500 or Less

Kyle Chandler's Acceptance Speech (as written by Neil Hoppe)

2011-09-20T00:04:00.000-05:00

I tell you what: it’s such an honor to be up here. Never in a million years did I think I’d win this. Hugh and Jon and Michael have been waiting so damn long to win this thing I just figured they had already Indian wrestled for it. I guess my first thanks should be to Bryan for even giving us all at shot it.

I just never thought I’d be standing here. Guys like me from shows like this don’t win this award. It should be any one of you. Hell Michael, you beat cancer, and you still don’t have one. What’s a guy gotta do? You know what I’m sayin’? It shouldn’t have been me. So I guess my second thanks has to go to the academy for even giving me a shot, let alone voting for me. Thank you all.

There’s a whole list of people I’m supposed to be thanking right now, and if you go online tomorrow at whatever website my people run, I promise you each and every one of your names will be listed there. In bold. I promise. You can all go there and see for yourselves who got me here. Do I twitter? No seriously, anybody know? Cause if I do, each one of you that deserves credit will get his or her own damn tweet tomorrow. And if I don’t twitter, I’m startin’ just so you all will receive the proper due.

There’s a whole list of people, but there’s only two I’m gonna talk about tonight. First, there is no Eric Taylor without Tami Taylor. This is not my award. Connie, this is our award. So here’s what we’re gonna do. Tomorrow morning I’m gonna head into the garage and fire up the table saw and cut this damn thing in half. Right down the middle. Then Kathryn and I are gonna drive over to your house and present you with your award for outstanding lead in a dramatic series. It’ll just be a little lighter than normal. Thank you, Connie.

Second. There is no Kyle Chandler without Kathryn Chandler. Baby, we did it. And I’m sorry, but I already gave half the statue to Connie, so you’re just gonna have to be satisfied with my half. I hope it’s enough. I love you.

Friday Night Lights was a story of heartbreak. It’s a story of adversity, setback, and loss. But it’s also of story of perseverance. Of determination. Of guts and willpower and tonight...triumph. It’s a story of clear eyes and full hearts. Thank you so much.

Untitled Narrative Exercise Pt. 2 (397)

2011-02-03T23:58:00.000-06:00

Nothing intervened, so I continued yesterday's story.

---

A biting pain in his wrists. That’s how Joseph knew he was awake—and not dead. They were bound behind him. He was upright in a chair, and from the smell of burlap he knew they had hooded him. He heard a scrape of a metal chair across concrete.

“Where is your friend?”

The voice came from the chair he’d heard. The sound of a file being dropped on a table. Pages turning.

“I know you’re awake. Please answer the question.”

Joseph tried to speak, but his throat was rusted shut.

“What’s that?”

“Water.” Joseph whisper-croaked.

“Water will be provided if you can satisfactorily answer my questions.”

Joseph swallowed to try and lubricate his throat. It didn’t work.

“Where is your friend?”

He started to answer, but his breath hitched in his chest. Tears stung his eyes. He swallowed again. “You killed him.”

Some papers shuffled.

“You fled with a man last night. Roger Weyland. We recovered you an hour after your departure. Where is Roger?

“His name was Roger?”

“Where is he?”

“He’s dead too.”

“Where is he?”

It was too much. “Why are you doing this?”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t understand what’s happening. We made a breakthrough-“

“Tell me where Roger is.”

“-in the lab. That’s a good thing-”

“Tell me where he is!”

The voice’s chair scraped the floor.

“-so why have we been brought here?”

With the hood on, Joseph was utterly unprepared for the blow to his temple. There was a flash behind his eyes like a strobe going off. Then he hit the concrete on his side, still bound to the chair. The voice was suddenly close to his ear.

“It doesn’t have to be this way. If you’ll answer my questions, we’ll draw this interview to a conclusion.”

His left side screamed from the uncushioned fall. His ears were ringing. There was blood in his mouth. He’d bit his tongue.

“Where is Roger Weyland?”

Joseph whispered, “he..he fell…into a ravine…off a cliff. We were running and it was dark and he…fell. Please may I have some water?”

The voice stood up. “We will check the ravine. If we find him, your situation will improve.” The implied threat—if they did not find him—hung in the air.

Joseph heard the file gathered off the desk. A door opened. Footsteps. The door closed. He was alone.

He started to cry.

---

In many ways I feel like Joseph lying on my side, tied to that chair with the hood on. I need your feedback. Tell me if it sucks. And if it does, tell me why.

A Really Bad Attempt at a Narrative Exercise (464)

2011-02-02T23:17:00.001-06:00

It was bound to happen. I knew there would be a day I’d be loathe to post what I wrote. I’ve half-consciously been putting off writing anything narrative. I just didn’t feel “ready.” But without anything else to bs about, I figured it was time. So I cobbled together an exercise for myself.

I set the clock for an hour, and used these four websites to generate my elements.

Wikipedia.org (random article): Fort Klamath, Oregon (an unincorporated community in the middle of nowhere)

http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3: (last quote on the first page) “The important thing is not to stop questioning” –Albert Einstein

http://storytoolz.com/generator/idea: Revolt

http://www.behindthename.com/random: Joseph

Here’s what came out in the hour:

“The important thing is not to stop questioning.”

The sweat and blood from their flight from the compound made his hands slick. Joseph gripped the man’s hands as best he could, but he could feel the man’s fingers sliding out of his. His heart pounded and he had a stitch in his side, but he redoubled his efforts to keep the man from falling.

“Please…You have to help...I can’t hold on.”

“Everything they’ve told us is lies.”

In the distance, Joseph could hear the dogs.

“They’re coming! We’ve got to…”

One hand popped free.

Joseph begged, “Please. Try to pull yourself up. I can’t…”

“Look at me!”

Joseph stopped struggling and met the man’s burning gaze.

“If you stop. They win.”

Joseph stared helplessly back. The man seemed satisfied.

”Now run.” The man let go. He slipped without a sigh into the inky chasm.

One heartbeat. Five. Dogs barking.

Joseph lurched to his feet and stumbled blindly through the brambles. He tried to run in a straight line, keeping the gorge to his left, but without any light he soon lost all sense of direction. He hoped each step wouldn’t end in space.

This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. Not twenty-four hours had passed since they’d made the breakthrough in the lab. Years of research, countless failed tests. Then suddenly…They’d barely gotten the cork out of the champagne when the helicopter arrived and whisked them away to a secure location to “replicate the process and begin implementing a vaccine protocol.” Fort Klamath was a secure facility, but not the kind with a lab.

His legs were quivering and the stitch had grown a twin on the other side. But still Joseph ran. He thought the sound of the dogs might be receding when he slammed headlong into a large, metal something, knocking him flat. Whatever it was gonged with his impact. His head swam and as he struggled to clear it, he thought he might vomit. Somewhere close by a hatch opened.

“It’s him.”

He felt the pinch of the electrode and the first metallic wave of electricity before everything went black.

428 Words On Network TV over at Jumppunched.com

2011-02-01T12:45:00.000-06:00

Tuesdays have become Jumppunched days for me. Head over there to read my open letter to Network Executives on the state of Network Television.

473 Not Very Good Words on Success (& all that other stuff)

2011-01-31T22:12:00.000-06:00

Preface: I wrote some good blogs last week. This is not one of them. They can’t all be winners.

“What does that kind of risk look like?”

I’m in a men’s group that meets regularly to talk about, well, everything. It’s not a Bible study and it’s not an accountability group. It’s a life examination, a place where no question is out of bounds, and the only answers required are honest ones. We were meeting a couple of weeks back and I was talking about my life—hopes and disappointments, possibilities. One of the guys looked at me and asked, “what is ‘success’ for you?”

I couldn’t answer him. But after this meander through risk/failure/inspiration/work I thought I could put words to it. Over the weekend I thought about it and planned to write it today. Then Donald Miller went and wrote it for me.

Or rather, I should say that’s what I’d like my definition to be. With all respect Mr. Miller, but it’s easier for that to be true when you’ve already written a best seller.

But then again, success is a head game. How much is enough? Are you ever satisfied? Is it even healthy to strive for success? Shouldn’t it be enough to earn a decent wage and raise my kids in health and safety?

Head game.

The truth is that while I should be satisfied with what I have and call it success, I’m not. I want a WGA. I want a Pulitzer. I want to be a Show Runner. Is that very Christian of me?

…

I know I was made to tell stories. I know I haven’t told the really good ones yet. I can feel them, rumbling around in the basement, snorting with impatience, waiting to see the light of day.

So if I haven’t met with success yet, and if my problem is that I don’t risk enough, where do I begin?

I let it drop a few days back that I have a goal of four feature-length scripts this year. Two for stage and two for screen. I have the idea for one, and the genre for another. I also let it drop that I’m going to write one here, on the blog.

Since I first started blogging, I always held my best ideas back, because I wanted to “make something of them.” We see how far that’s gotten me. So I’m throwing it out. I’m going to take (in my mind) a monumental risk and write a script in front of you in real time. Wide open to your comments, critique, ridicule and possible theft.

Although blogging in the traditional sense (you know, thought vomit, or “personal observation”) is good for me, I’m a dialogue writer. That’s what I should be doing.

One big risk that (hopefully) leads to one small success.

363 Words to Round Out The Week (About Inspiration & Work)

2011-01-28T22:17:00.000-06:00

I like this commercial from ESPN. It’s pretty simple. If you want to play on the big stage, you have to do the work to get there.

I’m doing that ridiculous workout program you see on infomercials late at night right now. In fact, I’m nine days from finishing my first ninety day circuit. (And I’m going to do it again.) When I started the program, I couldn’t do very many push-ups. But every week I worked at them. Now in week twelve I can do quadruple the number I could in week one.

The same is true being a creative. The fundamental thing that always held me back from writing anything was my desire for it to be perfect. But how could it be perfect if I never worked at it? It’s taken me WAY too long to realize this simple truth.

The last definition for inspiration is “an act of breathing in; an inhalation.” I like that a lot.

The body requires oxygen. I learned why in eighth grade science but I can’t recall now, so I just accept that it does. Inspiration in the physiological sense is the oxygen delivery process for the lungs, which in turn passes it on to the blood and so on. Inspiration in the creative sense is the catalyst delivery process for the mind. The thing I like most about this last definition is the implied constancy of it. We are always breathing. Constant inspiration. The day we stop is the day we die.

We are always breathing.

Inspiration is inevitable. Because we are created as emotional beings, we will always intersect with catalysts that send us into that transcendent state. That’s a comforting thought. Before I was always afraid of not being inspired. Now I live confidently that inspiration is always right around the next corner. Always in the next breath.

“What is the result inspiration produces?” If I’ve done the work to play on the big stage, if I’ve placed myself in the path of success, loaded for bear with a double-barrel full of words, full of rhythm and syntax and structure…

I’m working to be ready for that next breath.

497 More Words on Inspiration (& Work)

2011-01-27T12:05:00.001-06:00

I spent the better part of the last twenty years waiting to be inspired to write something awesome. I didn’t get a whole lot written. Sure, I started a bunch of stuff, but I could never finish it. The inspiration (that feeling of invincibility derived from a catalyst) would run out and I would wait for the next catalyst to push me further down road.

What a complete waste.

Then in the last few years I started digging deeper into the craft of writing. I spent more time thinking about and working on the mechanics of good writing, rather than relying on talent and waiting for inspiration. In 2010 (in addition to all the stuff I wrote for work) I wrote a both a feature-length screenplay and stage play. I was inspired to write both, but finished them through perseverance, through pushing through that place where there’s no more inspiration and only a mountain of words left to write.

Because if there’s one thing that’s been beaten into me about living and working as a creative, it’s that it’s a habit. You have to get up and do it whether you feel like it or not. Inspiration has little to do with it. It is hard, painstaking, gutting-it-out work. Inspiration has its place as the jumping off point (see the definition: “a sudden brilliant, creative or timely idea), but inspiration is a fleeting emotion that doesn’t get you through the dark night of the soul. (Donald Miller has touched recently on this too. Here and Here.)

