too soon to go back to work?

moving day

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:56:18 -0400

What, you don’t like it when I only call once a month?

Kevin is moving his personal blog to a new home: www.kevinalton.com. This blog will remain active with various band news and thoughts from the community within the band.

Nobody is fired and no one has quit, though Brandon has announced a trial separation beginning in mid-August. More on that later. At least he was honest and didn’t tell us he was “going out for the paper.”

More to come!

Peace,
K

the odd relationship of help

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 21:33:57 -0400

Everything in American culture is available on a consumer basis. You can do almost anything of which you can conceive at virtually any hour, any day of the week. Somewhere. Probably even online.

Except.

If you want to HELP, you can’t do that on your own terms. Help isn’t open 24/7 and it doesn’t offer free shipping for orders over $25 and it sure doesn’t care if your food was cold or if your sweater came in the wrong color. Help NEEDS you, but it doesn’t necessarily want you. It definitely doesn’t think long on whether or not you’ll achieve a great sense of fulfillment after interacting with it.

Your relationship with Help, until you realize and even embrace these things, will be a continual frustration. After all, you’re available from 10-12 on Thursday mornings. Why can’t you Help?

The room in the above photo is usually relatively empty. There are a few tables for sorting clothes there in the middle. Off to the right is a desk with a phone, currently about six bags deep. To the left, a wall unit air conditioner similar to what you’d find in a hotel room. After the tornado at the end of April, donations poured in to the only standing benevolence. This is the sorting room at Christ Chapel, a mission on the south side of my town of Ringgold, GA. Believe it or not, the clothes you see have already been sorted; the volunteers at Christ Chapel did it mostly in the parking lot and then brought the sorted bags to heave up on Mt. Donation.

In the weeks following the tornado in Ringgold, we discovered that our youth, due to federal regulations, would not be able to directly assist in the disaster recovery due to their age. What they could do was participate in ANY local mission effort available prior to the storm. We’ve had a very basic relationship with Christ Chapel for years; once a year we’d do a scavenger hunt to help replenish their food supply and one other time of the year we’d send a crew for 3 days during a mission event to paint or clean or sort or whatever for a few hours a day. You know, Help.

Renewed in purpose, we approached them with post-disaster vigor. We’re here to Help, we said. We can come on Mondays from 9-2:30pm. The chapel agreed, not wanting to turn down any assistance. I missed the first week due to a middle school youth trip; a devoted youth mom took the small group. The second week the group was equally small and we were out of stuff do Help With by about 11am. It was pretty hot, so their mild frustration at running out of work was tempered by the opportunity to head to some real air conditioning. Yesterday was our third week and, while our labors this week felt particularly Helpful, we were done again by about 11am. But something struck me differently this day.

About mid-morning, I was sorting old yogurt from a very tired refrigerator into a trash can to make way for a fresh load of day-old yogurt from one of our local grocery stores. The fridge had no ordinary means of opening save a remaining metal claw that formerly grasped the top of the freezer door handle. More importantly, the rubber seal around the door of both compartments appeared to take a path mapped by a squirrel trying to escape an automobile. There were zig-zag gaps all around the door.

“Bobby,” I asked the director, standing nearby. “How would you feel about me showing up with a new refrigerator to replace this one some day?”

“I’d dance like David,” he said. “I mean... well, I’d keep my pants on.”

And there it was. Not the pants thing. The part where I learned of a need for which I could actually provide assistance. There’s a free fridge on Craigslist about every 15 days. I should be able to hook him up shortly. But the larger truth has remains with me.

If you really want to Help, you have to be in relationship. Help comes to you, if you’re there. I think the truth, the hard truth, is that that we want to FEEL helpful. It’s the reason I was out the day after the tornado, cutting up a tree in the yard behind a church member’s untouched house. And the reason I spent the following Monday working myself to a near blackout in a different church member’s neighbor’s yard. I needed to FEEL like I’d responded. But Help is different, I think. Real Help goes beyond instinct into something else; Help sticks around to make sure that all Help is done.

The past two months have completely upset the picture I thought I’d been painting of what local missions looks like. I’ve been here for four years; there’s no reason that Bobby should still be suffering with that miserable refrigerator. We should have already been there.

Looking backwards, the lesson seems obvious enough. The real rewards always seem to be in relationship; why would it be any different with helping others?

Thanks again to all who have expressed support during these unusual and difficult weeks.

Peace to you all,
K

slapping babies

Mon, 2 May 2011 21:07:34 -0400

This picture is of the house across the street from where I worked clearing trees with one of my church families today. It’s a traditional 2-story Cape Cod, except that the storm converted it into a cozy master-on-main with an open floor plan. And a completely vanished first floor. What you see there in shadow is the main floor with the second floor, nearly intact, about a foot and a half above it. Like an horrific pull-the-tablecloth trick. Voila!

