I didn’t say this on your Facebook wall, but these additional words sit and stand and leap behind what two sentences I did post. What you see is not just for you. What you see is for us. What you see is for you and us to change.

You’ve gone to the islands a couple times that I can think of, and it didn’t occur to me until I saw your photos that your going was about more than your teaching or your preaching or your inestimable ability to capture youth and leaders.

You have always been more than I could wrap my head around. You have always been more than anyone could. You have always been more.

I must admit and repent that I’ve not cultivated the vision to see you as you are. You know that history is full of times when we’ve had to knock each other back. That is the fundamental agreement we made some day over you cutting my hair or in the basement eating French silk pies. We agreed to be honest and truthful. We agreed we’d notice each other and tell each other what we saw.

The trick in keeping that agreement is in the constant cultivation of vision. And it wasn’t until I saw you seeing that landfill that the spirit—and we may blame a spirit—whispered to me that I wasn’t seeing. I wasn’t seeing you and why you were there in the Philippines.

I knew you were going. I celebrated and prayed when I saw you heading there. I did so the way I always do when I see you doing the doggone thing. You’re doing what you always have. You’re doing what you’re here to do. And with your persistence with your life call comes my sneaky ability to take vision for granted.

I assume you’ll do the thing. I assume you’ll achieve, not greatness, but dogged consistency in following Jesus. I assume you’ll be you. I assume too much.

In my assumptions I didn’t look closely. In my assumptions I stopped noticing what was, perhaps, just beyond both our gazes. Of course, you may know this. In which case, you can accept my words as a reminder. What you see is for you but it’s also for us. What you see is for you and us to do something about.

You haven’t been brought to that place—and I have in mind the Philippines and other places too—to stop at seeing. You have always been a moving man. You get to my nerves, you move so much. You get to me because you expect so much damned movement. But that is a quality that is necessary with what you saw.

Be moved by what you see. And then move us. Do it by grace. Do it in faith. Do it after and while being convinced that changing vision is never your job alone. It never really is your job. Change your vision and ours by changing what’s before us.

I love you whether you listen to me or not, and you know I hate to be ignored.

When one person is shot in an urban area, it’s horrific. I can only imagine–and I don’t want to imagine this–what it’s like to be part of the emergency response to dozens being shot.

The dead. Their bullet-speckled bodies. The trails of their dreams littered the packed corners of a club. The families forever impacted and immediately spun into the dizzying unbelievable grief of this type of death. The injured, still alive and, in a way, immeasurably lifeless. Emergency personnel and medical providers who “are professional” and who are also almost immediately depersonalized in the process. The offender permanently affixed in our minds for the last of his sins.

There is a whole lot wrong with the world as seen in this latest tragedy. I heard the snip of the story out of Orlando this morning and didn’t really see anything until this afternoon. And today is Sunday. Today is the Lord’s day in Christian parlance. It’s the primary day we gather to worship, to reflect, to listen, and to pray. Though all those things are parts of a Christian’s daily life, Sunday is the day we do those things together, side by side, hearing and being heard by our relatives in the faith. Sunday is the day that we, together, rehearse the promise that, though things like this happen now, they will not always be.

I’m sitting here, heading to a church function, thinking about my prayers in the church service, thinking about what I said and what I didn’t say. I’m thinking about how this was precisely the reason I stopped watching the news late into every Saturday night. It was a part of my religious practice actually, watching and listening so that I could give words to what I’d say on Sunday mornings when I led any parts of worship. I stopped because I didn’t want all these images informing my prayers. Even while the news was exactly what needed to frame the language of my prayers.

It’s bruising to pray well. It’s hard to pray honestly. It’s hard because you have to pray about the bald-faced evil that terrorizes people for no good reason. It’s one thing to pray for the long-stretched out problems that will really take God to change. It’s another thing to pray for things that God has left for us to do.

When I was in seminary, I learned a particular way to pray. We’d gather in the Chapel of the Unnamed Faithful and offer prayers of the people. In the church of my upbringing, we had altar call and altar prayer and extemporaneous prayer. But we didn’t have this explicitly framed prayers of the people. It’s essentially a list of prayers–often written out thoughtfully by the prayer leader before service–that is read and held by all the people in the gathered space. The prayers of the people were both a reminder to God what things we needed and a reminder to us what we needed to be.

I hope that people prayed today. I hope that people who never prayed did. I hope that church people and non-church people said something to God. And I hope that the intense tragedies like these make us into a more prayerful people. I’m sure nothing bad can come from praying. I’m sure change and grace can result in fact. I hope you’re praying. I hope you say something to God about what you see today and what we all saw, again, with this latest unmentionable terror.

Photo Thanks to Leeroy

Evelyn Underhill, when talking about the Lord’s Prayer, said that we prefer to live upon the surface and ignore the deeps. I was reminded of the deeps when I was sitting near the new boy the other night. Dawn was asleep for the evening time frame, and I was not.

Bryce was sleep too. Me and Brooks were together. We were negotiating. He was sleepy and resistant to sleep’s power. I was trying, siding with sleep, lulling him like the last couple weeks.

I told him that he was tired. I told him that I wasn’t going to hold him all the time, every evening, until he went to sleep and while he stayed sleep, and on and on. These are words that just come out and though I was sincere, I felt like I was talking to myself.

Still, we made progress. He was not on my lap or in my arms. He was next to me, on his side, held against the couch, sidelined the way he likes to rest after he’s eaten. He was looking at me. I saw depth in his gaze.

Certainly it was the depth that I brought to the moment. It was the kind of deep moment that sleep deprivation and wonder at humanity-still-new gives a parent. It was slightly humorous, this depth. Normal people don’t experience this particular depth.

It’s like Underhill’s comment. When we’re normal, we stay on the surface. The experience, the unsettling experience, of being deprived makes you abnormal. Abnormality opens you to depth.

To be clear, I am not as sleep-deprived as I could be. And though my friends would say differently, I’m not as abnormal as I could be. But I’m opening slowly. I’m trying to attend to the deeps. I’m trying to be open to what’s there.