Postmodern Pastoral

You ever finally get a group of friends together to go out and have a fun dinner and see some cute city sights, and then like 2 minutes into the party you realize "wow I have no personality" Or there's a fun guy you wanna be friends with, so you text him, "hey" and he says "hey" back, and then at that point you literally have run out of things to say.  Or you have a day off, so you stay up late and you intend on sleeping in, but then you wake up at 6:30 am anyway and the rest of the morning you're even more tired and cranky than normal.  You have ingredients for a salad, but it takes too long to chop them all up, so you microwave some popcorn, after a few days, your lettuce goes bad, and you hate throwing it out. It's Thanksgiving and you take an airplane and a long car ride to go see your folks, and at home you all just fall asleep in front of the TV.  You forgot to look at the date until you got to work and all of a sudden it's your birth...

  I'm spending a few weeks with my brother Luke, and his family in Houston. It's very peaceful. Luke has a toddler and we basically play all day, and we have nap time, so I get a nap everyday. Golly I'm so grateful for naps. Yesterday morning Luke and his wife had to run an errand so I was babysitting for a few hours, Luke gave me permission to use the TV if his baby was going out of control. It's nice to have the TV as a safety net, but I know Luke doesn't want his child to get addicted to screens. There's this balance of short term compromises against the grand vision of how to raise a child. We didn't watch TV, we read Calvin and Hobbes.  I had friends Daniel and Addison visiting from Austin and I wanted to meet up with them, at noon we met at Spa World, the Korean spa on the west side of Houston. It's quite a drive, but everything is a drive here. On the way I listened to "I'm Glad My Mom Died" by Jeanette McCurdy, so I guess the drive ...

I've been in Park City for the last few months, I was driving a city bus, they hire seasonal workers for the ski season. It was plan b, I wanted to go back to my old wilderness guiding job but they shut down. So I figured I could spend a few months in Utah. I called my mom the other day and told her I didn't really like Utah, and she responded "well I knew you wouldn't" lol bless. I put on some fat and didn't get enough sleep, but that's largely my fault, not Utah's.  Ironically, I started to really enjoy Utah about a week before I left. Lol okay. Leaving a place is so exciting though. I mean, I don't have a job or a place to sleep, and that comes with it's share of challenges, but it's also so fun and adventurous!  I stopped by a friend named Mark, Mark is beautiful and we chatted for a couple of hours and he gave me snacks for my road-trip. I stopped by my grandparent's cemetery and ate a sandwich there. Then after hours of driving in...

 City bus city bus go go go! Take the fast lane don't be slow! - Logan Greene Riding the bus is a skill, and I'm learning a lot of people have no clue how to do it. So, at the risk of sounding condescending, I figured I'd share some helpful tips.  There's a large sign on the front of the bus, it tells you which bus it is and which direction it's going. Please read that sign. Feel free to ask your bus driver questions, but ultimately it is your responsibility to know how to use the bus. This rich girl from South Carolina who's never ridden a bus before asked me how to get to Walgreens and I said "you have to get off at this stop, wait for the yellow bus, and that will take you to Walgreens." Then she started crying. 😐 Each bus has a fixed route, and it runs back and forth along that route. There's little street signs that say "bus stop" stand under them and wait for the bus. Ride along and watch where the bus is going. Pull the cord or ri...

I'm envious of Charlie Bird. He's a beautiful Mormon man with a beautiful Mormon husband and his social media presence makes his life seem so free and easy and fun. He was ESPN's favorite mascot in college sport history, like, that's pretty cool. He serves in the church and his congregation loves him. Truthfully I know it's not so easy, being a gay Mormon is so hard. He's also said on social media that his privacy has been/is being violated. Despite intellectually understanding that his life is not perfect, I still feel the intense emotion of envy. And the sin of envy is on me. I wanted to stay in the church and be openly gay. Maybe I didn't want it hard enough, or maybe I was too weak to endure that path. But that plan didn't work out. I prayed so hard to be cured of my homosexual temptations. I met with a therapist to develop chastity-friendly coping mechanisms. But it was all vanity. And now, someone else has what I was denied.  In a lot of ways Charl...

 My supervisor came on my bus to warn me about the homeless and all the problems they cause, such as open containers and smoking weed. He told a little story of how a homeless man once had a crockpot and was making food in the transit center. He thought this would shock and upset me. I pushed back and said "homeless people have to eat"  "But the problem is the homeless in this town want to be homeless!" I replied "So? Does that mean they shouldn't eat?" He backed down a little and said "yeah they don't bother me too much but it's not the image Park City wants"  I didn't know what to say to that. A few hours after thought of a lot of things I should have said but didn't think of them quick enough. So I just said again "everyone has to eat everyday." Probably not the best thing to say but I needed to communicate the fact that I was mad. I get upset when people that he trash-talk the homeless. He could not handle the id...

  Picking up a tarantula and putting it on my face and all the girls would scream. When a kid asked me what it was like coming out of the closet. Sleeping in a soaking wet sleeping bag for 12 nights in a row. #monsoonseason When one kid told me "it's so weird to be happy and sober at the same time" Throwing rocks in the ice to watch it break. Hike strikes. A mouse crawled on my face when I was trying to sleep. Ew. Kids cussing out their parents to me and then me not passing along that information to the parents. Putting a large flat rock over coals to keep them slowly smouldering so we could start the fire again in the morning. In a rowdy boys band, and most the boys were asleep, one boy asked me to sing a few more lullabies. Hiking in the rain in winter, and all of us showed the first few signs of hypothermia, another band had to come bring us dry wood so we could get warm.  Sitting on top of a boulder on top of a butte overlooking the Gila river.  One kid telling me the...