Media Fast: An Experiment in Digital Simplicity!

My wife and I took a solitude retreat this past weekend to one of our favorite retreat places by Point Reyes. We brought minimal entertainment supplies: two books each, and of them was the Bible.

A little apprehensive with the horrid expectation of being bored out of our minds, we went to our retreat place ready for some change of scenery.

And then Rest Happened
As life's frantic pace took a rest, and as the complexities of event and creative time management gave way to a simpler schedule (sleep, pray, eat, read, repeat) the restlessness gave way to a deep rest.

We started to enjoy more whatever we were doing, without thinking about the myriads of things we should be doing. We started to enjoy the present moment, without thinking of whatever big and exciting event was around the corner.

Despite my meager entertainment choices, I don't remember ever getting bored. I realized that my fear of getting bored is borderline paranoia. Boredom is not out to get me. There is no need to fight it off with an army of gadgets.

Media Fast!

After our retreat, my wife and I decided to make Tuesdays our media fast. This past Tuesday was a day when we didn't watch any TV. We missed not having our evenings filled with Parks & Rec, New Girl or Call the Midwife, but we enjoyed the conversations, the friends we had over for dinner, and just the quiet moments to reflect and meditate.

This is something that I encourage all of us to do: pick a day out of your week and fast from media. How this looks like may be different for all of us. Fasting from media may mean not watching any TV for that day. Maybe it is not checking any social media, phones, or (oh the horror!) the internet.

Experiment and adjust as necessary, but whatever you do, give yourself and your mind a break.

Paralyzed by Choices: The Freedom of Simplicity

The entertainment choices that I have are endless. I have limitless choices of what to watch on TV, thanks to Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and some other apps I can cast to my TV. If I count all the options available, it is well over a million.

And then, there are books. I literally own close to 200 hundred books, and I have read maybe a third of them. If I were to read all of the books I haven't yet read in my library, it would take me close to 960 hours to do so, or about 40 non-stop days.

Additionally, I have Podcasts. I recently deleted 5 gigs' worth of Podcasts that I haven't listened to for lack of time. Those Podcasts were slowing down my phone to the point that I couldn't do much with it.

It is no surprise that I feel increasingly restless and unsatisfied with my free time to the point that I actually dread it, while at the same time long for it.

I feel paralyzed by too many choices.

The Debilitating Paradox of Choices

According to psychologist Barry Schwartz, in the western world we live under the assumption that in order to increase personal freedom we need to increase our choices. Unfortunately, the more choices we have, the less satisfied we are.

Why? Schwartz claims that when we have too many choices, we have the expectation of making the one perfect choice. Even if we make a good choice, we still feel that a better choice is out there in the world. This nagging feeling of missing out on the best choice actually prevents us from enjoying the choices we do make.

We can spend many hours making a choice, and in the end we feel that maybe we could have chosen something better.

Not only that, but if the choices we made don't meet our ridiculously high expectations of perfection, we only have ourselves to blame. When we are presented with only one choice, and if that choice is unsatisfying, then we naturally blame outside forces for it. If we make a choice out of endless choices and we are still unsatisfied with it, then we are the only ones to blame.

As you can see then, having too many choices not only paralyzes us and raises our expectations to unhealthy and unrealistic levels, but also prevents us from enjoying the choices we make and makes us feel bad about ourselves when those expectations aren't met.

What to Do? The Liberating Boundaries of Simplicity

I believe our call to simplicity is an answer to the tyranny of too many choices. Our culture teaches us to rebel against boundaries and in this process of rebellion we sell our freedom to the ruthless forces of licentiousness and liberties.

Simplicity also enables us to truly concentrate on our inner life, by freeing us up from the addictions of our endless choices. The less time you spend obsessed over what to watch, play, or read, the more time you can spend in single-minded pursuit of God and His purposes for you.

Fortunately, simplicity offers us a model where we can regain our freedom by the liberating act of freeing ourselves of endless choices.

Here are 3 things you can do to reduce your choices and practice simplicity:

1. Declutter! Start a 3-day experiment of decluttering your living spaces of things you don't need, and only keep those that bring you joy. On day 1 start with clothes, day 2 books, and day 3 media (DVDs, CDs etc). This will narrow the choices that you have to the things that really bring you joy, and will bring greater simplicity and satisfaction to the choices you make.

2. Schedule and plan your entertainment! I'm not advocating that you get rid of your Netflix subscription, or all of your entertainment options in order to experience freedom. We all need times to relax and unwind after a stressful day. In order to get the most out of our entertainment we need to schedule and plan for it. Instead of wasting time on trying to decide which movie or episode to watch, spend some time planning what you'll watch this week, and schedule that time in your calendar.

