Author Archives: admin

admin

About admin

In the process of starting a new grassroots movement in downtown Vancouver, Washington. In the process of fighting terminal cancer. In the process of learning to be a better neighbor, husband, father, Christ follower, and friend. As initiators of the Grassroots Conspiracy we hope to be a part of a movement of hope, imagination, and transformation in our developing downtown neighborhoods.

Motion

Posted on by
2

Last week I was blessed to hear my friend Jenney perform some of her poetry. Now I must admit that I’m not really a poetry guy. Poetry does not immediately speak to my heart or capture my imagination…but it might be because I haven’t been reading or listening to the right stuff! I’ve included one of Jenney’s poems below called “Motion”. When Jenney read this it caught me. It caught my imagination. The last two sentences continue to hold me firmly in their grasp. They say that “…we must not be ashamed of our aching need for contact for god is the absence of aloneness whatever the modern prophets say. And the need for love is not a cringing whisper of our indecent feebleness but a clamoring bell that shouts out our impossible greatness to the mad but listening world.” God is the absence of aloneness. How does that strike you? I find that phrase absolutely breathtaking–in a world where we’ve somehow mistakenly overvalued individuality, isolation, and self-sufficiency to be reminded that God is the absence of aloneness is an incredibly hopeful image. It is an incredibly poignant image to hold onto and I think it draws us back into an understanding of God that is both accurate to his identity and to our need for him. And our need for him, as the poem suggest (though using the term ‘love’), is not something to be ashamed of. Being in need of love, and embracing such a need, is never something to be ashamed of. It is who we are, it is what we are created for, it is built into our identity. We are lovers. We cannot get away from it…or, rather, when we get away from it we begin to disintegrate and lose who we are and what our humanity is all about. I am created to love and to be loved–and it is in this love that we come to understand our “impossible greatness”…or as the Christian narrative characterizes it…our identity as creatures who are indelibly fashioned in the image of God. We spend so much time moving, staying busy, filling our homes and cars with noise, making every attempt to keep our lives and minds so full that we’ve got no space to recognize our neediness impossible greatness. We “resist standing still” because if we stand still too long we might be reminded of our identity as lovers, and if we are reminded of our identity as lovers we might just begin to love, and if we begin to love we might become vulnerable, and if we become vulnerable we may just get hurt, and getting hurt…hurts.

Motion

Do you move through your life as I do? Hacking into each moment as if you are cutting a path Through a ricocheting field of insects? Do you resist standing still?
Fearful that the accumulation of seconds Will pin you to a tree branch And leave you as an offering to An already bloated predator? Are you breathless from your conviction That the years will pile around you as you stand still–Bury you under the frozen confetti of your regrets? Do you move not because you love motion But because you hate the microscopes That are trained above you as you try to commit To being a simple organism in a static microcosm? Are you like me? I who have tried to increase the speed Of my life without having first learned to release the weight of
My disappointed hopes. Have you in your fury sprinted into the distance Knowing there is only a wall to meet you? And have you in stubbornness, Your ignorant pride, tried to move that wall through the violence of your Personal outrage? If you have, then you are kin to me, we are brothers and Sisters in our confusion, and we cannot climb this wall alone, nor contend with The wilderness beyond it, through random motion and blind reaching in the dark.

No.

We must first become the offspring of the counterintuitive. We must gather our courage as casually as we gather shells from an unpolluted shore. We must coax our wounded peace out from its hiding place and rehabilitate its broken faith with our commitment. And we must not endorse regrets. We must not feed them even little bits of well intentioned love because this would not be a kindness but an invitation to a prolonging of our loss. Instead, we must learn to hurl superfluous desires back into the turbulent waters and be bold in the belief that the light does not arrive with the answers that we find but with the questions that we ask. And we must not be ashamed of our aching need for contact for god is the absence of aloneness whatever the modern prophets say. And the need for love is not a cringing whisper of our indecent feebleness but a clamoring bell that shouts out our impossible greatness to the mad but listening world.

I hope we find space in our life to risk getting hurt.

 

* I can’t claim that my perspective here in any way captures Jenney’s perspective…but I think that’s part of the beauty of poetry right? If you would like to purchase Jenney’s book of poems you can do so here. It’d be worth your while!

