Coffee Thoughts

Right now I’m at a coffee shop with my roommate Henry.  (I won’t mention what coffee shop in hopes to pressure them into giving me free drinks for a name drop.  Leverage.)  I had a lot of thoughts and ideas in a crazy windstorm of inspiration. 

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First, I want to justify more of thoughts and decisions with the statement: “to live is Christ and to die is gain.  For example:

“Hey Jake I really like that t-shirt.”

“Thanks.  To live is Christ and to die is gain.”

I think it’d raise some pretty prominent and weighty questions.  “Wow.  Jake is deep.  Real deep.

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We were asked if we wanted plates for our muffins, and I said, “there is no better plate than my mouth.”  And then I immediately realized how much this is true, and how much that’s not a good thing. 

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I read an article headline that said, “Umenyiora scoffs at Giants’ contract offers.”  New item on bucket list: scoff at a contract offer.  (Bonus points if there is a headline made about it: “McLaughlin says ‘pfffft’ to millions”) Someday, someday… 

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I need to use the word ‘beautiful’ to describe how things taste.  And also use phrases like: “Man, that sunset looks really spicy.” Or “The colors in that photograph are quite salty.”

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Let’s be honest, I’m never going to write part III of the “Bill the Baptist.”  Spoiler alert, he dies at the end. 

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I want to start conversations with more provoking icebreaker questions:

“If you could get rid of one book of the Bible which one would it be?”

“Which friend would you feel the least sad if they died?”

“What’s been the worst part of your day so far?”

“How much do you weigh?  No really, how much?”

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The one thing I miss about finals week:  Not studying. 

The Fall of Bill the Baptist

(Part II) 

Mike Montgomery has been a ministry partner with Bill for the last three decades.  He has seen Bill’s monumental rise and devastating collapse.   He is recalling the regression from the subtle miscues to the inexcusable follies.  He tells these stories with a sense of regret, wondering if any of it could have been foreseen and thus prevented.  I sit across from Mike, who rubs face, as the memories may be too much.  “What was rock bottom?” I ask.   He laughs and shakes his head.

“When Bill peed in the baptismal.”

In a dark room Bill watches the old tapes, the images fill the large screen, making him larger than life.  Bill’s booming voice surrounds us, and we clearly see his passion.  An older man walks into the pool, and Bill takes a step to help the man in and slips just slightly.  On a screen like this, the mistakes are clear too. 

The spirit and the flesh are always at war with each other.  In the summer of ’89 Bill began dropping people.  “The first few times we chalked it up as a laugh, a simple bloop,” Mike says.  “Even Michael Jordan missed a free throw.  But it got worse.”   

Not only did Bill start dropping people during their baptisms, but his baptismal diction was beginning to raise some eyebrows.  At his peak, Bill has baptized thousands upon thousands and in multiple languages, on every continent.  His baptism structure and style was as diverse as those he was baptizing.  His ability to adapt to culture and context was uncanny and revolutionary.

“Because of Bill’s and Art’s impact and influence many now believe that doing baptisms are mostly about technique.  But they’re wrong.  It’s all mental.  You lose the mental edge, and you’ve lost everything.”  Mike remembers the mental threads beginning to fray.  “We were watching film one day after a pretty terrible set of baptisms.  Bill wanted to figure out what went wrong.  He’s picking apart his form and technique.  He’s saying, ‘Look at my feet, they’re not under my shoulders.  They’re too close.  Look at the wrist, it’s too loose.  I didn’t have my hand up high enough.’ Stuff like that.  And I’m sitting there, watching the same tape, and I’m in complete shock.  He’s totally oblivious.  Finally, I say, ‘Bill.  It’s not your form.  You did the whole service in Chinese.  We’re in Fort Worth, Texas.’”

There were certainly concerns and questions among the baptizing circuit, but after Bill the Baptist’s prolific career, many were giving him the benefit of the doubt.  After years of being the forerunner of technique and structure, most believed Bill to be experimenting yet again.  But some things were simply unexplainable.

“He would baptize fifty men in one night and call each one ‘sister,’” Mike laments.  “He’d replace ‘privilege’ or ‘honor’ with ‘regret’ saying: ‘It’s my regret to baptize you my sister in the name of the Father-‘ and then dunk them, and people would just be confused.  That was another issue.  Sometimes he’d forget about the Trinity.  One time Bill baptized 115 people only in the name of the Father.  That was a theological train wreck.” 

