and through me. Times where I dig deep into word and work on my hermeneutics (if you don't know what that word means,honestly, don't worry about it). Times where I focus on radical evangelism and proclamation as a means to make it more of my lifestyle than and event. Seasons where I busy myself with setting up schools, programs and ministries to equip others to know God more. Moments where I draw aside and sit in absolute silence and stillness and allow my life to be completely uncluttered and absolutely solely focused on intimacy with the Father. But the challenge remains to always allow myself to experience the HOLISTIC love of the trinity in every aspect of my life and the lives of those around me.

To never arrive, to never settle, to never feel like i've achieved.

But to rest in the fact that Jesus' Life, Death and Resurrection reach deep into my WHOLE being, continually conforming me to himself.

When you see someone who is incredibly confident and secure in who they are or what they're good at there's a good chance that they had a loving father early on speaking the truth consistently into their lives. A father who was generous in his approval of that child and a child who constantly, above every other person around them, was starving for their father to affirm them in whatever it was they were doing. I know that this is isn't an absolute rule and that not every single confident and whole person fits into this category. I do think you'd be shocked though at how high the percentage of people who are, how many did have this amazing and simple foundation in their lives.

I unfortunately didn't have this. So that leaves me with a interesting conundrum; how do I go about being secure,confident and whole in my life?

It's quite simple actually.

I follow Jesus' example of asking the Father non stop what he thinks about me, what he feels about me. I ask him for his heart for the people around me, I ask him if I'm doing a good job in loving those people. I ask him and only him to validate me and bring truth and definition into who I really am.

A CONFIDENT, WHOLE, LOVED son of the most high God.

Holistic Hippies Pt.1

My life is full of extremes. Sometimes I wish it wasn't always this way, but mostly I think I would go crazy if my life was nominal, marginal or highly measured. I always have a sense of something HUGE around the corner, constantly anticipating the next big impossible challenge. Often the thing around the corner ends up being even way bigger than I dreamed it could of been and I'm left wondering how in Hades I got myself into that kind of situation again?

It's terrifying and I'm addicted to the terror.

This is good, mostly. As a follower of Jesus we should constantly be pushing ourselves to live out of the sense of urgency that Jesus left us with when he ascended up into the clouds. He came and did a lot of cool stuff and put into motion the cure to make this world what it was created to be. He himself started it, and he himself will in some way finish it ( bring on the eschatology mysteries). But there is this long awkward pause in between these two moments and the shocking reality is that this stage, the stage we are in now, seems to be completely, 100%, no two ways about it, left in our hands. With that understanding our lives should be to a large degree wild, reckless, abandoned and terrifying. We haven't a second to waste really. The work Jesus started is still an ongoing process that Jesus decides to entrust to US to accomplish.

YIKES! No pressure aye, Jesus?

In my short time in full time ministry thus far I've had the chance to observe quite a bit of other people who, like myself, are really attempting to live completely sold out to the call of God in our lives. Varied results would be a fair assessment, and an even fairer one would be how incredibly inconsistent I am in the midst of all my astute observations on others. As we rise and fall in our ministries and pursuits of being used by God, I don't sense that we don't want to be wildly effective or that we as followers of this amazing Jesus don't have the highest expectations of what he can do in and through us. Even with the most sincere intentions possible, it seems like it's a slippery slope of simultaneous massive success and massive failure... ALL THE TIME! I began to ask myself is this really what God has for us? Is serving him supposed to be such an imbalanced guessing game of blind faith and sheer determination?

One of my new favorite words is the word HOLISTIC. As a teenager I was very confused on what this actually meant. Whenever I saw this word it was usually on a business sign for a New Age massage/grocery store somewhere on Maui (yes, sometimes both services were offered at the same establishment). In my mind I intertwined this word holistic with things like tofu,aloe vera, dreadlocks and girls with hairy armpits. Maui has a shockingly strong Hippy presence with my hometown of Haiku and the next town down the road Paia, being the epicenter of utopian hippy paradise. Endless stories of hippy madness could be told, but that's entirely beside the point. I do feel though that growing up in such surroundings made it difficult for me to appreciate this amazing word... HOLISTIC. It surely has a much larger meaning than a massage technique or way to buy organic household groceries. Here are some pictures of the funky and iconic town of Paia, Maui.