Roasting And Toasting the Night Away

Posted on by
6

So I was asked a month ago or so if I was willing to be roasted. Are you familiar with a roast? It’s that event where people gather together to make fun of one person up on stage–the man or woman of the hour. Roasts are usually really funny and often offensive…though they do seem pretty fun…for everyone but the person being roasted of course. But as someone who enjoys making fun of himself quite a bit my first thought was that being roasted sounded quite fun. Strange, but fun. Awkward, but fun. Fun.

There was some push back though. A roast felt incongruent with the story being told in and around my death.

And so

And so my friends decided to re-frame it as a “Roast & Toast”, as a pre-funeral funeral, as an excuse to party together and to tell stories. It’s still a roast because apparently people still want to make fun of me, but now it’s also a toast because feel bad only making fun of the dying guy and want to make up for it by also saying nice things. Haha, either way I think it sounds fun (I’m kind of partial to any  excuse to get together and socialize!) and I’d love for you to be there with me.

It’s coming up in only a week or so, on Thursday, May 31st from 6:00-9:00. You can see the Facebook page for it here for more details.

Here’s the blurb about it:

(on said date) We will be celebrating the life of Ryan Woods by showering him with memories, pictures, poems, embarrassment, and love. For those who wish to tell Ryan what he means to them by sharing a lovely memory, a funny story…or an incriminating anecdote…Please join us at Compass Church in Vancouver, Washington, from 6-9pm. To create a keepsake of memories, you’re encouraged to prepare to video a segment for Ryan and/or Jess, write an entry in a journal that will be available, or even utilize the area that will be set up to scrapbook a photo or memento.

If you are unable to come, but would still like to send a video/letter/picture to be given to Ryan, please send a private message for details on how to do that.

Let’s laugh, share, cry…but mostly, let’s “Roast and Toast”

Regardless of whether or not you have something you want to share it’d be great to hang out and to see people whom I might not be able to connect with. These days time is my families most precious commodity and we’re finding we have less and less of it to give away. My hope is that the 31st will give me a moment to see many of you whom I haven’t had time to hug, kiss, or give a strong handshake to!

Hope you can make it…and if you do…please be kind.

The Great Homosexual Lover

Posted on by
8

This video is terrible for two reasons. Reason number one: the man is a very poor communicator. Reason number two: the man is absolutely filled with hate and misrepresents both what the church and Jesus is supposed to be about.

At one point he references Obama and says “I’m not going to vote for a baby killer and a homosexual lover!” Umm…I’m not sure if he realizes that Jesus was and and is a homosexual lover. No, I’m not going to write about whether or not I think Jesus is okay with a homosexual lifestyle because I think that this is arguable from both sides and from different angles…and that’s just not what this blog post is about. What IS NOT arguable is that Jesus loves all people, even and especially those who have been marginalized in society (which clearly includes the GLBTQ community). Those who have been forced to the fringes are those who early on were most drawn to the church, they were the ones who filled the crowds who followed Jesus, they felt drawn to Jesus and Jesus people.

I see no need to spend time calling out the people in this video because obviously the preacher and the backwards people who were cheering and clapping his hate-filled speech are not accurate representations of what Jesus people should be like. It would be like spending time and energy trying to argue against the Westboro Baptist folk–it’s both a waste of time and a waste of argument because there’s not really anyone in their right mind who needs to be swayed to disagree with them in the first place! So to spend time arguing against Pastor Charles Worley feels wasteful.

I do, however, think there’s reason to pause and remind us Jesus followers (and those who question what Jesus followers look like) that Jesus was and is a lover of all peoples regardless of race, sexual orientation, moral compass, sex, or economic status and that we are invited to do the same. It is so often easy write people off, to find reasons to be unkind, or–more likely–to find pretty sounding ways of treating people who are different from us with less dignity and respect. The whole “hate the sin love the sinner” phrase is one example of what I believe is a “pretty” way to treat people with less dignity. To look me in the eyes and tell me glibly that you hate what I do but are willing to still love me comes off patronizing and does not in any way feel like an act of love. I’m not suggesting you must like all people’s behaviors, but that phrase has an arrogant superiority to it that I believe is hurtful. It is especially hurtful because it usually emerges outside the context of relationship. Had Jesus’ first words to Zacchaeus been “Hey little man, I hate the way you live your life and your probably going to hell…but because I’m nice and loving I’m still willing to go out for coffee later with you. What do you say?” Zacc probably wouldn’t have hung out with him as he did. Instead Jesus not only treated him with respect and dignity but also showed and received hospitality from him. While Jesus did later invite Zacchaues into a new way of living, Jesus didn’t really live into that phrase “hate the sin love the sinner”. I just don’t see a reason to even use it. It feels arrogant, invasive, hurtful, assumptive, and just plain ol’ not nice. But I digress from the point…

Plain and simply: Jesus loves people. If you don’t vote for “homosexual lovers” then you’d find yourself not voting for Jesus. If you’re someone who wants to lock people up and drop food off via an airplane you’d probably not be in the same voting block as Jesus. If you’re someone who uses a stage, microphone, or pulpit to invite people into hateful living then I’m certain you’d be worshiping at a different church than Jesus. Jesus loves all people…

…now if only I were able to master doing the same…

 

Whose Story is This?

