The Muppets speak truth

A month ago I wrote a blog entitled The Muppets are Liars

It came from a place of beginning to heal from some past hurts. It came from a place of loving the Muppets but knowing that life is not like a movie, much less one we write.

Even, as I wrote the blog, I knew there was a part two. While the opening number of the new Muppet movie conveniently entitled "The Muppets" starts with a song that could easily be interpreted to be stating that things are grand when there is one by your side (and therefore not grand when you are alone). However the film's ending speaks of community, acceptance, and being stronger as a whole than as an individual (even paired individual) pieces.

SPOILERS BELOW FOR THE MUPPETS
(you have been warned-cause apparently spoiler warning are good etiquette here on the interwebs).

Act II of the Muppets ends with a song entitled "Man or Muppet." The two main characters must decide what they want most in life and then choose to pursue it. I first saw this film at a sneak peek in August, less than a week before leaving for Chicago to pursue what I want most in life.

A new Muppet named Walter is told that while he believes in other people that is the easy thing. Walter is admonished that eventually he will have to believe in himself. Now without getting into the idea that we are all okay and can make our dreams come true (I am looking at you Muppet Babies). There is the fact that if we believe that we can't do anything, than we won't.

In the middle of Act III The Muppets, despite kidnapping Jack Black as celebrity guest host for their theatre saving telethon and then loose their theatre and the Muppet name due to a maguffan of a clause in their 1979 Rich and Famous Contract.

At the films denouement, Kermit gives an impassioned speech about how it was not the name or the building that made the Muppets special. By telling all of them that he believes in them, Kermit lets all of his cast-mates and friends know that they are a like a family to him.

The finale has the entire Muppet cast sing a reprise of the "Happy Song" that began the film. Now instead of a a focus on family (Gary and Walter) or couples in love (Gary and Mary), the song takes on a new significance of community. The Muppets are what I like to call "found family." They are more than mere friends, they are family. There are roles of leadership and roles of support. Those in leadership look to allow everyone to find their voice. Believing in each other, believing in self, and becoming what they want to be have always been the themes of the Muppets and their found family.

Now where in ourselves should we look? Some will say to ourselves, or to God within us, or even the god in us. This particular blog post is not about the answer to that question (I'm sure everyone here knows my answer).

This blog post is to say that in a time where I am learning to follow my passions and believe in my worth, I am eternally grateful for the community that surrounds me here at North Park Seminary. Listening ears, open hearts, acceptance, encouragement, a hot dish brought to potluck, a game of pick up basketball, or even a smile. All of you have upheld me this semester. Thank you so much.



--Serving Him alongside all of you, just from further away
--Jesse Letourneau

The Muppets are liars!

It kills me to say this, but the Muppets are liars.

Let me back up a little.

My senior year of college was marked with some pretty melancholy moments. I know its not terribly unique to feel this way in your early 20s. Heartbreak and confusion of what the future held hung pretty heavy in my dorm room that year. My roomate and I even had this unspoken contest as to who could pin the most depressing song lyrics on our walls. It got pretty ridiculous, until one day I decided to go another route.

I put up the lyrics to a song from The Muppet Movie. The song is entitled "I Hope that Somethi' Better Comes Along." It is an upbeat little number sung by a frog and dog bemoaning the difficulties of relationships. For me that was the ray of optimism (and absurdity) that broke through the clouds of my little self centered world.

That fall turned to spring, and graduation was right around the corner. Soon enough our group of close knit friends slowly drifted apart as new jobs took us to new places and new lives and new marriages added new responsibilities. My roommate married, and together we celebrated that his "something better' had come along.

Here I am today, nearly twelve years later. And I find that melancholy is a pretty easy mode to slip into.

The link above is from the newest Muppet film (debuting Nov 23). One of the lyrics states, "Life's a happy song, when you have someone by your side to sing along." I can do several things with this lyric. I can bemoan that fact that I am alone (I'm not, but I am certainty not living the story I had envisioned I would be twelve years out of undergraduate school.). I can focus on the community that is around me (which I am trying so very hard to do. I always assume that no one wants to deal with my stuff, should have to deal with my stuff, or simply has there own stuff to deal with). Or I can do something completely else.

I cam realize that the Muppets are liars.

In the same movie where the frog and the dog sing of the woes caused by inter-species relationships, there is a much more famous song, "The Rainbow Connection." It is the song that opens the film. The Muppet Movie ends with what is essentially the second stanza of "The Rainbow Connection" known as the "Magic Store."

"The Magic Store" begins with these words "Life is a story. Write your own ending."

