Home

There is a mythical place called Home. Some people would call it Sanctuary, others a ‘safe place to land’, still others would call it the Jones’s house in the perfect neighborhood just up the street.

But Home isn’t stuck between four walls. Sometimes Home is an old pickup truck that still treats me better than most human beings! (And still the safest place to cry)

Home is a place inside ourselves. If you have a faith slant it might just be someplace that’s not even here but is inhabited by a sense of something bigger down the road. 

Home can be in the hands we hold, the voices we whisper to and the people we know give us that sense of belonging.

Home can be in a group of silver-yeared believers who adopt a wild buck that realizes they have more life and love than most modern churchies he’s ever encountered.

Home is akin to Love.  It doesn’t happen without it.  We feel deeply, share openly with those we love and in a sense they are Home.

Home is knowing it’s NOT home alone. We do need others.  From sweet smiles to deeper longings of the spirit and soul.

Home is belonging, being, sharing, caring, listening, crying and loving one another.

Home.

Where’s yours?

~ Peace

The Burtle 

So I did a thing…

Today, my first endeavor putting the words I’ve written together in book form is available. Like Big Boy published (though it was self published, it has a real deal ISBN number and available online!) I’m proud of it and it’s surreal in the same moment.

If you’re interested the link Is below - or just search on that ginormous online seller that originally just sold books (named after a River).

It’s an offering of who I am to the God I love.

Hopefully seen from a perspective that isn’t judgy or religious.

~ Peace 

The Burtle

The Link:

Known, a collection of writings

Parenting is hard.

Whether it’s from 3000 miles away or it’s across the house as they’re sitting 15 feet away from you, the distance might seem just as insurmountable (whether there be physical, mental or even spiritual chasms).

How do we smother them with love when at the same time we want to smother them with a pillow? Not really. But you know you want to shake them every once in a while!

Born of our flesh, they often times have the same psychological make-up that we have. Similar deficiencies and hopefully some of the same beautiful parts in their own unique packages. 

And whether they be 10 or 16 or 26 - they are hard. 

There’s a verse that says, show a child the way they should go (Proverbs 22:6). Sometimes it means directing them towards activities or interests that they may not really want to pursue; sometimes it’s encouraging things you don’t really like yourself, but you know it’s things they enjoy. And sometimes it’s setting up those ugly boundaries that just suck. They suck because they’re hard and they suck because they truly suck the life out of you. 

Parenting is hard. 

Yesterday I got to sit across from my daughter on her 25th birthday. I never imagined we would make it this far. She’s made like me in many ways and at the same time she’s much stronger than I am. She’s faced things that I can say I’ve never had to go through or endure. And she’s doing the best she can every day. 

It’s one of the joys when you see them on the other side. And as we were leaving I looked at her and I said “what’s your faith?”

She hates the question but instead of me telling her exactly what kind of faith she should have, I asked her what she believed. And she told me she had a higher power. She wasn’t sure much beyond that, but that’s a start. Because I would rather her believe in something than nothing. I would rather be able to have the discussion I had with her openly without it being mixed with the anger that she seethes toward people who push faith or her in total silence.

Parenting is hard. 

It’s much harder when we don’t have faith. That means me, my kids, and even the other parent. You can’t manufacture faith in someone who doesn’t believe, but you can pray like hell for them to find something that sticks in their ass and makes them realize that there are bigger mountains to climb.

How do you parent? 

I never feel like I do it well enough, but I try. And for many years I didn’t try. Not to the level of trying i could be proud of - trying to bridge the gap. Find things of interest that a 10 year-old, 25-year-old and a 26-year-old might want to talk about. And I often still fail to find those common grounds. 

I do believe fully that if you try, you’re at least participating.

Talk to them. Talk to them until you’re blue in the face if you have to, but also listen. And when you listen, maybe you’ll find one thread that you can say is common between you. Maybe they’ll see you listening and realize there’s more to communication than just yelling and screaming and then running away or just hiding and trying to slide by without opening up. Because parenting is really relationship. Starts as this protector of life and it develops into one of guide or mentor into hopefully some kind of relationship that might resemble a friendship. Or at least a connection that’s beyond just “do what I say!”