Due to Bill’s inconsistencies and erratic behavior, Mike and the team decided to send Bill down to the minors.  “It was tough for a lot of reasons, but we thought at the very least Bill could do some infant baptisms.”  This proved to be a grave mistake, as the format of infant baptisms were able to mask the problems but not actually fix them. 

After a month of “successful” infant baptisms, and believing Bill to be back in form, he was invited to head up the largest baptism of all time at Madison Square Garden.  10,000 were planned to be baptized; the would-be pinnacle of Bill the Baptist’s career, would turn into the abyss. 

With the bright lights of the most famous arena shining upon him, Bill began to do what he had been doing three decades previous, baptizing.  “The first few hundred went off without a hitch,” Mike said.  “Then he just hit a wall, and he got sloppier and sloppier.  He’d phrase the Trinity as all one word.  He’d just mumble, fathesonhospit.  And then dunk.  We were about to pull him, when all of a sudden he just locks up.  I remember that spotlight shining in his face, and his eyes all glazed over.  He didn’t do or say anything.  And then I hear a woman shriek, ‘He’s peeing in the pool!’  It was chaos after that.”

No one died, but over 225 people had to be sent to the hospital in the stampede that followed.  Bill’s spirit was all but broken.  They sent him down once more to take care of the infants, but after a handful of parents reported their newborns missing, the crew decided it was time to close the shop.  It was Mike Montgomery who had to break the news.

“I thought, I’m going to have to give an account to God Almighty.  I am responsible for shutting down one of his greatest instruments.  I prayed that God would have mercy on my soul.  It was one of the worst days of my life.” 

(Check back for Part 3 to conclude the story of Bill the Baptist)

Profiles of Courage: Bill the Baptist

(Part I)

There is a momentary silence as the stage lights shine brightly upon the water.  This is a night of redemption, symbolized in so many fitting ways.  A young woman is lifted up by a strong hand, beads of water stream from her hair.  And the applause, the confirmation of a sister echoes throughout the sanctuary.  The two in the baptismal share a hug, while the forty-two preceding, draped in white cotton towels clap and cheer.  Bill the Baptist has returned.

The story of Bill the Baptist is not a clear one, a good story never is.  And it’s not a clean one as the great stories never are.  The trajectory of his story plays with a fatalistic irony that begs for interpretation and thoughtful studies concerning the human condition and the nature of redemption.  Themes upon themes, and yet for Bill the Baptist, this is a story told only between himself and God. 

Unbeknownst of any prophetic implications Mary and James Theodore christened their newborn son William James Theodore.  Under the pastoral tutelage of prolific baptizer Arthur Snelling, the young William was nurtured towards the bright lights and warm waters of the baptismal.  Snelling himself was a mold breaker, known for his unorthodox delivery, many flocked to him out of mere curiosity.  For example, Snelling was one of the first to adapt the wrist-upon-wrist-lock into baptisms.  Countless awkward interactions preceded the revolutionary technique, as many pastors found the traditional hand-to-chest baptism difficult to implement for the females of their congregation. 

A young, impressionistic William became Snelling’s protégé after his parents witnessed the boy baptizing the family dog in the bathtub.  The next day, Bill recalls, the dog was hit by a car and died.  God’s timing seemed obvious and reinforced the truth that all dogs do indeed go to heaven, but only if baptized.  William thrived under Snelling’s supervision, and soon the adolescent became second-string baptizer for the congregation of the First Family of Christ.

Bill finds an old VHS and puts it into the player.  The tape loops for a moment and then reveals a teenaged Bill – pencil and paper in hand – with an elderly Snelling placing a careful hand on the young man’s back.  The two stare intently upon a television, Snelling points a crooked finger to the screen, and Bill scratches a few notes in response.  Bill looks on wistfully, “Art was the first one to tape baptisms as a point for training.  We spent hours in that film room.”  

William’s moniker changed literally over night.  Caught up in the rousing spirit of a tent revival, William – at age sixteen – performed an impromptu baptism, officially breaking himself away from his predecssor.  There were children, grandparents, man, woman alike in that crowd, and none left with a dry brow.  The next morning the local paper headlined, “Bill the Baptist Dunks 118!”  Nothing would be the same. 

