New routines that really aren't all that new.  We just haven't engaged them in a while, so it's like trying to get your running legs back in shape after a while off.   It feels familiar, but it still takes some effort.

Lunch sandwiches made - at 7am.  Breakfast to eat - on the go.  Coffee brewed - at a time of the morning no brewing had taken place for a while.

Showers.  School clothes.  Cramming notebooks and papers in bookbags.  Lunchboxes on the kitchen counter, ready to go, but so easy to leave behind.  It's already happened, and this is just the first week.  We're out of practice.

Some new routines that really are new.  The two boys going two different places.  One to elementary school and the other to middle school.  And here in Charlotte, different schools start at different times, to maximize bus usage.

So the new routine I call "divide and conquer:" my wife takes our younger son to elementary school, leaving no later than 8 in the morning, coffee in hand.  She drops him off and then heads on to her new job working at the church preschool three days a week.  Half an hour later, Elder and I depart, and on my way to work I drop him off at middle school.

Middle school.  I have a hard time believing he's in middle school.  And yes, I know I'll have a hard time believing when he's in high school, and when he graduates, and when we drop him off at college, and when he graduates from college, and when he gets married. I get that.   Life is a succession of benchmarks anticipated and then experienced, but I'm not ready to think about those still to come.  I'm thinking about this one this week, because that's where I am. And the thought of having a son in middle school feels weird, just weird.

I drop him off and there's a crowd of students huddled outside - they haven't yet opened the doors.  These kids look huge to me; the few seconds I see them as the car door swings open and my son quickly exits (Don't say goodbye to me here, say it earlier, he has told me. I oblige).  They're huge, but the truth is that my son is no pushover, either.  Summer has seen him crack five feet, which means it's now down to months before he's looking me eye-to-eye.  True, with me this is no great accomplishment. I know and accept this.  Which is why I encourage my son to always set his sights higher, on this and on other matters.

Middle school.  Man.  I still get hung up on that one.

But I'm mostly grateful.  Grateful that a new year is upon us, because as much as I love the easy flow of summer, there's a reason God made watches and alarm clocks and calendars.  We are creatures of routine; and new or old it's nice to get back into them.  

And as we continue in this journey of our first year since the move, I'm very grateful that my boys are getting to start school along with everyone else this time around.  Not like last year, when the week before Thanksgiving they were unceremoniously dropped into a random class like a paratrooper dropped from a flyover into a strange and foreign land.  This time, thank God, they were able to experience walking through those school doors, knowing that moment was just as new for everyone else as it was for them.  

It's new, and yet it's still the same.  And it's only the first week.  And I'm so very grateful.

I bet many of you have seen this video. If not, next time you have three minutes to spare (like, right now), give this a look:

The thing is,  Derek Sivers is right - much the same way Seth Godin is in his book "Tribes."  There are leaders and there are followers, but in the end it has to be about the movement, not the person.  And no leader - no matter how dynamic their personality or how worthy their cause - no leader can be such unless they have people who are ready to follow.  And not people who follow them per-se, but people who follow the movement. People who are passionate about it.  Fervently invested in it.

So - it has to be about the movement, not the leader.  And both the leaders and followers need to get this, or no one's dancing for long.

It's a great way to understand the church, but there sure are a lot of obstacles that can get in the way.  You have pastors who make it more about themselves than it needs to be.  You have churches who make it more about the pastor, putting them on a pedestal, separate from everyone else.  You have congregants who are more observers than followers, and you have churches and pastors who never quite find the movement (read: mission) they are called to.

In other words, there are a lot of moving parts involved in helping a church look like this rock show/dance mosh pit, and it's quite the task bringing them all together as such.  But it can be done.  Here's a very simplistic way of understanding a more complex process:

Find your mission/movement - BUT, don't just limit yourself to what you see others do. Dare to dream and find your own calling.

Find a good leader - BUT, resist every urge to instinctively make it all about them.  And resist every urge to allow them to do the same.

Find those good first followers - BUT, don't let them go un-nurtured and unsupported.  If the mission/movement is right, there's no shame in being "just another follower."  In fact, it's absolutely critical.

And most of all, never be afraid to do a wickedly crazy dance.  You very well may be surprised at the good things that can come from it.  

Just keep your shirt on.  Pretty please.

It's a strange new world we live in where "breaking news" unveils itself through the ding! of a cell phone notification, the slow-trickle-evolving-into-full-on-deluge of our Facebook and Twitter feeds, and the talking head on the news channel is telling us what we already know.  Such it was yesterday, right before dinnertime, when word began to get out that Robin Williams had taken his life at age 63. 

The immediate sentiment in the social media world was one of collective sadness and loss, followed by expressions of thanks and gratitude for that funny moment in that funny movie (of which there were, frankly, too many to count), followed by this question for which there is no good answer:

How could someone who made us laugh so much be full of so much pain?

That right there, my friends, is the question.

I've heard it said that the best comedians are often the ones battling depression and deep-seeded angst the most; their quick wit and humor a defense mechanism to mask the pain inside.  Maybe there's some truth in that, but of course it's a rash over-generalization that runs the risk of sidetracking us from seeing the full complexity of things....

That being said, people are complicated.  And you don’t need the suicide of one of the greatest actors and comedians of our generation to tell you this.  People are complicated, and part of the rub of human interaction in any context is how much of what we see on the outside truly reflects what lies on the inside.

No one needs to know everything about a person.  Being authentic as a human being does not mean we have to share every thought that runs through our head; every feeling that finds a place in our hearts.  Still, we have become incredibly and frighteningly skilled at masking who we are inside, particularly when it involves deep pain. We've convinced ourselves that to share that kind of pain would not be acceptable, or would be too much of a burden for others to bear, or would run contrary to the totally unrealistic expectation we have of ourselves and others that we are supposed to have it all together, have it all figured out.  We're afraid, so we keep it inside. 

This is how people like Robin Williams, a comedic genius, can take his life - and no one sees it coming.  This is how Seung-Hui Cho or Adam Lanza can take the lives of Virginia Tech college students or Sandy Hook Elementary kids - and no one sees it coming.  Deep, deep pain that goes unrevealed.  We only see what people let us see and what we enable them to share.

People are complicated, because being made in the image of God is complicated.  God's very image encased in frail human bodies - when you have that figured out, let me know.   The rock band Switchfoot has a great lyric in the chorus of one of their songs that gets at this as best as anything: We were meant to live for so much more // Have we lost ourselves?  // Somewhere we live inside.  I imagine there will always be that tension we have to wrestle with, figure out.  The trick is knowing when it grows too great for us to handle by ourselves.  There's no thermometer we can use to measure a fever in our soul - which is why that same God created us not to live in isolation but in community.  We need each other to help us figure out the journey that each day brings.

It's hard for me to speak about suicide because, while I've certainly had my low points, I've never found myself at "that point."  I know people in my life who have, and moreover, I know there are other people around me that I don't know have.  So I try my best to adhere to that wonderful wisdom that found its way to my Facebook feed a few months ago: Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.  Be kind, always.  And taking it a step further, too.  I've tried to be more aware, more intuitive, more cognizant of cues.  If my instinct has been to think that it's none of my business, I've tried to tell myself that perhaps it is.  Reaching out to those around me who can’t seem to do anything more than reach in.  In a world marked by partisanship, divisiveness, conflict and chaos, doing my best to live out unity, peace and compassion.

And I've tried as best I can to communicate, in word and in action, what a fellow pastor friend of mine put into words so well last night in a simple tweet: 

Everyone's fighting a battle we know nothing about.  Perhaps we can learn how to fight them together.