3. Stick to one book per week. If you have a big library and a desire to read many books, chances are that you're reading too many books at once, and only finishing half the books that you start. As you are reading a book, instead of enjoying it your mind is thinking of the 3 other books you are reading at the same time. To prevent this, pick one book that you want to read for a week (or two weeks, depending on how fast you read) and stick to it! One week is short enough of a time frame that if your mind starts thinking of other books you wish to read, you'll know that you can get to them soon, liberating you to enjoy the choice you made for this week.

That's it for now! Do you have any other advice on how to simplify your life?

Decluttering! An Experiment in Simplicity

Ever since I became a follower of Jesus I have been fascinated by simplicity.

Leading a simple life, with all the romantic and idealistic connotations that it inspires, is a passion of mine. This passion, unfortunately, often comes into conflict with other passions I've nurtured: technology, media, books, and many other forms of entertainment.

As the years went by, I slowly collected an impressive array of entertainment options. It would probably take me a lifetime to consume all of it!

This brought an incredible amount of clutter to my life, and the weight of it all was becoming unbearable. My dreams of simplicity took space in the back burner of my mind, slowly simmering and nagging me as the years went by.

A Book & The Beginning of an Experiment
And then I bought a book by Marie Kondo on the Japanese Art of Decluttering & Organizing that everyone in my office was talking about. Hmm...I thought, why not? And in capitalistic irony, I sought my solution to decluttering from media by buying one more book.

As I read the book, I found it peculiar. Kondo is quite the odd cookie, to put it mildly. Her KonMari method (you guessed it, the method is named after her last and first name) seemed to make sense however, and talking it over with my wife, we decided to plunge into a scary and yet exciting experiment. Let's try it out, we said, armed with book in hand, fear and determination.

Day 1: Clothes
The book recommends starting with clothes. We gathered all of our clothes into the living room. Every. Single. Item.

As we gathered our clothes from different rooms in our home, the disturbing explosion in our living room was convicting. It looked as if a GAP suddenly imploded in our living space. How did we get this amount of clothes? our shocked eyes seemed to express.

Then, we proceeded by grabbing each item, holding it, and asking ourselves, "does this spark joy?" We found the simple question to be powerful, and as we went trough every single item, we found that we owned a lot of clothes that we didn't even like.

After two hours of rummaging through our beloved wearables, we managed to purge a third to a half of our clothes. Some of them we got rid of, the gently used ones (sans underwear) we donated.

Day 2: Books
Gosh darn it to heck! I knew the day would come when I needed to go through the pride and glory of my media collection: books.

My dear and beloved books, how could I get rid of you? You have brought so much inspiration, laughter, and tears to my life. And yet I look at y'all with apprehension at the thought of moving again: the unbearably heavy boxes we put you in did no favors to my back and my manhood!

As this heart-wrenching day started, we again gathered EVERY SINGLE BOOK into the living room. The process itself took longer than we thought. We struggled to find an open space to put ALL the books on, and even our chairs and couch had to do double duty.

As I asked myself the question, "does this book spark joy?" it became more and more difficult to answer. Who cares?! I thought I want to read it someday! 

Slowly, however, my wife and I were able to get rid of a third of our books. We filled 5 heavy boxes of them, and yet we still managed to keep a sizable collection to ourselves.

The book purge wasn't as successful, but we felt pretty good about the end result: an organized library by category, and an awareness of so many good books we really want to read, but that were forgotten.

We Still Have Much More to Do
We are still not done with our experiment. We are very pleased, however, at the changes this has brought us.

I have been reflecting on the effect the endless choices of media and entertainment that I have. I believe this ultimately has a negative effect on our spirituality, and it can actually detract from it.

I have been convicted in my prayers about how much stuff I actually own, and I am more aware now of how those things wear me down and bring unnecessary stress to my life.

Stay tuned for a follow-up post this Friday about how too many options distract us from the inner life and our walk with God, and how a commitment to simplicity will aid us in this journey of faith.

The Western Captivity of the Church: Christianity as a Social Club

Christianity, in the Western world, is a social club. We fancy ourselves a community, a church, but the Western cultural captivity of the church betrays our best intentions.

Every culture has its blind spots that are obvious and yet elusive. Elusive because our own ethnocentrism prevents us from seeing with different eyes. We are blind as to how our Western cultural values takes over Christianity and transforms it into what is was never meant to be.

