Introudction, part 2
I suppose I need to explain this “smell of cardboard” business before we begin. The phrase, “the smell of cardboard” came from a discussion I was having with a couple of friends in an IM conference. We were talking about “out of the box” thinking, and I believe so in regards to the “church”. Basically, we were ranting about the way things are and dreaming about the way things could be (should be?).
I told them that people in the box concerning “church” love the “smell of cardboard”. They are in the box so long that what was once so alluring and strong has all but become extinct, but to take it away or change it would bring full realization of obsession and addiction.
People are addicted to “church”.
I don’t care what church you go to. For me, it’s always been Baptist churches. And not just any old Baptist church – but the really good kind…
Independent
Fundamental
King James
Bible Believing
Baptists
We’re not accustom to change, unless it’s the kind we put in the offering plate when it comes around. We truly represent the punch line to the joke, “How many Baptists does it take to change a light bulb?”
“CHANGE!?”
Now, the smell of cardboard doesn’t just apply to the above, but really it’s my way of describing anyone who is addicted to their way of seeing things or doing things. It’s my way of describing people who are in a box and don’t want to come out (or don’t even realize they are in there, or worse, can’t realize it). It’s my way of describing people who would rather be defined than to define themselves. It’s my way of describing people who would rather be defined than undefined (yes I know “undefined is still defined).
If you’re interested in change. This book is for you.
If you’re not but you want to know how people like me think. This book is for you.
If you’re turned off by the cardboard feel, the black pages and white font, and think, “this isn’t a book, a book is supposed to be…” This book is about you.
Only…it’s about me. Because for a decade or so I was you.
But I’m coming out of the box.
I’m going back home…
…back to the undefined.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
INTRODUCTION
Out of the box…back to the undefined
My journey back to God started when I was four months old. Not that I remember it, but my memories were told to me by my mother as I was growing up. I was very sick with acute sinusitis. I lay in the hospital for eight days, non responsive to those around me. Evidently they didn’t think I was going to make it because, as I’m told, my mom had the local Catholic priest come to baptize me.
My dad wasn’t exactly thrilled about that.
He was studying with the Jehovah’s Witnesses at the time. Well, obviously he wasn’t thrilled at the prospects of me dying, but what I mean is the Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t quite in agreement with the beliefs and practices of the Catholic Church.
My dad wasn’t there for my sprinkling.
As the story goes, the priest comforted my mother with wet hands and told her, “Do not fear, the Lord has great things yet to do through your son…he will live.” She believed.
I lived.
I believe I still hold the record for the highest white blood cell count in our hospital’s history.
On the eighth day of my hospitalization I opened my eyes and sprung to life – my dad told me it was as if I was never ill, as if it never happened. Well, it did, and to this day I have terrible sinus problems, but I also have a story that fueled me growing up.
The Lord was going to do great things through me.
*****
My parents divorced when I was four. I don’t remember much of it, but I do remember them arguing one time – it’s a distant memory. I never thought much of the divorce growing up, it’s just the way it was, I suppose. When kids would cry at school or complain about their parents divorce while we were camping I would shrug it off and tell them to deal with it; I never understood their pain. That was until I was in my early twenties.
My girl friends and I were watching one of her favorite movies one night. I found it slightly boring ( I wont mention the title incase it happens to be your girlfriend’s favorite too!), so I was trying to stay awake. One scene woke me up quick! This married couple were fighting over something I remember little of now, but something that they said or did triggered something inside of me…
I cried like a baby. No, a baby would never do justice to how I cried that night. My poor girlfriend just sat there and held me as I cried and sobbed, tears and snot soaking her shirt and lap. I felt like I was four years old laying there in her arms. I didn’t want to open my eyes.
*****
We grew up on the poor side of town. We lived in low-income housing as my mom opted to stay home with us until we were all in school. I’d like to say I was thankful for that, but growing up you don’t realize how special those types of sacrifices are. I do now, as I have two toddlers of my own.
I’m sure it’s true with many people, but my childhood was, hands down, the greatest part of my life. When I say that I’m sure you’re agreeing with me, but when I say “life” I means even now. My childhood is on the same shelf as when I came to know Jesus, when I had my first and second kid, and when I said “I do”. It was that special to me. I would like to live it those days all my days.
I think the Kingdom of God is going to be like. I think it is like that.
Heck, it may even be better than my childhood.
The unfortunate part of my childhood was not that we were unfortunate – who cares about money at that age (besides I stole what I wanted…I didn’t say I was an angel) but that living where we did brought with it some people who didn’t quite share the same values as we did growing up. Needless to say many adult themes were a regular part of my days growing up. Of course, it was normal to me then, but I’m finding out that is has its own set of consequences even today.
