Twisted

Twisted

(“Whoever wants to become great among you must serve the rest of you like a servant. Whoever wants to become the first among you must serve all of you like a slave.” Mark 10:43b-44)

It is easy to walk backwards with the wind,
even with no explanation offered, even while laughter’s daughter
points out or weaving path; it is easy to walk backwards, even
against the wind. We do not miss where we’ve been, and will
quickly see
where we are going.

It is twisted to want the basement apartment,
or to have erase our listing from Who’s Who and our
Human of the Year award.
It is bent, born with alien genetics to dream a destiny
with mainly both hands and all our fingers submerged
below greasy suds of a sub-par kitchen.
It is perverted to climb under forgotten bridges to
network with nameless faces; it is shameless to befriend
the unbankable, amend the unthankable, spend the unspendable
on every anonymous concert whispered to private orphans and
silent widows.

It is easy to talk sideways inches from the script and
days away from the grand production. Hear my elocution,
my precise enunciation, as I quote every solution for
drugs and poverty and pollution from my
raised dais (crane your necks please), and standing on my head;

You can pay twice the price if you attend again tonight.

Keeping Them on the Road

“He taught the truth and did not lie. He walked with me in peace and uprightness. He kept many out of the ditch, kept them on the road.” Malachi 2:6

Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, deals with, among other things, the corruption of the priesthood. They had forgotten their divine responsibilities, and used their position as a method for personal gain. This made the susceptible to bribes from the rich, leaving the poor neglected.

Taking the Lead

“But you are not that way. Instead, the most prominent among you must be as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves.” Luke 22:26

There is no dearth of information on how to be a good leader. It would be cynical to say that most of them disagree with Jesus’ teaching about servanthood; but I don’t think that is entirely true. Most business models emphasize being the best at providing for your customers’ needs. That seems to parallel Jesus’ statements about leaders who serve.

The difficulty is in personally acting it out in our own lives. Today I played guitar for 25 fifth-graders at a Veterans Day Assembly. It was fun and I truly enjoyed it. I learned “This Land is Your Land”; Woody Guthrie’s famous American anthem and practiced the fairly easy arrangement with them twice this week.

Besides the usual musician’s joy of playing, there is another side of me that likes people to know I’m good at something. I suppose that is part our human nature generally, and my desire for accolades personally. “Hey, I didn’t know Mark played guitar…or that he played it that good!”

With that back story and confession behind us, I take you to this morning. First of all, I forgot a pick. Big deal; use your fingers. But we guitarists know that does throw things off a bit. Plus, finger picking, without properly grown nails, is about half as loud as with a pick. I had forgone the use of a microphone for the very reason that I was using a pick.

Without time to run home and find a pick, I did my finger-picking best. It was not nearly loud enough, the couple of flourishes I did “flat-picking” didn’t work at all with my fingers, and, worst of all, I miscounted the number of verse we did. No big deal, except that the final chorus was to end with the last line repeated a little slower.

It didn’t happen, not with the guitar anyway. The director and fifth-graders hit their mark perfectly on the ending line, but I kept playing on tempo, right on through, as if we were riffing right into another verse. As everyone always says, “Nobody probably noticed.”

Wrong! I noticed. I noticed not playing it the way I wished. I noticed that the guitar probably wasn’t heard well. And I noticed, keenly noticed that I raced right past the ending. What I didn’t notice was how happy the students were when everyone clapped for them.

I’m a real servant leader, I tell you! I was happy to play for fifth graders instead of Carnegie Hall. I was ready at the first phone call to spend a couple of mornings at the Elementary School. I was glad to leave the important duties in my office to play a simple song for a room full of 10 and 11 year olds. But, you see, even though it appeared to be servant-like; my interior was still aching for recognition.

I’m not being too hard on myself…truly I am not. I know the very fact that I realize what was going on inside me is evidence I’m not all that into myself. But it does illustrate for me the deceptive nature of leadership and recognition. Even when we are trying to serve others, it can feel less fulfilling if no one notices. Or, when they do notice, it is when we have not performed up to par.

Whether it is to accompany elementary students, or lecture grad students at an Ivy League University, our drive can still be measured anywhere from self-serving to self-deprecating. I believe the healthy attitude is at neither end of that spectrum, but rather an attitude that places the needs of those I lead above my need for recognition.

So, next time I’m invited, I will once more gladly accept. And next time, if I forget my pick, I will try to be just a little less self-conscious, and a little more focused on how much fun those particular students are actually having. After all, it is our Loving Heavenly Father I serve, and I thing He enjoyed the music my friends and I made.

Stutter at Jewel

Stutter at Jewel

(“Don’t forget about your leaders who taught you God’s message. Remember what kind of lives they lived and try to have faith like theirs.” Hebrews 13:7)

How many tags can adhere to one life,
notecarded a word at a time;
capitalized for punctuation,
handwritten for affirmation
that our opinions are true
(not me, you, in the background, trying to silence the
sounds of your own name broadcast too loud).

Where do we place the labels after
the lapels, threadbare, can carry the adhesive no more?
How do we write the names that never blamed
forgotten appointments on feeble and constant
distractions, or fractions of duty less than whole?

Some definitions do only justice to one word at a time,
some words cannot contain their meanings, adding syllable to
syllable,
suffixes appended like a trainful of cabooses.

Some stutter at jewel brilliance and hue,
while others babble, sputtering around the helix
like a vine repeating its circle up a frontporch
pole.

We repeat the dictionary and still starve for more to
serve guests gathered who wonder how we got so far.
We could repeat the name, him or them, her or those,
and a few closely following the local news from day
dawn until near dusk
could nod as we file the gratitude where it
fairly belongs.

Leading Like Jesus

“Instead, {God’s steward} must be hospitable, in love with what is good, sensible, fair, of holy life; self-controlled.” Titus 1:8

This single verse is in no way a complete description of the desirable traits for Christian leadership. But they are telling. I do not think there is a single one of these six attributes anyone would disagree with. We might even come up with some of them on our own, apart from reading what Paul wrote to Titus.