Part of me wishes that sentiment was true. I would love to take pen to paper and make my wishes and dreams come true. However, the wiser part of me knows that we do not write our own endings. God does. God is the author of this hero's journey I am on.

I can do many things as I look at the story of my life. I can look too far too deeply into the past and become stuck there unable to be effective here and now. I can do the same with the future.

But in this story it is the author who is omniscient and not I. I do not know what the future holds and honestly barely understand what the present holds.

I do not know why registration is such a difficult task for me to understand, or why my radiator hates me, I do not know why the school work can seem overwhelming at times.

I don't know when my something better may come along, I don't get to write my own ending.

But even without knowing those things, there is something I can do. I can be obedient.

I know one thing. And I am relatively sure of one thing.

God has made me to be a Children's Pastor. That is my call, that is my vocation, that is my core, that is my true self. I am relatively sure that North Park is the road to accomplishing becoming a Children's Pastor.

And so I push on. I obey. I do what I can to move through this course of education, and trust to God for the rest.

So my life can indeed be a happy song. Because I trust not in the plans I have, or in the ending I would write. I trust instead in God.

The Muppets may be liars. But my God is not.

So for now, for today, I will hold onto His plan and trust in His ending.

--Serving Him alongside all of you, just from further away
--Jesse Letourneau

housekeeping

Hey all,

Reading back through my blog I realized I hadn't yet given part three of my Arriving at Destination "series." The short version is that friends from home came up for the weekend, and we spent it laughing, sharing, eating (tons of great food, and they kept insisting on paying), going on ziplines in the rain, and the canopy tour on the sunniest day of the weekend.

I was blessed by their presence, and so very blessed by being able to be in place to give back (working at camp allowed me to have their weekend to be quite cheap). Again to serve from a place of strength. It was doubly honoring to serve from a place of strength to one of the many groups of people who served me when I was still in my place of (for lack of a better term) weakness.

I know the journey through my time in Africa is incomplete and long overdue. I have summarized the trip into two more blog posts, I just need to get them from my head to the screen. They will come "shortly."

A new season of Outdoor Ed has begun here at ARCG. Loving the new team, looking forward to getting to interact with the kids.

--Serving Him alongside all of you, just from further away

--Jesse "Gonzo" Letourneau

Ariving at Destination part two

The weekend of October 15-17 I was lucky enough to go to a conference for Christian Camping. I took a ton away from that time. A renewed focus on student lead teaching. A realization that I belong to a larger community of Christian camping. The reminder of the beauty of God's creation. The reminder of the beauty of relationships. And a confirmation that I work with wonderful, open and honest, and God-fearing people.

Oh, I also ended up on a free guided tour of Yosemite!

--Serving Him alongside all of you, just from further away

--Jesse "Gonzo" Letourneau

(as always click on pics to make em bigger)

Arriving at Destination part one

I have long thought it would be cool if there was a GPS for life.

"Turn Left Ahead." Take this Job." "Avoid crazy girl approaching" and of course "Arriving at Destination." ah, Destination, the journey's end. I have always been more about the where than the why. Maybe it's because I can get car sick even if I am driving. Maybe it's because getting there takes work, and I would rather avoid work. Maybe getting there takes pain, and I assume I have had enough of that for one lifetime. Maybe it's because the journey is about growth, and growth implies that one is getting stronger and better. And maybe for too long I saw myself as unworthy of being better.

Whatever the case, I am slowly learning to look around me and enjoy the view, enjoy the journey, and even enjoy the pain and growth, and maybe even to accept the fact of my worth. The thing that makes any destination, any journey, and really any thing worth the effort is the people you are traveling with.

God has underscored my journey, my growth, and my worth three times in the last five weeks. Each time He did so at a camp. Each time he used the people who have stood along side me.

September 24-26 was a crazy weekend for me. Here at Alliance, we hosted a Men's Advance (cause guys retreat enough on their own). A thousand little moments that weekend, some good, some bad, some big, some minuscule, some echoing faith that can move mountains, some that I am smart enough not to commit to writing, all led to the Saturday night sermon.

The cliff notes version is that men in this country are absent. Fathers in this country are absent. Boys do not have a ceremony, a time, a rite, where someone sits them down and tells them what it means to be a man. Where someone sits them down ans tells them that they are a man. At the end of the service, an invitation was sent for those who felt the need to mark the truth of being a man, and even more than that being a man of God was extended. The other men in the room came forward and prayed over us.

I am a 33 year old guy (no longer a boy, but never embracing my manhood), who was raised from the age of 12 by a single mother. The idea of having someone speak those words to me (and don't get me wrong, my mom is awesome, and there have been a thousand father figures in my life, I have learned from the church what being a man is) as a novel concept isn't horribly shocking.