The question then, I don’t think should be “what inspires you?” It can actually be counterproductive. We find something we think is the bee’s knees and can’t wait to share with people but when we do we hardly ever get the desired response. A “yeah…cool” at the most. We get our feeling hurt because they didn’t get it. If this happens enough we get bitter. Inspiration wasted. Lord knows I’ve lost plenty of good ideas that way.

So I think it’s important to recognize that the inspiration you experience is for you. It’s your rocket fuel to break out of the centripetal force that’s holding you where you are, but it’s only the stage one booster of breaking orbit. You have to maintain your trajectory after lift off. Stage two. This question I believe, is the important one: “what is the result inspiration produces?”

In that earlier series I wrote, I talked about that symbiotic relationship between faith and inspiration. I believe they are inexorably linked. You can’t have one without the other. The next logical step (for faith and creativity) is found in James. As paraphrased by Rich Mullins: “Faith without works, it just ain’t happening.”

I plan to double my output this year. Two screenplays. Two plays. And I plan on writing at least one of them here in front of you. I have not an ounce of inspiration for any of these four projects.

That’s also for later.

499 words about inspiration

2011-01-26T23:34:00.000-06:00

My friend MeLissa has declared this “Inspiration Week” and has challenged people to talk about what inspires them. If you have the time, I wrote about 4000 words on this subject in a rambling, semi-sensical four-part series a little over a year ago. It’s not a list of cool stuff or places to find inspiration. It was a journey of discovery about how symbiotic faith and inspiration are. You can find them (in order) here, here, here and here.

But this post isn’t about that. In fact, I encourage you to leave now before you read what I have to say today about inspiration. It’s not what you’re hoping for. You might even get your feelings hurt. Really.

You’ve been warned.

We think of inspiration as a thing: a piece of art, a good book, an epic movie. But those things are just the catalysts for inspiration. Inspiration is our physiological, emotional and spiritual response to such catalysts. In one of those earlier posts, I gave the definition of inspiration. Here again:

inspiration
noun
1 the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, esp. to do something creative
• the quality of having been so stimulated, esp. when evident in something
• a person or thing that stimulates in this way
• a sudden brilliant, creative, or timely idea
• the divine influence believed to have led to the writing of the Bible.

2 the drawing in of breath; inhalation.
• an act of breathing in; an inhalation.

Look at the first definition. It’s a process. Or the second: “the quality of having been so stimulated…” We sense something that elicits a response in us. Endorphins and adrenaline are released. Our breath quickens. Our hearts pound. A switch is thrown somewhere deep inside and suddenly we’re able to conquer the world. That’s inspiration. Not the thing that did it to us, but our response to the thing. And because we’re all unique we’re all uniquely inspired. The catalyst for one person is not necessarily the same for another. So you could show me cat pictures and illustrations of robots and girls holding hands and I might not feel a thing. (I know. I’m a cold-hearted B. But I’m also thirty-eight with four kids. It’d be creepy if such things inspired me.)

Which makes me think, “Inspiration is a crap-shoot.” It’s entirely subjective to the beholder, and it changes day to day. I.E.: When I was twenty-five I told Seth Worley that “The Crow” was an awesome movie. I was INSPIRED by it. Now I think, “gosh, it’s really dark, and kind of thin, too.” So not only are the catalysts different and unique for each individual, they change constantly.

I don’t know if I like that. This idea that I’ve held so loftily for so long now seems a bit…fickle.

I am a believer in inspiration. True believer. And I want to share with you in the beauty and truth of inspiration.

But that part comes later.

487 Words on Telling Good Stories

2011-01-25T16:38:00.000-06:00

Blogging over here today. It's a blog I'm privileged to contribute to with some story-obsessed friends.

500 More Words on Risk and Failure

2011-01-24T10:47:00.000-06:00

A recent text conversation with Seth Worley:

Seth: FYI. Nic Cage is currently being sued out the wazoo by people he’s in debt with. Been going on for a while. Might want to amend your blog.

Seth: That’s why he’s in everything you see lately.

Me: I know that. Why should I amend it?

Me: The point was that he continually faces risk and failure and continues to work, no matter what the circumstances.

Seth: Yeah, but not because he’s passionate. You don’t have to amend it. I just thought it was funny that you were like “he takes a job that he thinks is cool and does it. Or maybe he lost big in Vegas and has no other choice.” When the truth is he has no other choice.

Me: But he made bad choices before he had no choice.

Seth: Okay. Yes. That’s how he got there.

Me: Haha. Yes. Bt I meant he made bad acting choices.

Seth: So did I read your post wrong? I thought you used him as an example of noble failure.

Me: Not so much noble failure as continuing to risk and persevere through failure…

Among the things that Seth and I talk about (dinosaurs, absurd and pointless action sequences) is this subject of risk and failure.

Nic Cage is a terrible example of someone taking risks, because he is doing it for the money. He has to. But still, there must be a small voice in the back of his head that says, “if you keep doing this crap the only thing you’ll be able to land is syfy originals.” I think we can all agree he’s risking career suicide with schlock like “Season of the Witch” and “Drive Angry.”

Seth and I were talking the other day about risk. We were lamenting the fact that we work in a place where we’re not allowed to fail, and it causes us to take less chances. That was the afternoon before Shanley lecture. Mr. Shanley told us he’s currently developing a pilot with HBO about a Brooklyn District Attorney. He told us HBO was excited about it, talking about the courtroom scenes.

“No courtroom scenes.” Shanley said. “He never goes to court.”
HBO: Okay. Well, the office then.
Shanley: No. He hates the office. He never goes to the office.

A show about a DA that doesn’t go to court and doesn’t go to the office. HBO signed off. Shanley’s working on the script right now.

I realized my problem isn’t that I’m not allowed to fail. (Sidenote: I am allowed to fail at work. I’ve sent stuff to camp that BOMBED.) The problem is I don’t risk enough.

Doug Hall wrote this book about brainstorming. In it he talks about baseball and home runs. He says the best home run hitters strike out eleven times for every home run they hit. Eleven failures for every success.

So I guess the question is: what does that kind of risk look like?

498 Words on Wounding Your Children

2011-01-23T18:37:00.000-06:00

In “Wild At Heart,” John Eldredge talks about the wound a father gives to his son. Essentially, no matter how hard we as fathers try, because of our brokenness (our own wound) we’re going to somehow wound our children. We overcompensate for our own shortcomings and our children bear the brunt of it.

To say I’m broken is an understatement. I’m pretty sure Paul got it wrong in I Timothy. He’s the second worst sinner behind me. And out the laundry list of my sins, the thing I’ve struggled with the most lately is being unkind to my children. It’s a daily battle for me not to drag my own personal frustrations and shortcomings home and project them onto my children. I inevitably lose that battle. It is the thing I hate the most about myself, knowing that I’m wounding them, knowing that I’m presently forming their inadequacies.

The good news is there’s something I can do about it. Every day, every moment creates a new opportunity for me to repent and work on repairing the damage I’ve done. And I do. One of the things I’ve always worked hard at is asking forgiveness of my children whenever I am unkind to them. I let them know that whatever I’ve done—raising my voice, cutting them off, being rude, ignoring them—is not okay. I tell them how sorry I am and ask them to forgive me. So while I’m not satisfied with my behavior, I recognize that this is the cost of being broken in a broken world. I will wound my kids, but I can strive against it.

And then Jacob needed glasses.

He is exuberant. He bounces around the house in them and keeps talking about how much better he can see. He picked the titanium kind that you can bend in a pretzel, which he thinks is cool. And they’re the same kind that most of his glasses-wearing friends have. But there is still a part of me that looks at him wearing those glasses…I look at him and I think “I did that to him.” And there’s nothing I can do about it.

The novelty of the glasses will wear off. Someone will make fun of him or he’ll be judged by the way he looks. Unlike my sin, this isn’t a wound I can work on. I can’t repent of this shortcoming I’ve inflicted on him.

I wasn’t made fun of for wearing glasses in the classic sense. No “four-eyes” or anything like that. But it did color my childhood. It put me on the uncool side of the line. And while I think things like this matter less now than ever, I still never want my children to experience it.

I’m sure Lasik or the next technology will be so affordable that he’ll be corrective lens-free before he gets out of high school. And I know it’s nothing. I know there’s A LOT worse to come. But still…

…being broken sucks.

344 words on Being a Parent

2011-01-22T20:01:00.002-06:00

One of the things I noticed as I paged through my blog was the amount I wrote about my kids. I have no problem with that, since I they’re mine and most of my funny stories come from them these days. But I was trying to see my blog with objective eyes and I thought, “this dude writes about his kids a lot.” So I’m going to limit Hoppeland posts to the weekends.

The other day Shannon posted this picture of Asher and I on Facebook. I think it’s awesome. (She told me later she made sure to get my ink in it. My wife, folks.) Asher is like a bear cub. He likes to be touching someone when he falls asleep. One day he’s going to be grown up and not want to do it anymore, so I’ll take it while I can get it.

Until the other night.

Shannon comes in from putting Asher in bed as I’m folding clothes and tells me he has a fever of 101. Then she tells me he wants me to come lie down with him. My son with the fever wants me to come lie forehead to forehead with him. Basically, he wants to breathe in my face. With a fever.

As a parent, there’s nothing you won’t do for your kid. I’ve been thrown up, pooped and peed on. I’ve allowed them to place chewed food in my mouth. I’ve even given them the last bite of my ice cream, my cereal, my chocolate. But I had a really hard time with this one. Those other things were all “in the moment” types of decisions. But essentially, this would be me willingly lying down in the path of a bullet train. A bullet train called “Flu.” And just so he would go to sleep faster. No emergency.

I really battled it. Even as he placed his hot little forehead against mine and breathed all over my face, I fought it. There’s nothing you won’t do for your kid.

And I haven’t gotten sick.

Yet.

475 words on Risk and Failure

2011-01-21T09:55:00.001-06:00

I’ve been thinking a lot about risk and failure lately. It’s coaching change season in the NFL. Right now the twenty-eight teams not still playing are evaluating, firing and hiring coaches. As I listen to radio and browse ESPN, it strikes me how many fired coaches there are that another team has hired. John Fox, head coach of the Carolina Panthers for ten or so years gets fired and the next week the Denver Broncos hire him as their head coach. Mike Singletary is out as the head coach of the 49ers. There’s no doubt someone’s going to pick him up to be a linebackers coach or Defensive coordinator. We equate the NFL, and all sports, really, with winning. Success. But the reality is the league is populated with losers. With failure. Most players and coaches will never win the Super Bowl. But they’re out there everyday giving it their best shot. These coaches shoulder huge pressure, take an enormous risk to win. But most won’t.

Risk: exposure to the chance of injury or loss. A hazard or dangerous chance.

JPS talked about failure too. He wrote and directed “Joe Versus the Volcano” which is widely regarded as a monumental flop. (It wasn’t. The returns weren’t bad, and the reviews were mixed. But somehow it got this stigma attached to it.) He talked about having to live through that and what it did to his career. But he kept writing. Then he won the Pulitzer. Suck it, critics.

My friend Erin has taken on this crazy self-assigned project to watch every movie Robert Duvall’s ever been in. She dug up a quote from him about the success and failure about certain projects. He basically said he doesn’t listen to critics. He keeps working.

Because I’ve been dumbfounded by some of the choices people in Hollywood make. Nic Cage baffles me. But it’s the same thing. He finds a project that he likes/believes in/looks fun and does it. He takes the risk. Either that or he’s lost HUGE in Vegas and has some rough dudes after him.

For these people, coaches and Hollywood types, the pressure to succeed is massive giant. The risk is on a level I can’t fathom. But they do it. They fail. A lot. Then they do it again.

I had a brush with failure yesterday. Someone in the building didn’t like something I’d shot for them. Said they were going to have to reshoot the whole thing with someone else. Normally, this would send me into a tailspin. Normally, I’d question the very fabric of my being. But today I’m not. I did the best I could with the materials, people and equipment I had to work with. I stayed on time and under budget. They didn’t like it. I can’t help that. I failed. But I slept great last night.

438 Words on Habit Forming

2011-01-20T09:28:00.003-06:00

Dear Reader Of This Blog (or mom),

I started here with the best of intentions. You can find them here. Looking at the date of the last post you can see how well that’s worked out for me.