This place is the Mecca of Hippy Living

Fairly self explanatory: Hippies got to get their hemp bracelets from somewhere

This isn't so exclusively hippy, but it's a great mixture of both local and hippy: Paia Laundromat

Main product sold here would probably be happiness

Street view of the Mecca

When God created us, he created us to be like him. He created us with an innate sense of wholeness that comes directly from HIS wholeness. Father, son, holy spirit... ONE, WHOLE, COMPLETE, PERFECT. We obviously don't currently operate in this dimension. We are broken, disjointed, shattered and incomplete. As human beings we have come to recognize more and more the complexity of what it means to be in these skin covered miracle factories called our bodies. We know that we need to look after these bodies in more ways than one. Our physical bodies need food, nourishment, rest. Our brain needs stimulation, challenge and growth. Our emotional well being is constantly being determined by the amount of love and encouragement we are receiving from those around us. Our inner spirit is constantly striving to be restored to its original design of being one with the creator.

When any one of these areas is out of line with how it was designed to function it often sets off a chain reaction that immediately affects the other areas. If we are physically sick it can make us feel emotionally drained. If we are heavily depressed emotionally we can become literally physically ill. In reverse, many studies show that when some people are terminally ill with things like cancer, the sheer power of being positive and full of life in their emotions seems to literally deter the physical ailments in their broken bodies. One of my sisters best friend growing up was a part of a huge family of like 8 other siblings. I remember as a kid hearing that this friends mom just made a mental and emotional decision after her 2nd or 3rd child that she just wasn't going to allow herself to get sick during the pregnancies anymore. No morning sickness or vomiting, NOTHING. The story goes that the next 6 children came completely vomit, discomfort and sickness free! She made a conscious and emotional decision that affected her physical symptoms. Kinda hard to imagine actually.

Jesus lived a FULL life. He lived a PERFECT life. He lived a WHOLE life. From the moment he arrived in a manger to the moment he ascended into those clouds, he was combatting and rectifying this broken and separated reality that human beings and all of creation seem to be completely subjected to. (Pt. 2 coming soon)

Parachute Pandemonium

I just finished one of the most thoroughly enthralling weekends of my young adult life. Parachute festival is an annual event held on the North Island of New Zealand right outside Hamilton. http://festival.parachutemusic.com/

It attracts upwards of 25,000 people each year with NZ and international musical acts and it was my very first multi day music festival experience. All in all the festival itself was decent, not a lot of bands that I would freak out over, but still a few that got me quite excited to see. I would like to go over the highlights of this amazing weekend by trying to list out a bunch of the INSANE things God did, way beyond watching cool bands play music to 1,000s for 30-45 minutes.

To start off, getting to NZ and participating in the festival was nothing short of a disaster. One of the most difficult preparation times i've had for anything in quite a while, halfway through the madness of trying to sort out the logistics of coming over I started to realize that God must be up to something HUGE. The broad strokes plan was to have a promo stall for YWAM and DTS, meet up with one of our current DTS outreach teams and serve the festival in security on top of running shifts in our promo tent. This kind of stuff normally shouldn't be tricky, but for some reason it was co-measurate with parting the red sea.

As soon as I got to NZ and actually arrived at the festival everything clicked and the ensuing 72+ hours were some of the most insane in my entire life. Below is a list describing some of the main events.

Thursday Night:

- Arrive at mystery creek around 8 pm after hitching multiple rides with multiple groups of people i've never met before from Auckland to Hamilton.

- Hastily set up our stall with close to no supplies like tape or any practical things. (Aesthetically challenged Stevie should NEVER be allowed to be in charge of anything of the sort)

-Attend the volunteers pre festival meeting, over 1000 people in a big room worshipping God sheepishly while Aaron Gillespie provokes us to be passionate about making Jesus public over the weekend.

