How's My Driving?

This morning started with a drive down from Orange to Irvine for Catalyst West Coast Labs. The drive went alright, but we were close enough to the local morning drive time that there was a lot of traffic crawling. I don't know if I should really call it traffic, though because that image insinuates that something is actually moving. In the church van, every motion is exaggerated, so start/stop - one bumper to the next isn't all that great. No incidences, but I did make an observation: I've never met someone with a cleaner driving record who takes more crap about how he drives than I do. File that under 'Perils of Being the Youth Minister'.

Anyway, upon safe arrival at Mariners, we all checked in and started the labs. First up for me was Susan Isaacs' lab regarding the value of writing your spiritual autobiography. I'll be bringing her book home. One of the most meaningful writing assignments I've ever had was a few years ago, when I had to do a brief spiritual autobiography for a spiritual formation class. One question from the lab that really sparked my synapses was: 

What is the story that I can no longer NOT tell?

It reminded me of the fire in Jeremiah's bones that he could not keep in anymore. We have to deliver the message God gives us to deliver.

Dan Kimball's lab was also good, talking about exchanging religion for the mission of God. I always appreciate the gentle heart from which Kimball speaks. He had some great stuff that the church needs to be teaching. (It sounded like more of it will be explained in whatever his next book will be.)


Scott Belsky's lab about Making Ideas Happen was pretty thought provoking, too. I am full of ideas, but I've become disordered to the point where most of them gain no traction and fizzle out. The class stirred some thoughts about how that's happened and what I need to do about it. I'm an easy going person by design and I don't see that changing, but somehow that laid-back approach to life has combined with a deficiency of hope and the resulting apathy  to at least make me appear unorganized. That needs to change.


As I was driving to lunch today, I missed the exit & consequently the entry into the parking lot we needed to get into. It wasn't a big deal; we easily took the next exit, got back on the freeway, re-exited and hit the lot from the other direction. It was similar to the airport yesterday, when I navigated a different route because I misjudged the intended exit. I realized: I will probably miss some turns in life, but I'm good at improvising a new plan and still getting where I needed to go. There are lots of ways to get from one point to another - as long as we remember where we're headed to begin with.
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I'm operating on about 6 hours of sleep since Monday morning, so these threads are not yet fully woven together. So... feel free to pick a little, but please don't pull them too hard or my whole sweater may unravel, which would be very unfortunate because this is not the typical OC sunshine week - I need that sweater.  Good night.