Last night I went to hear John Patrick Shanley speak. I’ve heard him before. Here’s who he is, in case you don’t know. Whereas the first time I heard him speak was mythic and inspiring, last night was…mechanical. The audience was different, and so his answers were different. He talked more about the process, the business of art. And he talked about discipline.

Read his bio. It’s original, funny, outrageous and 100% true. Last night he picked up where his bio left off. He talked about what the Marine Corps did for him. Before the marines he got kicked out of every school he attended. After the marines he graduated valedictorian of his class at NYU.

He talked about his writing habit. I admire a lot of writers. They all have different processes. Different mediums. But they all share one thing in common. They have a writing habit. Stephen King sits down in the morning and doesn’t allow himself to leave his desk until he’s written 5000 words. Don Miller is committed to a new blog post every day. Damon Lindelof said the first million words he wrote were crap, but that he had to write them to get to the good words. John Shanley came out of the Marine Corps and set his alarm for 5 every morning. He would get up and sit at the typewriter for three hours. He said, “I didn’t have to write anything, but it was inevitably the quickest way to make the three hours pass.” Then he’d go for a three mile run. Then he’d start his day.

We make time for what’s important to us. Lately I’ve made time for Shannon’s burgeoning acting career, which is important. I’ve made time for exercise, which is also important. But I haven’t made any time for writing. I’ve instead allowed a lot of non-important things to creep in. I become terribly interested in them, but they aren’t important.

I paged through my blog and discovered a lot of writing I’m proud of, and a lot not so much. But I also saw that I rarely kept to my 500 word limit. I remember at the time saying “the idea is more important than the word count.” I believe that’s true, but I also didn’t stick to the premise, which is important.

So I’m going to take another whack at it. 500 or less. Every day.

A thought from Uncle Eug

2010-07-21T07:03:00.005-05:00

We've all got a top shelf where we keep the most awesome things we've come across in our general rattlings about. I have a lot of top shelves. Movies, TV shows, recipes, tools. Most of them are figurative or emotional. I have one literal top shelf where I keep the books that have punched a hole in me. Here you can find Brennan Manning's "The Ragamuffin Gospel" and most of Donald Miller's books. But there is always a first.

A first book that opens your eyes to the world around you. That makes you say "I've been living in Plato's cave." It causes you to question everything and wonder how you've could have possibly live without knowing the information it contains. For me that book is "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction" by Eugene Peterson.

The way I've always described Dr. Peterson's writing is that he just says things in a way that make sense to me. There are seven of his books on that top shelf (there'd be more if I'd read more). But the oldest is "Long Obedience." I carried it around in my backpack for almost two years. There's more highlighted in it than not. It was the book I had him sign when I had the privilege of meeting him (I hyperventilated.)

I have a community group that meets at my house every week. It's not necessarily associated with a church. It started because of a TV show (LOST), but when they show ended they kept coming back. Mostly we eat, laugh, watch stuff. But some weeks someone will linger a little longer to talk about the mess of their lives. (SIDEBAR: all our lives are a mess. You're not alone.) This happened last night. Hot mess.

When I got up this morning I couldn't get this passage from "Long Obedience" out of my head. You know who you are. Read this, and then come downtown so we can get a cup of coffee.

"Every day I put faith on the line. I have never seen God. In a world where nearly everything can be weighed, explained, quantified, subjected to psychological analysis and scientific control, I persist in making the center of my life a God whom no eye hath seen, nor ear hear, whose will no one can probe. That's a risk.

Every day I put hope on the line. I don't know one thing about the future. I don't know what the next hour will hold. There may be sickness, accident, personal or world catastrophe. Before this day is over I may have to deal with death, pain, loss, rejection...Still, despite my ignorance and surrounded by tinny optimists and cowardly pessimists, I say that God will accomplish his will, and I cheerfully persist in the living in the hope that nothing will separate me from Christ's love.

Every day I put love on the line. There is nothing I am less good at than love. I am far better in competition than in love. I am far better at responding to my instincts and ambitions to get ahead and make my mark than I am at figuring out how to love another. I am schooled and trained in acquisitive skills, in getting my own way. And yet I decide, every day, to set aside what I can do best and attempt what I do very clumsily--open myself to the frustrations and failures of loving, daring to believe that failing in love is better than succeeding in pride.

All this is hazardous work; I live on the edge of defeat all the time. I have never done any one of these things to my (or anyone else's) satisfaction."

--Peterson "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction" 76-77.

Fighting perfection

2010-06-11T16:43:00.001-05:00

I’m bound hand-to-hand, ankle-to-ankle, face-to-face with God. He’s pressing in to me and I can’t escape. His hands grip mine. I try to shrink away, but there’s nowhere to go. He leans in, pressing his forehead against mine. He eyes bore into me. His mouth is on mine. I’m desperate to shut him out. I try to scrunch my eyes closed, my mouth. But I can’t. He inhales and I can feel myself being sucked away. I fight so hard. I don’t want to surrender. But I’m powerless. I’m utterly drained—he consumes me.

God exhales, but what He breathes back into me, through this soul kiss, isn’t me. It’s Him. It’s Life. Like Moses, I feel my face shine. Tears spill from my lids at the breathless marvel of what has just happened. My fists relax and our fingers intertwine. Our eyes millimeters apart, I see the twinkle in His. He’s smiling at me. There’s a frozen moment, the delight in his eyes at my surprise and wonder. Our fingers locked together, our toes touching. His breath, His life filling my lungs.

I blink and I’m struggling again. My flesh is corrupting His breath. I’m desperate to be away! I’m jerking to the left and right. “Let me go!!” He is implacable. His hands grip mine again. He presses against me, his weight dampening my thrashing. His eyes find mine again, his lips clamp onto mine.

And so it goes every day, every breath.

I fight against perfection, yet I long for it.

In the Intersection

2010-03-11T21:53:00.001-06:00

Shannon looked at me yesterday when I got home and said, “why don’t you go write tomorrow night?”

This is huge.

Neil’s typical daily routine:

4am: alarm
4:30am-5:30am: exercise
5:30am-6:30am: shower/make coffee, smoothie, lunch. Kiss Shannon. Kiss the kids.
6:30am: leave for work.
7:30am-4:00pm: work
5pm: arrive home
5pm-8pm: dinner, being a dad
8pm-9:30pm: Shannon time (usually a movie or a tv show)
9:30pm: Bed

This merely to illustrate how much time I, who consider myself a writer, have to write. This isn’t a pity party. It’s just the way it is. I have a wife. I have kids. I have a job. I have a long commute. I have a doctor who tells me to exercise so I’ll live past 40.

Sure I have time at work to write. But at work I’m writing for work—AM show scripts, group leader segments, late nite games. Not anything for me. But again, that’s okay because it’s my job and I’m good at it.

So if I ever want to write anything for myself (or you, my five faithful readers), it’s at the expense of the above-mentioned commitments.

So when Shannon says, “why don’t you go write tomorrow night?” It’s a pretty big deal. I get excited.

But also nervous. Cause now there’s pressure to produce something in these precious, worth their weight in gold, five hours I have been gifted. I go somewhere reasonably cool with interesting things and people to look at (new and unexpected visuals cause creative stimulation). I make a playlist of dramatic/epic music. I sit down and hope to God something happens. I solve my Rubik’s Cube eight or nine times.

And lo, God answers the hopes and makes something happen. The second act of a screenplay I’ve been stuck on for eight months breaks. Three new blog topics pop out.

Everything happens in His time. I know that. I know He orchestrates events: things I’ve seen and read, Shannon’s subtle observation of when I need a night, a badly needed phone call. But I think we forget it. How else to explain the constant surprise at God showing up in our lives and making things happen? Be it the Red Sea or a plot point, I feel the rustle in my heart as the Pneuma moves to orchestrate events, and I am surprised. I am surprised that He hasn’t forgotten me, hasn’t abandoned me. And my surprise turns to gratefulness.

Later it might become guilt over my lack of faith. But tonight I’ve got my foot on the brake pedal, hanging out in this intersection of surprise and gratefulness. It’s clear to me that God and I meet here regularly in this intersection, where His plan is the road, what He does and who He made me to be are the colliding cars, and this keyboard the blinking traffic light.

Shannon says as long as there’s nothing else going on, there’s no reason this can’t be a regular event. Shannon rules.

Things I learned being married to the Shrew

2010-02-18T14:59:00.002-06:00

Dear Shannon,

I don’t feel I’ve adequately expressed to you my thoughts and feelings on your performance in “The Taming of The Shrew.” You haven’t said anything or even hinted at disappointment in this, but you deserve more. Here it is.

When you first told me you wanted to be in “Shrew” I was nervous (I think understandably) about the time commitment. I was nervous about being on my own with The Four every night for two and a half months. I was worried you’d be exhausted and the house would be more a wreck than it usually is. But it turns out that wasn’t the case. And it turns out it was the best thing that’s happened to you in years.

I heard that at the 2nd to final cast party (lots of those cast parties) Iain (the director) talked about what a great cast it was and how you were all so much a family. I also heard that Beki (Biancha) said it was because of you. She was absolutely right. From the moment you stepped on stage it was obvious who’s show it was. Everyone else did a great job, but you were better. We watched Shaun White kill it in the halfpipe at the Olympics last night. I think that last night more than at any other time, the world recognized that Shaun White simply operates at another level. And that’s how it was in “Shrew”: you were operating at a level the others simply weren’t capable of.

I know this sounds like hyperbole, but it isn’t. You were that good, and I have the commentary of our friends and family to prove it’s not just me.

The good thing about a situation like this is it causes everyone else to work harder and be better. Just by being in the performance you raised the quality of the production, but because of who you are—your work ethic, your passion and personality, you caused them to take it up another notch. The result of which was a much better production than I’d bet Pull-Tight has had in years. Because you do that. You inspire the people around you to be better, to stretch themselves to do and be more than they could on their own.

I’d like to say that the moment you stepped on stage I saw you in a whole new light. But the truth is I didn’t. I know what’s in you and the levels you’re capable of, more than even you do, I think. So it wasn’t a big revelatory moment for me, although I did feel an unexpected amount of pride and a little bit of “suck it, monkeys. She’s with me.” For me, the gratifying thing has been watching our friends have the “aha” moment about your talent. The texts, tweets and comments I’ve gotten from them about you are so great, so vindicating, because they show me people are finally recognizing something I’ve known since you first performed that catwalk scene in “Lady J” with Scott. You are the most talented girl I know.

But the most indescribably beautiful thing about all of this is that you chose to lay it down for a decade to have our children.

I just gonna let that sit there for a moment.

I know you don’t see it this way, but it’s a sacrifice a lot of people can’t or won’t make. You did without hesitation, for me, for us, for them. Thanks for that.

The best part, though, is not what a great show it was or how talented you are or how our friends finally see you the way I do. The best part is what you got out of it. I was worried our home life would suffer. If you had told me it would get better, I would have laughed at you. But that’s exactly what happened. The house was in better order, you had more energy, and our communication improved. You were doing something you are passionate about, something that affirmed you and fed your soul. I think that in the craziness of life we tend toward sacrificing those things we love because we believe we’re supposed to give it all up in order to raise our children. But this experience reminded me that we need those things we love and are good at because when we’re renewed by them, we’re happier, we’re more giving, we’re better people. We’re better to The Four. We’re better to each other. While it’s true that “Shrew” cut into the amount of time we saw each other every day, it didn’t bother me because the time we did spend together was better. I’ll take the few minutes of good conversation over the hours of staring at the television every time.

And so when you told me the other night about the next auditions, and that you want to learn how to fence and play the Cello, I wasn’t surprised at all and I didn’t think you’re weird or silly. I think you’re awesome, and awesome that you want to do these things. I want to help you accomplish them. You might be mortified that I just announced to the world your dream of playing the cello, but I can’t think of a better way to help you accomplish it. Hopefully now people will ask you how it’s going (friends! Ask her how it’s going!). Hopefully it will speed you toward your goal. And like I said, you inspire people. A case in point: I’m sitting in Meridee’s this morning, trying to get some writing done before my meetings. A couple sits down on the couch across from me, and after about thirty minutes they ask what some of the stickers on my cpu are about. I soon find out I’m talking to Jeromy and Jennifer Deibler, formerly of FFH. After we realize how we know each other Jennifer tells me she wants to talk to you about how she can get into acting because Allison raved about how great you, a mother of four, were in “Shrew.”