Few could have projected such a far-reaching ceiling in a career that began with incredible expectations anyways.  “None of the church directors could have predicted what we saw with Bill,” reminisced an anonymous pastor.  “Every baptism is a ‘miracle,’ yes.  But Bill literally performed miracles when he baptized people.  Our church had sent a couple scouts to see if all the hype was real.  They were with Bill for two days, and they came back reporting that Bill had done 22 full immersion baptisms in pothole at a Wal-Mart parking lot.”

As Bill’s skill and following grew so did his legend.  One lingering story that continues to bring chills is of Bill baptizing people with water that had turned into wine.  Such a story sounds quite miraculous and even heretical for some, but for Bill it was an average night.  When asked about it Bill just shrugs, “The miracle wasn’t water into wine, but the fact that the wine actually turned into grape juice when we baptized our underage participants.” 

The numbers are staggering.  Bill shows us a room of bookcases that are filled with binders, each one documenting person after person that was baptized into the kingdom with Bill’s own hands.  Each binder represents one day or event, with a number that titles the spine.  176. 223. 184. 305. 111.  These are not statistics to Bill, they’re people.  Each with their own life and their own story.

Bill’s own story would unravel quickly.  With so many solidifying their lives of redemption through Bill’s baptismal waters, few could have seen the ironic fall.  “The rise of William James Theodore is unprecedented. But the fall of Bill the Baptist has never been seen and never will,” commented one rival pastor.  His tone betrays an unforgiving grudge, “A man with three first names is no man at all.  He was doomed to fail.” 

(Check in tomorrow for Part 2) 

The Tale of Brave Jacob

Ulysses by James Joyce is considered to be one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.  Libraries have been filled with attempts to analyze and annotate, hundreds upon thousands of terrible undergraduate papers have been written, lives have been made and ruined with this book.  I have tried to read this book five times (at minimum - not counting the handful attempts where I've read the first five pages and put it back down in fear and self loathing) and have yet to finish.

Joyce wrote only three novels, three collections of poetry, and a collection of short stories.  I've read his first work, his short story collection, Dubliners.  I read this while in Turkey and it was amazing.  Loved it.  Stories are simple yet profound.  I read his first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man after my senior year in high school and it immediately became my favorite book - a great portrayal of a young man wrestling with his faith, his desire to be a writer, his family/national ties, and romance.  Obviously right up my alley.

Apparently somewhere along the way Joyce decided that his writing should be incredibly esoteric and impenetrable.  Ulysses plays around with form and style, employing stream-of-consciousness, and relying heavily on abstract, obscure allusions.  (Abstract and obscure to those who do not have doctorates in Greek literature/mythology.)  For example, the last fifty pages or so is an inner dialogue of a house wife with no punctuation.  Joyce's final novel Finnegan's Wake is considered to be unreadable. I tried to read the first page and almost choked on my tongue.   Here is the opening "sentence" to Finnegan's Wake: 

“riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.”

That’s pretty much the whole novel.  Although Ulysses does not pose that extreme threat to my sanity, it’s still quite a trudging experience.  I would even pride myself in being able to read “difficult” literature, but this is a beast of a novel; it is my Moby Dick.  It will only take an Ahabian obsession to destroy the book that has eaten my leg, scarred my body, and ruined my marriage… (whale may or may not have done the latter).

So with the summer approaching and possible time to spare, I have decided to dedicate myself to finish Ulysses.  Updates to follow. 

The world is big, the world is small

This photograph (taken by Massoud Hossaini) just won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography.  A sobering, tragic look at the world outside our own, the photograph shows a 12 year-old Afghan girl moments after a suicide bomber attacked a shrine at Kabul.  A photograph like this should remind us that suffering exists in ways many of us will never experience.  It should push us towards a God of comfort and peace, not draw us away from Him.

(Massoud Hossaini/AFP/Newscom)

Poem in fifteen minutes

Hanging out with the Adertons once more and we decided that each of us would write a poem in fifteen minutes.  It's fun to have creative friends.  Here's my result:

Memories

You beer that drink

And I’ll cigar that smoke

You joke that laugh

And I’ll song that dance

You food that eat

And I’ll knee those skins

We’ll dream those listens

And thought those fears

We’ll tear those cries

And mistake those learns

We’ll past our recalls

And nothing our forgets

We’ll change our pockets

And future our hope

List Making

Inspired by a grocery list I found on the Aderton’s (just referenced in two straight blog posts) bathroom counter, I began to think about the importance of list making.  We are a culture that loves lists.  To-do-lists, countdowns, lists of favorites, etc.  We love to organize, categorize, and prioritize.  And we love to have a sense of accomplishment – for better or worse.  But it made me wonder where we get this desire for list making, and the answer is the answer to everything: God!  Duh.  (See the book of Numbers and Chronicles)

I did a little further research and found out that archaeologists actually found lists thought to be from Jesus, Peter, and Paul. 