-12 am find my tent and temporary home for the weekend.

Friday:

- Spend time with Jesus in the morning in our promo stall. Make a conscious decision to start each morning before the stall opens in worship and reading the word out loud, inviting God to have his way with our dinky little stall.

- God speaks to me to not spend any money of food etc. over the weekend and to trust him to provide for me the entire festival

- Half an hour later, I'm already extremely hungry and start pretending that maybe I made up the last bit. Immediately following this the ladies in the stall next door yell out over the wall... "You hungry over there? We have a whole roast chicken if you want it!"

- Meet with the DTS outreach team about how we should go about the weekend. Feel like God said for us to pray with every person that walks into our tent for his purpose and direction for their lives. Must of prayed with over 50 people over the weekend for direct, clear and prophetic words from God for their future. One of the highlights from these times included praying with a young single mom who dreamed of doing DTS and missions in school but got pregnant and then rejected by her church etc. After talking for 30 minutes or so, prayed with her and got a clear scripture from God and visions for her future. She cracked open and shared that God is pushing her now to take her 2 year old daughter this year and do a DTS, hopefully in Australia! Stories like this happened non-stop the entire festival in our stall. SO EPIC!

- Near the end of the first full day I cruise through the village where all the other stalls are set up. Saw some old friends who did dts at newy, notice TWLOHA twloha.com has a stall ( have small talk with some young interns), see that Come and Live also has a stall. http://comeandlive.com/ Rock up and immediately see the guys from Ascend the Hill http://comeandlive.com/artists/ascend-the-hill/ and Showbread http://comeandlive.com/artists/showbread/ praying with the founder Chad Johnson. I Join them in praying for the weekend and meet Chad (one of my heros of late). Make plans to get coffee with him the next day and chat up how YWAM and come and live can grow in relationship. (Check out all of the groups and bands I just mentioned... all LEGIT, just google em)

* Didn't even come close to going hungry once the whole day, completely looked after by random people all day, including multiple COFFEE'S!!!

Saturday:

- Start bright and early with worship and reading the word in our stall.

- Tons of incredible prayer times with both young and old about Gods plan and purposes for them.

- Checked out Jay Lucas' (old YWAM friends) seminar. Have lunch and catch up about life as of late.

- Have a solid connection time with Chad of Come and Live, major time of encouragement and prayer for both YWAM and Come and Live.

- Me and Chad pray with multiple kids for physical healing. Basically any person Chad saw with a crutch, cast, limp or ailment of any kind he would immediately stop and ask if we could pray for them. (For those that know me well, I am smack dab in the middle of a major wrestle in this area). Chads faith inspires me to make trusting God for healings a lot more personal.

- See 'The Chariot' for the first time. BUCKET LIST checked.

- After spending nearly 15 hours either in our stall or hanging with Chad, I attended a late night worship with the Edge/Kingsland http://www.edgekingsland.co.nz/signsoflife/ and Ascend the Hill. EPIC time. Prayed with a young guy named Tom for freedom from sexual sin and addiction. Prayed with a little girl named Faith for her tummy ache and her brother who is stuck in depression. At 12:30 AM I realize that I am a half hour late for my graveyard security shift. See a middle aged woman sheepishly standing outside a big group of people getting prayed for. God tells me to be a little more late and ask her if she's alright. She immediately blurts out that she needs a prophetic word to keep her marriage going. She shares how she's about to divorce her abusive husband. I ask God to speak something into the sitch, he does, Galatians 5:6. I pray it out and she hits the floor (literally). As she both sobs and laughs near hysterically, she begins to release years of pain and heartbreak. I find myself speechless ( for those of you that again know me well, you would know that this ins't super normal for me). I see this woman multiple times throughout the festival and each time she can't even begin to describe the weight thats been lifted off her.

- 12:45 am: Start my 6 hour graveyard security shift. AMAZING time of catching my breath and allowing God to clarify all of the things he's doing.

* Also didn't come close to going hungry once all day.

