Just a brief thought for the day: you are not your feelings.

I woke up this morning feeling angry, anxious, and judgmental.

Does that mean, in order to be “authentic”, “true to myself”, or “transparent”, that I need to inflict all that negativity on the people around me?

Of course not.

I drank my coffee. I bit back several biting comments about small annoyances that really don’t matter. I took a little extra time to be alone, to breathe, to read, and to pray. I double checked my words before they left my mouth.

Does that mean I wasn’t being honest? Does it mean that I wasn’t being true to myself, just putting on a front, just keeping up appearances?

I don’t think so.

I am not my feelings. They do not express my truest self. What I felt this morning was nothing more than a product of the end of a long, slightly overbusy, slightly overpeopled workweek, and a lack of good sleep.

I don’t need to act that out in order to be true to myself.

Having emotionally diarrhea doesn’t help anyone – it just makes everything stink.

Because, beyond all those emotions, which come and go in ways that have very little to do with me, are deeper truths about the self I want to live into – to be loving, generous, compassionate, and willing to treat others with kindness, even when I don’t feel like it.

That’s truly who I am, not whatever I’m feeling at this particular moment. 

On mornings like this, I’m really grateful that’s the case.

I often don’t feel cool enough to go to some churches.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience – and it’s possible you’ve not, either because you’re not interested, or because you’re better dressed and better looking than I am, but occasionally, when I’ve visited a church, especially when it’s a hip, new, fast growing church, I immediately feel out of place. Everyone dresses better than I do, is in better shape than I am, has better style hair, better grooming, and is, in short, to all appearances, more put together than I can be on my best day.

The worship is always shockingly competent. The videos put most production companies to shame, the band somehow takes really trite three chord praise songs with lousy lyrics and makes them sound awesome (while looking like they really love doing it),and  the preacher is either really a) funny b) hip c) earnest in a way that connects with the audience.

And I think – damn, I’m not cool enough to be here.

It’s a good thing I don’t belong to a cool church.

We were having our monthly worship gathering a few weeks ago in a our friend’s backyard a month ago, when I looked around at the people.

Most of us had left the slim section of the clothing store years ago.

None of us, (okay, maybe just one or two of us,) would look particularly at home at the Gap or Abercrombie and Fitch.

Our one child, who happens to be autistic, happily ran around during the entire service, upending my friend’s front lawn, as we took turns chasing after him.

Some of us stutter.

Many of us talk with Mass accents so broad that you could drive a mac truck through them.

Some of us are scarred, from bad luck, or violence, or self-violence.

Many of us can’t carry a tune in the bucket.

Some of us struggle with addiction.

Some of us obviously need to see a dentist.

Put us all together, it’s very clear that we are not a cool community.

There are days that I wish we were cooler – that we were younger, hipper, richer, but I’ve come to realize that it’s not us. And, I’ve decided, I’m glad about it. For, although I realize that many cool, hip, happening churches are doing great work, and I realize that my feeling out of place perhaps has more to do with my own insecurity than it does with them, I can’t shake the feeling Jesus and his crowd weren’t cool either.

After all, that first community was really just a bunch of disreputable, morally questionable, socially unacceptable outcasts following around a day-laborer turned homeless itinerant teacher: definitely not the group of people you’d put on a flyer or a billboard. I’d expect they were also, taken as a group, rather grubby, somewhat profane, rather awkward, and, generally speaking, not the type of people you’d want to invite to your next party.

I think that’s good to keep in mind, in a culture that’s filled with small enclaves and microcultures, where it is now entirely possible to be with people who almost exactly like you. It’s easy to forget that we need each other: the have’s and the have not’s, people from all walks of life, from those who have the resources to shake the world, to those who should really get a parade if they manage to get out of bed and successfully tie their shoes in the morning.

We need each other, in all our glorious uncouth uncoolness.

And that way, I know there will be at least one church that I’m cool enough to be a part of, too.

I’m sitting in the library right now, having carved out a very precious hour for myself so I can write.

So – what have I done with the first half of my very precious hour?

1) Found and checked out two books from a favorite author.  (Score! I didn’t even know he hadn’t written two new books!)