What is shocking, what is appalling, is that to my left and my right, and filling three rows behind me sat men who had never had this done for them. Men in their 30s as well. And men in their 40s, and 50s, and 60s. How the hell does the church allow someone to become a grandfather, yet the idea of marking their time from boyhood to manhood is a new one to them? How has the Church, how have we as men, failed the body, how have we failed each other? Let's hit pause for a second, because I want to come back to this, but first I need to explain what was happening in me that night.

That night I was healed. That night all of the zip-lines, and sea cave kayaking, and ski lessons, and movie nights, and simple words of encouragement, all my time at ARCG, all my time in CM at Grace, all my time at Simpson, all the encouragement of friends and family over my 33 years, finally made sense, complete and total sense. I saw fully (or at least more fully, cause grace isn't a concept I will fully unpack in this lifetime) the person others had seen in me. I was commissioned by man that night, but my spirit was spoken to by God.

He told me that I was a man, and that I no longer needed to serve as broken and lonely, but that He had made me into a man of God, a man with gifts, talents, and passions that would be able to reach out to the men, the guys, and the boys I so desperately want to tell of the wonders of grace. I now no longer serve being able to only put my arm around those I serve, and share in their pain. I now can help them up to where I am. I can pull them up, because God has made me whole, and I stand above, not better than, but healed.

That day my son, I became a man.

--Serving Him alongside all of you, just from further away

--Jesse "Gonzo" Letourneau

Rambling Road

Time for another not so regular, not so structured edition of what has been bouncing through my mind.

Last month, I heard a sermon on Luke 24, The Emaus Road. The analogy was given of when Jesus opening the eyes of His traveling companions to the plan of God to standing on a peak and looking back on the trail you have just walked. This is where it all becomes clear. This is where you can look and see every twist and turn and understand why they are there. This is where the path you just walked makes sense.

Fourteen years ago I sat in the bleachers of Forest Lake Christian School's gym and argued with God. Roughly six weeks ago I sat in an airport shuttle and tried to argue with God. The gym was my point A and the shuttle my current point B.

Way back in 1996, I was a high school senior who thought he had learned it all, seen it all, and done it all. Only I knew something was amiss. There was more to this God I served, yet it was just out of reach. And so I prayed. I prayed a prayer that I would have never prayed I had I known how it would have been answered, and yet have never regretted.

My prayer was simply this: "God I want to experience you in new ways. I want you to become real in my life." Like an incredibly slow mantra, this was my daily prayer for months. Then I met a man named Tom Ives. Tom was from Royal Servants, a short term missions organization. He was there to give the talk for our weekly chapel.

I have never felt the call to be an overseas missionary, so why would I need to go "practice"? (I have been on four short term trips, and am considering a fifth.) I had no real desire to listen to what Tom had to say. It wasn't going to apply to me. Besides "these guys" come and yell and scream and say the only way to be closer to God is to raise money and go on their trip. I wasn't buying what Tom had to sell. I sat down convinced this chapel would have nothing for me.

The first words he spoke were, "Do you want to experience God in a new way? Do you want Him to become real in your life?" The next 25 minutes were spent with me trying to convince God that He was mistaken. That this was not the answer to my prayer. I whined about schedules and money and languages, each time I thought I had outsmarted God, Tom's next sentence answered my exact "problem."

It was on this trip in 1996 that I first began Children's Ministry. I played with puppets, told stories, and saw kids make decisions to follow Christ. The next fourteen years were spent volunteering in one form of CM or another.

Then the lunch and the shuttle ride were the final pieces to the puzzle.

So here I stand, perched atop a vista, looking out over the last 14 years.

I see a whale lip syncing DcTalk. There is CEF and Good News Club, picking up helium tanks, and debating whether Santa Claus should be invited to our Christmas Party or not, frosting sugar cookies without the aid of a knife, songs and games and stories, verses and water fights, learning and teaching, and sometimes learning as I teach, adding shading to cartoon houses, and complaining about Ma's "cooking", there is a commissioning service involving a jester, a cake, and the title of Ambassador of Grace Kids to Alliance Redwoods. And there is singing Baby Shark and having lunch with Scott.

Very little of that means much to anyone but myself, but it is the path that has carried me this far. As I look back I see God equipping and guiding me. As I look up, I see a path not yet taken. One if I knew what it entails, I would never have asked for. A path that I am sure I will not regret.

Serving Him alongside you, just from a little further away,

--Jesse "Gonzo" Letourneau