Tribute Week – The Sharps.

I’m creating a little Tribute Blog Week. In honor of my boys Tenacious.

I’ll be honest, from time to time I go through a variety of emotions about the life I/we live. I won’t say depression. But I really deeply struggle with frustration, overwhelm-ment (why is this not a word), anxiety, and despair in the sense that I do lose sight of the big picture sometime and can get caught up in the messiness of life. I think some people think I’m bi-polar, not that there is anything wrong with that. It’s just that when you choose to live a certain kind of life, it’s really easy to get frustrated and distracted looking around at all the silver and gold things dangling in front of your face. It’s tough to lose focus and feel like what you’re doing/living/being is a lost cause. This feeling is more prevalent to me these days with a baby on the way knowing that there is a real tension between living truly and deeply and being pragmatic.

Long story short, I get an email or two a week from strangers on this blog who I’ve never met in person, but for some odd reason find words or ideas or practices that I play with encouraging. Enough so that email us and write really kind words about me and Anna. These little emails and encouraging notes are like little pick me ups when I read them. Small tokens of affirmation that we’re not totally insane for daring to dream and imagine new possibilities. These really kind words make up for the mean emails I get from the likes of Ken Silva and/or one of his henchman. And from the overwhelming (dare I say crushing to my spirit) feeling that the principalities and powers of this world are seemingly winning, while the “good guys” aren’t as lucky.

So with that in mind I want to dedicate this week to affirming some of my friends. Some who I’ve met in the “real world” and others who I’ve only exchanged emails, IMs, and phone calls with.

Today I’d like to give mad props and kudos to Ryan & Holly Sharp. While I don’t know Holly very well, and I only know Ryan via emails, blogs, music, chats, and an occasional podcast, the Sharps encourage me and nurture my soul and my hope for the world more than almost anybody. If you live underneath a rock, you may not be aware of the superb music that is The Cobalt Season, otherwise you are probably more than familiar with their music and lyrics.

Ryan is one guy I know that is brutally honest. Even in some of the “on-the-edge” circles I run in when it comes to thought and practice, we still have a very subtle way of glossing over our real and true feelings. Sometimes I think we spiritualize the shit that goes on just as much as the fundamentalist who attributes hurricanes, plagues, and poverty to god. Instead of just calling it like it is and expressing the full range of emotions that we feel and allowing the raw power of honesty to heal in ways that may not be possible were things shuffled over.

Ryan & Holly, more than anybody I know, reflect theological/political/economic statements in almost everything that they do. I know it’s easy to romanticize something from afar . . . and I think they’d be the first to admit that their life is far from the image we perhaps conjure in our head . . . but they live a life that is fully integrated. Thus, a good portion of what they do become in their own way statements about the world they believe in. Taking their son on a road trip . . . living in community . . . the way they design a book and the way they paint. These are all deep statements about how they view the world. They don’t just move through life letting it happen to them. They make it happen. They choose it. Whether it turns out for good or bad or somewhere in the middle is not the point. They actively make their decisions.

As a young married couple, it’s been incredibly encouraging to both Anna and me to be able to follow, even from a distance, a couple who are trying their best to live the way of Jesus into the world. Sometimes succeeding. Sometimes failing. But at the very least authentically and honestly.

I will be dead honest with you . . . if it wasn’t for the indirect shaping that Ryan has given to my life, I wouldn’t be a graphic designer today. Or working from home as a small business owner. I wouldn’t have attempted organic farming. I would have let my creative spirit die along time ago for the sake of the pragmatics of getting paid and security for the future. I would have traded the life I live now for a life in the corporate world or for working at a church just for a paycheck. Not that there is anything wrong with working in a cubicle or working at a church. That’s not what I’m saying at all. Just that I’d end up doing those things with my heart not in them and doing them for a check. The Sharps remind me that this is not a viable option. Not an option that will feed my spirit. Not an option that is sustainable to my soul. Not an option that is creative, imaginative, and integrated with everything I think and feel on the inside.

So today . . . the first day of Tribute Week . . . I raise my glass to The Sharps. Be encouraged good friends. You’re doing it. You’re living it. What you’re doing matters.