Jesus' Wednesday To-Do List:

1. Ask Father for patience, love, new sandals, insight

2. Heal people

3. Fix basketball hoop at orphanage

4. Remind orphanage once more, that I am no longer a carpenter

5. Heal more people

6. Yell at Pharisees

7. Eat food.  Real food.

8. Have Peter proofread stand-up comedy routine

9. Rebuke Peter for correcting my stand-up comedy routine

10. Heal people

11. Tell John the Baptist not to go to Herod’s party

Things to work on – by Peter (Formerly Simon Rothschild)

1.     Get plenty of sleep!

2.     Work on apologetics

3.     Work on swordsmanship (lethal not maiming)

4.     Study up on the chemical bond structure of water

5.     Figure out how to fish better

6.     And then actually fish better

7.     400 meter sprints

8.     Spend more time with the wife and kids

What to mention to the Corinthians – by Paul

1. Need money.  Cash rules everything around me.

2. Apollos is dumb.  I’m dumb.  Peter also dumb.  Jesus good. Be unified

3. Most of the time I pray for you.

3. I pray for you all the time

4. Yes, you can eat bacon.

5. Do NOT consume all the grape juice and communion wafers (not that filling anyways)

6. Tongues are only meant for eating.  (Maybe kissing)

7. Try not to have sex with your stepmother

7. DO NOT have sex with your stepmother

8. Make sure to set up hotel reservations, I’ll be arriving soon - this time I'm serious

9. Why get married? WWJD

The Hunger Games: This Time It's For Real

Food?  Competition?  If you can ever employ and intertwine these two plot devices into a cohesive story you will see Jake McLaughlin in the theater.  Despite never gaining weight and having a terrible palette I really love food.  And despite never playing any formal sport and being not athletic whatsoever I really love to compete.  But apparently these are not the topics or themes of The Hunger Games (Kobayashi weeps). 

I’m not going to go into detail about the story as I’m sure all of you are by now familiar.  (If I had to sum it up in one sentence: Katniss be trifilin’.)   I have not read the book, as I believe all movies to be better than their written counterparts, i.e. Matilda (God bless you Danny Devito).  So I came into the movie with a fresh perspective and learned much more about myself than I had bargained. 

First, I am really captivated by competition.  I like to watch people compete at basically anything.  I remember when I was introduced to curling during the 2006 Winter Olympics and would spend my lunch break watching those beautiful, enthralling sweepers and bowlers.  If one can watch curling then one can certainly watch teenagers killing each other, right?  It’s sorta like boxing…  Ohhh.  That’s supposed to be the point of the movie.  That we’re NOT supposed to enjoy watching teenagers kill each other.*  Got it.

*To be clear, I do not totally condone teenagers killing one another.  

But I spent the last half of the movie a little frustrated because I cared more about the competition than I did about Kathleen and Peter.  Who was winning?  How many people did K-Dough kill?  Who was still alive?  Side note.  If I were to restructure the rules, I would definitely reward people for kills and such.  It’s like Call of Duty.  You kill fifteen straight people, you get a tactical nuke. 

I also enjoyed the first half of the movie with all the speculation on who were the favorites and who were the underdogs.  One thing I’ve realized is that the joy of being a sports fan is like 45% speculation-prediction-second guessing, and like 55% actually watching the event.  I wanted more Sportscenter-like analysis and more stats.  Here are some that I actually dug up:

Out of the 75 times the Hunger Games have been played only 13 of the winners have been female – with only one girl not being from District 1 or 2.*

*This makes Katrina’s win that much more impressive.

Districts 1 and 2 hold 68 of the Games’ winners. 

The record for most kills for a champion was 20 by Dugger Hopkins. 

The record for least amount of kills for a champion was 1 by Regina Rutters. (Also known as the most boring Hunger Games EVER.)

The record for the most kills by a non-champion was 17 by Raleigh Faringer, who was upset by the first outer district champion: Billy Calhoun.

To air a 30 second commercial during The Hunger Games cost 1.5 million dollars. 