Many of the kids I grew up with had no use for God, or Christianity, or religion – especiall as it interfered with what we knew was right growing up. I remember one time when somebody’s mom was having another kid and they were talking about names for the baby, one of my friends had the Baby Names Book and was going through all of our names. The cool names were applauded. The not so cool names…
May name is Tobias. The way it works when people get to know me is my name devolves. You say, “nice to meet you Tobias.” To which I reply, “Just call me Toby.” As we get to know each other it soon becomes, “Tob.” I’ve bee “Tob” all my life. Many of the people I pastor call me “Tob”. Not “Toby”, “Pastor Toby”, just, “Tob”.
I like it that way.
I like my name.
I didn’t on that day with the Baby Names Book.
“Tobias is Hebrew for “One who loves Jehovah.”
“Ha, ha, Tob, you’re a Jehovah-lover!”
“You love Go-od. You love Ga-haad!”
“Lord lover!”
I didn’t like their ilk, but it did stoke the fires the priest started when I was four months old. God had great things for me to do. May name showed that. Although I wasn’t a “Jehovah-lover” then, God was a “Tob-lover,” and that love is being returned now by me to him.
******
I’ve always been good at drawing. Everyone I know says it is a “gift”, a gift from God. When I was in kindergardern I drew a dinosaur book. It was better drawn than most adults can do today. And, I colored it all..in the lines! Either the school or my mom had it laminated. I remember drawing it. I remember the Dinosaur book I used for a reference. I remember how I studied the illustrations in the book and began to slowly recreate them on the blank white pages on the table in front of me.
My dad tells me that I was “amazing.” The control, deft, that I had at such a young age always astounded him. My brother is the same way. My son also has the same talent.
Growing up with a “talent” or a “gift” can either be a blessing or a curse. My mom never went crazy trying to push me towards this or that, she just sort of let it develop, always encouraging and interested, but she never pushed to hard. Some times I’m thanksful for that, others I regret she didn’t push harder. All in all, I lean more towards the thankful side. But, it did leave me alone to learn how to use my gift.
I spent hours studying objects and illustrations, drawing them as best I could. Every cartoon I watched, I drew. I had some sweet drawings of Godzilla from when I was little. What amazes me is how much I remembered from what I watched. When I look at those pictures I drew I realize how observant children are (it has made me more mindful with what I let my children watch).
If you’re an artist, I think you’ll understand what I am about to write. If you’re not than bare with me. See, it wasn’t that I would look at and object or illustration to know what to draw. I studied it to see how the person who made it made it. I wouldn’t just shade the picture the way the original artist did it, I would figure out how he shaded it.
Consequently I have been like that my whole life. I don’t know if this is why, but I have always had a hard time drawing still life and things like that because I have nothing to copy from; nothing to figure out. I wouldn’t say that the way I taught myself has robbed me of any originality, but I have never learned any one style, but rather, I learn and practice the style of art that I like at the time.
I am beginning to see that this relates to how I am with everything.
There was never one right way to draw this or that, only what I liked at the moment. I never clung too tightly to one style. I never had my own style either. Charles Schultz, Todd MacFarlane, Jack Kirby, they all had their style. Not me. No one ever looked at any of my drawings and said, “that’s a Toby Neal.” I’ve always wanted to have my own style, but never enough to develop it, and besides, I thin kthat any one person’s stule is an amalgam of the influences on their life and work anyway.
As Solomon says, “there is nothing new under the sun.” Even when it comes to artist style.
*******
Drawing like that has always helped me avoid the mold, or be put into a box. In some ways a box of some sort is unavoidable. Even “out of the box” people are in a box; they are in the “out of the box” box. But, they are still in a place that I felt more comfortable.
When I was a younger teen I feel deeply in love with rock and roll music. I grew up with it as well, but we also listen to just about everything. I have this weird memory of being on top of our kitchen table, broom in my hand, pretending I was the lead guitarist of Styx. I must have been seven or eight.
I’m the type of person that is all or nothing. When I’m into something I am into something. I was into rock music. It became more than a preference, more than a love…it became a god. Silly, I know, but it was. In fact, rock music was a major stumbling block for me when God was letting me know of his love for me. I didn’t understand it then – how it all fit – I thought God thought it was evil, and that I had to throw away my tapes and cds or worse, burn them.
What I have learned is that God hates idolatry, not music.