When I think about the narrative of our life I know you made it a lot more interesting by doing this. I think we’re both on the verge of some terribly exciting chapters. I can’t wait to see where we are in a year. In five. And I know it won’t be all excitement and awesomeness—there will be tension and stress and heartbreak and chaos, but that’s what makes the narrative worth following. And so I choose this with you.

I choose this.

(P.S. I just talked to Sasha Shuff, and she’s looking into Cello lessons for you. She’s gonna call me back in a minute.)

The Creative Doldrums Pt. 4

2010-02-10T15:49:00.005-06:00

So here's the long-awaited final installment in the "doldrums" series. You can find the earlier installments further down, if you missed them. Working this out has been good for me. I learned something. I think I'll struggle with this for the rest of my life, but at least I know some of the how and why. Okay, the blog:

Out in the desert, the Israelites find themselves stuck between the promises of God.

Promise 1: “I will deliver you out of Egypt.” (Looking around. Definitely out of Egypt. Pharaoh face down in the Red Sea. Promise 1, check.)

Promise 2: “I will deliver you into a land flowing with milk and honey” (Looking around. No milk. No honey. Lots of sand. Promise 2…?)

They’re out of Egypt, but not in the land of milk & honey. At times they can literally SEE this fabled land. Early on in their desert sojourn they’re camped right on the border, ready to drink said milk and eat said honey, but experience what we might call “trust issues.” They grumble, they whine, they complain. They doubt. They doubt God can clear MilkAndHoneyLand out for them. They doubt the God who utterly boatraced the most powerful nation on earth can take care of a few suffixes. They doubt.

Again the passage is written as if this is a surprise to God. Again He talks a big game about plagues and death and ending the Israelites right then and there. Again Moses “has” to talk him out of it. But again, my bedrock belief about God is that He’s omni-omni, and that there’s no way this latest bout of whining takes Him by surprise.

I love the Olympics. I love discovering new sports, particularly in the winter games. Speed skating is ridiculous and I even like Curling. Back when the winter games were in Torino/Turin (was there ever a final verdict on what to call that one?) I found Biathlon. Biathlon is this crazy event with like 200 contestants. They cross-country ski 4 kilometers with a .22 rifle on their backs. They fly into this target range where they have to shoot five targets in five shots from a distance of 50 meters, sometimes standing, sometimes prone. Then they take off for another 4 kilometer loop to do it again. But here’s the thing, for every target they miss, they have to ski a 150 meter penalty loop. So you could ski into the shooting range in first, miss one target and ski back out in forty-seventh because of the penalty loop. It’s crazy.

Any first year seminarian can tell you that the word sin has its roots in archery. In Hebrew the word is “hataat” meaning “to miss the mark” or literally “he missed.” Sin is missing the target God sets. I find it fascinating that in Biathlon “sinning” results in a penalty lap, which is exactly what happened to the Hebrews.

Again God relents, this time settling for punishing them with a long walk in the desert. A really long walk.

There’s a pastor in Portland I like name Rick McKinley. I listen to his sermons on podcast when I can. He talks about how God will often redeem our sin and struggle to accomplish good. He calls it God’s judo move. I think God does a heck of a judo move here, although it’s not a famous or glamorous one. The Israelites have been trekking across the desert for two years and some change. In that time God has laid down the most extensive law code in the history of man. Show of hands: who thinks the Israelites are ready to take off the training wheels and take the new law code out for an unsupervised spin?

On the other side of the Jordan are all manner of people and pagan religious practices just waiting to get mixed up and muddied into the Israelites. So God does the Judo move, turning the Israelites disobedience, doubt and punishment into a training period where they can learn the law and live with God undistracted.

Not to say that God made the Israelites doubt so they could go on the training trek. No. They chose that on their own. The blame lies squarely with the Israelites. God promised them something. He brought them front and center to it. They whined like my 7 year-old and doubted God could do what He said He would do. So they get a forty-year penalty lap. God didn’t cause the doubt, but he does a judo move to redeem the doubt.

So there they are, stuck between the promises. If you’re Moses or Joshua or Caleb you gotta be pulling your hair out. So close! And now you’re walking the wrong way. Even if they can discern God’s judo move, it’s an icy cold comfort, knowing they were that close, seeing it, smelling it, but not being able to get there.

Grumbling.

I feel like that a lot. I feel like that right now. Stuck between the promises of God. He’s brought me thus far and He’s promised more. I can see the “promised more” from where I am, but I can’t see how to get there, and so I grumble. Rather than patiently wait for God to get me there, I wail about my present conditions. Never mind these conditions are far better than the place He delivered me from. Never mind He’s promised me a land of milk and honey. I grumble. Eventually, I doubt.

These days I have a lot of doubt. I doubt people like me. I doubt in my ability to do my job effectively. I doubt I’m a good dad, a good husband. I doubt anyone thinks I’m creative. I doubt anyone cares about what I write. And so I take a long walk in the sand, but rather than having faith in God’s judo move, I doubt that too. So I wake up grumbling in the sand, grumbling as I gather the manna He’s provided me, grumbling as I travel the road He set me on. Only I don’t want people (or God) to know how much doubt I have in my heart, so instead I try to name it something hip and artistic—the Creative Doldrums. Rather than confess my doubt, I hide behind the faux creative shield of “uninspired.”

It’s not a lack of inspiration. It’s this grumbling, this doubt that shuts down my ability to create. That locks me out of who He made me to be. It’s this doubt that bleeds the color out of my world. Because of course God is the Creator and the source of all creation. Of course all good things come from Him and all that. Of course all the Sunday school answers that are pooling in the front of my brain.

Of course doubt is the antithesis of inspiration.

(a really long pause while he thinks about the implications of this statement. For you it maybe a second or five. For him it was two months.)

The original point was this: I was reading Don Miller’s new book and I ran across this paragraph and it got me terribly excited and inspired.

“…I wonder if that’s what we’ll do with God when we are through with all of this, if he’ll show us around heaven, all the light coming in through windows a thousand miles away, all the fields sweeping down to a couple of chairs under a tree, in a field outside the city. And we’ll sit and tell Him our stories, and He’ll smile and tell us what they mean.”

I read this and saw color. And now I see that it wasn’t because it was great or beautiful writing or because it was terribly creative. It was a truth that cut through my doubt. Another piece of my salvation fell into place. He said it right—Jesus and I will ride these very English bikes into heaven, grinning and singing and whooping at the tops of our lungs. We’ll fly down those fields with our feet off the pedals and the wind singing a perfect roar in our ears and skid to a stop under that tree where God smiling, sitting in that chair waiting for us.

Because it wasn’t really Mr. Miller or his book that inspired me. It was the Jesus in him that cut through my doubt so I could hear what I needed. And as I made notes and wrote I realized it wasn’t as instantaneous as it felt. The tank had been slowly filled by my time in the Word. By Joseph in prison and Jesus in the upper room. By Moses and Israelites groaning in Egypt and grumbling in the desert. The Holy Spirit flipped the switch I think of as “inspiration,” but Jesus is constantly battling the doubt in my heart.

We can be inspired by lots of stuff, but the true source of Inspiration that drives our ability to create is that divine sparkplug, the Holy Spirit, living in us. When I stop listening to my own heart and listen to Him, I am Inspired. He whispers to me that I do have value. That He created me this way and He likes the stuff I write. He whispers into my heart that I do have something valuable to say, because He’s the one that created me to say it. He whispers, “don’t come to the tree without good stories to tell. Don’t come to the tree without telling the stories I made you to tell.”

(another long pause. Take as much time as you need.)

Even now I can feel my doubt creeping back in, stealing the inspiration I have to work on different projects. The good news is that at least now I recognize what’s happening and how it’s happening. So I tattoo the Holy Spirit’s words on my heart as insurance and protection against the times when I don’t feel it.

“What Brothers Do” or “How I ended up Driving Gigi’s purple glasses and Longaberger baskets across the country.”

2010-02-06T20:12:00.002-06:00

As Shannon drove me to my parents’ house to meet Chris, Asher said, “Dad, you’re going to drive the truck?”

Me: Yes Asher.
Asher: Why?

I had already told him several times that morning that I was driving a truck with uncle Chris back to his house in California, that we had spent the night before loading all of his and Gigi’s remaining Nashville-based possessions into this twenty-four foot truck. But till now he hadn’t asked why. I paused for a moment, then turned around in my seat and looked at him.

“Because that’s what brothers do.”

My older brother: Chris, his wife: Gigi, their two children: Burns (6) and Grayton (4).

Three years ago Chris applied to and was accepted into the only Spiritual Formation program at an evangelical university in the U.S. (and probably the world, for that matter, I don’t know). Of course this university is in California (L.A., nat’). So they packed a twenty-four foot truck with everything they could, put the rest in storage and Moved Away. They lived in a rented university house while he was a student, and round about a year ago he graduated. I guess they liked him, because they offered him a teaching position, and so they decided to stay. This meant finding a more permanent address, and as the housing market had cratered, there was never a better time for them to take the plunge into the unfathomably expensive southern CA housing landscape. It’s a long and painful story: that of their journey to California home ownership, but shortly after the first of the year they stood victorious on the threshold of their new house. And all that stuff they’d left in storage? It finally had a home too.

A few weeks ago I got an email from my mother informing me that my highly sought after truck packing skills were required, as Chris and a buddy would be flying in to pack up their remaining stuff and drive it back to Cali. I’m like most people—I hate packing, but he was my brother, so we worked the scheduling out. About a week later I received another email from my mother that the CA buddy had to drop out of the trip, and that Chris would be driving the truck solo. I talked it over with Shannon for a minute and she agreed. I called my mother and said, “I’ll go with him.”

In the three years he’s been out there, I haven’t been able to visit. And really, we haven’t spent more than about four hours together in a sitting since he’s moved. So this seemed like an excellent opportunity for me to get to do both. Plus, I have a buddy from college with a new baby that lives out there that I’d also get to see. It was an easy decision, and well worth the two vacation days.

But still, nobody likes packing and NOBODY like being in the cab of a Uhaul for thirty-odd hours, and I thought I’d dread and resent it, but as I met him the night he got to town to load a PIANO, and then the rest of his stuff, I found it didn’t bother me at all, and that I was actually having a good time. Matt (younger brother) came out and joined us after his basketball game (he’s a coach for a local school). It was cold and rained the whole time. Didn’t bother me a bit.

My dad had pushed earlier in the evening to stop and eat between the piano and the rest of the stuff, but I wanted to finish loading, because you do the hard part first, and also because I knew Matt might be able to join us. He did. So did mom. And something happened that hasn’t happened in memory: the five of us—my mom and dad, my two brothers and I, had dinner together.

I have my own family now, and they are my family. My brothers are both married and have children as well. But I think this is the first time since at least they were married (7 or 8 years) that it’s just been the five of us. Nothing special happened, mostly I just explained “Lost” to them, but it was special, and I was blessed by it.

The night before, Shannon had been at rehearsal and I was home with the Four. Asher is at the age where he loves to play “Duck Duck Goose” and he’s terrible at it. It’s also not so much about catching each other as it is just to run in a big meandering loop through the house cackling like mad while someone chases you. There’s no mush pot. So Asher, Lorelei, Piper and I had been playing (I carry Piper with me as we run or chase, depending), and it was time to put Piper to bed. Jacob was doing homework at the table. I took Piper upstairs and put her down. When I came out of her room, Asher and Lorelei were still playing and Jacob was participating from the table—which is to say that he was rooting for them. And they were all delirious with laughter.

There is no finer sound in the world than your own children laughing with and because of each other.

So I was thinking about these two beautiful moments—the dinner and the duck, duck, goose game—when Asher asked me why I was driving a truck to California with my brother.

I wanted to say to him, “because you grow up and get married and have kids and get jobs and move away and LIFE HAPPENS and you don’t ever get to play duck, duck, goose with your siblings anymore.” But he’s three and wouldn’t understand that. So I said,

“That’s what brothers do.”

And he seemed to accept this.

