I’ve taken an official leadership position in my church community, Third Way (and here’s where our blog has moved to). This is scary to me. Ever since I had first considered being a youth pastor just after I graduated high school and witnessed both my youth pastor and head pastor(both people very dear to me and two of the holiest men I knew) get unjustly attacked, leadership in church freaked me out. Leaders are under microscope and God even tells us how they are judged more harshly! Anything goes wrong, it is the fault of the leaders(actual or not). So I accepted this not without waiting to hear from God and weighing what it’d cost me.

So far we have had three meetings and we have discussed copious issues and have been turning over our vision like a farmer with soil. What calms me and continues to fuel my hope is the clear desire of this team to listen, to the Holy Spirit and to the voices of our community. Love is our center, Jesus is our center. We remind each other of this!

Simultaneously, rehearsals have seemed to double(days and nighst, bleh) and I have had to fight for time the last few weeks to spend with Heather. I am super excited for what we are doing in Black Label Movement(Woyzeck Project in the fall), but in the midst of this our leadership team has been meeting. Three times. We are moving slowly, but we are building on a perfect cornerstone. And second only to how I get to love and serve Heather, I feel like I my role on this team is some of the lasting and important work I am doing currently. It is exciting!

This weekend we have had leaders from REBA PLACE meet with us. Finding out the kind of community they have become and their advice and encouragement for us roots my heart further into our baby community. Their way of life fits snugly into what Jesus tells us is best for His people. It is Kingdom… here.

Greg Boyd came to our first meeting and the advice he said he couldn’t stress enough was to be praying and listening leaders. It is important that we don’t get too caught up in logistics and issues, and that we seek the lead of our Helper.

What is comes down to is that we are servants. Jesus is the example. And I think what is most exciting about all this for me is how it reminds me how I depend on Him. I can rest in Him and if follow, I have nothing to worry about.

I am switching my entry title to the number entry on this topic rather than the days I’ve been married. That could has already become cumbersome.

I do have to admit, I am learning more than I care to write down. Not that that it’s not worth it; it’s just SO much I haven’t really had enough time to take it all in yet. Note: Heather knows nothing of the turn this blog has taken. She will eventually, no doubt.

OK, well here’s a short list of some things I’ve learned:

– It hasn’t necessarily what we’ve seen or where we’ve gone that has really made this honeymoon feel unique, it’s been the people we’ve met. Our first day on Kauai we met a couple, Dick and Laurie, who had been to the island over 20 times. They gave a few suggestions and then asked if we’d join them for a cook out the next night. We grilled at sunset and had beautiful flowing conversations, and for dessert Dick and Laurie sang us a duet about garbage men. Unforgettable.

– I love her even more when I observe how she relates to my dad, how she loves him.  How she loves my whole family, for that matter.

– We are lovers of over two and a half weeks and even though we have better and more communication than most people in this areas, and have a mutual gentleness, thoughtfulness, altruism, curiosity, desire, etc., there are some areas and points of view that can be very delicate subjects. I imagine there will continue to be hard issues(ha!) for a time to come. I consider myself an attentive and confident lover, but I find myself battling insecurities and idealism daily. Thank the Lord I have the wife I do who loves me in just the right ways… no pun intended.

– Extra hormones(aka BC) do affect emotional sensitivity. We are still figuring out the best birth control potion and unfortunately it’s a bit of a trial and error until we get it right. It has been good for me to practice being gentle, though, and to remind both of us to be good communicators. Heather is so not high maintenance and so loving and patient with me and my shenanigans that it’s a bit like making sure I don’t get soft floating around in the heavens.

– I sometimes feel overwhelmed at how not good I am at this selfless love thing, this call to love as Christ loves the Church. Sometimes I just feel tired and want appease my loner tendencies. And sometimes one minute I think I’m speaking in wisdom, and the next I realize I’m a jerkhead. Sometimes I think I am doing something in love without expectation, but I feel grumpy if it’s not received the way I imagined. I’m as flawed as high fructose corn syrup!

What’s more important than loving your wife and showing her kindness and respect? Nothing.

I have been married four full days, and full is an understatement. Since we’ve been in Kauai the fullness has fully thawed and I am overflowing. I am finding the comparison, the only one that seems remotely able to capture this experience, is heaven. I am in heaven. We are in heaven.Or so as I imagine it will be. My wife is sleeping on the couch next to me and I am having a hard time believing I am alive or that life could ever suck again. I know it can and I am not really in heaven… but God’s giving me a taste of it.

