Transcript for January 3, 2010 by Bob Kleinheksel

Happy New Year to you all! On behalf of us all at C3, I wish you good beginnings, clear vision and anticipation of beautiful realities and states of mind -to be discovered, experienced, created and enjoyed. I wish you well in your emerging humanity and resolutions.

I suppose it is good to think of resolutions again – as is custom. I’ve heard of these ones in the past week.

John Burroughs wrote: One resolution I have made, and try always to keep is this: To rise above the little things.

And on a lighter note: A man turns to his friend asking for a cigarette. The friend says, I thought you were giving up smoking.

I am said the first man, I am in phase one of my resolution. Phase one? Yes, I’ve quit buying them!

And these dieting resolutions:

2007: I will get my weight down below 180 pounds.
2008: I will follow my new diet religiously until I get below 200 pounds.
2009: I will develop a realistic attitude about my weight.
2010: I will try to drive past a gym at least once a week.

And this resolution close to home here: Rog, my colleague, is making the shift from cream filled long-johns to regular round doughnuts. I like that!

Mark Twain cynically wrote: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Ouch.

Even though there is truth in his words, I believe resolutions are possible to carry through, so don’t be discouraged. Set them anyway. You will set achievable, measurable ones. I count on that from you and I hope you count on that from me.

About the time one learns how to make the most of life, the most of life is gone.

Today is another day to consider the most of life. Whether there is length or brevity in our days and years, I invite you as storytellers to think again with me about our lives and the perspectives with which we see the world.

Today we actively wonder what the rest of our lives will be about. How we see them? How we understand them? And if we were writing our stories, what kind of content would another read? What perspective would we write from? If another would read the stories of our lives from here on in, what would they read? Would they be inspired, bored, discouraged, enlivened?

I am reminded about the passage of time and the nature of my life and story as I consider my oldest son starting drivers training. How could I be living next door in the big brick house, holding him as a baby in my arms, and now see him as tall as I am and living life audaciously as a teenager? A good chunk of the most of my life has passed, leaving me to consider how open-eyed I am about what is happening now. What am I catching, what am I missing? What am I taking for granted? What and who am I cherishing?

We get bogged down by the mundane and lose our vision. We lose our ability to see beauty, to have fun. Somehow or other, as we get older work seems a lot less fun, and fun seems a lot more work.

If we followed the church season year, we would now be celebrating Epiphany. This season follows Christmas and Christmastide. From Greek Epi-phaneia. Manifestation, appearance. The traditional church season celebrates the Christ being known in the world – with the three magi coming to visit.

I like these meanings: sudden perception of the essential nature or meaning of something. An intuitive grasp of reality through something simple and striking.

What are you now perceiving? What lay in wait for you to see differently? What person or relationship may be understood anew or developed in some fresh way? And as you begin to see with new eyes, epiphany eyes, how will that affect how you write the story of your lives?

From what perspective do you write your stories? From what perspective do you see the world? As victim, as explorer, as victimizer, as active, as passive? What essential natures or meanings are we creating and discovering? Isn’t it amazing how much is up to us? We can allow others to dictate what we could be feeling and how we might see the world, but in the end, it is up to us. It is up to you. It is up to me.

Seeing with Epiphany eyes takes practice. Do you ever wonder how you get to be good at something? I want to be a better guitarist, but I forget often how much practice that takes in order to progress, to be more confident, to enjoy it more. It takes a lot of practice. So does seeing beauty or ugliness in the world.

I watched The Green Mile over the holidays. Tom Hanks and Michael Clark Duncan, this towering African American man with unique abilities to sense and see. At one point in the movie John coffee shares with the prison guards his discouragement about ugliness in the world, that people hurt each other every day. John Coffy, Duncan’s character, was so tired and discouraged because he was embroiled in betrayal, violence and ugliness. Later in the movie, as he is being led to old sparky, the electric chair, he shares a new revelation of how there is beauty and peace and love abiding in the world – and those who had been hurt or killed were well and laughing. John Coffy had an amazing ability to see, to really see. He could see ugliness and he could see beauty.

What do we typically see? What kind of practice might benefit us as we move through life? What kind of practice will enhance our ability to see life, events and people in new ways? And how might we write from a different perspective? For instance, if one sees himself typically as a victim, wounded, betrayed, let down….that perspective and identity will have severe affects on an outlook on life. That person’s story will be told from that perspective. If that is the only perspective, think about what is missed? Think of the possibility unrealized, the beauty unseen.

Each of us here are authors with a variety of identities and perspectives. We can be honest about them and take them all into account. Don’t deny the ways you have been wounded and don’t deny the ways you’ve been recipients of great gifts and opportunity and love. Your best is yet unwritten.