If you’re completely new here: I’m a UMC youth leader and sometimes worship leader/singer-songwriter. The one thing that I’m never immune to in a worship setting is the way others engage in it, particularly when it’s with emotion. Really, you can stuff the rest of it in a sack as far as I’m concerned. When I first started volunteering regularly with youth I was troubled by how I not-at-all I enjoyed the music that they used in worship. What I discovered to get around that dislike initially was that I could worship through how they engaged in worship. That remains one of my preferred means of worship in a corporate setting, but the fallout as a worship leader is that engaging with the actors in worship (the gathered) can present some real challenges to one’s ability to continue leading, particularly if those present are deeply moved. For example if you, the leader, are now blubbering and shaking and such it makes the words hard to follow. Also the melody.

There are ways to somewhat head emotional collapse off at the pass. Never sing a song without reading through the lyrics for things that might send you into a sniffling death-spiral. You can rehearse transitions in your mind, thinking through the places that might push you over the edge. You can try to tune out any meaningful speaking or video segments that might bring the next song to an untimely close. And for Pete’s sake, don’t look at anybody.

All that works great for standard fare like mission weeks, moving closing worship sessions on retreats, and that sort of thing. But NOTHING can prepare you for leading worship in a time of heartache or need. When the earthquake hit Japan in March, we held a responsive prayer service which, at the last second, included a song I’d written celebrating the calming presence of God. Two lines I made it before falling apart. With that in mind as we began to form the elements of a community worship service for our first Sunday in the aftermath of our own storm, I was desperate to find a way to hold it together through what promised to be some difficult worship prompting. But TWO DAYS before the service I couldn’t even think about the transition from a deeply moving audio piece (someone had captured the tornado strike on video from a distance; as the storm hit our town, the man shooting began to pray repeatedly, “Lord, be with them. Oh Lord be with them”) into the Gungor song “Please Be My Strength” which cries out from a place of sorrow for God to be the strength that we do not possess. As the service got closer and more events unfolded, it got worse. There was no way I was going to make it.

Please know that I wasn’t trying to avoid crying for the sake of saving face. I’ve got two kids; I’m not afraid to cry. I just feel that those gathered can better offer worship to God in a time of weakness if those prompting can be strong.

So I was reaching Sunday afternoon, reaching for anything that might distract my mind enough to fight off a moment of emotion without removing me from the moment. Like thinking about baseball for... when you’re not thinking about baseball. But it couldn’t be anything complicated; nothing with a story line, nothing long--after all, I needed to look at the next line of the song or speak the next words to remain present. Something quick like... like slapping a baby.

I don’t know where it came from and obviously I (nor you, dear reader) would ever do such thing. But “slapping babies” became my mantra for the afternoon. Quick, like a pop; odd enough to distract my mind, foreign enough from my behavior to go no further that the thought of those two words: slapping babies. One dose of “slapping babies” and I was right back in it without so much as a shaky breath during sound check. Even more incredibly, it worked during our service as well. I was fully present mentally in the service. I even listened to the howling audio of the tornado with that man brokenly begging God to be with us. And I only had to think “slapping babies” twice on the first verse and once on the second chorus of “Please Be My Strength” to stay in control. Then I was free to exit stage right and weep quietly on my own.

I have more, but it will wait for another day. Yesterday ended in anger for me, not at any person or process, just at needless pain. It’s too much to think through; too much to bear. This is the most prolonged heartache I’ve ever known, and we’re not yet a week into a process of years. At the same time, I’ve never been more grateful to be in ministry, nor more grateful for my faith family. They, in many spoken and unspoken ways, are my strength.

And thank God for slapping babies.

Peace, K

oh, not helpless--useless.

Sat, 30 Apr 2011 17:35:10 -0400

In spite of all my self-interested instincts, I headed back to town today ready to fix it. Yesterday had been a little slow, what with nobody being allowed in and such distractions, but today, surely today I’d be a fireball of fix-this-thingness plus UMCOR had jobs for at least 200 people to do. I had my coveted green sheet of paper with “UMCOR” in a bold font that was the magical key to the city. To cut down on the number of vehicles but still be mobile, I brought my bike in the back of my truck and rode from the staging house separately from the bus with my UMCOR tag in my pocket. Which meant that the bus beat me to the road block. The bus without a magic UMCOR sign.

