LIFE IN THE PARTY

I was five when I first remember begging my mom to come sit with me for a while. I’d been lying in the dark for hours trying to shut my brain off and drift off to sleep like normal kids my age. My mind, like so many nights since, was pre-occupied with the problems of the universe. My mom listened as I told her I didn’t like forever. I didn’t like the idea that it just keeps going and going. That scared me. But, I said, I didn’t want to die either. Everything turning into nothings scared me worse. But then, I reasoned, if I was dead and didn’t live forever I guess I wouldn’t know being dead was a bad thing. I wouldn’t be around to feel sad about being dead.

I went on confessing my fears of being sick someday like this kid at school who threw up in front of my whole class and got made fun off. I didn’t want that but I figured it was bound to happen eventually. People get sick and I’m a people, I said, so I will probably get sick and feel horrible and maybe even throw-up on somebody.

Some nights I couldn’t sleep because of guilt and so when mom arrived I’d confess a litany of transgressions like Charles Manson before the Pope. I’d recount for her how I’d tortured my sister in subtle ways or lied about eating all my sack lunch at school. I’d act out entire conversations from earlier that day in which I’d said something hurtful to someone who’d said something hurtful first.

Other nights I was just worried. I was concerned about nuclear bombs, the sun burning out, tornadoes, and the watermelon seeds I ate the week before growing in my stomach and pushing a plant out my nose and ears and eyes and butt eventually. I wanted to know why people have to get sad and why Granny was old and if I would have to be sad and old one day too. I wanted to know how God wrote the bible and why people didn’t do what it said if they really thought He wrote it. I was worried that those people would go to Hell like my preacher said they would too.

These were the things that filled my mind then, and to some degree, in more grown-up seeming forms, still spin my gears today.

My mom’s solution was usually to rub my back, listen to me stress and ponder, and then coach me to close my eyes and imagine being in the best place doing the best things ever. I thought about sitting in front of my grandmother’s stove on a cold morning sipping coffee with her, playing with my cousins in her backyard, riding cousin Kathy’s horse Patches and then sitting down to a meal of something fried or barbequed. I relived roller coasters and funnel cakes and large Cokes at Six Flags in Dallas, skating with my friends at daycare to the Bee Gees or getting to stay up late and watch Solid Gold, the news and then Johnny Carson. Those were the best things in life.

Then my mom would remind me that people made TV shows and funnel cakes and God had so many things that were even better waiting for us in Heaven. So don’t worry about dying – she’d say. And she’d tell me not to worry about being sick or old one day because I was still very young and very well right then. She’d tell me not to think about wars and suns flickering out because those things will never happen in my lifetime. And watermelon seeds don’t grow if they’re chewed up and can’t get sunlight in your stomach.

And as her voice lulled me to sleep my head would swim in happy thoughts about all the great stuff God built for me in Heaven and all the good things here on earth to enjoy until then.

Today I walked into our church service to the tune of “We Are Family” blasting from the band and singers on stage. Spotlights of all colors whipped through fog and across the mostly smiling crowd as four-foot lime green balls bounced from raised hand to raised hand. Horns blew, confetti cannons erupted, screens flashed and voices shouted and sang. It was a party.

We celebrated what God has done in our church for the last month and a half as we learned about and practiced the idea of community together. The emphasis was called “40 Days of Community” and is an extension of Rick Warren’s “40 Days of Purpose” program so many trendy churches like ours taught last year.

The cynic in me looked around at the bouncing Boomers this morning like a teen-ager embarrassed yet oddly impressed at his parents busting a move at his Senior prom. Awkward. Admirable. But the little boy in me, perpetually pondering, consistently concerned, always analyzing and worried, needed this.