Sunday:

- Sleep for a little over 2 hours from 6:30- 8:30

- Wake up feeling absolutely WRECKED. Still push through and start morning worshipping and asking God to give me strength to end festival well.

- YWAM Tauranga guys show up and say they can man stall for pretty much the whole day.

- While hanging out with at the Come and Live tent a mom and her extremely handicapped son (caleb) come and ask for prayer. Chad prays with confidence and authority. I hesitate to pray initially but then decided to allow the compassion I was feeling for Caleb to be poured out through prayer for the pain to subside from Caleb's tormented body. Caleb says that the pain went from an 8 to a 4 while we prayed.

- Pass out in a near coma, two hour nap at some point in the afternoon.

- Wake up zombieish and spend some time in our stall, directional prayers for many are prayed. Young Tom comes and hangs out and we pray for his band to be able to go on tour and tell kids about Jesus.

- Run into caleb and his mom ( karen) around 10:30 PM. Caleb tells me that he wasn't telling the truth about the pain going from and 8 to 4 earlier, he said he felt guilty about being honest when we prayed earlier cause he didn't want us to be disappointed. ( theological head spin continues). Karen (mom) tells me that for some reason when I prayed something clicked in her heart. She goes on to tell me that she had another son with the same condition already die and is unwilling to let go of faith that God will touch and heal caleb. ( I barely hold back from sobbing hysterically). She then asks me about my life, tell her I'm with YWAM etc. and am here on holidays. She says "you look tired" I tell her my mental weekend so far. She offers for me to stay at their holiday home in Lake Taupo after the festival. I tell her that I don't have any transport, she says, "Oh, thats alright, my brother is a pilot and has a private plane. I'm gonna make some calls and see if he can fly you down for a few days!!!" ( yeah, not even kidding here, SILLY STUFF!)

- See the Chariot play again, way better then the first time.

* Fed all day, at one point I got pretty hungry and was starting to get a little nervous. At the peak of my hunger one of the come and live guys slipped $20 into my hoodie pocket.

Monday:

- Start last day with worship and the word

- Caleb and Karen mozy on over to our YWAM tent. Spend some time praying and chatting. As she leaves tent she slips me $50 (SO RIDICULOUS!!!)

- Pray with young married couple I had met with the come and live guys. After hanging out off and on all weekend realize that she is an old friends (bunji) little sister.

- Pack up the stall, say goodbye to Jesse and the DTS outreach team.

- An old DTS student from 2004 who was selling stuff at festival comes up and says "you dropped something out of your pocket" Then proceeds to slip $100 in my back pocket.

- Pack up my gear into a little burgundy volvo station wagon belonging to a young married couple I met the first day of the festival. Drive up to their house in Auckland where they offer to put me up until I make the next connection.

* Fed all day. Meat pies to gourmet risotto. Tip top ice cream blows my mind.

Tuesday:

- Surf for the first time in NZ at north Piha beach. HUGE closeouts, lots of paddling and duck diving.

- See much of the Auckland west coast, absolutely blown away by the beauty of Gods creation.

Wednesday:

- Currently sitting in a Queen st. cafe in downtown auckland. Absolutely flabbergasted by the grace of the Almighty God. Crying as I write out caleb's journey. Really confused on how I came out "on top" after praying with him, and that he still is in non stop agonizing pain. Trusting God to get me to Tauranga tomorrow for a Come and Live event and then spend the next 10 days with one of the most important families in my entire life (dawsons). Giving God every burden and hurt and pain from an interesting 2011. Finding myself literally wanting to jump out of my skin for the amazing things he is already doing and wants to do in 2012.

I hope that this little list of some of the more clear highlights from this weekend inspire and encourage you. Through reflecting on all that happened I'm shocked at the simplicity of hearing and obeying God. He truly knows what's best and wants us to experience this kind of freedom ALL THE TIME! I pray that you will begin, or continue, to trust him with every single part of you life. God bless.

Best of 2011

What a year that was!!! I was stretched, challenged, overwhelmed with friendship and blown away by the opportunities God put before me. Big year personally and just as equally massive was the amount of quality things I read,watched and listened to. Here is a list of the top things that impacted me last year. Not all were necessarily released in 2011, but were possibly things I finally got my hands on last year.


