The last year and a half has been very full, and very difficult.  I recently received an SMS from my uncle which quotes part of Hebrews 12, and I read the whole chapter, drinking in the encouragement to press on.  While thinking over the recent events in my life in light of that chapter, I reflected back on another similarly difficult time in my life and I thought I'd share here part of a post I wrote on my original blog back then:

    Sometimes in life you have no idea what is going on, sometimes you have absolutely no clue what God is doing or why.  At times like these I often fall back on one simple phrase.

    “Aslan is On the Move!”

    It is repeated amongst my family and friends as an encouragement, a rally cry, a prayer, and a benediction, almost as if it were a magic spell.  This simple set of five words never fails to inspire in my body and soul a profound effect, but rather than trying to explain it to you myself I shall give you the words of the one who coined the phrase.

    ‘Here the Beaver’s voice sank into silence and (…) it added in a low whisper-  “They say Aslan is on the move" (…) The moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different.  Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don’t understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning—either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lovely meaning to lovely to put into words, that makes the dream so beautiful you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could get into that dream again.  It was like that now (…) At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in its inside.  Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror.  Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous.  Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her.  And Lucy got the feel you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.’

    So when the world looks bleak, and hope seems dim, take up the cry “Aslan is on the move!”  Remind yourself and all around not to lose heart because: “It’s no good, Son of Adam, (…) no good your trying, of all people.  But now that Aslan is on the move (…) He’ll settle (things) all right (…)

        Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
        At the sound of His roar, sorrows will be no more,
        When He bares His teeth, winter meets its death,
        And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring
                                                                                    again!

     “You’ll understand when you see Him.”

To the King!

    Proverbs 12:18 states that "Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing."  While I'll not make too many claims to having attained any heights of wisdom, I have learned the value of minding my tongue and my tone when conversing with my wife.  I've shared the guidelines we use for resolving disagreements and hurt feelings over at Skipping Bachelorhood: Skipper Trick #6: Don’t Fight; Argue.

The how and why of my qualifications to pontificate over at Skipping Bachelorhood: Tales from the Skipped: Skipper Goggans

A friend of mine recently asked me to contribute his blog for skippers, young men who have opted to skip over the period of responsibility-free bachelorhood typically embraced by the last two generations of the modern western male.  So here's my contribution to the conversation over at the broom factory: Skipper Trick #5: Examine the Fight, and Never Give Up

I recently reread this passage from The Revolt of "Mother" by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and it moved me (and convicted me) more than anything else has for quite a while.  God help me--I want to be more like this woman.

    "Sarah Penn's face as she rolled her pies had that expression of meek vigor which might have characterized one of the New Testament saints. She was making mince-pies. Her husband, Adoniram Penn, liked them better than any other kind. She baked twice a week. Adoniram often liked a piece of pie between meals. She hurried this morning. It had been later than usual when she began, and she wanted to have a pie baked for dinner. However deep a resentment she might be forced to hold against her husband, she would never fail in sedulous attention to his wants.

    Nobility of character manifests itself at loop-holes when it is not provided with large doors. Sarah Penn's showed itself today in flaky dishes of pastry. So she made the pies faithfully, while across the table she could see, when she glanced up from her work, the sight that rankled in her patient and steadfast soul -- the digging of the cellar of the new barn in the place where Adoniram forty years ago had promised her their new house should stand."

I have recently read a few articles and blogs and heard several conversations that really bothered me.  Not offended-bothered, just saddened-bothered.  The subject was questioning whether or not homosexual emotions/lusts were at work in the relationship dynamics of characters and people who just about everyone is familiar with: whether it's David and Jonathan, Frodo and Sam, or Jesus and John, people seem to have a propensity for jumping to conclusions.  While I will readily agree that in some instances the authors of some literary works did intend for there to be evidence of homosexual relationships in their work, I do not feel that it is the case with any of the above or many other examples, and I would like to offer an explanation, that I feel uniquely suited to give, for the actions and behaviors that people most often hold up as indirect indicators of a character being homosexual.

    Clearly from Scripture homosexuality is almost as old as time but to suggest that David and Jonathan, or Jesus and John, were bi- or homosexual seems absurd to me and the result of a lack of personal experience with being relationally intimate with some one whom they are not sexually intimate, and because of the sadly prevalent and thoroughly erroneous Freudian notion that everything in life is and must be connected to sex.  As I have 6 brothers in my family with whom I am very close, and as a member to a group of guys who have all been very close friends from childhood, I think I can safely say that most people in our over-sexually-aware (and homosexually-aware) society read far too much into any instance of same gender intimacy.  While it is true that most men are uncomfortable with prolonged physical contact (like holding someone while they cry, or putting one’s arm around someone), lots of eye contact, back rubs, use of pet names, overt verbal displays of affections or other similar actions, I firmly believe that this is simply because they strongly associate those actions only with the opposite sex interactions, and that if these actions are looked at objectively it can be seen that there is no reason for them to be viewed sexually.

    My friends, siblings, and I grew up putting an arm over each others shoulders while standing or sitting next to each other in the car, watching a movie, or just talking, to show unity, to show that we were 'best friends,' and we still do it for those same reasons despite the fact that I am 25 and have two kids.  We give each other back massages after working out, wrestling and sparring, hiking and climbing, fishing and swimming, or just while standing around talking.  We give long bear-hugs when greeting and when parting.  We hold hands when we pray, and we've held each other and cried when life was shitty or when the Holy Spirit beat us into broken contrition over our sin.  We call each other mean names in a playful, joking tone as a 'manly' way of calling each other by endearments, and we say "I love you" to each other every time we end a phone call or a visit.

    We are all straight as arrows, most of us are married, and half of us have kids.  We act that way with each other because we know that there is no hint of homosexuality to it, merely comfortable familiarity.  We've all been friends for so long, been through so much together, hurt each other so deeply and worked through it so determinedly and thoroughly, that we know that we can trust each other with our very lives because we've shared our deepest failings and our greatest successes together; we know each others' dirtiest secrets and our brightest hopes.  We are family: a band of brothers—some by blood, all by the Holy Spirit—that we know we can turn to for anything because no matter the time or space that separates us, we always have been and always will be committed to our relationships with each other.

    Physical and relational intimacy between members of the same gender is not a sign of homosexuality, it is a byproduct of a relationship so deeply intimate, constant, and permanent,  that unless a person in our over-sexed society has personally experienced it the only way they can interpret it is by miss-labeling it as sexual.

    Again, I say all this not because I am offended, but because I feel saddened by and sorry for anyone who makes false assumptions about same-sex (particularly male) intimacy through ignorance and to offer, not only a different perspective, but the  hope that so much more can be put into and gotten out of our interactions with other members of the Body of Christ if we are willing to move past the Freudian stigmas of our hyper-sexualized culture.