I don’t know if any of this resonates but I just know after several days of talking a lot about parenting and how it does and doesn’t work at times, I know that it’s better when you actually talk with others. Talk about your failures and talk about your hopes for your kids. 

Parenting is hard.

But so worth it.

~ Peace

The Burtle

the tender

I wasn’t raised on the tender.

There wasn’t a focus on when he washed his disciples’ feet or the tears that were shed over the passing of his dear friend. When Mary was there listening attentively, I knew Martha was faithfully doing the ‘right thing’.

We didn’t look at the last meal and have any real thoughts about the fact that his followers embraced him in a loving manner just hours before he prayed for them.  Loved them.  Died for them.

I didn’t know love at all.

I knew performance and prophecy and had a pretty good take on the scriptures from the book - at least the ones that were often bellowed from the pulpit. I’m no theologian, but I knew the message that was being taught. Unfortunately, a lot of times it was wrong.

Not wrong because it was a lie, but wrong because the focus wasn’t on grace and forgiveness and accepting as we are. It was on ‘we accept you more - the more you become like us’. Something that still resonates today, I believe.

Somewhere I missed that message. The tender message of hope through the eyes of love. 

And yet that is the one thing that has kept me here. The love of a being that I don’t understand but I still yell at sometimes, even today. I beg and plead and cry to, and realize that nothing works without him. Without this all powerful being that was so stupid-crazy that he came down and walked among us. 

He came to love.

So the journey more recently has been to understand this love thing. It’s nothing new. I can probably pick out at least five or six of my recent blogs that deal specifically with that topic, but today it’s more specifically about the fact that there are so many places that I used to think about the judgment of God that are truly about the Love of God.

And as I’m still working on the fact that he might just accept me as I am today, red eyed and snotty nosed, dripping with depression, I know that he loves me. 

Instead of asking ‘why?’ I just say very quietly…

“Thank You.”

~ Peace

The Burtle

What we carry.

The past can latch on and just NOT LET GO. 

__________

I had a beautiful conversation this evening with an older couple that I truly adore. Whether they realize it or not, in the few interactions that we’ve had I have come to respect and want to know them more.

At one point, we talked about our pasts. More I talked about mine and they listened, shocker… me talking - but I talked because I do feel a trust and a willingness to share with this couple.

The wife asked me about therapy - not knowing that I am so much on the bandwagon of ‘everybody should talk to someone! Get therapy!!’

Then she told me that she had recently started counseling of her own. Man, she’s a fucking superhero! That is huge! I don’t know if she thought I was serious or being silly, but I think it’s one of the most incredible things to find someone in the late fall/winter of their lives still willing to talk and open up. Walk the journey of healing the past.

I carried my past with me for a long, long time and it became so heavy and so damning. It condemned me well beyond the scars of my youth, and it tried to keep me in my pain and addiction. It tried to kill me.

Funny, even Jesus carried the weight… But then he lifted it up on a tree, and gave it to the Father.

What if we just stopped? What if we took the time to go ‘this needs to be dealt with, and I need help?’

What if we started walking through the pain and started to slowly hand it over to a higher power? Give it somewhere that can actually take care of it instead of continuing to carry it or worse, bury it! Either way it’s going to come out. Maybe it’ll come out in our anger and our frustrations or maybe it can come out in healthy conversations that lead towards peace in our spirit.

I don’t know, except for that it’s worked for me. 

And tonight/early morning as I’m writing this I realize that even when work is shit and I’m tired and frustrated, I still have more peace than I’ve had in any of the years when I was still trying to carry all those past hurts on a daily basis.

So thankful for the conversation tonight. It’s not every day that you meet an superhero!! And I hope to take some time to learn more about them soon.

If you’re still carrying the past, why don’t you look down and realize that you’re standing in the present? And hopefully, with some help let go of that and realize that today is enough, tomorrow will come, and lay those burdens down.

~ Peace

The Burtle

The Bubble

I had a conversation yesterday with an older gentleman who told me that he wasn’t willing to give his money to a certain city. That city is Portland. And it is a shit show in my opinion of all the things that are hard about thousands of people living together.

It’s not unique. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle have similar vibes. Even Atlanta has many places that echo problems that I’ve seen there. 

I know Portland pretty well. I’ve been there more times than I could count easily and for about nine months I lived just north of the city in one of the upper boroughs. 

