Old Yerarbooks that Bring voices from the Past

I found on a bookshelf yesterday my sixth grade, seventh grade and eighth grade yearbooks. I open them up and flipped through the pages, and had trouble remembering names and faces. Then I started reading the comments and signatures and my memory is really shot. There were mention of things I did that I have absolutely no recollection of. At first I panicked, then realized that that was forty years ago and there is no way I would remember every little detail of my everyday life.

With this I realized that what we thought at one time was so important really is not that important. Time goes and people come and go in your lives. There are some that leave a deep impression and others that leave none. If that is true for me, what has my life been for all those have crossed my path? Do I take them seriously; do I listen intently to their stories? Have I been present for all that my journey brings me to? The answer to that is obviously no.

Now that I have been settled for the longest period of my life, now that I have lived longer with Tracy and the kids, I am finding myself rooted in new ways. It is strange to have this life from my past, memories that shaped me as a child and made me the adult that I am, but even that person has been shaped now more by the people in my life right now. My family and my church I have lived longer with than any other family or community. These people have shaped me more than any other. Maybe because of memory loss, there is a searching for something that seems lost. Maybe that is just from moving every three to five years for forty years of my life. If the world has any insights let me know.

Just read and an article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/02/AR2011030205716.html, it is about what happens to families of children that live through an evacuation and or regime change outside their home country. I found the article interesting as nothing was ever said to my parents after I had experienced both an evacuation at the end of my ninth grade year in school and then a bloody coup de ta a month before I was to graduate from high school. Both experiences effected me at the time and continue to pop up in my life even today.
There is trauma when ripped from your everyday life and then moved out of your home and into a culture that seems so foreign even if it is your supposed native culture.
For years I have struggled with how I fit in to a world that I do not feel comfortable in. I go to my children s high school and feel comfortable in the midst of all the diversity. I remember walking into China town in New York city and smelling the dried fish and other wonderful smells of my childhood and feeling like I was home.
What I am starting to realize as I get older is that we all have life experiences that push us to the outside of feeling culturally connected. We all walk in some kind of exile wondering how will I ever fit into this world in which I live. This very thought has opened a new way to read the scriptures, the Hebrews spent much of their time in exile and they were always looking for a way to fit in. Jesus was always going against the cultural norms and finding himself on the outside. The same with the prophets and other faithful disciples throughout the years. What is revealing is that the journey we call life is that call to let go of trying to fit in culturally and work to accepting myself just as I am. My life is my life, it made me who I am today and am grateful for all those that have crossed my path. Grateful for my family of origin that started me on my journey. I am grateful for my wife that has loved me despite the crap that I bring into the relationship. Am grateful for my children that have loved me unconditionally and made be feel so much more important than I really am. They have walked with me and pushed me to become the person I am today. So Thanks family for your love, your patience and our laughter as we have journeyed through life. I look forward to the adventures that lie ahead.

Changing Weather

As I sat and tried to get well from this bug yesterday I had a chance to observe the weather a bit. I would look out and we would have huge snow flakes, it was like being in the middle of a snow globe. Then before I realized it the sun would be shining in through the window. Then the snow would slowly start again and within thirty minutes we would have cycled through the weather pattern again. It was rather awesome and I began to realize that the weather is always changing and we rarely notice. We just live life day to day and another year has goes by. It is when we are in crisis, a storm growing in our lives that we notice the the changes that have been going on in our lives.
It seems like it was just yesterday that I was in high school and here I am all grown up with grown children. What happened to the last thirty years?
I realize now I was so busy living life, I let it slip by me without even noticing. That would be a regret I have, not slowing down to see the weather changing. Why is it that the to do list always seems so important but being present in the life of family, and I mean in the small things gets left behind.
The weather continues to change by the hour today, not as drastic as yesterday but I am noticing. I have decided to make a point of slowing down and and be present to my life, to changes everyday. I want to watch my children find their wings and fly into their lives. I want to be their for my wife as we journey into new adventures. I will be present to life and to change.

I thought I would give this a go.

I have been sitting around all day for the past three days due to the bug that I am fighting, and sitting here I decided that I would give this a go. So first why the title? I am a third culture kid, which is a person who spent at least one year or more growing up outside your home country. I grew up in five countries and just before my eighteenth birthday moved to my home country, the United States of America to begin my college life. I added pastor to the title because I have often wondered why I ended up working in the church. One idea I came up with is that faith in my family was the one constant in my life. So it has seemed natural that I have become a pastor to have an anchor, which is my faith in my life.
Now that I have lived in the same place for eleven years, the longest I have lived anywhere, I am losing my itchy feet. At the same time my faith is growing deeper. I always enjoyed the thrill of moving to a new place, it was a new adventure for me, I am surprised at what a comfort it is to have some roots planted. The reality is as a pastor my roots are in the church and when I retire I will have to separate myself do to the ethical guidelines of no longer being their pastor. Somewhere in my mind there is the reality that I will not be here forever and there is some grief with that. For now I will focus on the adventure of traveling with the same community and growing in my faith.
What I plan to do is to journey with this blog with my thoughts and musings that will range the gamete of issues. I invite anyone to follow and even dialogue with me if one finds a topic that triggers your thinking. I look forward to the day and weeks ahead.