So I’m in a truck with my brother Chris. Matt has already expressed his sincere desire to be in the middle seat between us. I believe him with all my heart, because I would feel the same way if they were going without me. We’re eating like crap, telling some old stories, but mostly just riding in companionable silence. Adult duck, duck, goose.

A Santa Rant (but acutally 1069)

2009-12-23T10:59:00.001-06:00

I really thought I could let this go, but I guess I can’t.

Shannon and I don’t spend a lot of time on Santa. Neither do we discourage it. We don’t have the stupid plastic elf in our living room and we have never hung “naughty list” over their heads. But we do take them for a picture with Santa every year and we do place gifts “from Santa” under the tree. We let them believe he’s real.

I’ll probably take some heat for this one, but I don’t care. It’s time to stop the madness. The other day in Sunday school a girl I don’t really know asked the class what their opinion was on Santa, that they weren’t sure what to teach their daughter. The room was kind of mixed. She told us she grew up not believing in Santa but also that she wasn’t popular because she ruined it for other kids. The room hesitantly debated back and forth for a while, but basically said, “It’s up to you.”

And it is up to you what you teach your children about Santa. But frankly, I find the argument that teaching children to believe in Santa will damage their belief in God to be ridiculous. I understand there are extenuating circumstances. I understand some people have a real problem with it. A missionary friend of mine hates the idea of Santa, but he also related a story in which his father shamed him in front of people over his belief in Santa (neither he nor his father were believers at the time.). I completely respect him and his belief. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to follow his advice, because my experience was different, and I will make sure my children’s experience is different.

I don’t remember when I discovered the truth about Santa (this should be testimony in itself at how little it affected my relationship with Jesus), but I do remember my mother’s acknowledgement of it. I was twelve or thirteen. It was around midnight on Christmas Eve and my mother and I were the last two up. She was stuffing the stockings, and when she realized I was still up she said something to the effect of “I guess you know now.” I said sure. She said, “don’t tell your little brother.” I said okay. And then she asked, “you want to help?” It’s a great Christmas memory of mine, getting to help with the stockings that night. There’s real magic in it for me. I simply never associated belief in Santa with belief in God. I think it has something to do with the fact that my parents never made a big deal out of it either. They didn’t discourage it, but they didn’t sell it.

On another note, I find it fascinating that parents who so vehemently oppose Santa because he’s “not real” have no problem inviting talking hamsters and turtles into their homes everyday. There’s no guy in a red suit that delivers presents, but mice and ducks can use “mousekatools” sing “Hot Dog Hot Dog Hot Diggity Dog”.

I do believe in these things. I believe in talking clown fish and families with super powers. I believe in the power their stories have to impact my life and teach me things about being a good husband, a good father, a good person, a good writer. And I believe in the power of Santa Claus. I particularly believe in the origin stories about a Turkish Bishop, whether they are all rooted in fact or not. I also believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, including Genesis 1-12. You can’t start reading the Bible before there are seeming contradictions. Right up front, right at the very beginning, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 have conflicting accounts of creation. How can I believe both? Because I believe in the God who chose to write the story of His love for us as a narrative and not as a textbook. Because I believe that God likes a good story and He made us to be like Him. We are each of us created with the need for narrative, to tell and have told good stories.

There was one good thing I took out of Sunday school that morning. George, our intrepid teacher and host said this when speaking of how discovering the truth about Santa might cause doubt in God: “My father (a Baptist minister) said it’s good to doubt. I doubt a lot, and it’s a good thing.”

From doubt comes belief. Henry Blackaby in “Experiencing God” calls it the “crisis of belief”. We all at one moment or another have to decide if we believe something is true in the face of uncertainty and make a decision based on it. Doubt is good because it forces us to examine what we believe and why. I have doubted the existence of God many more times than is probably wise to admit, but I’m still here, because each of those times has only served to deepen my faith in Him. Because I’ve wrestled with Him through long nights and cried out in desperation “I will not let you go unless you bless me!” All this leads me to say: if you’re worried that your children’s belief in God will be shaken by Santa, maybe you should examine why this is. How much doubt have you wrestled through? How much are you modeling the Relationship? Are you merely talking about God or are you showing them God with your life?

Every night that my family has been able to sit down to dinner together in the month of December, Asher looks at me and says “Can you tell us the words again?” I say, “what words?”

Asher: About Christmas
Me: What about Christmas?
Asher: It means giving.
Me: What else?
Asher: Jesus.

This three year-old, my Asher-the-Big-Basher, goes rabid at the mention of Santa and wants to make sure the milk we leave out for him is chocolate. But every night wants to talk about Christmas in relation to giving and Jesus. He will tell you Christmas is about giving because the wise men came to give presents to Jesus, not get them, and that we should do the same. It’s a good story.

(edit)

This thing’s full of theological holes and wanders all over the place, but I don’t care. Raising kids is messy business.

Ephod Love Song (but actually 1061)

2009-11-24T12:55:00.005-06:00

As I’m reading through Exodus again I’m having lot of new questions. Moses is on the mountain with God and all the people are waiting down at the bottom. God’s giving Moses the tablets. He’ going into incredible detail about the Tent of Meeting and everything. I’m sitting here asking myself questions like, “why does God want fresh bread on the table? He’s not going to eat it.” (Of course I get the greater significance of the bread, from it saving David’s life to John 6:35. But still…if I’m Moses? “Fresh bread? Uh, Sure…”) Also, the recipe for anointing oil looks fantastic, but it also says unauthorized use of the oil well get you expelled or “cut off.” But I really want to try it! I’m a Baptist and subscribe to Priesthood of the Believer, does that count as “authorized?”

Yesterday I read about the Vestments—the priestly garb. I’m struck over and over at how much detail is going into this outfit. (Alternating pomegranates and bells on the robe. The bells I get, but what’s with the pomegranates? God likes pomegranates that much? Should I?) I’m struck by how many times God names Aaron as the wearer of these garments. God even spends a paragraph talking about the type of underwear he wants Aaron to wear, and calls this one permanent. Don’t go into the presence of God without underwear on.

Then we get to the consecration. Aaron’s got all these beautiful, insanely intricate ceremonial pieces on—the breast piece, the ephod, the robe, the turban, the tunic, even the underwear. And then,

“…take some of the blood that is on the Altar, mix it with some of the anointing oil, and splash it on Aaron and his clothes and on his sons and their clothes so that Aaron and his clothes and his sons and his sons' clothes will be made holy.”

So Aaron puts all the stuff on, only to have it spattered in blood. I’ve read this hundreds of times before and thought nothing about it, because it’s our (Christians) history. It’s part of our upbringing. We’ve heard these stories since we were little kids. We’re immune to them. BUT AARON IS WEARING POSSIBLY THE MOST EXPENSIVE GARMENTS IN HISTORY AND HAVING RAM BLOOD INTENTIONALLY SPATTERED ON THEM.

Then he’s supposed to hold, in his hands, the fat from the ram, the fat tail, the fat that covers the innards, the long lobe of the liver, the two kidneys and the fat on them, and the right thigh and wave them at God. While dressed in the blood-spattered priestly garments.

I get it. I’ve already said I get the greater significance, the law serving as a neon Expo marker highlighting our sin and need for Jesus. But still…HE’S HOLDING RAM ORGANS AND WAVING THEM AT GOD.

I don’t know how I feel about this.

So it’s “Aaron this, Aaron that.” Wave-offerings, peace-offerings, whole-burnt-offerings. Over and over God names Aaron and his role. I’ve never thought that much about Aaron. He’s kind of supporting cast member in my head. Like the characters that worked the desk in “ER.” They were in every episode, but there was never an episode about them.

But here he is, front and center in God’s plan for atonement, worship and consecration. He’s mentioned by name thirty-one times in Exodus 28-29. God has PLANS for this cat. I’m going round and round in my head, with the minutae and the blood and the organ waving. Really wondering about all the detail and all the gore. Questioning. I mean, there’s A LOT of blood in these pages.

And then this morning I turn the page.

While God is going into such intricate detail about what he wants Aaron to wear, Aaron is casting a calf out of gold to worship. At the moment God is laying out the process of sacrificial atonement, Aaron’s presiding over a pagan worship orgy.

Like I said, Aaron’s always been a day-player in my head—a spear carrier. As such I’ve never ascribed him much in the way of sinner or saint. He’s just been kind of vanilla. But after this?

The passage is written as if God suddenly discovers this and Moses has to talk him out of incinerating the lot, but I don’t for one second believe God wasn’t keenly aware of what was happening in the valley while he’s law-giving with Moses. At the bedrock of my belief in God is the tenet that God is acutely aware of everything going on, everywhere. God is acutely aware of what Aaron’s up to, even as God is setting him up with the superfly outfit and laying down the rules for his (Aaron’s) priesthood.

Suddenly the details of the vestments become a love sonnet. God is gushing about what he wants his beloved to wear. He can’t help Himself. And since He’s God and omni-everything, He can get pretty detailed. Even while at that very moment, He knows his beloved is betraying him. The blood and the organs no longer seem horrific. God no longer appears a callous bloodthirsty tyrant. It is necessary to atone for what Aaron and the Israelites have done. I’m pretty sure God hates it—is as revolted by it as I am, but it’s the only way He can still interact with His beloved. I think it might also be the only way that Aaron et al will grasp the gravity of what they have done. Being spattered with blood to bring home the depth of their sin. I imagine Aaron, shame-faced, maybe scared out of his mind, covered in blood and holding this offal, trembling. God is across from him, weeping at what his beloved has to go through to be in His (God's) presence. I’m heartbroken for God over the way his beloved has cheated on Him, even as I’m keenly aware that I’m the cheating beloved, that I’m Aaron.

My personal heroes of the faith have long been the ones that screw up the most. Peter, of course. Jonah is a favorite. And now Aaron is added to this group. Another of God’s personally chosen that has betrayed Him. I’m in good company.

And then I’m in the Upper Room. Jesus is breaking the bread. He’s pouring the wine. The next day he offers the Atonement. I’m propelled to a whole new level of gratitude for His heroic act of salvation. I don’t constantly have to dress up in an elaborate outfit and be splashed with blood to atone for betraying God.

The law has (once again) highlighted my need for Jesus.

The Creative Doldrums Pt.3 (but actually 631)

2009-11-19T15:19:00.002-06:00

I’ve seen “The Prince of Egypt” at least five hundred times. When Jacob was two it was his favorite movie. He’d ask constantly, “Moses? Moses?” I like this movie a lot, I think they got a lot of things right. It’s a spiritual marker for me, but I was always dissatisfied with the ending. For me the most defining moment of faith for the Israelites was not getting out of Egypt, it was what they did when they once they got out.

A few years back before I worked for the ‘Way I bid on a rather large set contract and got it. We had just moved back to Nashville and were staying with Shannon’s parents. Not only did we not have a place to live, not only did I not have to place to build these twenty-six sets, I didn’t have the tools, materials, anything really. I was talking to my dad about it and he told me that he and his coworkers had a phrase they would use whenever they landed a huge project they didn’t think they would get. “The dog has caught the car…now what?”

In a magnificent cataclysm of salty spray the Red Sea crashes closed on the Egyptians. Boom. The end. No more Egyptians. The Israelites are free. Free! There’s a big party—lots of singing, probably a big barbecue. And then the next day or week (if it was a really good barbecue) Moses wakes up and rolls out of his sleeping bag, looks East and sees a big fat bunch of nothing.

I resonate with the Israelites in the desert. Every day these people wake up, step out of their tents, shake the sand out of their sandals and go collect Manna. As they’re picking up the daily portion (and no more because it rots! Learned that one the hard way, they did) they look up to see if the Pillar of Cloud is moving. To see if they’re packing up the kids and tents and loading the donkey and hitting the road. It’s not terribly exciting, but neither is getting up and making a smoothie and driving 45 minutes to 1 Lifeway Plaza for a day of Pipe & Drape inventory. They spend the day walking in sand. They pull over for lunch and eat manna sandwiches sitting in the sand. When the day’s over, they unload the donkey, pitch the tent, grill some quail, maybe take in an evening campfire song, and then go to sleep in the sand. On the good days they don’t grumble about this monotonous existence. According to Moses, there weren’t many good days.