Tunes:
Where to even begin. HUGE year for mind-blowing music. I will attempt to keep the list small and labor on what's so amazing about the albums I've chosen.


#1 Album of 2011


'Bon Iver' by Bon Iver

Simply put... I'm not sure if I've ever heard a more beautiful piece of music in my short time on this planet. The composition of the melodies and wide range of instruments matched with Justin Vernon's insanely unique tone and range vocally... it just really can't be beaten. The only minor lack ( and I mean extremely minor) would be lyrical content. It's not drab or low quality, it's a little transcendent at times. If transcendent is a word that works here? I wouldn't say that when I listen to the album ( which honestly must of been upward of multiple hundreds of times) I connected strongly with the message of the song and would even go as far to say that most songs are so artsy and personal that a clear message is not easy to be defined. Nonetheless this gets my pick as best album of the year.

#2 Album of 2011

'Stuck in the city' by Brandon Reid

http://brandonreid.bandcamp.com/

You've probably never heard of this guy unless you are a YWAM Newcastle affiliate of the last 2 years. To say he deserves your listening ear would be the biggest understatement of 2011. He was a distant friend of my buddy Jeremy Earnshaw who passed away in 2008. Hailing from Fairbanks, Brandon strolled through our community in 2010 after Jeremy's parents informed us that he was hitch hiking around oz looking for couches to sleep on. One of the strangest and eccentric dudes I've met in a while for sure, I still to this day have never seen a pair of shoes on his feet. Nonetheless, the guy is an absolute song-writing genius!!! This album came out late in the year and it completely blew my mind. The blend of americana and his INSANELY clear melodic voice, coupled with his ability to write lyrics that make you feel like you actually want to live in the Old West and start a farm provides the most surprising album I've ever listened to. The only way to describe how much I've enjoyed this album is to use the word obsessive, it got to the point that if I didn't listen to it for more than a day or two I started feeling withdrawls.


#3 Album of 2011


'Major/Minor' by Thrice

Thrice has cemented themselves as pretty much my super band. Nearly untouchable in being the most well rounded and progressive group I've even listened to. This album may not be their masterpiece (which is nearly impossible to say that any one of their previous ones can be decided upon as one as well) but would get my vote for most complete lyrical work by Dustin Kensrue thus far. ABSOLUTELY MIND BLOWINGLY PENETRATING LYRICS. From the opening line to the closing one, this album wreaks of literary genius. The music is also exquisite.

#4 Album of 2011


'El camino' by The Black Keys

ROCK n ROLL lives on! Their previous record 'Brothers' was arguably the best piece of modern rock and roll I had ever listened to. Though this album barely snuck it's way into 2011 it completely deserves the title of best rock and roll album of 2011. Wildly imaginative guitar riffs and ridiculously catchy lyrics and melodies. I can't get enough of this album, it truly is rock and roll magic.

#5 Album of 2011


'Mylo Xyloto' by Coldplay

How could a new Coldplay album not make my top 5? Immediately from the opening track 'Hurts like heaven' you can tell that something new is afoot from the kings of modern alternative rock. The major addition of heavy synth was not loved by all fans, but I found it totally acceptable and even welcome. The first 5 songs of the album are almost complete in and of themselves with ' Us against the world' landing itself in my top 5 Coldplay songs of all time.

Honorable mentions:
'Pala' by Friendly Fires: Pure dance/pop bliss
'21' by Adele: Best Female vocalist around at the moment IMO
'Signs of life EP' by Edge Kingsland: potentially best worship EP i've ever had
'Space face' by Margo May: Old friend through YWAM, Kansas City melody queen
'Little Hell' by City and Color: Dallas Green is the king of beautiful melodies




Books:


I've fallen more and more in love with reading over the past 5 years or so. I read a few great books this last year.


