Liminality

Rocky Balboa told his son, “Life is not about how many times you get hit. It is rather about how many times you get back up to keep moving forward. But be aware, no one hits harder than life.” The boy in me can’t help but fall in love with this statement. There is something unbelievably inspiring about watching a Rocky movie. It makes me want to work out to ‘Eye of the Tiger’ or sprint a set of stairs just to jump up and down when I get to the top. But do you sense a deeper question to this statement? Is Rocky saying something about who we are as humans or even how we experience life? Would it be the same to say Rocky is implying that life hits all of us harder than we want it to, and it is fiercer than we anticipated? Is Rocky saying that sooner or later we all wrestle our disillusionment? Regardless of your thoughts about Sylvester Stallone’s ability to produce movies, there is something strikingly accurate about this quote. Life is hard. Life interrupts our illusion

Genesis 1:26-27 speaks of God creating humankind in the image of God. In other words, we carry around something that reminds God of God. This is the self we are born with - but the world seems to do a work on us that causes us to lose sight of it. Life must be lived a certain way and the world seems to know what that should be. The story is: We need to finish our education and find a partner in life. We need to take a job and make a name for ourselves but only stay because we hope for a bigger and better job. This is what the world has for us and since we feel the need to survive in it, we attempt to make ourselves into something that we hope the world will admire better than the selves we originally were. This is the story of all our lives, or at least how – if we are not careful – live out our story. It is with a busyness that is concerned with the world’s watchful eye that our self, that was created with a reflection of God’s image, gets buried so deep that most of us e

The content in life is far better than its duration. In fact, this just may be how life is measured. At 24 years old, I in no way believe I have arrived at, fulfilled or accomplished everything in life; nor do I believe I have the answers to life’s most difficult questions. In fact, I am quite open that I believe life is not about finding the right answers but rather embracing a journey of uncertainty. It is a journey full of surprises. A journey that brings love, ecstasy, excitement, wonder, chaos, adrenalin, sadness, anguish, despair, hurt, brokenness and loss to the forefront of life. I also believe I get to choose for myself how to handle these real life situations. I hope when I face them, I will always prefer the choice that contains joy. Joy is the essence of what we long for. It carries a genuine sense of peace and tranquility with it. The problem, however, is that joy is notoriously unpredictable. Why is it that the older, the more gnarled the cherry tree, the

This past Sunday Mt. Carmel Baptist Church ordained me into full time Christian ministry. Union Baptist Church in West Point, Georgia called me to pastor last April and in that process called for my ordination. Because of a unique circumstance they allowed my home church, in which my father pastors, to perform the ceremony. It truly was an unforgettable day. During the service my New Testament and Greek professor from Belmont University, Dr. Robert Byrd, gave a charge to me, and my father, Dr. Bill Owen, gave a short homily. Together, the two of them circled around a similar topic that I can't stop thinking about. They told me to listen to my inner life speak. Listening to your life speak? To me, this means retreating into the depths of your heart, soul and mind and contemplating. It means noticing the joys, sorrows, loves, passions, anguish, happiness that life creates. It means shedding light on the patterns that our choices craft and defining the uncertainty that