All or nothing, I was a rock fanatic, hean and black tee-shirt wearing teenager. Any money I had went towards tapes, concerts, drugs and girls. In that order. I wasn’t your typical poser, though. I hate posers. Always have, always will, I suppose. I dressed and looked the part of a rocker (we were called “stoners”), but I didn’t do it to be one, I did it because I was one and it was just how I liked to dress.
I certainly didn’t do it to be different (or the same). I hate people who did that. (I think I say “hate” to much) There were people whom I associated with who tried to get into the stoner thing to be different, only they weren’t different. They were the same. No, they weren’t the same. They were faking it. People who fight to be “individuals” – to be different – really are the same a all the other people fighting to be different.
I wasn’t trying to fit into the mold, and when people tried to put me into one, I quickly showed them I wasn’t going to be in one. You can’t fit a square peg into a round hole.
In my school, stoners didn’t hang out with “preppies”. Prep’s were the worst. As I remember it there were three classes of people in our school: preps, stoners, and losers (I believe they were commonly referred to as “scums”). Preps thought stoners were losers, and stoners thought preps were losers, even though both knew that the other were loses in the same way that the losers were losers.
Did I lose you?
But, I was friends with both sides, or rather all three. I was well iked, and respected by all three groups. I was the leader of the stoners I hung with. The preps wondered why I was one. And I was a friend to the losers, no matter who. Of course, when the lines needed to be drawn, everyone knew where I stood.
A stoner.
Still think of myself that way today, believe it or not. I still don’t like “preps” (not the dress style, but the things that made preppies preps). I gravitate towards the stoners and the losers. They are my people, if you will. And as I was then, so I am today – well liked and respected by all three sides.
I just don’t want to be put in any category, or box. I never have. Even though I was in one (technically – “stoner”) that box really wasn’t the defined box that everyone would have liked it to be (or that they were in). My box, admittedly, was a box, in essence, but it wasn’t at the same time. That’s where I am most comfortable. In the undefined.
That’s where I am going. That’s where I think I am at today.
******
I’ve tried to put myself in boxes throughout the years. I have always believed it would be nice to”be” this or that. Living in the undefined isn’t always easy, and at times lonely, and most definitely confusing. It’s not a centered place. Its ground doesn’t lend well to roots. Change is a constant, and surety is a vapor. But, it is home.
But sometimes home isn’t always best. Have you every been in someone else’s house and wished it were your own. Not because of the house but because of the home. The way they lived. The love. The parents. How they were structured. Whatever it was, you just thought, “I wish my home was like this.” Well, I’ve felt like that about my personality, looks, philosophy, etc. More than once. When you’re out of the box (or in the box that is called “out of the box”) some boxes look better than where you’re at.
But I always end up back at home, so to speak.
Always.
These writings are going to be about just that. I want to share with you my journey back to home. I want to open up to you and share with you how and why I became a Christian, joined a Baptist church, and became a pastor, and why I am coming to the conclusions I am about all of those things.
My hope is that throughout your reading you’ll come to know me and understand me better and perhaps even learn more about yourself and come to know yourself better. Secretly, I am hoping that in just writing this I will come to know myelf better and learn more about myself. I’m still on a journey out of the box and back to the undefined...
My journey back to God started when I was four months old. Not that I remember it, but my memories were told to me by my mother as I was growing up. I was very sick with acute sinusitis. I lay in the hospital for eight days, non responsive to those around me. Evidently they didn’t think I was going to make it because, as I’m told, my mom had the local Catholic priest come to baptize me.
My dad wasn’t exactly thrilled about that.
He was studying with the Jehovah’s Witnesses at the time. Well, obviously he wasn’t thrilled at the prospects of me dying, but what I mean is the Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t quite in agreement with the beliefs and practices of the Catholic Church.
My dad wasn’t there for my sprinkling.
As the story goes, the priest comforted my mother with wet hands and told her, “Do not fear, the Lord has great things yet to do through your son…he will live.” She believed.
I lived.
I believe I still hold the record for the highest white blood cell count in our hospital’s history.
On the eighth day of my hospitalization I opened my eyes and sprung to life – my dad told me it was as if I was never ill, as if it never happened. Well, it did, and to this day I have terrible sinus problems, but I also have a story that fueled me growing up.
The Lord was going to do great things through me.
*****
My parents divorced when I was four. I don’t remember much of it, but I do remember them arguing one time – it’s a distant memory. I never thought much of the divorce growing up, it’s just the way it was, I suppose. When kids would cry at school or complain about their parents divorce while we were camping I would shrug it off and tell them to deal with it; I never understood their pain. That was until I was in my early twenties.