So by the time I caught up to them, it was too late. The officer at that roadblock was not buying their particular brand of Rock-Springs-UMC-bus-headed-to-Ringgold-UMC nonsense and I think the long-haired fella riding up on a bike with a foldy UMCOR sign (me) just made it worse. We were exiled to an adjacent parking lot to “stand by.” Eventually, GEMA showed up and convinced him, but the officer insisted that the magic UMCOR sign be removed from my pocket and placed in the front window of the bus. And also that I should stay real close to the bus, because otherwise I’d get thrown out of town for not having the sign anymore. So a rough start to savior day.

But when we finally got to the church, I was ready to... hoo boy, I better sit down for a minute. Oh wait, make that lay down for 20 minutes. Apparently between “standing by” in the parking lot and arriving at church the two days of no-sunscreen or regular water and very little sleep caught up to me. I broke out in a cold sweat. I could feel the blood draining from my head. I suck. I retreated in shame to a couch in the youth room, completely missing the UMCOR training meeting.

Eventually I emerged, joined a work crew and saved a life while helping reattach a blown-in side wall on someone’s house. Wait, no, I didn’t. I sat in the cool shade of an office and tried to figure out how to help create a meaningful community worship service tomorrow night that doesn’t tweak people’s emotions or reek of cheese. While actual reports of life-saving rolled in--an 84 year old woman was found alive, trapped in her home since Wednesday. Another 91 year old woman was found shortly after who DIDN’T KNOW ANYTHING HAD HAPPENED. This is craziness on an map.

At some point it finally occurred to me that I was right where other people wanted to be and couldn’t, and I was complaining about it. Our youth are clawing at the gates of the town (figurative gates, for non-locals), desperate to get in and do anything--even if it’s just being there. Their town is destroyed, and they haven’t gotten to see it. Some have classmates that have died and there has been no opportunity to mourn. To be there was a gift, even if I felt useless.

So, attitude improved, I headed for home. And I didn’t even swear in my head when I got a flat tire 100 feet from the church and had to push my bike all the way to the staging house. I’m looking forward to some great, genuine, probably tear-filled worship tomorrow, both at our restricted access site at 9am for workers and residents and our community-wide evening worship experience at Heritage HS at 7p.m. I hope that anyone from anywhere feels welcome to join us at 7.

I’m probably going cry, which is worth the price of admission right there.

Peace, K

first day in

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 22:52:23 -0400

I got the call early this morning from my pastor that staff would be allowed in to meet with UMCOR (United Methodist Committee On Relief, for the pagans) at our church, which was cleared to be the official GEMA distribution site. To get in to town the most simply, we gathered at a church member’s house outside of town and rode in together.

Everything is wrong. And because everything is wrong, even the things that technically aren’t wrong don’t look right. The Shop-Rite, for example, is basically untouched, but has a mountain of brand new telephone poles in its parking lot, ready to be installed. My buddy Adam Cathey’s law office is fine, but looks strange because next door the roof of Wilborn’s Music is peeled back like a broken toenail. Every five minutes the road-that-is-open and road-that-is-closed situation changes, so the way you arrived at the church is no longer the way out when you go to meet the guy bringing funeral home tents to set up for shade. And at some point you begin to realize that nearly every tree that served as a mental landmark in this town has been snapped in half or embedded in something else.

I continued today with the guilt of being glad that certain things were fine: Richard’s Restaurant looks OK; I eat there once a week. Bonnie’s motorcycle shop looks intact; my bike is in there for service. An invisible list of Things That Affect My Life was quietly being checked off as I moved around the city. I even root against being adjacent to the sorrow of others: one of our senior church members came by with her equally senior sister, desperately trying to get to her house which she had not seen since the storm. I volunteered to help her get there, but in my center I was pleading that I wouldn’t be the one to accompany her to a devastated home. I’m really pretty selfishly motivated, if I haven’t mentioned it. I was fine walking past all of the upside-down shed/board stuck-like-spear into roof or wall scenery on the way to her house, provided that when we got to her house I could say, “Oh look, it’s not so bad.”

Which I did. Her house had suffered broken windows in back and some roof leaks, but was sound structurally. The yard looked like a sideways forest of other people’s trees. That picture at the top is a tree in the yard; the thing in the tree is a beam of 1/2’’ thick steel, wrapped around the tree like a ribbon by 195mph wind. But her home was there, resolving my fear. I didn’t want to have led her to the realization that she’d lost her home. Having checked the interior as well, we walked back to her car and parted ways.

The coming months and years here will play on the edge of my love/hate relationship with real ministry. I hate heartbreak. It kills me inside to be near it. But I’m drawn to it. Most of my favorite memories in ministry are embedded in a larger story of real hardship. Something deeply and painfully broken. And they’re not even all stories that led to healing; sometimes broken is broken. But I’ve found that it’s in the broken places that we can draw closest together, because in the broken places there just isn’t room for anything that doesn’t matter. No room for anything that isn’t real.