Our first day here, Heath and I met two older and delightful marrieds, Dick and Laurie. We grilled out with them tonight and they sang this amazing duet for us(with a little twisting of Laurie’s arm) about garbage men. Anyway, Dick had given us, more specifically me, some wisdom on what he has learned in his forty-four years of marriage. Which gets to the point of why I have started writing again in my blog:

My hopeful intent is to document wisdom I pick up as a husband, how to be a good married, and so forth. Maybe I’ll do this for a year, maybe less, maybe. I had this idea last night and it fit right in with my goals to be the best husband I can be for the love of my life, Heather.

OK, back to Dick. The first time we met he said, “I’ve got five words of wisdom for you as a newly wed: Don’t let your wife get too hungry. Yes, that’s more than five, but those are not trite words. I have known this about myself for a long time. I do get ornery when I need food.

Tonight Dick offered another proverb: Don’t be too critical. Yes! I am with him 100 percent! But I would go one step further: Don’t be too critical, but build her up, encourage her often. I want to do this. I want to be a good husband.

“Oroyan’s 2000 effort “Golf Ball Hunting” is the dance Quentin Tarantino would want to make. The performers literally bounce off the walls, jump like ninjas, and go fast and furious from beginning to end. In short, it’s a blast.” – Star Tribune

“Edward Bruno Oroyan’s “Golf Ball Hunting” sends an army of five dancers (the BLM men and Selle-Virtucio) on madcap maneuvers. In what appears to be a boot camp for ninjas crossed with the Marx Brothers on massive doses of performance-enhancing drugs, these dancers bust through space, leaking testosterone. It’s a fast, funny, rambunctious addition to this gutsy evening of dance.” – Pioneer Press

“Oroyan’s piece Golf Ball Hunting is a much more conventional work, featuring five movers’ fast-paced urban-oriented moves over a trip-hop beat. It was also an audience favorite, drawing rousing applause.” –Twin Cities Daily Planet

I’ve been thinking about this lately and I think it is biblical: I think God calls us to have a life open to spontaneity. God calls us to keep our eyes open and our minds active, and if we do that we should be continuously making choices that could dramatically change our lives. Every day, hour by hour. There is so much opportunity to show love to people around us but we so often miss it because we have to stick to our schedules or we refuse to see and hear. 

So many Christians see planning as a virtue, that safety(financial, physical, spiritual, etc.) is a main goal. Those things aren’t bad, but I know God hasn’t called us to a life of security and comfort. Think of all the examples Jesus displayed and gave in parables that told us to stay on our toes and in the ready, that we don’t know when things are going to happen, that someone might come knocking at our door unexpectedly, that we might come across a beaten man on the street, that we are called to love even on our day off! 

The wonderful thing is is that God TOTALLY provides security and comfort, but it is not something we control and plan. It comes when we realize we are helpless (and we are!) and we can relax into His lead. As a dancer, I have such a hard time being led because I am so used to being the leading partner; listening and letting someone else lead is a skill and it takes trust. When the beautifully competent Leader of the universe wants to keep us from tripping over or own feet, I want to let Him! I want to see the woman crying at the bus stop and hear the sigh of the coworker alone in the break room. I want to open my senses and take it in, let it soften my heart and open my schedules. 

Some are more apt to this than others, for sure, but that’s no excuse. I think we need to keep striving for complete dependence on God and simply be available for the opportunity He stacks into our hands. Like Isaiah, “Here I am!”

Why do they even make medium and hard toothbrushes? Every dentist and every piece of literature about taking care of your teeth says that you should brush gently and use a soft toothbrush so you don’t damage your enamel and prematurely cause your gums to recede. I can understand that the demand is probably affecting the supply, but how stupid are the toothbrush companies? Their customers’ teeth are going to fall out early because their short gums can’t hold in their tiny, thinning teeth. Goodbye teeth, so long toothbrush! Unless you brush your dentures… Do you brush dentures? Or do they just soak? I guess if you brushed your dentures you might use a hard toothbrush and it wouldn’t matter. Might work better, in fact. I know I like a stiff brush when I scrub my porcelain toilet. Hmmm…. So maybe those toothbrush companies aren’t so stupid, as long as people are brushing stains from their dentures and toilets. But maybe hard toothbrushes should be sold alongside plungers and old people stuff so as not to confuse those of us who still have teeth and want to keep them. 

A year and a half after shooting it I FINALLY get to see it! YES!

Yay! Also, there’s a little blurb in Minnesota Monthly(scroll down to ‘Great Expectations’)!

How do you feel, she asks.

I feel homeless, I say.

What do you mean, she asks.

Have you ever been homeless, she asks.

I feel fine, I say.