My girl friends and I were watching one of her favorite movies one night. I found it slightly boring ( I wont mention the title incase it happens to be your girlfriend’s favorite too!), so I was trying to stay awake. One scene woke me up quick! This married couple were fighting over something I remember little of now, but something that they said or did triggered something inside of me…
I cried like a baby. No, a baby would never do justice to how I cried that night. My poor girlfriend just sat there and held me as I cried and sobbed, tears and snot soaking her shirt and lap. I felt like I was four years old laying there in her arms. I didn’t want to open my eyes.
*****
We grew up on the poor side of town. We lived in low-income housing as my mom opted to stay home with us until we were all in school. I’d like to say I was thankful for that, but growing up you don’t realize how special those types of sacrifices are. I do now, as I have two toddlers of my own.
I’m sure it’s true with many people, but my childhood was, hands down, the greatest part of my life. When I say that I’m sure you’re agreeing with me, but when I say “life” I means even now. My childhood is on the same shelf as when I came to know Jesus, when I had my first and second kid, and when I said “I do”. It was that special to me. I would like to live it those days all my days.
I think the Kingdom of God is going to be like. I think it is like that.
Heck, it may even be better than my childhood.
The unfortunate part of my childhood was not that we were unfortunate – who cares about money at that age (besides I stole what I wanted…I didn’t say I was an angel) but that living where we did brought with it some people who didn’t quite share the same values as we did growing up. Needless to say many adult themes were a regular part of my days growing up. Of course, it was normal to me then, but I’m finding out that is has its own set of consequences even today.
Many of the kids I grew up with had no use for God, or Christianity, or religion – especiall as it interfered with what we knew was right growing up. I remember one time when somebody’s mom was having another kid and they were talking about names for the baby, one of my friends had the Baby Names Book and was going through all of our names. The cool names were applauded. The not so cool names…
May name is Tobias. The way it works when people get to know me is my name devolves. You say, “nice to meet you Tobias.” To which I reply, “Just call me Toby.” As we get to know each other it soon becomes, “Tob.” I’ve bee “Tob” all my life. Many of the people I pastor call me “Tob”. Not “Toby”, “Pastor Toby”, just, “Tob”.
I like it that way.
I like my name.
I didn’t on that day with the Baby Names Book.
“Tobias is Hebrew for “One who loves Jehovah.”
“Ha, ha, Tob, you’re a Jehovah-lover!”
“You love Go-od. You love Ga-haad!”
“Lord lover!”
I didn’t like their ilk, but it did stoke the fires the priest started when I was four months old. God had great things for me to do. May name showed that. Although I wasn’t a “Jehovah-lover” then, God was a “Tob-lover,” and that love is being returned now by me to him.
******
I’ve always been good at drawing. Everyone I know says it is a “gift”, a gift from God. When I was in kindergardern I drew a dinosaur book. It was better drawn than most adults can do today. And, I colored it all..in the lines! Either the school or my mom had it laminated. I remember drawing it. I remember the Dinosaur book I used for a reference. I remember how I studied the illustrations in the book and began to slowly recreate them on the blank white pages on the table in front of me.
My dad tells me that I was “amazing.” The control, deft, that I had at such a young age always astounded him. My brother is the same way. My son also has the same talent.
Growing up with a “talent” or a “gift” can either be a blessing or a curse. My mom never went crazy trying to push me towards this or that, she just sort of let it develop, always encouraging and interested, but she never pushed to hard. Some times I’m thanksful for that, others I regret she didn’t push harder. All in all, I lean more towards the thankful side. But, it did leave me alone to learn how to use my gift.
I spent hours studying objects and illustrations, drawing them as best I could. Every cartoon I watched, I drew. I had some sweet drawings of Godzilla from when I was little. What amazes me is how much I remembered from what I watched. When I look at those pictures I drew I realize how observant children are (it has made me more mindful with what I let my children watch).
If you’re an artist, I think you’ll understand what I am about to write. If you’re not than bare with me. See, it wasn’t that I would look at and object or illustration to know what to draw. I studied it to see how the person who made it made it. I wouldn’t just shade the picture the way the original artist did it, I would figure out how he shaded it.
Consequently I have been like that my whole life. I don’t know if this is why, but I have always had a hard time drawing still life and things like that because I have nothing to copy from; nothing to figure out. I wouldn’t say that the way I taught myself has robbed me of any originality, but I have never learned any one style, but rather, I learn and practice the style of art that I like at the time.
I am beginning to see that this relates to how I am with everything.