The Acculturation of Christianity
I'm not trying to say that the acculturation of Christianity is something bad. I believe Christianity should incarnate into the culture wherever the gospel is preached. Instead of having a carbon copy of Christianity in the entire world, every culture shines a light on different aspects of the faith, and in doing so, it remains distinct from one another and yet universal.

The problem is, however, that in the Christian west, our cultural values have come in its full force, hijacked our faith, and overshadowed the person of Christ on whom it is supposed to be established on. Both the Christian right and the left are equally guilty of this.

This is most evident in the way we present our faith to the world.

Christian Witness According to the Clubs of Conservative Christianity & Liberal Christianity
In my experience, when conservative Christians witness their faith to the world, they do so from their cultural values. They promote all the political and cultural values associated with the right: pro-life, traditional family values, personal responsibility, personal freedoms from government, and oddly enough, gun rights and capitalism.

On the other hand, liberal Christians are guilty of the same thing, and when they witness their faith to the world, they do so from cultural and political values associated with the left: concern for the poor and marginalized, feminism and pro-choice, egalitarianism, self expression, gun control and regulated market.

Both the Christian right and left are reactive to one another, and they base their identity as negative characteristics of each other..."thank you God that I'm not like those..."

In my opinion, as I have expressed in past posts, both are guilty of the same thing, that is, finding their primary identity in their cultural values, instead of who they are in Christ.

We might find ourselves particularly drawn to the values of the right or left, or perhaps a combination of the two. I don't think that's wrong, and my point is not to argue the validity of one set of values over the other.

My point is this: our Christian witness should not be based on our cultural values. The left and right can't sufficiently tell us who we are as individuals and as a people, and so we should not base our identity in those values.

In Christ Alone
When I first came to Christianity, it was because of the fascinating, intriguing, and incredibly attractive person of Jesus. As I learned more about Him, and as I communed more with Him, my heart was more and more captivated by Him.

The most beautiful thing we can share about Christianity is the person of Jesus. No cultural value, however noble or just, can come close to His radiant glory. There is nothing more beautiful we can present to the world.

Our witness should be motivated by the person of Jesus. He is fascinating enough. He is attractive enough. There is no need to cover gold with silver in order to make it more attractive. In the same way, there is no reason to dress up Jesus with our cultural values and present them as the reason to come to Christianity. Show them Jesus, and the rest will take care of itself.

Why do we witness from our values? Is it because we are afraid that Jesus is not enough? Is it that we are embarrassed to be confused with some fundamentalist group and so we feel the need to cover Him up with our social and political values?

What brought me to Christianity was not its stands on abortion, traditional family values or its care for the poor and feminist egalitarian views. What brought me to Christianity was the person of Jesus. He was relentless in His pursuit of me, until I allowed myself to catch a glimpse of His beauty, and I never wanted to turn back again.

Let us stop selling the world short of who we are. Let us evangelize not by our opposition to Planned Parenthood and gay marriage, or our opposition to the free market or the 1%.

Those issues are important, but they should not be absolutized to the point that they become central to the faith.

When we evangelize, we should be motivated by this: the love of Christ for the world.

The Importance of Community: Why I Have Decided to Stay Roman Catholic

As many of you know, for the past 3 years I have been in discernment of whether to leave the Roman Catholic Church for the Anglican Communion.

As of this moment, I can say that I feel at peace about staying in the Catholic Church.

This doesn't mean, however, that I still don't have the same disagreements that I expressed in the past. It doesn't mean that those disagreements are not important to me anymore. What it does mean is that, at the present moment, I don't feel like these disagreements are enough for me to leave the Roman Catholic Church.

Why Not?
One of the main reasons why I decided to stay is the fact that the church is more than a simple institution I belong to. The Roman Catholic Church is more than just a club that I can easily drop membership to if it no longer fit my ideas.

The Church, above all of that, is a community. And I love this community.

Jesus call us to community, and this community requires a commitment that is nurtured through love and respect. When Jesus says that "my mother and my brother are those who hear the word of God and do it" (Luke 8:21) I believe He is putting a high level of commitment to His community.

When I grew up with my family, I didn't agree with all the rules of the house. I didn't agree with how everything was managed. I don't think there is anyone on this earth who can say that they did.

But I love my family, and it is that love that has kept me a member of the family to this day.

And so it is with my community of faith, the Roman Catholic Church. The fact that I don't agree with everything that is going on with it doesn't even begin to detract from the fact that I love this community. I love many of its traditions and wisdom, and I am willing to be under it out of love.

This love also encourages me to take a second look at its rules and regulations, and while I'm not saying that I will blindly follow them, I will respect them out of love and respect for the community.