When there’s ridiculous plagues and a sea that splits in half, faith isn’t hard to come by. God seems pretty big and powerful and when you get down to it--inspiring. No, you don’t have to look far for inspiration in those moments. It’s when you’ve lost track of how many days in a row you’ve eaten quail-on-manna (or had a salad for lunch), when the next dune looks like the last (writing 11 years of camp drama), when there’s sand in FREAKING EVERYTHING that faith takes work. Only the right kind of inspiration could sustain you through those times and give you the spark to keep going. Sugar rushes and caffeine highs don’t get you through the desert.

Hang on. (He goes back and reads what he’s written).

…At some point I turned a corner and started talking about faith instead of creativity…

Wow, there’s just all kinds of stuff popping around in my head now…

We’ll have to pick it up here later, kids.

(edit)

I've got 7 or 8 different strands that spun out of this. I'm just trying to make sense of them. Once I do, you'll have it.

The Creative Doldrums Pt. 2 (but actually 1199)

2009-11-08T10:59:00.003-06:00

This is a story about ennui and inspiration. About hard work, about creating, about believing. About hope and it’s fundamental link to real passion and creativity.

About a year ago I developed my own belief of what I hope heaven is. Till then I’d been existing off of other people’s definitions and visions—a mashup of gold streets and big choirs and angels with a lot of wings and bad CCM. Didn’t sound terribly exciting, I mean, I think the angels will be cool, but gold’s not my favorite precious metal, and CCM…well…

Beneath that I knew heaven was better. Better. Had to be. I understood the people trying to describe heaven were reduced to metaphor and simile—how do you describe the indescribable? I knew that, knew they were doing the best they could, but at the end of the day it fell short, and that no matter how they described it with their finite minds and imperfect imaginations, heaven was better.

And I’ve lived long enough in this broken world to Long for Heaven, to have that deep tug from the center of your chest toward that place where suffering and conflict cease. There have been stretches in which I’ve said, “Lord, now’s not so bad…” But still then, even with a Biblical and seminalogical knowledge of heaven, even knowing it was better than anything I’d heard, even with the angels with the wings and the eyeballs, I still had reservations about it’s awesomeness.

But about a year ago I was driving to Ridgecrest by myself late one night, and I was listening to Peter Gabriel’s “Growing Up Live” concert. Towards the end of the concert he does “Solsbury Hill” and they’re on this giant circular stage in the middle of an arena and the stage is actually a revolve—it spins on a motor. Mr. Gabriel jumps on a very English bike and proceeds to peddle around the stage while the rest of the band skips merrily along. All the while singing:

“Climbing up on Solsbury Hill
I could see the city light
Wind was blowing, time stood still
Eagle flew out of the night
He was something to observe
Came in close, I heard a voice
Standing stretching every nerve
Had to listen had no choice
I did not believe the information
Just had to trust imagination
My heart going boom boom boom
"Son," he said "Grab your things,
I've come to take you home."

In that car in the dark by myself on the way to Ridgecrest. I’m singing at the top of my lungs and I’ve never had a truer epiphany. At the end of my days Jesus will show up on a very English bike singing Peter Gabriel songs. And I’ll skip merrily along into heaven. I don’t know. Maybe he’ll have a bike for me too. We’ll sing and skip and cackle like mad men and ride very English bikes and joy will burst from our pores.

Except it will be Better.

I hadn’t thought of this in a while, mainly because I’ve been living in the Creative Doldrums. Actually I’ve been in the Doldrums so long it had soured into what can only be described as ennui.

ennui (änˈwē)

noun

a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement. (occupation meaning a way of spending time, not a job)

The color had slowly seeped out of my world. Nothing excited me and I began to see only the negative. I would fret about stuff I had no control over. But mostly I would trudge through each day hoping that no one would notice the stuff I was creating had no spark. I was a colorblind man painting by numbers with colors that had no names.

There were occasional bursts of color, mostly from my kids, or I’d get a temporary jolt from a new song or TV show. I consumed vast quantities of media, looking for that elusive inspiration. I’d get a jumpstart from some cleverly written dialogue only to suck all the marrow out of it and I’d be sustained for an afternoon or a day. But inevitably I’d be picking up the colors with no names, painting on numbers with no meaning.

I lost track of time.

Not to say I’d forgotten about Jesus or Relationship. I’ve been reading my Bible regularly, applying the Peterson method as I go: reading slowly, imaginatively, relationally. I read passages I’ve read dozens, even hundreds of times and still came away with new questions. Not really finding answers to them or my struggle with inspiration. I guess you could say my colorblindness seeped into my relationship. I couldn’t see the color in what I was reading. I couldn’t see the beauty, the hope.

Inspiration is a funny thing when you go looking for it. It’s like those floating microscopic things in your eyes. You can see them, but if you try to look at them they float away. So you go stumbling around on this constant search for inspiration, focused on your periphery, hoping the thing you’ve glimpsed that might be inspiration will stay still long enough for you to sidle up next to it. You’re afraid to look directly at it, to look it in the eye for fear that it’s not what you thought it was, that it might not be real, or rather that it is, but by turning your full attention to it you’ll jinx it or ruin the magic. You’ll cause it to float away.

This is how I felt with Don Miller’s new book. Everybody I know that’s read it has gushed about its awesomeness. It’s bad juju for something if everyone around you praises it. It can’t possibly live up to the hype. But I’d already bought my tickets to hear Mr. Miller talk about this book and I didn’t want to be the J-hole that shows up without having done his homework. I’d painted myself into a corner, but still haven’t even bought the book and now the date is only two weeks away. So I did the only thing I could: I crept through the bowels of the ‘Way to the secret entrance of the bookstore and plunked my employee discount card on the counter to get my copy. I took a deep breath and looked it in the eye.

Shannon and I got up at 3:30 Friday morning to get our kids farmed out before we caught a 7:00 flight to Maryland for marriage event we were performing at. I was planning to start it on the plane. But I was also planning on doing a bunch of other stuff, just in case…you know…just in case it floated away when I looked it in the eye.

Inspiration is a funny thing when you go looking for it. When you have great hope for something to be awesome and inspire you and you’ve finally sidled up next to it and worked up the courage to look it in the eye…sometimes it doesn’t float away. Sometimes it looks right back. Sometimes it smiles. Sometimes it winks and grabs your hand and whispers, “let’s go, we’ve got work to do.”

The Creative Doldrums pt 1 (but actually 999)

2009-07-08T12:14:00.002-05:00

It is a well-known fact that the only way out of the Creative Doldrums is to create a way out of them.

I think I’ve stated my difficulty with the creative process (and hence, the irony of my chosen profession). About this problem I read a lot. I get a lot of advice. And most of it is at least decent advice. The problem with this is it’s usually of the clinical type. It’s an analysis of the process. And understanding why I struggle is great. I get that. I need that. But at the end of the day there’s still the gap. I’m here. Success (something Created Well) is over there. I have a vision of what I want it to be. Due to my research and received advice, I know HOW to get there. But there’s still this GIANT FREAKING FATHOMLESS CHASM between me and Success.

It’s like I’ve got the blueprints (the vision) and all these tools (received advice) to build the bridge…but none of the actual building materials. And so I stand at the edge of the chasm, toes over the edge, staring futilely to the other side. The only thing I know to do is go hunting for building materials.

This is the process I go through over and over. You’d think I’d have a good idea where the materials are by now. But it’s not lumber and steel and screws and bolts I’m looking for. I’m not even sure what to call these materials…ideas? No. I have ideas. Ideas aren’t the problem. It’s the execution of the ideas I’m hurting for. I think it’s inspiration.

inspiration |ˌinspəˈrā sh ən|
noun
1 the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, esp. to do something creative
• the quality of having been so stimulated, esp. when evident in something
• a person or thing that stimulates in this way
• a sudden brilliant, creative, or timely idea
• the divine influence believed to have led to the writing of the Bible.

2 the drawing in of breath; inhalation.
• an act of breathing in; an inhalation.

Ideas for me are the easy part. I have lots of ideas. The problem is “having been so stimulated” to realize the idea—to turn the Vision into Success. The problem is I’m not inspired.

So where does one go for inspiration? There’s not exactly an “inspiration store.” I look all over. It’s not easy to find. Once we do we suck all the wonder out of it and it quickly loses it’s luster, so we have to find new sources. (That’s because we’re fundamentally broken, but that’s not the point here today.) So the search for materials continues…

I’ve found a couple of minor deposits of inspiration lately: Arcade Fire’s “Neon Bible” (the album).

And this:

There’s an opera in Bregenz Austria that has a venue called the Sea Stage. Seats 7000. Was featured in the latest Bond (the big eye set). This is the set for their upcoming production of “Aida”. Me=inspired.

But not enough to get across the chasm.

And then on the way home, completely out of the blue in a place where I wasn’t searching:

While the world has spent the last week mourning some guy named Jackson, Nashville has been digging out of it’s own tragedy. You can read about it here.

So I’m driving home yesterday and the Nashville sports radio station has gotten Coach (Jeff) Fisher on the air to talk about Steve McNair. I’m not here to get into the circumstances of McNair’s death, and either was Fisher. He merely told stories about his time with Steve. It was honest and refreshing and made me respect this man (Fisher) who already has every ounce of my respect even more.

But here’s where I found the building materials. (two parts, I’ll tell part two first).

Part 2: After twenty minutes on the air (longer than any interview I’ve ever known the Coach to let happen) the host tells Fisher he has to take a break. He lets the coach off the hook by acknowledging they’ve already gone the scheduled amount of time, but asks him what he wants to do. Fisher says, “take the break. I’ll stick around." And then after the break they take callers. This is a guy well-schooled in the art of question deflection. The first rule of question deflection is control the environment (time/type of question/arena) Fisher, understanding our city’s need to grieve, sticks a pin in the rules to talk to people who he knows will ask the worst and hardest questions. He didn’t have to do this. Me=inspired by Coach Fisher’s selflessness.

Part 1: Fisher’s telling McNair stories. McNair wasn’t having a good game. He was making mistakes, getting booed by the fans. And then he gets hurt and they have to take him out. Over the P/A comes the announcement that Neil O’Donnell is coming in and the place erupts in cheers. Fisher describes looking at Steve heading into the tunnel, and seeing the defeat in his eyes. Steve’s given it everything and his fans cheer because he got hurt and had to be replaced.

Two weeks later they’re in another game. Steve’s been on the sideline because of his injury. Toward the end of the game the Titans are down by four and O’Donnell takes a shot and has to leave the game. Fisher looks over at McNair, who winks at him, picks up a ball, throws a few warm up passes, then goes in the game and puts the team in the end zone.

It’s the wink that gets me.

I was coming home from yet another day of crushing creative failure, wondering how to get over it, how to make something happen the next day. Me=inspired by McNair’s resilience.

So today I’m winking at my boss and throwing a few warm-ups (this post), then heading in to build that freaking bridge to Success (idea created well).

Maybe next time there will be a Smoke Monster (but actually 723)

2009-06-12T22:10:00.001-05:00

I’ve been to four camps in the last ten days. I like Ridgecrest well enough, and Belmont’s easy because it’s five minutes from work. Today I’d tell you Glorieta is my favorite (the weather, the food, the scenery). But God has decided that North Greenville University will be the location we meet. I left there a week ago and haven’t been able to get it out of my heart.

It’s 2009. I’m at North Greenville University for 20 hours to see a few element of programming. I’m a fulltime Event Producer for LifeWay and I’ve written 95% of the dramatic material this year. I have no worries about butchering this year, at least at this location. They’ve got a hero for a PD and a dynamic duo for actors. They crush the drama. They bring Nite Life in in under 25 minutes. They hit all the jokes at AM show. I stay in yet another ancient dank basement dorm (what’s the deal with NGU & basement dorms?) and have a good late night conversation with the director. There’s a new bagel place across the street. I’m gone before lunch but haven’t left in my heart. As soon as I drove on campus, it was 2006, it was 2004, it was 1987. In a world where the Frozen Donkey Wheel is off its axis and camp becomes unstuck in time, North Greenville is my constant. (mom, that’s a “LOST” reference)

It’s 2006. I’m a youth minister taking my students to camp at North Greenville, now University. A lot has changed: new cafeteria, new student center. . I’ve built a lot of the programming this year, which is being butchered. I don’t know how to let go. I can’t unplug. But I’m the customer. I have students here. I’m utterly lost. I’m confused. I have a grievously wounded soul. It’s close to the end of the Starbucks Years. I spend a lot of time alone in the prayer garden. They put us on the basement floor of a dorm (different from 1987). I make four guys who slept through quiet time get up at 6 to pick up garbage around campus. I think David would be proud. Casey and I go to great lengths to embarrass our guys in front of girls they’re trying to impress. A parent all but eviscerates me for not taking her son to the hospital when jumped through a window and busted his leg open. A kid accepts Christ. Another one feels a call to the mission field. It’s a good week.