There was never one right way to draw this or that, only what I liked at the moment. I never clung too tightly to one style. I never had my own style either. Charles Schultz, Todd MacFarlane, Jack Kirby, they all had their style. Not me. No one ever looked at any of my drawings and said, “that’s a Toby Neal.” I’ve always wanted to have my own style, but never enough to develop it, and besides, I thin kthat any one person’s stule is an amalgam of the influences on their life and work anyway.
As Solomon says, “there is nothing new under the sun.” Even when it comes to artist style.
*******
Drawing like that has always helped me avoid the mold, or be put into a box. In some ways a box of some sort is unavoidable. Even “out of the box” people are in a box; they are in the “out of the box” box. But, they are still in a place that I felt more comfortable.
When I was a younger teen I feel deeply in love with rock and roll music. I grew up with it as well, but we also listen to just about everything. I have this weird memory of being on top of our kitchen table, broom in my hand, pretending I was the lead guitarist of Styx. I must have been seven or eight.
I’m the type of person that is all or nothing. When I’m into something I am into something. I was into rock music. It became more than a preference, more than a love…it became a god. Silly, I know, but it was. In fact, rock music was a major stumbling block for me when God was letting me know of his love for me. I didn’t understand it then – how it all fit – I thought God thought it was evil, and that I had to throw away my tapes and cds or worse, burn them.
What I have learned is that God hates idolatry, not music.
All or nothing, I was a rock fanatic, hean and black tee-shirt wearing teenager. Any money I had went towards tapes, concerts, drugs and girls. In that order. I wasn’t your typical poser, though. I hate posers. Always have, always will, I suppose. I dressed and looked the part of a rocker (we were called “stoners”), but I didn’t do it to be one, I did it because I was one and it was just how I liked to dress.
I certainly didn’t do it to be different (or the same). I hate people who did that. (I think I say “hate” to much) There were people whom I associated with who tried to get into the stoner thing to be different, only they weren’t different. They were the same. No, they weren’t the same. They were faking it. People who fight to be “individuals” – to be different – really are the same a all the other people fighting to be different.
I wasn’t trying to fit into the mold, and when people tried to put me into one, I quickly showed them I wasn’t going to be in one. You can’t fit a square peg into a round hole.
In my school, stoners didn’t hang out with “preppies”. Prep’s were the worst. As I remember it there were three classes of people in our school: preps, stoners, and losers (I believe they were commonly referred to as “scums”). Preps thought stoners were losers, and stoners thought preps were losers, even though both knew that the other were loses in the same way that the losers were losers.
Did I lose you?
But, I was friends with both sides, or rather all three. I was well iked, and respected by all three groups. I was the leader of the stoners I hung with. The preps wondered why I was one. And I was a friend to the losers, no matter who. Of course, when the lines needed to be drawn, everyone knew where I stood.
A stoner.
Still think of myself that way today, believe it or not. I still don’t like “preps” (not the dress style, but the things that made preppies preps). I gravitate towards the stoners and the losers. They are my people, if you will. And as I was then, so I am today – well liked and respected by all three sides.
I just don’t want to be put in any category, or box. I never have. Even though I was in one (technically – “stoner”) that box really wasn’t the defined box that everyone would have liked it to be (or that they were in). My box, admittedly, was a box, in essence, but it wasn’t at the same time. That’s where I am most comfortable. In the undefined.
That’s where I am going. That’s where I think I am at today.
******
I’ve tried to put myself in boxes throughout the years. I have always believed it would be nice to”be” this or that. Living in the undefined isn’t always easy, and at times lonely, and most definitely confusing. It’s not a centered place. Its ground doesn’t lend well to roots. Change is a constant, and surety is a vapor. But, it is home.
But sometimes home isn’t always best. Have you every been in someone else’s house and wished it were your own. Not because of the house but because of the home. The way they lived. The love. The parents. How they were structured. Whatever it was, you just thought, “I wish my home was like this.” Well, I’ve felt like that about my personality, looks, philosophy, etc. More than once. When you’re out of the box (or in the box that is called “out of the box”) some boxes look better than where you’re at.
But I always end up back at home, so to speak.
Always.
These writings are going to be about just that. I want to share with you my journey back to home. I want to open up to you and share with you how and why I became a Christian, joined a Baptist church, and became a pastor, and why I am coming to the conclusions I am about all of those things.
My hope is that throughout your reading you’ll come to know me and understand me better and perhaps even learn more about yourself and come to know yourself better. Secretly, I am hoping that in just writing this I will come to know myelf better and learn more about myself. I’m still on a journey out of the box and back to the undefined...
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