Tents. Begging. Social programs that can’t meet the needs of the thousands of people that have been bussed there from other ‘cleaner’ cities to get them out of their hair.  Do your research, there are cities that literally put people on buses and bus them to places like Portland to get them off their whitewashed streets.

And while I do mostly agree with this gentleman, I think we’re missing a big item. The bubble that we put ourselves in so often. I know I have one. I have found that as I get a little older than there are places that I am not comfortable going. places that I don’t want to be around as much or even people I’d rather avoid. I’ve gotten to where I’m a pretty snobbish lower-middle class/upper-lower class man.

And if this was just about economic standing and trying to provide the best for myself and those around me, that would be perfectly OK. 

But it’s not. 

Portland needs people. It needs people that care. Just like Atlanta needs people that care. There are so many broken hearts and yes, there’s addiction and there’s laziness and there’s just knowing that you can get by with as little as possible, but there’s also a lot of mental health issues and a lot of hurting people that could use a hot meal and a conversation.

I’m not talking about rescuing everyone. But maybe we could spend a little bit of that money we spend on the new clothes, that trip, the exquisite meal and put it towards one person at a time. Give time to get face to face with someone who isn’t like us - and maybe find that were made alike than we think.

One bad decision.  One bad month financially. One slip. And we’re in their shoes.

I’m not a fan of Portland. I love a little boy who lives about 35 minutes west of the city. I wasn’t happy when I was there and even though I know they’ve cleaned up a lot of the tents, there’s still a huge vagrancy issue that is so hard to watch. 

I took my daughter and my youngest downtown a couple weeks ago while I was there and it’s still hard. But it’s also trying to find its place again. Maybe it’s trying to clean up a little bit? 

Maybe we need to help give some spiritual cleansing. Pray, reach out, give. 

Not just money, but give of ourselves. 

~ Peace

The Burtle 

the Hallmark ending

It’s a myth. 

It’s fabricated, conceived out of the notion that life can end up in a nice, tidy package with a perfect bow. 

It’s a lie. 

The Hallmark ending is a lie. 

Before I go any further, I love Hallmark movies. I watch them as soon as they come on in the fall and winter (a current favorite is October Kiss) . I’ll watch them in the spring and summer. I really adore them - often as I say how stupid and WRONG they are at the same time! They are easy watches with simple twists, and always resolve in a nice,  heartwarming ending. 

But life is so much harder. Life takes a lot more work and it doesn’t resolve in 90 minutes. 

I think the only way to get something that resembles a Hallmark movie is to work every day at not having a Hallmark movie. 

Hear me out. I don’t mean that there can’t be moments. Moments when a first kiss comes, moments of tension resolved in laughter, a moment when someone shows up. That’s probably the biggest desire of my heart - to know that when something falls apart there is one special person that shows up. When you’re trying to make a hard decision or face something BIG, that person you love and trust is there. 

But isn’t that just called relationship? 

And relationships are hard. They take WORK. They take opening our insides to work through things that we would never work through on our own. Having to listen and bend while growing with someone?

Is that the problem that some of us face? That we look at those movies, romantic comedies, even action hero movies where things resolve in the end and think that’s how life works. And sometimes it does. I’m not cutting on the happy ending. 

I want the happy ending. 

But the happy ending takes a hell of a lot of work in the beginning, in the middle, on the hard days, on the days where you just don’t like the other person but you still love them, on the days when you know you need to be there for them because they’re a crying, soppy mess; on the days when you just don’t want to and you still do. 

The Hallmark ending isn’t real. 

But a relationship built upon love, trust, kindness, all the virtues of 1st Corinthians; that relationship has a potential to have multiple Hallmark moments throughout the entire relationship. And instead of looking for some spectacular explosion of emotions, to just be honestly known and loved by someone. 

Also, it takes faith. 

Faith in another human being, but also faith in something bigger. Something that guides and helps get through those hard times. Because your partner, wife, husband, they may not be there for everything. There are times when we have to reach down inside and reach for something bigger. Maybe God?

So maybe instead of having a Hallmark ending, we should be looking for Hallmark beginnings. Simple gestures, showing up, listening, loving, just being known. 

~ Peace

The Burtle