#1 book of 2011


'A million miles in a thousand years' by Donald Miller

Simply breathtaking storytelling. Donald Miller has emerged as my biggest inspiration in how to weave heartfelt honestly and vulnerability with natural unforced humor. This book challenged me thoroughly to want to wake up and make everyday count. The premise is simple but thoroughly profound and impacting to anyone who would pick it up and give it a real read. I dare you to read this and not dream about how you can change the world.

#2 book of 2011


'Life together' by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

This one barely snuck into 2011 for me. I still technically haven't finished it. I got it as a Christmas present and immediately dug deep into the amazing insight and clarity on what it looks like to function in community in a way that goes beyond mere appreciation. Bonhoeffer is the guru of presenting, in excruciating detail, the scriptural truth in a way that penetrates through cultural and seasonal confusion. If you are apart of, have been apart of or ever plan to be apart of a community that you want Jesus to use in a healthy and powerful way, this book is a must read.

# 3 book of 2011


'Fast Food Nation' by Eric Schlosser

I know this book came out many years ago, I finally got around to reading it in 2011. Witty, shocking and honest. Highly impacting read. It didn't feel preachy and never felt like it watered down the message in order to keep my attention. I'm slowly becoming someone who actually desires to eat healthy and steward my body in a way that God intends for me to. This book has been highly motivating in that regard.

Movies:
I consider myself a movie enthusiast. While heavy dramas would definitely get my pick as preferred watching I would definitely say I still appreciate a wide variety of other categories of film. Really I love almost all genres bar Romantic/Comedies, I could go the rest of my life without ever sitting through another 'Hitch' or 'Sweet home alabama'. Luckily 2011 cranked out quality in other areas.

#1 movie of 2011


'Trust' directed by David Schwimmer

Probably the sickest I've ever felt in a movie. The shocking reality of online communication and the naivety of both young people and their parents are mercilessly exposed in this painful movie. Impeccable acting and an uncompromising storyline, this film delivers a major wake up call to those who see mainstream media and advertising as unimportant or trivial. Some found it too graphic and harsh, but I left this film feeling a major dose of the Father's love/agony for his children. Bringing the truth into the light isn't always simple, but this film gives one of todays most slippery areas a major kick in the pants.

#2 movie of 2011


'Super 8' directed by J.J. Abrams

I became a sold out J.J. fan almost 8 years ago when 'Lost' completely consumed my appreciation for modern television programming. Super 8 is the perfect blend of suspense, action, humor and heartfelt character dialog. It was the 'Goonies' meets 'Jurassic Park' in some ways for me, blending brilliant teenage boy dialog with gripping in your face action sequences. The train crash sequence was absolutely perfect.

#3 movie of 2011


'Bridesmaids' directed by Paul Feig

Guilty pleasure. Highly offensive to many,understandably so. This movie was a classic Lujan family comedy. Kristen Wiig is an absolute genius performer to me, and this movie cements her as a genuine leading character. I found myself laughing painfully hard many, many times with Melissa McCarthy's performance going down as one of my favorite quirky characters since Galifnakis in 'The Hangover'.

Ghosts of Christmas past

So, Christmas has come and gone once again. Celebrating it for the 27th time, I still feel there is much more mileage to get out of the richness of the occasion. Each year now feels to be just beginning to scratch the surface. This year has been such an unexpected and profound journey of both personal reflection and simultaneous outward projection of what Jesus means to me.

I still find it difficult to separate the past from the present though.

Over the years I have grown into a richer and fuller understanding of God's amazing breadth and depth of love through Jesus. Particularly at this time of the year though, I still find myself struggling to separate the hope of things to come from the pain of previous loss.

Honestly as much as I love Christmas, I have realized the last few years that I get slightly uneasy around this time of year. The big picture stuff is all in place for me. I fully get the gravity of this season. An all powerful being who made everything we can see, touch, smell, feel, etc., deciding to come and be "WITH US" is truly the most exceptional thing that has ever happened since we were formed out of some dirt (guys) and human bone (girls) way back when, when all THIS came into being. Beyond that broad stroked appreciation, sifting through Christmas on a very ME level has very mixed emotions.