Finally, I learned that I might be too competitive.  I’ll be honest I really like winning, and if winning means staying alive longer than my opponents then yes, I would indeed kill my competitors.  All super great athletes have what we like to call: “The Killer Instinct.”  And we all have it, it’s just that the great ones are able to tap into it.  That’s why we love Michael Jordan so much.  Imagine how many teenagers he could kill.  A LOT, I assure you. 

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize?  So run that you may obtain it.” – 1 Corinthians 9:24 (Definitely taken out of context.) 

All Asians Look Alike

I’ve worked at Fareway since high school, three stores in three different towns.  At each town, with each store, while carrying out groceries, I have been mistaken for another person (presumably Asian).   Surprisingly Iowa is not an incredibly diverse state, so in all fairness these cases of mistaken identity should be expected.

When I was at Muscatine there was another guy who was maybe a year or two older than me, who others suggested that we were twins.  I never met this guy, and somehow I never actually saw him to validate such suggestions.  I even carried out groceries for his father who told me that I should meet him.  I think his father actually believed we were twins because he became more and more subtly aggressive in our attempt to be reunited. 

Father: “Have you talked to my son yet?”

Me: “No…”

Father; “You should.  You guys look alike.”

Me: “A few people have said that.”

Father: “He works at Menards.  If you go to Menards you should find him.”

Me: “I uh… will…”

Father: “Are you going to Menards today?”

Me: “I don’t think so…”

Father: “Well you should.  Find my son.” 

I also had a conversation with a man* that I’ve never had before and probably never will again in my life.

*The man was in his late twenties, so he doesn’t even get the Oh-I’m-Old-And-White-And-Endearingly-Racist Excuse.

Man: “Can I ask you a question?”

(I’m thinking, oh he wants to know how long such and such a sale is going to last, or how long we’re open, or when we’re going to get in the next shipment of Code Red Mountain Dew.)

Me: “Yeah, sure.”

Man: “Are you Mexican?”

Me: “No…”

Man: “What are you?”

Me: “Korean.”

Man: “Ohhh.  Well, you look Mexican.” 

Me: “Ah, common mistake, I get that a lot.”*

*I didn’t really say that. 

In Ames this type of conversation would occur maybe once every other week, but I always chalked it up to the fact that there are a lot of Asians in Ames. “Hey didn’t I see you running for the bus the other day?”  No you did not.

Now that I’m in Nevada, however, this conversation happens nearly once every week.  This is both surprising and not surprising.  I’m not surprised in that Nevada is incredibly white, so if there were an Asian in town, of course they would mistake me for said Asian.   But I am quite surprised that there is even an Asian in Nevada, Iowa.  A lot of these conversations end in me giving a Jim-Halpert-incredulous-stare and headshake.  Here are a few:

Sweet Old Lady: “Don’t you live by me?”

Me (patiently): “I actually live in Ames.”

Sweet Old Lady: “Are you sure?  Don’t you live on 2^nd street?”

Me (bluntly): “I live in Ames.”

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Woman: “How does your mom like her new job?”

Me: “I’m not sure you know my mom…”

Woman: “Well, I heard that she got a new real estate job.”

Me: “My mom actually lives in Muscatine, Iowa.”

Woman: “Huh.  Really?  I wonder why I heard that then.”

Shakes head.

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Man: “You live here in Nevada?”

Me: “No I actually live in Ames.”

Man: “You look like a guy who lives in Nevada.”

Me: “Nope, I’m from Ames.”

Man: “Oh.  Well, did your parents just go to New Mexico?”

Me: “No.”

As I am adopted these conversations always intrigue me, as it could be possible that I do have long lost brothers who also somehow got adopted into families in Iowa.  (Hallmark movie in the making.) These interactions do humor me more than they make me self-conscious.  One of the reasons is that I do not view myself as “adopted” or even out of place from the people around me.  The family I have is my only family.  My parents are my only parents.  I believe this is how God sees us, as through Christ we have become adopted into his family.  Not only that, but we’re now his actual sons and daughters.  The act of adoption into Christ is true and filled with grace and love; the label however, of “adopted” sons and daughters may not be totally accurate.  My parents never refer to me as their adopted son.  I’m just their son, there’s no gray area or false identity.  Adoption means a new family and thus a new identity, an identity we should be ready to fully embrace as those who are co-heirs with Christ.

“For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”