And a lot of times, that’s the only place some of us finally find God. A God that isn’t all cluttered up with stuff that doesn’t matter and stuff that isn’t real. A God that’s still there in the broken places.

Peace, K

helpless

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 20:20:53 -0400

It’s not often that I feel completely helpless. It happened last year when my back was out; everything in our ministry and my home life felt like it was careening along out of control. In reality, that was only as out of control as you are when someone else is driving; I wasn’t in control, but our ministry & family continued along just fine with the guidance of others.

This helplessness I feel today is a different breed altogether. Last night just after 8p.m. I stood in my yard with my wife and watched a wicked looking cloud boil past overhead. Even sent a little tweet about it: “It isn’t every day that you get to stand in the yard and watch the sky start to make and then not make tornadoes. Over & over.” About 40 seconds later, the sky did make a tornado and dropped it on our small town, the ordinarily quiet Ringgold, GA. To kick things off, the tornado blew through some houses, demolished a grocery store and shopping center along with a couple of gas stations before lifting two 18-wheelers off of the interstate overpass and slamming them to the highway below. The storm then raged through the business district of Ringgold, wiping out around half of them and damaging more. Then the middle school and high school, along with countless residences. It’s only a town of about 3,000. We’ve been leveled. I think the whole process took maybe 10 minutes.

Yet somehow tonight I sit in an untouched home with the lights on and Internet access. As a community member, I long to be down in our community, but we’re not allowed in (all day only certified first responders have been allowed access to most anything within the city limits). As a church staff person, I want to gather as much of my group as possible and begin the process of letting them minster to each other. But we have nowhere to gather. Our church was relatively unharmed, but stands without power in the center of the affected area. The church pictured above is Mt. Peria Baptist, which sits about 3 buildings away from ours and clearly was not as fortunate.

Trying to express what’s going on to the boys has been challenging, too. “How bad was the storm, Daddy?” “Well, you remember the restaurant where we ate dinner last night? It doesn’t exist anymore and some of its employees are dead.” No, I didn’t say that. But what do you say? It’s one of the most impacting events of their lives. Of MY life. I still can’t believe what I saw when I went out last night, and I saw it again today. It’s absolutely insane.

What’s more insane is how what happened in Japan a few weeks ago is roughly one bah-grillion times worse, but these events will almost certainly erase those events from our minds. Because they happened to us? Sure, I guess. It’s what we do. We’re just geared to care more for ourselves. I was talking to a youth parent today (nameless here, to maintain the integrity of the quote) and we were talking about the damage, etc and processing the deaths of two of the students from our high school. We were relieved that they weren’t from our group, but also felt bad about feeling that relief--two kids died, isn’t that good enough for grief? But this dad said, “Well, it’s like earlier today I was out in the yard picking up some shingles out of the grass and I couldn’t figure out where they were from and I remember thinking, ‘I sure hope they’re not from my house.’ And then I thought, ‘Hey asshole, who’s house would you like for them to be from?’”

It’s all been a call to real community. I spent the day today in the yards of church members, clearing trees and just talking. My inclination (to be confirmed by our group shortly) is to cancel our summer calendar, including two mission trips, and spend the summer working in our community. Because if we can’t exist solely for our community at a time like this, we should probably just close up shop.

Thanks to all of you who have voiced your support and concern from across the country. I apologize to those of you to whom I’ve been unable to respond directly. Your thoughts and prayers are a genuine support at this time.

Peace to you all,
K

accidental victor

Mon, 4 Apr 2011 12:37:06 -0400

With UConn’s win over Kentucky Saturday night, I won the “official” ESPN bracket competition with my friend Josh. With my re-pick of Butler over VCU, I believe I put our side competition to rest as well; even if UConn loses tonight as (I think) Josh is predicting, his re-pick points for a Butler win won’t be enough to carry the day. Please wait here while I go verify that math.

[opens browser, check’s Josh’s blog, brief period of calculations]

That’s correct. After the great 8, I was behind 10 points in the ESPN bracket but up 600 to 570 in our re-pick configuration (if you’ve forgotten/don’t care, a dead bracket game can be re-picked for half of the bracket’s official points). But Josh’s bracket was dead with Florida’s loss last week. I picked up 160 points Saturday from my still-alive UConn pick and another 80 from my Butler re-pick, putting me at 850.