I became more aware of the WHY last Thanksgiving. I spent it with my sister Rebecca and her beautiful family in Florida. We began talking about how at a very young age nearly ever year I would have these random health episodes on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. A couple times I had critical asthma attacks that would land me in the emergency room. Another year I got the flu so bad that my family, being completely overwhelmed by the amount of vomit being emitted from my tiny body, accidentally overdosed me on suppositories! If you don't know what a suppository is, I'll spare you the details. The overdose led to me having a severe allergic reaction to the drugs within, sending my minuscule little 5 or 6 year old body into random spasms, and my neck would crink over to the side semi-permanently on and off for hours at a time. This naturally led to me and my family spending the "funnest" day of the year in the emergency room again.

You might think it was all a case of bad luck. Why Christmas over and over again? What a coincidence!

Right?

My sister and I started talking about this and came to a more concise conclusion than mere chance. You see, the Christmas before all this started happening a much more traumatic and catastrophic thing happened to me and my family. My parents, who had been fighting and barely hanging on to their marriage, decided to separate a few weeks before Christmas. My Mom took me and my sisters to my grandparents in California last minute where we spent our first Christmas without Dad. This obviously would have been sad and dramatic at the time, but I was too young to really soak in what was really happening. I'm sure for the rest of the family it was a terribly difficult time.

I actually remember it being really fun spending Christmas in the cold for the first time. I remember laughing,singing and dancing with my cousins who I didn't know well but was able to grow in love with them over that Christmas. I remember putting popcorn on a string and putting it around the massive Christmas tree my grandparents had in their giant living room. There was no way we could do this in Hawaii due to ants and cockroaches. I was amazed that such commonplace critters "go away" in the winter in other parts of the world. I remember my Uncle got my cousins a train set and a R/C car track. I was so jealous, but managed to get a few turns in on the R/C track. I remember my sisters and cousins put together a talent night of sorts, which consisted mostly of them lip syncing and dancing horribly to Paula Abdul (those songs are burned in my memory decades later, and I don't even like Paula Abdul). I'm pretty sure video footage of said talent night exists somewhere out in the vast galaxy of cardboard boxed Lujan memorabilia.

As I sat and reflected with my sister last Thanksgiving I realized this was and is my first cognitive Christmas memory. The year before our family took a trip to Washington and Whistler around Christmas time, and I only have a few snapshots of memories from that trip. One is being in snow for the first time in my life (to this day I have only been in snow maybe one or two other times). The other clear memory is being pushed down a massive flight of frozen stairs by my very caring and attentive sisters and smashing face first into a car bumper at the bottom of the hill. I remember coming to consciousness a few moments later and my dad carrying me through the snow back to our cabin and telling me I was going to be ok.

But these memories are without any clear, classic Christmas imagery. No going through our stockings Christmas Eve, no gathering around the tree and opening presents Christmas morning, no carols, no hot chocolate, no decorating the tree, none of that kind of stuff.

That all came the next year, minus one incredibly important detail...

DAD!

My first cognitive Christmas memories are all great and warm and fun, but they are missing arguably the most important piece of the puzzle. I didn't know it at the time, and didn't really put that piece together until last Thanksgiving, but as much as those memories with my grandparents and my cousins were amazing, I think deep down I knew something was drastically wrong. My sister shared that knowing now the full trauma and disconnect that occurred over my parents divorce, the cause of all those physical reactions at Christmas time were directly related to the deep psychological and spiritual trauma I experienced when Mom and Dad split up that fateful Christmas in the late 1980s. My little boy body was trying to catch up with the pain that was occurring under the surface.

I found myself in that moment realizing, as we discussed quite lightheartedly and cavalier the actual heartbreaking reality of my childhood, that she was absolutely right and that my current tension and struggle with Christmas in the present are completely intertwined with those haunting memories. I am finding myself also more and more compelled to understand that I, like everyone else on this planet, have a responsibility to make a choice to either allow these things to be reconciled or to allow them to brew and boil year in year out and live out of that reality.

Sometimes it feels that there is no other reality to live out of. "It's all I've ever known" we tell ourselves.

