Late Night Drives, Prayers, and Singalongs

Chris Cox

Bedtime has been a not-so-exciting adventure in our home of late. At least one of our boys will typically have a difficult time going to sleep. With yesterday being the night before the first day of school, that was exponentially true of everyone. Excitement, anxiety, and nerves were crushing every suggestion that we had on how to go to sleep. That is how I found myself driving through Nashville sometime after 10 PM with our youngest son in the passenger seat. His mind could not shut off and so his mom suggested we go for a drive.

Knowing that anxiety about returning to school was at the forefront of his concerns, Liam and I took our normal route to his school. We pulled into an empty parking lot and stopped where he would be dropped off the next morning. As we sat there, I asked him if it would be okay if we prayed about the new school year. He nodded his head and then looked at me like I was crazy when I asked if he wanted to say some words too.

So I prayed and he held my hand. We asked God that this school would be a safe place of learning. That Liam would remember that there were friends and adults in that building that loved and cared for him. We prayed that God would help his relationships grow and that he would form new friendships. We prayed that he would remember that God was with him when he was in school each day and that he was always on the mind of his parents. We said, “Amen” and he hugged me. Then he asked if we could drive around a little more and listen to some music.

6,574 Days

6,574 Days

Chris Cox

I am 20 years old. It’s my birthday and the waning days of my sophomore year in college. In a fit of boredom that only occurs when you cross the socially acceptable randomness in college with a solid decade of watching David Letterman, I’m curious about what would happen to different objects if I throw them off the top balcony of our dorm building.

There’s this girl that I like. I think she likes me too. I’ve never been super confident about such things, but I’m pretty sure about this. I run up and tell her about my juvenile science experiment and she readily agrees to help me. I grab her hand as we scamper to the stairs. It’s the first time I ever hold her hand. We’re still a few months away from dating. Yet I still remember the electricity of holding E.A. Ferree’s hand for the first time.

We are 40 years old now and today is our 18th wedding anniversary. We have been married 6,574 days. At some point this fall, we will hit the tipping point in our lives where we have been together as a couple longer than we have not. Which seems wild. I wonder what that 20 year old kid would think if you told him that he’d still hold that girl’s hand 20 years later and even then he would feel electricity. And he would feel home.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Personality Index (Updated Edition)

Chris Cox

There is a massive industry that revolves around people trying to figure out what makes them tick. We want to know our strengths and weaknesses so that we can hopefully go about contributing to the world. Some of the most popular tools for exploring these aspects are the Enneagram (I’m a type 9) and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (INTP or INFP depending on when I have taken it). Yet there is another way of assessing personality types that has been used by amateur clinicians on elementary school playgrounds since the late 1980s: the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

For the poor folks who don’t know about these modern mythological heroes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is about four brothers who are—follow me closely here—teenaged mutant turtles who practice martial arts. For multiple generations of children, TMNT have been featured in countless cartoons, video games, and movies including a delightful film that just came out this week. And from the beginning, kids would find themselves drawn to either Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, or Michelangelo.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Personality Index (TMNTPI) seeds to codify what these playground and dorm room conversations have been doing for years: helping people figure out their strengths and weaknesses based upon the turtle with which they most identify. This is not necessarily your favorite turtle though your favorite may be the one with which the TMNTPI links you. Also, most of us will actually have aspects of all the turtles. Yet there is typically one that is strongest.

A Haunted Summer at the Cineplex

Chris Cox

(This post contains spoilers for a bunch of movies that came out from May to July)

The oldest and I were in a Saturday night showing of Haunted Mansion when something occurred to me: Is every movie this summer about grief in some way? Granted I have not seen every movie this summer. I don’t do horror movies. I have not seen Barbie yet though I am going to because EA says it’s amazing and our rector spent a good chunk of a sermon talking about the movie. I also did not see the newest Transformers movie because I was forced to see Revenge of the Fallen many years ago and swore I would never go to one of those movies again.

But the summer blockbusters that I have seen? All have characters haunted by grief.

  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - We learn Rocket belligerent exterior is masking the immense pain of losing his first friends Lylla, Teefs, and Floor. Peter is grieved by the loss of his relationship with Gamora and grappling with having been taken from his home as a child.

Da-Na-Na-Naaaaaa! (Zelda Treasure Chest Sound Effect)

Chris Cox
Weekly Lectionary

Like many homes containing individuals both my age and my sons’ ages, we have been deep (literally and metaphorically) in Hyrule. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom came out in early May and since its release the Cox men have been scouring the land, the sky, and the Depths for everything that we can in order to defeat the evil Ganondorf (or create an automated flame-throwing robot that will attack a camp of Bokoblins). It’s a delight.

Thus when I read in today’s gospel passage about a great treasure hidden in a field, I immediately heard the sound effect that has accompanied the opening of treasure chests in Zelda games for decades. In the parable, Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven (the reign of God, the beloved community of God) to a great treasure that one stumbles upon. The treasure is so valuable that the one who finds it goes off and sales everything that they have just to buy that field.

In Tears of the Kingdom, there are treasure chests all over Hyrule. Sometimes the contents of a chest are not exciting: stakes, a piece of amber, a shield. But then sometimes you will come across a treasure chest that has an incredibly powerful and valuable weapon. This discovery often forces a difficult decision. Your character Link can carry only so many weapons. So if you come across a valuable item when your cache is full, you have to literally drop something in order to make room for it. Sometimes the decision to drop something is easy yet sometimes you have to make the hard decision to part with something valuable to make room for something better.