Josh had a rough Elite 8 (why isn’t that “Great 8,” sports people?) but rallied by re-picking UConn over Kentucky for 80 in the Final Four, putting him at 650. We’re at odds in the final game, but even if UConn loses to Butler Josh can only pick up 160 points and he’ll still lose by 40.

Stay in school, kids. My success here is no indicator of how things usually go when you’re guessing; and while I’d like to take this opportunity to announce my retirement, undefeated, from the world of NCAA brackets, my prolonged career would certainly have proven that point to you.

Peace,
K

all that’s left of march is april

Sat, 2 Apr 2011 00:31:11 -0400

I realized very late that there’s some more basketball to be doing. Only three picks remain; here are two of them:

Butler over VCU: I had originally picked Vandy as the dark horse that nearly makes it to the end before things go the way they should, but I wasn’t looking at the rankings yet and didn’t realize that Vandy, as a 5 seed, technically CAN’T be the dark horse. More of a dun, really. VCU is the dark horse. The dark horse is tired.

UConn over Kentucky: If UConn wins this game, I win the official bracket challenge against Josh, though he could still beat me in our re-pick arrangement. Currently I trail Josh by 10 in the official bracket but lead by 30 points in our “side” bracket.

If you’re completely new to this blog or NCAA basketball, know that the championship game is on Monday and that this blog will return to basketball silence for another 11 months.

Come, UConn (team mascot)s! You can do it.

Peace,
K

Journey to the Center of the 7th Floor

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 01:59:31 -0400

Interesting day. We (Purrington, if you’re new and have come to believe this is a sports blog) did a photo shoot on the abandoned 7th floor of a historical building in Chattanooga, currently owned by 1st Presbyterian. (Thanks 1st Pres.)

On top of that, we found out last night that the song “I Know” from our Paper Cities EP got picked up on Under the Radar, a weekly podcast that’s syndicated on over 150 radio stations. So a fun band day all around. Probably a separate blog about this later.

On to the hoopness. Josh and I made a change in our scoring system which has left me confused for the moment, but I feel certain I’m still down a bit because I only got 3 of the 8 games right over the past two days. On the upside, his ESPN bracket is toast after this round, if not during.

My Great 8 picks:

EAST

NCU over Kentucky (re-pick): uuuuuuhhhhmmm... Yup. Probably a close one though.

WEST

UConn over Arizona: Please to happen. I’m all done without this one.

SOUTHWEST

Kansas over VCU: This nonsense has to stop. I’m with Barack Obarkley on this one.

SOUTHEAST

Butler over Florida: Power move pick. Butler wins, I get Josh’s points and Josh is out of the big money/big prizes, which is what I need right now. What, you don’t predict outcomes based on your own needs?

I’m up in Nashville tonight getting ready to attend PodCamp Nashville in the morning. Nerds/geeks just shifted in their seats with quickened pulses and everyone else asked, “PodCamp?”

Back soon!

Peace,
K

We’ve only got Kansas anymore, Toto.

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 22:04:06 -0400

This is starting to remind me of parts of the SAT. For the right-hand side of my bracket, I shall now guess “C.”

I’m down to my friend Josh by 30 points in our arrangement of points, which includes re-pick options for failed brackets. The NCAA regional semifinals begin tomorrow night; here are my picks (if you don’t have any idea what’s going on here, hit “previous” a few times):

EAST Ohio State over Kentucky: This is my only remaining predicted matchup in the Sweet 16. Trust me.

North Carolina over Marquette: Marquette disappointed me by not losing to Syracuse. They’re all done now.

WEST

Duke over stupid Arizona: Arizona has cost me points in two rounds. Arizona is also the state where, on a mission trip, our youth group went to the emergency room every day except for the day I refused to go and get stitches. May God bless the Navajo people; screw Arizona.

UConn over SDSU: I need it so bad. Please to be true.

SOUTHWEST

Kansas over Richmond: Spiders are very, very cool, but I’ve learned that Charles Barkley and President Obama have Kansas going all the way. I don’t want to end up on a list.

Stupid Florida State over useless VCU: Full re-pick bracket. I guess I want my Florida St. friends to win. I’ll even let this exonerate me from stealing the deputy-shaped usher badge from FSU’s Wesley Center.

SOUTHEAST

Stupid Wisconsin over useless Butler (repick): Butler lost to Pitt at least 4 times the other day, but won. This time they’ll do it right.

Stupid BYU over useless Florida: I’ve got to not pick Florida for a minute, it hurts my heart.

That’s it for now; I think they manage to drag this out over a couple of days, which corresponds with how Josh does his picks.

Purrington is doing an actual photo session on Friday night. I’ll wrap my enthusiasm in some sarcasm about that in a later post.

Peace, K