It’s 2004. I get a phone call from James Jackson telling me they’ve had a program director drop out of camp on them two weeks before camp is to start. He asks if I can go and spend a weekend with this team and get them ready for camp. I’m freelance, I wrote the drama. I’m available. He tells me it’s North Greenville College. I spend an intensive two days in rehearsals with these staffers who don’t realize what they’ve gotten themselves into by agreeing to act. But they respond well and we manage to put a decent performance together. In the seventeen years since I’ve been here almost nothing has changed. The curb where we did “line up”. The tennis courts. The cafeteria.

It’s 1987. I’m an 8th grader attending Centrifuge at North Greenville College. The theme is “On Track” with a sweet railroad motif and I’m staying with Craig and Mr. B in an ancient basement dorm room. The R.A.’s name is Vern, and he’s a tool. There’s a guy from Kuwait in my Bible study and Craig makes out with girl named Paige, whom I later see making out with some other guy. (Sorry Craig, didn’t know if you knew that, but it’s about time someone broke the news to you.) We’ve come to North Greenville by way of Hilton Head and a couple of kids got roasted at the beach. We’re talking blisters that burst and make their shirts stick (quite painfully) to their bodies. The cafeteria is not so great. But I meet a lot of people and really like this thing called camp.

(edit)

I’m trying, but I can’t think of another place that is so singularly locked to spiritual markers across my life. North Greenville…and He’s the God of the unlikely.

It goes to 11 (but actually 860)

2009-05-31T16:27:00.003-05:00

Shannon,

So one day and eleven years ago was the event. You wore white and surprised me with a bagpipe player. I think my favorite part of the day though, was when I first saw you. We were given “that moment” together in the sanctuary before pictures and I stood nervous down at the foot of the steps in this church we had grown up in, gotten engaged in, wanting this moment to be motion picture perfect. And then you bebopped into the room. You said,

“Hey babe!

And sauntered down the aisle like we were meeting for coffee or something, totally wrecking my movie moment, but totally making it one of the best memories of my life. That’s you…and I wouldn’t want it any other way. I couldn’t survive if it was any other way.

You are the freaking coolest wife ever. The deeper we get into this thing, the more I see how much I need you and how perfect you are for me. How whatever preconceived notions I might have had are ridiculous (and long gone). How God knows…He knows! What I need. He gave me you. I am thankful. I am grateful. I am blessed.

Another favorite memory: Closing on the Pebble Drive house. You turning your charm up to eleven to make the lawyer smile because this was a happy day for you and you weren’t going to let him kill your buzz.

When people I meet find out about the kids I say, “yeah. Shannon and I look at each other just about every day and say ‘we have a lot of kids.” I know we don’t say it so much any more, but I like saying it because it makes us sound like a team. The truth though, is that you do a lot more of the work for our team than I do (as I type this at The Dripolator in Black Mountain, NC!!!). And I want you to know how grateful I am for that. When it comes to our children, I would be lost without you. Yes I know how to change a diaper and I know how Jacob likes his waffles and that Lorelei likes her oatmeal dry and where the good spot on Asher’s Hard Blanket is. But it’s not about the stuff. It’s about how well you love them. Your attitude for them. I know very few moms who would: 1. Set up a four person tent in their living room and 2. Leave it up for a week so the kids could have a camp out in it. That’s a special kind of love. I know there are hard days and days you want to wring their necks, but we both know that’s just frustration with the moment, and has nothing to do with how you feel about them. I tell you this all the time, but I don’t know if you really hear me: I don’t care that the house isn’t spotless all the time. I don’t care that the laundry piles up or that this sink is full dishes. Because I know you’re coloring with Lorelei. You’re playing cars with Asher. You’re clapping with Piper. You’re loving our children—raising our family. That is so much more important than anything else! I can’t thank you enough for loving Jacob and Lorelei, Asher and Piper so well.

And now you’re mortified that OTHER PEOPLE are reading that our laundry isn’t done and our sink is full of dirty dishes. ATTENTION OTHER PEOPLE: LIFE IS HARD. IT IS NOT PERFECT. IT’S NOT A 30 SECOND COMMERCIAL FOR PINE-SOL OR DOWNY. LAUNDRY STACKS UP BECAUSE THERE’S A BASEBALL GAME AND GYMNASTICS AND CUB SCOUTS AND A BIRTHDAY PARTY AND NEIL GOES OUT OF TOWN A LOT. And we have a lot of kids who like to play with their mother.

There’s something to be said for your tolerance of Wagoneers and tattoos and failed businesses and Apple computers. But I’ve come to recognize that it’s more than tolerance. It’s your ferocious desire to protect the dreamer in me, even when it costs you. The beautiful thing is that I already see you doing the same for our kids. I don’t know how to thank you for this. I don’t know how you do it. I only know that your belief in me is the beginning of my confidence.

So all in all it’s been a pretty good eleven years (he says as an understatement with a dramatic lisp). The Student Life Years. The Starbuck’s Years. The 16 months on Lilac Circle. The 06 build. It’s made us stronger. I like to think it’s made us funnier (at least to each other). I love how much we make each other laugh these days. I love that I can’t wait to get home to see you.

I think back to that retreat we went on—the one where Wayne Baldwin told you I was a diamond in the rough and that you should give me a chance. I know I’m still pretty rough. But I know that whatever polishing I’ve been through I have you to thank.

I love you.

neil

A Compendium of Welding Songs

2009-05-09T03:24:00.005-05:00

Hello again,

I know I said I'd see you in June. That's me--unpredictable. I'm an enigma.

So when you do as much welding as I'm having to do, you have a lot of time to think. And you listen to ALOT of music. So you need variety and you need a bunch of it. But there are certain songs you keep coming back to to get you through the night. So here, Neil's top ten songs to weld to (in case you ever find yourself in need of a welding playlist, as opposed to a wedding playlist which lots of people want. This playlist would be entirely innappropriate for that, but maybe humourous...).

10. Matchbox 20 "How Far We've Come"
A little trendy, but I like the apocaplyptic language in it. Also its got a good beat, and I can weld to it.

9. David Bowie & Queen "Under Pressure"
Classic song that keeps me focused on what I'm doing.

8. Coldplay "Twisted Logic"
Cause sometimes you go backwards. And sometimes you go forwards.

7. Jars of Clay "Work"
"I have no fear of drowning. It's the breathing that's taking all this work"

6. Led Zeppelin "Kashmir"
That guitar riff.

5. Beastie Boys "Sabotage"
Just raw. and nasty. and raw.

4. Seal "Come and See What Love Has Done"
The soother, the breath of fresh air, because hope is a good thing.

3. Saul Williams "List of Demands"
I dig this guy. He's my kind of slam poet. And this song makes things happen (also featured in the Nike Sparq commercial).

2. David Crowder Band "You Are My Joy"
When I first heard this song, I knew it was for me. I felt like somebody else finally Got It--the way I feel when an idea sparks and a script comes out. "And He set me on fire//I am burning alive//with His breath in my lungs//I am coming undone//and I cannot hold it in//and remain composed...Actually this song is what sparked the idea for my long-awaited but imminent ink. (plus, you know fire...welding...it just goes)

1. Rage Against the Machine "Bulls on Parade"
Always been my welding song. Always will be. When the tank's dry and I've still got hours to go, I'll just put this one on repeat and let it drive me.

Honorable mentions: Saul Williams "Act III Scene 2", Rage "Wake Up", Explosions in the Sky "Remember Me As a Time of Day", Crowder "Do Not Move", The Who "Who Are You"

Happy welding. or wedding, if that's your thing.

sleep now. see you in June.

it's late & I'm still at the office (but actually 429)

2009-05-05T22:44:00.004-05:00

Hello Blog,

It’s me. I used to write on you (to you? At you?).

I just wanted to say the drought is almost over. Camp’s almost done, which means lots of road time. I’ve got a backlog of half-finished thoughts to dust off and bring to you. Plus there’s some other stuff down in the basement that wants out.

So I’ll be back soon. But in the meantime, here’s some random things from my night.

+ I burned my ankle while welding. Yes. My ankle. For those of you who have never welded, it’s possible, and it happens. For those of you who have, you know it happens a lot.

+ some lines from songs I listened to while welding (alone) in the ‘Way basement.
…Sparks fly, and I find you there…
…deliver me…
….And it’s just you and me here now…
…and He set me on fire, I am burning alive…
…Rescue is coming…
which leads me to:

+ I’ve been subsisting on 6 month old playlists on my ipod, as my cpu died with my library on it and I haven’t been able to get it sorted out yet. So yes, that was all Crowder, there was some Jars mixed in, and it made for a pretty good night of meditation.

+ Except for the fact that my left ear bud gave up the ghost tonight. For those of you who have welded, you know what a solitary experience it is. For those of you that haven’t, it’s a solitary experience. And looking at the WGD should tell you how much solitary time I still have to go. So Neil’s got to do something about this ear bud situation. I have a C-note I was saving back in my iphone piggy bank. I guess I’ll have to wait, again, for that baby.

+ In an unrelated note of self-disclosure, I have four different mixes of Jelly Belly’s and a bag of dove dark chocolates in my office. These might be the only things keeping me sane right now. (For all of you who know what I’ve accomplished over the last six months that are about to come UNGLUED and start ranting at me for blowing it…step off. I only hit ‘em 150 or so calories at a time, and never more than once a day…well twice when I’m at the office for 16 hours like I am today.) Yes. Jelly Belly's. I've become a fiend for them in the last few months. They're the junk.

So that’s it. See you when camp’s on the road.

Sincerely,

Neil

A Long Time Ago...in a childhood not so far away (but actually 1152, and worth every word)

2008-12-26T13:21:00.007-06:00

Some of my friends recently did top 5 lists on their blogs and I think that's great but by the time I got around to it all the good answers had been taken, so I passed. Except for this one thing: most had Star Wars on their list of movies they wished they'd seen in the theater.

Check mark, suckers.

And not only did I see it in the theater, I saw it three times in the theater. I was five, but I was there, and I remember it clearly. In fact, the first time we went to see it, it sold out. I was standing with Brent in a line about a hundred people long when the manager came out and announced it was sold out. This was my first trip to the movies and back then they didn’t do multiple screens, so Brent, in a quick moment of inventiveness, took us to see Pete's Dragon instead. Which I also remember clearly.

People may say, “Neil, there’s no way you can remember that.” But back then…no dvd’s. No vcr’s. No cable. We didn’t have media at our fingertips in a constant stream. Saturday morning cartoons were all we had, a moment like this was revolutionary for a five year-old.

So Star Wars is the second movie I saw In The Theater. And the first I saw multiple times. To say it marked me is understating it. Imprinted is a better word. I’m not one for dressing up and conventions, but I am a FAN. I played Star Wars for years after that…standing on my friend Thad’s bed to swing across the chasm in the Death Star…fighting over who got to be Luke…every Wednesday night on the church playground where the tire-jungle-gym was our Millennium Falcon and the tractor was the Xwing…I had the Darth Vader carrying case for all my action figures. Han Solo had lost a head somewhere and I didn’t care. Leia could kiss his neck…I drove around on the Thursday before Ep. IV reopened to every theater asking for the manager, saying, “I know it’s “opening” tomorrow, but I also know you usually get the reels on Tuesday…” At the third theater, the manager said, “be here a 11:45, bring your own food.” So I saw the rerelease of all three the night before, at midnight…I saw all the new ones at midnight…Jar Jar didn’t bother me that much…in Ep. II when Yoda comes tapping in with his cane, my heart started thumping. When he lit that laser sword (how do you describe a moment of fruition you’ve been imagining for twenty years?)…I drove to Walmart at three in the morning after that to buy the soundtrack…and even though the writing was crappy at best, when Ep. III came out, it was a milestone event, I had spent my whole life with this story, and it was finally concluding. I was closing a book I had been reading for thirty years.