Posted on by
4

Both my wife and I live an open life. We’ve always done so. Secrets and even good measured privacy have never had much space in our life. As a matter of fact, people who feel a need to have many secrets and to keep everything “close to the vest” often baffle and annoy us (apologies to those of you who find yourself in these boxes. I’m sure the feeling is somewhat mutual!). I just don’t see much of a need to keep something hidden from you.*

This way of life has not only continued on as I’ve battled cancer, but it has come to define it. Some of our greatest challenges over the last year have been trying to find balance amidst the constant demands for our time, energy, and attention. Living an open life and inviting people into our story (again, something that has been true of us for virtually our entire lives) has in many ways brought more difficulty in this journey. On the other hand it is exactly through this openness that we’ve been able to see massive ripple effects from my story. It is through our openness in inviting people into our story that we’ve been able to see more and more people touched by what’s happened.

“It’s one thing to have your husband die young. It’s a whole other thing for him to die publicly.” There is a sense of ownership that the community at large feels they posses over my story. And, in fact, I’d suggest that I in many ways I gave that to you. Or at the very least I opened the door to my hospital room and hung the sign “visitors welcome”. There are some who see that sign and have taken up residence. There are others who have used that as an opportunity to drop off cards, meals, or color sheets from their children. Some have stopped by regularly for visits. Others simply peak their heads in, knowing that there’s something interesting inside.

Part of me wants to be cynical and relate this with the rubbernecking that we all witness, complain about, and yet participate in on the freeway during an accident. But 90% of the time in my context I do not think this is the case. As a matter of fact I do not think rubbernecking is appropriate at all to describe the draw to watch, participate, or attempt to own my families story. No, that’s not a good illustration because I believe so strongly that the story being told (that’s not a reference to me as the storyteller, but to the story that is unfolding with me, by chance and without choice, as one of its primary characters) is one that is developing great meaning and resonates deeply in our world of broken narratives. I truly do not think that people are drawn to this story because it’s a train wreck but because it’s a beautiful story.

We’re drawn to beauty aren’t we? We’re created to be attracted to beautiful things. We’re created to want to be beautiful. And even though the story that is being played out in my life, in my marriage, my family, and my neighborhood is painfully messy–there is something intrinsically beautiful about it.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s getting harder and harder to live out. The weight of death–even if it does not become an immediate reality–is getting heavier and heavier within our home and within each one of us in the family. We can feel it. More than ever before. And it’s heavy.

I’m not going to attempt to create a framework or to even give advice on how you can be respectful or better care for our family as outsiders to the story.** That’s not the point of this blog nor is it something that I feel fully capable of writing (I’m not even certain that it is something that really could or should be written). The point of this post, I think, is to invite you even deeper into our story by my (potentially foolish?) attempt to expose myself even more in telling you that dying publicly adds baggage to the death process. Inviting you in brings blessing and it bring challenges.

So.

Please wipe your feet on the matt when you enter. Please don’t pound on the door when we actually choose to lock it. Please take cues from us when we don’t want visitors to stay long. Please don’t make fun of my fat cheeks, and please realize that this whole sentence is building off the earlier hospital room metaphor. We’re all drawn to a beautiful story–and my hope is that this story will continue to play out in a way that captures the beauty of the God who I believe is responsible for taking such a shitty situation and giving it any semblance of attractiveness–

Whose story is this? The correct answer is that it is my families! The pretty spiritual answer is that it’s God’s! The cool community answer is that it’s ours! The practical selfish answer is that it’s mine! The sympathetic and compassionate answer is that it’s my wife and kids! I’m going to go ahead and just give it to this guy instead.

* There are obviously needs in life for boundaries–and this is the great challenge for people like ourselves: to create healthy boundaries.