Something I’ve never admitted to anyone but family is that I’ve always been prone to profound sadness. What some people mistake in me for depth or maturity or introspection is simple nagging sorrow. As far back as I can remember it’s been there. It’s not depression. It’s not despair. It’s an overwhelming immutable sense of wickedness and reality's imperfection. It's smothering at times. I can’t put into words what it feels like, this lamentation that for me seems to get worse with experience and age. It makes me more prone to cynicism and anger than others seem to be. It brings tears and frustration. I can’t express it or cure it but my songs and words are one feeble attempt after another at doing so.

I enjoy life, friends, love, nature and all the things my mother had me cling to instead of bedtime demons. But a constant current of persistent heaviness flows underneath my life’s solid foundation of faith and hope.

I believe Jesus felt this too – though I may be wishing so to ease my own heart. He’s called a man of sorrows. He ached deeply for human kind, moved not only by His desire to be known but also by His awareness of our sorrow, He moved into our neighborhood and lived and cried among us and eventually freed us from sin – the source of so much darkness in this place. And the book He wrote His story in gives plenty reason for lament. It begins with the desertion of God by man, continues with one messed up family tree after after another birthing one bad guy and flawed hero after another, climaxes with the death of God, moves on to the hope of the resurrection but quickly turns back to depravity when the Church is formed from sometimes-bickering and always-persecuted followers, and ends with a bloody war before finally culminating in mans' wedding to God and the inheritance of blissful life everlasting. God doesn't exactly paint the rosiest picture of history or Himself for us. That's how I justify my allergy to casual positivity anyway.

Recently I've been trying to figure out why the heaviness is there. But until I know if this morbid fascination is a product of generational angst or some spiritual perceptiveness, I’ll continue to craft and yearn for moments like this morning. The way my church celebrated what God has taught us this morning, with the lights and glitz and oversized toys, isn’t how I celebrate. I’d prefer to commemorate by just listing all the good things God has done in my life and the lives of others. I’d prefer to get together with a small group of friends over a great meal with a relaxed schedule and conversation that oscillates between stimulating honesty and pointless hilarity. I’d like to watch a stupid movie with people I like to hear laugh. I’d prefer Gavin DeGraw or Weezer over Sly and The Family Stone.

But even though this celebration wasn’t the way I’d party it was a party I needed. Partying is something Christ did, turning water into a keg of strong whine, kicking up his heels and maybe even dancing a little. Even knowing the sins of every heart and the atrocities that awaited Him didn’t keep him from celebrating with those closest to Him the great life God had given them together. The cross was tomorrow, and while it wasn’t to be ignored, today was flooded with reasons to party in spite of it.

And maybe celebration for Jesus and us is like funnel cake visualizing for kids. Maybe the celebration gets us thinking – If life right now here in this moment is this good what waits for us when time has passed – when nothing stands between the goodness and greatness of God and us? And maybe celebration is like a smiling mother, forcing us to take ourselves less seriously just long enough to relax and listen to calming wisdom. Maybe it helps us correct perspective and store up strength for the sickness that waits for us somewhere out there in the tomorrows. And maybe celebration fosters surrender, tearing us away from drawing boards strewn with our plans to solve every problem and run the world. It reminds the confounded again that they are small and God is not, that when we are wrought and weak God is still good and able and the world spins by His hand with no need for ours. Maybe parties are important because when we leave them we are better able to hold our plans less tightly, love more deeply and sacrificially, and spend our hours on things that will outlast this present darkness. Maybe for those aware all's dying there's much needed life in the party. Maybe churches should throw them more often.

Maybe. All I know is that the constant sadness that accompanies being so aware of reality and my own heart feels a little lighter right now. I laugh thinking back now on this morning’s hippies doing what resembled an epileptic Macarena in the sanctuary. And I remember liking how my face felt unfurrowed and smiling. I can still feel that weird calm and comfort of being connected to all those jostling strange people as we hugged and hand shook knowing we dance and sing and shout for the same Father. And I want to take that party with me as a reminder that while there is always reason for sorrow there is also cause to celebrate a life I don’t deserve and a God who is great and doing great things in me, in spite of me and around me every day.

Got thoughts? Discuss this SHLOG on my message-board