When you live under the same roof with your family and/or community, you are bound to find house rules. These rules have helped the community in many ways. You may not agree with each and every single one of them, but once you decide to stay, and once you love this community, you respect its rules not from a simple sense of obligation, but by the freedom that this loves gives.

Individualism & Yelp Reviews of Churches
I believe that our desire to find a church that can satisfy our ideals and our niches is just a symptom of our emphasis on individualism. We church shop as if we are choosing our internet provider.

In an individualistic society, you are encouraged to fulfill your own dreams and ideals, and this can transfer over the way we do church.

Church, however, is not a place where we can have our needs met, a place where we worship alongside people who share our ideals.

Church is not a group of individuals, each looking for their often conflicting fulfillment of goals and ideals. If this is your idea of church then you will be sorely disappointed.

The Church is a community. In this community you come not to get something for your fulfillment, but you come to give yourself and your gifts, and to receive nourishment and support from the gifts of others. In this community, you come not so you can achieve your personal goals, but to love and serve.

In this community you come not just to nurture and build your individual body, but to nurture and build (or better said become) the body of Christ.

The Importance of Focus: The Inner-Life and Ministry

"But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you" Mathew 6:33 ESV.

My wife and I just moved to a cozy  little apartment in the middle of East Oakland. The entrance to the apartment's parking lot at the back is anything but ideal.

It's very narrow, and our trusty old van Biscuit (yes, we name our cars, don't judge us) can barely fit through the entrance.

The first time we drove Biscuit through this narrow way was a very unnerving and intimidating experience. We drove through it at a snail pace, making sure we didn't leave our side mirrors at the gates.

There is no way we are doing this everyday I thought.

At one point, Biscuit got stuck in the stair's metal handrail, one of the many obstacles that you go through when you enter our parking lot. Poor old Biscuit got stuck in such a way, that no matter if you pulled back or kept going forward, she would endure permanent damage.

After a few months of practice we got very efficient in getting in and out of our parking lot. At this point, we don't really worry about scratching Biscuit.

The trick to getting out of our parking lot damage-free is easy: focus on one side, and the rest will take care of itself.

I eventually learned the exact distance the side mirror needs to be on my left side from the stair's handrails, and as long as I kept that distance (and kept my eyes focused on it) Biscuit would fit right in.

As it is with Biscuit, So it is with Everything Else
I believe Biscuit has taught me an important lesson in life: many times it just requires that we focus on one important thing, and everything else will fall into place.

Much has been said about our ability, or rather our inability to multitask. Despite what we millennials try to do with our laptops on our laps, phone on right hand, tablet on our left, while playing an episode of Parks & Recs on Netflix at the T.V., we suck at multitasking.

I think this is one of the reasons Jesus told us to seek first the Kingdom of God, knowing full well our propensity to juggle many things at the same time, however benevolent they might be.

As Christians and as ministers, we are tempted to seek first our ministry, our service, our congregations and its growth, or whatever else occupies our mind and time, and we do so with a martyr mentality of sacrificing for the Kingdom of God.

I don't think that's what Jesus meant when He told us to seek first the Kingdom.

In the end, our pursuit of ministry, work or deeds, can keep us from being single minded on the Kingdom.

It is not as if we should focus on the Kingdom at the expense of our work. What Jesus is saying is this: focus on my Kingdom; on my saving and loving presence, in my life in you and in the world, and everything else, ministry, work, deeds, passions, dreams will be added to you.

Put Him at the center of your vehicle, and all the wheels will fall into balance.

Doing Vs. Being
I believe this is part of the same principle I described in the second lesson I learned in 2015.

Most of us (if not all of us) have a desire to do great things. Whether that be doing great things in our ministry, our work, or whatever our dreams and passions are, we desire to do something that we are proud of.

I'm starting to believe, however, that this is the wrong focus. This focus runs the danger of making us self-centered, or thinking that we are more important than we really are.

Like I shared in my last post, maybe God is not too impressed with our marvelous deeds.

By focusing on being, and shifting our focus from our deeds to the quality of our inner-life, then we are empowered to work alongside with God and others to do some serious Kingdom work.

This focus on being, or the quality of our-inner life should not be confused with self-focus or self centeredness. Paradoxically, I believe that focusing on our outer-life is what makes us self-centered.

If you are able to focus on your inner life, this should result in selflessness. It is only by knowing who you are in Christ, and in nurturing His life in you, and the constant renewal of your mind to the mind of Christ, that you can go out into the world and act from the quality of your being.

Ministry flows out of being, not the other way around.