** There are many who read my blog that do, in fact, walk through life with us. In general, however, those that I’m writing to here are those of you who are watching from a distance–many of you from across the world, many of you complete strangers, many of you whom I will never meet. You are all a part of this story because you’ve been invited into the room! But in many real ways you will (and obviously should) find yourselves as outsiders to the unfolding narrative here in the ‘Couve.

New Cars Symbolizing Death

Posted on by
10

We bought a car yesterday. A nice car. A car that I’d never buy. It’s a 2012 Jetta Sportwagen diesel. Jess and I would never buy this car. But we just did.

We buy junkers. We buy used Hyundai Accents, we buy old Chevy minivans with 100,000 miles on them, we buy cheap older cars. That’s just what we do.

But things have changed. Our old minivan is done. At 200,000+ miles the AC doesn’t work, the windows don’t roll down, one sliding door is permanently shut (because it’ll randomly open on its own while driving on the freeway!), the gas gauge doesn’t work, the brake lights do not work, the cruise control does not work, it needs new brakes and tires, and-oh did I mention-it’s got some engine and transmission work that needs to be done. So we knew we needed something soon. We also knew that when/if I die Jess would cash purchase a new car with her life insurance money. But I’m not dead yet…

So to make a short story shorter, in the end we realized that now was the time for me to be able to care for my wife by purchasing a car together that she was going to have to purchase on her own–to buy her “my husband is gone, I don’t want to worry about cars right now or for the immediate future, I just want to care for my children and recover” car. That “car” has good gas mileage (we hope to keep her monthly overhead costs low if/when I pass), it’s got to have space for children and their bikes/toys/camping trips/etc., it’s got to be a good quality car that’ll last her ’till our kids are in high school, and it’s got to be a newer car that won’t be breaking down often and thus demanding more of her time. She doesn’t care about bells, whistles, shiny things–just those practical things. That’s the car that we realized we must buy now. This week. Today. Ok, as it turns out, yesterday.

There’s just one problem…

I’m not dead!

That life insurance money is not there to fork over in cash for her ‘ideal’ car! How do you buy a car that you can only afford if you die? To be honest we don’t quite have the answer to that question. I won’t go into details regarding the deal we got on the car (though we got a good one thanks to an important connection) and I’ll honestly say that we’re still figuring out what it looks like to be able to afford it–but what I will say is that buying this car is messing me up. It’s messing Jess up. (and this is where I really want this blog to land)

Purchasing this car feels symbolic. It’s the beginning of a new life: a new life for a single mother who has lost her husband and has a new set of needs that demands a new type of car. It’s symbolic of me being gone and of her being alone. I almost feel like by purchasing this car I have given up on living! ‘Cause lets be honest, I’m not sure we can afford this car unless I die! I had better fork over that cash at some point during the life of this loan. Ha. When all was said and done at the dealership and we both had a moment to reflect we found ourselves honestly sad. What had we done? It wasn’t buyers remorse. No, it was the symbolism. We had just taken our first giant and tangible step forward into a post-Ryan world…and…well…it’s weird. I should probably have a better word than “weird” as a descriptor here. I’m sure real writers would use better words but at this moment it feels right. It just feels weird. It doesn’t feel bad because I know that at its core this is a moment where I was able to care for my wife in a very real way: I just freed her of having to do this whole experience on her own (and oh what an experience it was at the dealership!!). No, there was something beautiful about this stepping out together–but it was is very hard and very…weird. It feels weird to drive such a nice car–we don’t drive cars like this. It feels weird not drive a minivan anymore–we love minivans. It feels weird to call it my wife’s car–it’s always been “us”. It feels weird.

It is weird to continually try to figure out what it looks like to live in the tension of reality as it is and reality as we hope it to be. I hope that we end up having to restructure our loan because I miraculously don’t die. I hope that reality as it appears is not reality as it turns out. I hope to live and I know that God can bring this about. but. But. BUT I feel invited to step out in faith, to let go of any semblance of control by being ok with death. By being ok with preparing my wife for my death. By being ok with purchasing a car in preparation of my death. I don’t like it. It’s weird. It makes me sad. It worries me. I hate death. Death sucks. Death is the ultimate enemy. Buying new cars sucks. Car dealerships are enemies sidekicks. But (and there have been a lot of “buts” in this post haven’t there?!) my faith is in Jesus–not in healing, not in an easy life, not in a life that I expect but instead in the story he chooses to tell in and through me. If a new Jetta Sportwagen tdi is a part of that story…cool. Weird, but cool.

So…all that is to say…my wife got a new car yesterday.