What about all the new members who have recently said YES to this place as well as those considering C3? What might you see? Possibilities? Obligations? Growth? Most people have orientations to their churches far from positive – but all of us have a great opportunity in front of us: To forge a new reality with this emerging vital community. To receive from this place in ways needed; to give to this place our gifts, talents, time, volunteer service and financial strength. What about these new people along with everyone else…those traditional, those describing themselves as atheists? How do we see community? How do we see our roles, our place, our voice with new understandings? What is our unfolding story in general and how does this place configure in?

If any of you have seen The Matrix, you know this movie is in part about how we understand reality, what is real, what is illusory, what is virtual. You have this computer generated virtual reality. Some humans manage to escape and see it for what it is. Keanu Reeves is Neo (meaning new) and he begins to see what is around him. His understanding of what is real and what is not comes with practice, trust, openness and encouragement from others. It took time and practice and trust to see people and the world around him with new eyes. It will take practice on our part to see the world anew, to treat people more fairly, to see ourselves more intimately related in this grand drama and this community. To merge our stories with the 140 history and story of this place which began in 1870. How do you see it? How can it help you? How can you assist in its strength, vitality and viability for yourself and countless others beyond you? What will begin today with the continuance of your story and your epiphany eyesight?

The obvious thing about stories, beginnings and epiphany eyes is that they are new and are about change. Beginnings and stories mean emergence, evolution, progression; that which is originated or even original. We are on a continual, dynamic life track involving endings and beginnings and everything in between. We affirm there is something exciting about beginnings as well as challenging and anxiety producing.

One of my premises is that changes aren’t permanent – but change is. Those are old lyrics by the Canadian rock group RUSH. Count on change. Count on beginnings, count on epiphany eyes. Change and endings and beginnings are always happening, perceived or not. People, relationships, the physical quality of things, thoughts, theologies, how we parent, the aging of our bodies and the stars in this amazingly expanding universe. Stories can change; perspectives can change; your identities can shift.

I am reminded of change, my story with epiphany eyes and beginnings in my own family. My parenting has to adjust. I can’t take things personally. I embarrass my kids and myself more and more. I learn constantly I am in new territory – I have never been here before. I have never been a Dad of 15, 14 and 13 year old young adults. We are going through life for the first time

As my kids grow, I have to check myself and not only see them now as my kids cruising through life and my parenting as less and less active in some ways as kids become more nicely independent….but see them as living extensions of my own flesh and bone, sharing my genes, awesome and precious. To see them as their own persons as well, differentiated, interdependent; to see through the annoyances, the occasional nasty attitudes, the ways they separate themselves from me. To see them with ever renewing eyes to the wonders they are.

There’s not much if any archeological evidence for the exodus of the people of Israel from the land of Egypt as described in the book of Exodus in the Hebrew Scriptures. It is a helpful illustration anyway – whether it happened factually or not. Imagine what it might have been like to leave home, a country. What would you bring if you were going away to unfamiliar places on a daunting and exciting journey?


What do we bring with us from 2009 and before? What have we left behind? What are we beginning, seeing and writing about in year 2010? What is a resolution or revolution that may be fanned into flame – and brought forth in living color to this year and to those around you –in your circles of influence? What will the next chapters of your story contain?

What may be your revolution? What may be my revolution as Bob – as human, pastor, Dad, friend, colleague? What may emanate from me and expand to you and what will you notice in me and see demonstrated in my life that is different than before?

Your presence and stories are important. Your epiphany eyes see the same old realities in new ways. You are Neo, exposing the unreal and seeing the world with amazing clarity; you are Jake Sully, the avatar, beholding the intimate connections between people and nature and the pervasive life force found everyone, in everyone; you are Jesus, the Krishna – seeing and living in new and profound ways; and most of you, you are you, ever emerging, writing, telling and modifying your stories. You see people differently. You are an unfolding blend of beautiful humanity. Your lives matter and how you live and see make a difference.

Be about new beginnings….be a beginning. Live your life as if it were a broadening, broadcasting, published and dynamic inventory of beginnings and story lines which are life giving and sustaining.

You are story tellers, writing the chapters. As an author, you are established in various perspectives. Your experiences shape how you see the world, how you write, what you convey. How you see the world shapes your experiences. Your epiphany eyes will guide you to live and write full and more fulfilling lives. Try it again. Practice it. Practice and write something different….something surprising, something new.

From what perspective or vantage point will you write? As a victim, as a lover, as one angry, as one softened by beauty? Your stories are needed and valuable and the best is yet unwritten. I see you. You see me. We see ourselves and the world anew…and on go the stories of our lives. What will you write…and what will be read by the likes of those around you? Not your epitaph on a cold gravestone, but your emerging, living story right now?