Lessons Learned in 2015!

2015 was an amazing year.

2015 will be a year that I will always hold dear in my heart for many reasons, the biggest one being my marriage.

We are prone to look back, at the beginning of a new year, to remember the year that has passed us by. And so, before I look forward to what 2016 has in store for me, I want to look back at the biggest lessons 2015 taught me.

Lesson 1: We are Never Going to be Ready

At the beginning of 2015 I was a newly engaged man. My engagement came with a cocktail of emotions. Amid the highs and enthusiasm of my oncoming marriage, I was pierced by a fear: the fear of not being ready for marriage.

I was afraid of my own immaturity. This fear came with a healthy dose (or unhealthy?) of self-contempt. After many years and efforts of self-growth and character development, why am I still immature?

I hated when people told me something like "you have grown A LOT, but...". I hated it not because I was closed to criticism (at least I hope I wasn't) but because despite the "A LOT" of growth that I've done, I was still nowhere near the elusive goal of maturity. 

Not only that, if A LOT is not enough to get me close to where I need to be, what does that say about the place I was to begin with? Was I so incredibly immature, so immensely out of character, so hopelessly far behind that even after many years of A LOT of growth, I was nowhere near to where I was supposed to be?

I resented it, and I felt like crap. Either I haven't grown A LOT and people were just being nice to me, or I started with very poor material to being with.

With this incredible pressure over me, I tried to grow as much as I could. I felt like I was in a time bomb that will explode and destroy everything I wanted to accomplish unless I work my butt off and do some growing before my time is up.

The pressure, unfortunately, was also paralyzing. I started to resent myself and others. I never felt good enough. Many tears were shed in the name of incompetency. 

As the months passed by in this state, I came to the conclusion that I was never going to be ready, and that's OK.

A few days before the wedding, my fiancé and I visited the priest who was the pastor of the church where we'd get married. He was guiding us through the last preparations of the ceremony.

As we entered his office, we caught him in the middle of a fascinating conversation with his secretary. "Baptism is no sort of magical thing that instantaneously makes us holy" he was saying to her, "that's bad theology".

"Let me give you an example" he continued. "When I was ordained a priest, did I walk like a priest? Did I talk like a priest? Did I behave like a priest? No I didn't. And yet I was a priest, but I still had to grow in my role as a priest".

When I heard that it reinforced what I learned to accept: It's OK to not be ready.

This beloved priest, even after years of seminary, he still had to spend many years growing into his role as a priest. 

And so it is with us. With whatever project, job, ministry, or role that we take, we are never going to be completely ready for it, but it is by going into it with a humble and a beginner's mind that we'll be successful in it. More often than not, the person who is most confident in his readiness is the one who is not.

I'm not saying that preparations are irrelevant. The priest spent probably 5 years in seminary training to be a priest. I spent many years growing before marriage, and those years were necessary.

What I am saying is that after some considerable preparation, we should not be afraid of plunging into situations we may not feel completely ready for, for the situation itself will be the last stage of our preparation.

Marriage is the tool that will transform me into a husband.

Lesson 2: God is More Interesting on Being than on Doing.

What would Jesus do? We ask ourselves, in the pious hope of making the right choices and doing the right things in any given situation.

This apparently simple question seems to make sense. After all, as Christians, Jesus is supposed to be an example.

But Jesus is more than just an example. He is The Way. He is not a simple road sign. He is the road we need to walk on.

At the end of 2015, I became restless. I was entering into my Holiday break, and I intended to take advantage of it.

As the precious days of vacation passed, I became increasingly worried that I wasn't enjoying them enough. I felt like I was wasting time, and that I wasn't doing, or not doing, enough things to make this time meaningful.

The horrible restlessness continued in its merciless rage. I didn't know how to deal with it, or what to do (or not do) to shake off the nagging feeling.

Finally, I prayed. Always a good idea.

I simply asked God to tell me what to do about it. You are too concerned about doing, concentrate on being and the restlessness will go away I heard.

The answer seemed too simple, but maybe this was my way out of this horrible feeling. I started to concentrate more and more on how I could be the person God wanted me to be, despite what I did or did not do.

I noticed that whenever I concentrated on being, my restlessness seemed to disappear, and it would only reappear once I started thinking on what I had to do.

As westerners and achievers, our emphasis is on doing great things. I suspect that God is not too interested in our marvelous deeds.

He seems more interested in who we are. He is interested in relationships, and relationships is more than just doing things for each other.

Relationships is more about being with each other.

That's it for me! What are the biggest lessons you learned in 2015?