I encourage anyone who has read this far in the post to check out their latest album and to think about starting a Tribute Week of your own. You don’t have to make it as man-crushish as mine sounded. But reflect on those who have helped give shape to your life. Give some value to their lives with yours.

Tomorrow . . . the Fiedlers.

Very Good Music.

Some of the most innovative, thought provoking music out there. And I’m a music snob. Check it out and prepare to get yourself a cd.

The Consumptive Church: Appeasing The White Man’s Guilt.

The Context For My Starting Point, Different Starting Points, The Religious Industrial Complex, Opium & 3 Legged Chairs, The Model Speaks Volumes, The Medium Is The Message

I suppose I’m close to finally wrapping this thing up. At least from the critique side of things. Although as I’ve said before, critique is a form of construction . . . so hold off on the “Josh is always negative comments”.

I was reading Eugene Cho’s thoughts the other day on Buy Nothing Day and he makes some good points. His basic premise was that it’s easy for guys like me (white, affluent, etc) to support Buy Nothing Day once a year. I can afford to be “holier-than-thou” on the day after Christmas, because my lifestyle affords me the opportunities the rest of the year to buy what I want to when I want to. Whereas, for a lot of people, standing outside in freezing temperatures on the day after Christmas for electronics and children’s toys is more of a necessity.

For me it’s just as much a privilege not to buy something that particular day as it is for me to buy something on any other day. I can afford to opt-out of Black Friday. I can afford to opt-out of mass consumerism for a day. Because my lifestyle still affords me the luxury of opting-in on other days.

In hindsight, choosing to buy nothing like I did, had less to do with my critique of consumption and more to do with the privilege that has been afforded to me as a middle-class American. It had more to do with me wanting to appease my guilt for my consumption throughout the rest of the year than it did with me challenging the systemic injustices of hyper-consumption itself.

I get that. I really, really do.

While I think The Consumptive Church is only possible in an affluent white man’s world, I am also becoming painfully aware that critiques like mine are only possible because of the larger framework of that same affluent context. Perhaps these critiques really are more rooted in appeasing my guilt than they are in deep fundamental change.

In these critiques of mine . . . these “opting-outs” of conventional consumptive patterns, I’m afraid that the larger myths of consumption to satisfy might still go un-critiqued.

My favorite stanza of lyrics of all time comes from Ryan Sharp in I, Obstruction:

Just get rid of all your crap now
Just give it to the poor
So that they can have your crap now
So that they can want some more

What scares me more than anything about my life, is that my critiques will begin and end with nothing more than a shifting of my crap and affluence from me to someone with “less”. That I will do nothing more than shift my consumptive patterns from me to the third world.

At some point my critiques have to be more than economic restructuring. More than a shifting of politics. More than a reallocation of resources. At some point they have to challenge my hyper-consumption at it’s roots.

I don’t think consuming is a bad thing. If I don’t consume food and drink I die. If I don’t consume wood and gas, I don’t stay warm in the winter. If I don’t consume cotton and polyester, people will laugh at my hairy chest and I will freeze in the elements. Consumption is a part of life.

It is the hyper-consumption that has to be critiqued. It is the hyper-consumption that has to be challenged.

The question is not whether or not I need food and drink, but whether or not I need as much food and drink as I do. It’s not whether or not I need clothes to cover my body, but whether or not I need a closet full of overpriced, transient clothes made by 14 year olds. It’s not whether or not I need oil to get from place to place, but whether or not I need oil ensured by war and for my decadent disposal.

The question is not whether or not capitalism is a valid economic system, but whether or not capitalism as a consumption-based system where spending, owning, and hoarding are the leading virtues is better than capitalism as a production-based system where saving, sharing, and the common good are the leading virtues.

I need a better critique. I need a better alternative. I need to move beyond appeasing my guilt and towards embracing the common humanity that I share with everyone else. A critique that comes from below as opposed from the top, or worse yet . . . in the middle of.

Then I listen to the last lines of I, Obstruction:

It turns out I am the obstruction
Turns out I have been one
To loose them or enslave them
And just leave them all undone

Listening: But I Tell You by The Cobalt Season