But... as a believer in the real story of Christmas I need to take a sobering approach to such viewpoints. As much as I have allowed this Jesus to change my life and the way I view the world around me, I also still need to allow him to impact my past and where i've come from. Remembering that God came to be WITH ME when I was thirteen and desperately needed to know the love of a father, It seems so logical NOW, so elementary. It changed me then and it continues to change me now.

The thing is, it doesn't erase what occurred THEN. Those memories are still real and the pain and trauma attached didn't go away just because I prayed a prayer in an old kim chee factory almost 15 years ago in Kalihi Valley. I knew that God cared then, that he wasn't removed or unaffected by my pain. I found him to be someone who spoke clearly into the deepest parts of my soul, and that he cried and grieved those awful moments of my early childhood.

It feels like the only natural response we can do when we have these encounters with the Emmanuel God is to just toss up all this hurt to him and hope that we never need to revisit them again. Those moments when he shares with us that he was there in the midst of all our hurt and pain feels like a giant release valve that we hopefully never have to release again. We like to believe that a spiritual sort of memory wipe occurs.

I'm not quite sure this is what God has in mind though. He isn't the kind of God who wants to completely remove me from my past. As much as he hates that certain things have happened to me, he is BIG enough and WITH ME enough NOW to redeem all of that into a beautiful story that reeks of his faithfulness and healing power. Not a healing power that requires a spiritual and emotional lobotomy, but one that is fierce and wild enough to stand with and hold you while you wail, kick and scream about the deepest and darkest corners of your past. To me, this is the Christmas story at it most raw and vulnerable.

"Long lay the world in sin and error pining, till he appeared and the soul felt it's worth."

This is why Christmas really should be the most wonderful time of the year. All the things we do, which some Christians would say are pagan, can be redeemed FULLY to scream and shout this amazing truth.

Let the lights be bright, let the trees be glitzy, let the tinsel shine, let the stockings bulge, let the turkeys glisten, let boxes under the tree overflow, let carols be sung sweetly... let this all happen and more if they are done in such a way as to remind what God proved to us all those centuries ago.

Let it impact us NOW, and let it impact us for the THEN, for the things we wish never happened.

The choice I make now won't be made for me. I can pretend the symbolism around me this season points to the truth of who God is. To pretend that I live in a way that says I am whole and I am found.

Or I can choose to allow God to dig deep into who I am NOW through my past, present and into my future, radically shaping and forming me through things I want so badly to have never occurred. Through this God shows me that he is still true, that I can still know that this is the truth of who I am NOW even though sometimes it doesn't always feel that way.

This year I broke out of a funk that I have tried to break out of many times. I decided not to let my own expectations of what I wish happened THEN to affect the way I loved others around me NOW.

Gift giving is something that my family wasn't terrible at, but we weren't really great at either. My mom would make a massive effort every year to give us as much gifts as possible, but it was always a stretch to say the least. The last few years I would sit and hope that others would come and rescue Christmas for me. This year, with a help of a few friends, I broke out of that and decided to take on the reality of what God modeled for me through Christmas:

To give out of a sense of love and sacrifice and not out of obligation or guilt.

What a privilege it is to live life out of that reality!

We have these types of choices to make all the time, to live out of the old reality or the new reality. Christmas is a great, exaggerated season that confronts whether we believe and live out of the reality that God came to BE WITH US.

I gave out more presents this year than I ever have. I spent an exponentially greater time than ever before crafting and laboring sentiments to tell others that I'm grateful for them in my life. I also received gifts as well. One in particular that really deserves more gratitude.It's not a gift that you open up, freak out and jump up and down in screaming Jubilation over. It should be more like that, and if you're anything like me it doesn't always get expressed that way. Sure, it has its brief expressions of over the top appreciation and happiness, but deep down I know that it deserves more.

This Christmas I am pleased to say that the greatest gift I've received is learning how to appreciate more the one I've already received. It's the gift that keeps on giving, it's the gift that makes me scream in joy and the one that walks me through dark sorrow.

JESUS, the God who is WITH.