2) Wandered around the biography section looking at the introductions to memoirs. (Important research for my novel, of course)

3) Checked weei.com, grantland.com, and cnnsi.com. (Just in case, you know, something important happened in the world of sports since I got up this morning.)

4) Read article about the Pirates-Reds game. (After all, my cousin is a big Pirate’s fan, so reading the article is kind of like family loyalty, right?)

5) Check my rss reader for updates on goverment shutdown. (Being an informed citizen! Yay for civic engagement!)

6) Checked weei.com again. (In case, you know, anything else important happened in the last ten minutes).

7) Looked up T.S. Eliot (Because he’s a cool poet, and I’d like to read more poetry.)

I’m truly amazed how, whenever I sit down to write, I procrastinate instead.

I’m becoming really great at it. My excuses for why all those other things are really more important are getting more compelling all the time.

There’s a hard truth I haven’t found my way around though:

In order to accomplish the most important things in life, you have to, well, start doing them first.

So, from one procrastinator to another, (You’re reading my blog, right? Are you sure there’s not something else you should be doing right now?) just go out and do it.

Now.

Don’t think about it.

You don’t even have to read to the end of this post.

Write that novel. Start jogging. Start painting again. Open that book.Make that phone call. Have that tough conversation. Ask that person for forgiveness.

Take that risk you know you should, but always can find reasons not to.

That’s the only way it will happen.

And there’s no better time than now.

Trust me.

In case you didn’t notice, Pope Francis’ first in depth interview pretty much blew up the internet. My Facebook feed exploded with Pope-love (especially from my Protestant friends, most of whom, I think, secretly envy their Catholic friends for having such a cool leader.) Buzzfeed did one of their patented picture-lists on the interview – lists that they have recently been reserving primarily for cute puppy stories and pictures of Clint Eastwood’s shirtless son. Andrew Sullivan, one of the top bloggers in the country, pumped out post after glowing post about the Pope, pausing only periodically to pass out from over-excitement.

I read all the highlights and about half of the full transcript of the interview, and one thing in particular stood out to me: this man did not break any new theological or social ground. He’s a definite Jesus-person, still opposes abortion and homosexuality, and has pretty much kept himself entirely in line with the whole canon of Catholic teaching. Anyone looking for a shift in Catholicism’s teachings on abortion, contraception, homosexuality, or women would have been disappointed.

So what made this interview so popular that the internet exploded?

It was not what he said (e.g. What is the church’s position on abortion, gay rights, etc.) but how he said it.

When asked “who are you?”, he said that he was a sinner, loved by God. When asked about why he chose not to live in the Papal apartments, he talked about how he couldn’t live without community. When asked about his leadership style, he was humble and freely confessed his faults. When asked directly about homosexuality, he said, (and I lifted this quote straight from one of my gay friend’s glowing status updates about Pope Francis),”A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, whether I approved or disapproved of homosexuality. I replied, ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love or reject and condemn this person? We must always consider the person'”.

Simply by communicating with humility, compassion, and love, he did something that the world absolutely did not expect from one of its religious leaders.

In the process, he also happened to get everyone’s attention.

In church circles, we tend to argue ceaselessly about the correct doctrinal or social positions to take on the various issues of our day. We often delude ourselves into thinking that if we just found the right combination of positions – conservative, orthodox, reformed, progressive, emergent, etc., that the world would somehow be drawn to us.

However, perhaps this interview teaches us, (from all varieties of religious belief and unbelief) a different message. In the end, it is not what we believe, but how we hold what we believe that people find compelling or repelling. If I believe in peace, justice, and inclusion, but do so in a snarky, elitist, and judgmental way, no one’s going to be convinced by my arguments, no matter how brilliant they are. If I believe in Jesus Christ’s importance in my life and in the lives of others, but do so in a way that makes me greedy, angry, and scornful, then no one’s going to want the Jesus I’m offering.

I’ve thought through about a thousand ways to wrap this up, but perhaps the simplest way is this.

People paid attention to Pope Francis because they feel like he would love them if he met them. They’re probably right.

Perhaps we’d have more credibility if people felt the same way about us.