The parallel is not perfect. Even writing it now, I don’t feel great about comparing the Kingdom of God to a weapon.

Bethel, South Carolina and Elsewhere

Chris Cox
Weekly Lectionary

Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it!” And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven”….He called that place Bethel.
-Genesis 28:16-17, 19a

Whenever I visit my home in South Carolina, I love to go outside at night and take a deep breath. On a clear night the stars are far brighter than they are in Nashville. My parents live on the edge of the woods and though you can hear the distant hum of Interstate 26, the primary sounds are of the life that fills the place. Crickets. Cicadas. Birds bidding good night to one another. And a chorus of frogs that transform from a boy choir chirp to a deep bellow as spring turns to summer.

If I stop for just a moment, I feel peace. The world is still and I feel like God is just a little bit closer. I don’t see angels ascending and descending, but it definitely feels like the holy is in that place. That driveway in Spartanburg County is a Beth-el, a house of God. I am grateful for the times I remember that.

Closing a Chapter

Chris Cox

Ever since I started blogging some (muttering) years ago, I have struggled with how much of my life to share. That’s been especially true of late. I feel like there is more than enough “Chris is sad/angry/confused” material out there and I would have been insufferable the last 4 months (maybe I already was). Yet I feel the need to seek some closure concerning my time at Woodmont. So this is (probably, most likely) the last time I am going to write publicly about this season.

This is not the saga. This is simply me trying to close the chapter so that I can continue to heal and get back to writing about what I am learning about faith or who would win if all the lead characters from this summer’s blockbusters got into a fight (spoiler alert: if weapons are allowed then it is definitely Robert Oppenheimer).

First of all, I want to thank every person who reached out, checked in on us, grabbed a meal, sent a text, and everything else. It would be melodramatic to say that you have saved my life, but you were definitely a barricade that kept me from getting too close to the ledge. Thinking about that analogy, I guess you did save my life in a less dramatic way. Those gestures of kindness kept me moving when I felt desperately alone and like I was going crazy.

Hope in the Dirt

Chris Cox
Weekly Lectionary

Sundays are hard. That is just the reality of my life right now. It used to be my favorite day; a time when I got to to do what I love. Now the day is salt in the wound. This difficult season has put a great strain on my faith. Strong in the initial weeks after stepping down, I find myself spiritually struggling. I feel alone; uncertain of whether there is a place for me. There is a spark of hope and sacred mischief that, for the time being, has been extinguished.

So when Parable of the Sower began to be read this morning at church, I braced myself for the wave of guilt. In this wilderness season, I am the rocky soil, the soil among thorns, the soil patrolled by a Hitchcockian number of birds. How on earth can something good take root when I feel like crap?

While I prepared for a guilt trip, I heard our assistant rector Rev. Sides say this, “Jesus doesn’t use parables to shame.” She said that the point is not for us to hear these words and feel like failures. We contain all four types of soil. We need to be aware of the areas of our life that our rocky or thorny and clear the land the best that we can. Yet Jesus is still going to graciously sow seeds.

A ridiculously difficult passage that I have never really liked

Chris Cox
Weekly Lectionary

Did the title tip my hand too much? The near sacrifice of Isaac has always been a troubling passage for me. Now I can put on my religious studies hat and tell you that compared to some other religious stories of the day that this tale is actually kind of progressive. The religion following the God of Abraham is different from other faiths; even though it feints in that direction, this God does not require child sacrifice. This story conveys the important message (one that I wrote about just last week) about the necessity and difficulty of obedience to God above all else. It asserts that such faithfulness will be rewarded. I also know that this story was told in a context that is dramatically different from our own. It is not written for modern audiences.

But, whew, I really hate this story. I didn’t feel great about as a kid and I truly do not like it today as a father. Despite all the caveats mentioned above, I cannot read this story and not imagine how everyone involved would walk away with irreparably scarred relationships.

How could Abraham have lived with himself knowing that he was moments from killing his own son? How could Isaac—who was tied up, laid upon an altar, and watched his father grab a knife to sacrifice him—not be a complete shell of a person? How could the relationship with father and son ever be the same? And how could either of them not feel conflicted about a God who played such a seemingly cruel game with both of them?

Swords

Chris Cox
Weekly Lectionary

This is one of those texts with which people are not sure what to do. It is likely that a lot of churches will shy away from it. Or it is one that a church might triple down on and receive the wrong message (“As the army of Christ, we are at war with everyone and everything in this world!”). It’s a tough one. The text definitely has an edge as it reaches its crescendo. Jesus says that he didn’t come to bring peace. Rather he came to bring a sword that would sever the ties within one’s family. In fact, if you want to follow Jesus then you need to hate your own family.

It is one of those moments of jarring dissonance. Much of the gospel message aims to bring the Hope of God to fruition. There is a desire for justice, peace, and a love unlike that which the world has ever experienced. So when Jesus says that he came to set sons against fathers, daughters against mothers, and so on then we find ourselves clearing out our ears in hopes that we didn’t hear him correctly. It kind of seems antithetical to what he teaches. Does he really want his followers to go to war with their families?

I am writing this as I sit at my parents’ kitchen table in South Carolina. I am fortunate that I have parents who have been there for me from the beginning and are still here for me now. Yesterday at breakfast, Mom asked the loaded question of how I was doing and I could answer in full honesty because I knew she truly wanted to know and I had no fear that my response would not scare her off. I do not know where I would be without these two loving people.

So does Jesus want me to hate them? No, of course not.

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