Then I had some kids and the adventure started all over. They watched the originals with mixed results, but Star Wars found it’s groove with Jacob in the Clone Wars. He loves it. He was Luke for Halloween this year. He plays Star Wars on the playground with the neighborhood kids. So a couple of Saturdays ago we’re at Brent and Mil’s, and what has magically appeared in the toy closet? My Darth Vader carrying case? I haven’t seen that thing in at least ten years, and Jacob is glued to it. Of course he doesn’t recognize any of the figures. He looks at me like I’m crazy when he holds up who he thinks is Count Dooku and I tell him it’s Obi Wan. The Moment though, is when he finds Yoda and asks me where his lightsaber is, and I explain to him that when I was his age, Yoda didn’t have a lightsaber, how long I’d waited to see it, and how old he (Jacob) was when I finally saw Yoda Light It Up.

With kids you can never tell what sticks. I couldn’t tell how interested Jacob was in my story about Yoda’s lightsaber, but he asked if we could have lunch at Mimi & Poppy’s on Sunday (because he wanted to play with the Star Wars figures…YES!!!) But Sunday morning rolls around and we’re walking through church and he sees his friend Jacob Boyd and proceeds to recount to him every detail of the Yoda story.

I’m not sure who told him, but somehow he knows there’s Star Wars stuff at Disney World. And that’s all he wants to do. I remember the “Star Tours” ride, and while I don’t think it’s anything to write about, I want Jacob to have a great experience, so I’m committed to making it as awesome as possible. Day 2 is Hollywood (formerly MGM) Studios day. Jamie picks up the show times for the day and tells us there’s a Jedi training show over by the Star Tours, starting in five minutes. I think, “A Jedi Training Show? We can’t miss that!” So off we dash.

I don’t know what I was expecting…honestly I don’t think I even got that far. I just didn’t want Jacob to miss the show. What I got easily ranks in the Top Five Moments of Fatherhood, right after the four births, replacing Jacob’s first hit in baseball for number five.

The Jedi comes out and tells the crowd he’s here to train younglings in the way of the force and he starts pulling kids on stage. At first I thought it would be three or four, and although Jacob had shouldered to the front and was jumping up and down, I didn’t think he’d make it.

But he took about fifteen or so, including Jacob, and I thought, “Okay, this will last for a minute or two. It’ll be great.”

But then they start handing out robes…

…and lightsabers, and he’s teaching them a sword routine…

…I’m running like mad, trying to get a good angle against the sun, and then the music starts, the stormtroopers come out…

…and then this guy…

Neil’s interior monologue: “Attention, attention, we’ve entered a new condition.”

Still it’s not registering what’s going to happen. I think “this is awesome! Jacob’s on stage with Vader, and he’s going to get to see this guy fight him!”

Then they start lining kids up…

…And my childhood fantasies are fulfilled in my son.

To say it was dusty out there…well, I was a little emotional. He was awarded a certificate promoting him from Youngling to Padawan. I’m framing it for him.

It’s a little dusty right now.

So Jacob locked lightsabers with Darth Vader and now he’s a Padawan.

(edit)

I took over 500 pictures at Disney, and you’ll be able to see them on my Facebook in the next few days. More stories to come.

Pennsays...

2008-12-18T07:28:00.001-06:00

How about this? Thanks to MicahD for putting me onto it.

Asher the Basher (But actually 351)

2008-12-10T09:17:00.005-06:00

Alright. It’s time to climb out of the rathole I’ve been spiraling down for the last 2 months.

Sunday morning I’m sitting in the Toile (pronounced TWALL) Chair in Shannon’s and my bedroom, putting my shoes on. Next to the Toile Chair is Shannon’s dresser. And on top of the dresser are some pictures of Shannon and I. Asher bebops in and here’s our conversation:

Asher: What are you doing?
Me: I’m putting my shoes on.
Asher: To got to work?
Me: No. We’re going to church.
Asher: I don’t want to go to church.
Me: You don’t?
Asher: I want to go to school.
Me: But it’s Sunday. We’re all going to church.
Asher: I don’t want to go to my class. I want to go to school.
Me: You don’t like you’re class?
Asher: (picks up a picture from the dresser of Shannon and I with Jacob at about 2 and Lorelei at about 6 mos.) who’s this?
Me: Who is that?
Asher: Mommy and Daddy.
Me: That’s right.
Asher: And that’s Jacob and Piper.
Me: No. That’s Lorelei when she was a baby.
Asher: That’s not Piper?
Me: That’s Lorelei.
Asher: Where’s Asher?
Me: You weren’t born yet.
Asher: (Pointing at Shannon’s stomach) In mommy’s belly?
Me: No. We hadn’t even thought of you yet. You just…weren’t.
Asher: And this is a band-aid! (producing a band-aid out of nowhere. The real reason he’s come in.)
Me: (shaken out of my wonder of trying to remember life before Asher, laughing) Yes. It is.
Asher: Put it on!
Me: Okay. Where?
Asher: Thumb! (which he sticks in my face.)

(I do. It’s the largest size band-aid they make that doesn’t have the words “gauze pad” in it. It wraps around his thumb and wrist.)

Asher: That feels better!
Me: Good!
Asher: (picks up a clay jar from the bookshelf and takes the lid off. Then sips out of it.) That’s good coffee!

I can’t believe how awesome he is. I wonder if God is utterly delighted by my antics the way I am by Asher’s. I hope so.

write or die.

2008-11-10T09:15:00.003-06:00

If you're like me, you'll see this as a blessing in terror, or an awesome mind game--pick 'em. I'm trying it right now.

And does anyone else feel like they're cheating on Studio 60 when they watch 30 Rock?

Zachariah

2008-11-06T07:43:00.011-06:00

I went to Eastern Europe last January where I had the privilege to the Mirga's. They live in a tiny Roma village without running water. This is the video I produced about them and their son Zachariasz (pronounce Za-har-y-osh). One correction to the video: Zachariasz is their 4th son, not their third. The first was still-born, the 2nd and 3rd both died from this same mystery disease.

I got this email this morning.
I am very sad to have to say this, Zachariah died last night.November 5, 2008. Zachariah was a gift from God with a purpose!!!! We may not totally understand right now why he had to live a short life, but God's plans are perfect. Zachariasz (His Roma name) caused many of us to be on our knees before God in petitioning prayer for many months. The many trips to the hospitals became times of Ola sharing her faith and the gospel message with many other parents who had very sick children too. Ola is a faithful wittiness for the Lord.Andrzej is a bold wittiness to all also. Please pray for Ola & Andrzej Mirga as they arrange the funeral and suffer the physical loss of their son Zachariasz. Please pray for God's grace & peace that passes all understanding. Please praythat God will be glorified through all of this. Pray that the mouths of the mockers and unbelievers will be stopped. Pray that they will see God in this and not be confirmed in their minds that our God is not real. Ola Mirga, last night told me to say to you all "Thank you all for your prayers for me and my family!!!!" Z Bogiem, Jerry & family

Here's the prayer (and a couple of pics from the prayer exp) I wrote for Zachariasz last May that was prayed at all our camps. LEADER: Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; His love endures forever. Let Israel say: RESPONSE: “His love endures forever.” LEADER: Let the house of Aaron say: RESPONSE: “His love endures forever.” LEADER: Let those who fear the LORD say: RESPONSE: “His love endures forever.”
LEADER: Your love endures forever, regardless of life or death. Regardless of where we go or what we do, your love endures forever. We pray that your enduring love will crash over Andrzej, Ola, & Zechariah like a tidal flood. We pray that it soaks them through, that it saturates them, and that when they walk through their village of Szaflary, it drips off their fingertips and leaves puddles in their footprints; that Szaflary is marked, stained by the overflow of your love for these children of yours who cling to you with their very lives. LEADER: In my anguish I cried out to the LORD, And He answered me by setting me free. RESPONSE: The LORD is with me; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me? The LORD is with me; He is my helper. I will look in triumph on my enemies.
LEADER: Father, they have endured unimaginable anguish, and they cry out to you. We add our voices to theirs, fervently hoping and praying that you will hear and set them free. Set them free from the fear of losing their son. Be Andrzej’s helper, be Ola’s helper, give them triumph over their fears, over their anguish. RESPONSE: It is better to take refuge in the LORD Than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the LORD Than to trust in princes. LEADER: Father the doctors are baffled. The hospitals have no answers. Andrzej & Ola’s only choice is to trust in you, to take refuge in your shadow. It’s in your hands. Any miracle, any cure comes from you. Only you can save Zechariah’s life. And it’s easy to pray that you save Zechariah’s life. It’s easy and we pray it with urgency and expectation. Most High God will you please save this little boy’s life? Jehovah Rapha, in the name of Jesus, by the power of Christ, we pray that you will heal Zechariah.
But we also pray the hard prayer. Even as our hearts cry out for Zechariah’s life, we pray as Jesus did, on the Mount of Olives: we pray for your will. We pray for your glory. We pray that your desires are accomplished and that Andrzej & Ola will glorify you no matter the outcome. Jesus Christ we trust that you hear our prayers and intercede on our behalf. Jesus Christ, you are the greatest of all time. Amen. Please pray for Andrzej and Ola as they continue to love and serve their neighbors through this hard time.

Life Change equals proof, and other stuff (but actually 395)

2008-10-29T09:07:00.003-05:00

My friend Michael wrote this today. I started to comment on it, but my comment grew longer than I feel is appropriate for a comment, and is really a whole other thought, and since I haven’t posted in forever, I thought it would be appropriate as it’s own thought. Please read his post first.

(edit)

I think people say they want one thing and do another. I think it's easier to watch "The Biggest Loser" and feel good about eating a salad than it is to work towards a healthy lifestyle. I think it's easier to sleep in and watch football on Sundays than to commit to a community. Easier to show up five minutes late and leave five minutes early so you don't have to talk to anyone.

I'm not being pessimistic, I just know my own tendencies, and know that most people will say they want depth, but won't go deep because it's not convenient. Depth in action is scary because it requires life change. And this is my greatest struggle as a leader of a group. When God exposes brokenness (usually my own) and I ask hard questions in my class, people tend not to come back. The struggle is that I know it's not up to me, it's God's work. My role is to speak the name of God into their lives and then to pray that they listen.

But that doesn't make me feel any better about the thousand that say they want depth and community, but then only ten show up for it. I know my job is to focus on the ten and I do. I love the ten to the best of my ability. I am content with what God is doing and who he’s bringing. The reality is I can’t handle more than that right now. I know God is protecting me, protecting Shannon and the kids.

Dr. Peterson wrote “a person has to be thoroughly disgusted with the way things are to find the motivation to set out on the Christian way.” I guess the 990 just aren’t disgusted enough yet.

Michael, I think you’re right. More than ever people want proof of the remedy before they’ll buy. And the only proof Christianity has to offer is a life well-discipled. So I’ll keep working with my ten, hoping their lives will prove to ten more.

New macbook pros

2008-10-15T12:25:00.003-05:00

New Macbooks announced.
Don't have an iphone yet so
now I'm really chapped.

FOM running log (but actually WAY over.)

2008-10-13T22:32:00.001-05:00

I spent the weekend at Ridgecrest producing one of Lifeway’s Festivals of Marriage. What follows is a running log of my weekend.

Thursday Oct. 9

4:00 pm: Pull out of the Lifeway parking lot. Nashville traffic. Awesome. But the car’s got an aux line in. Now if I only had an 1/8” cable…

4:30 pm: The ankle’s bothering me pretty bad. I don’t know what the deal is. I don’t recall doing anything to it. Pulling off around the Hermitage to get a new wrap, a cuppa and some drugs. And if I pass a Walmart? Perhaps a 1/8” cable…

5:30 pm: Who am I kidding. I got the other stuff 45 minutes ago. I NEED that cable. I’ve got “Growing Up Live” and “Studio 60” and a 6 hour drive ahead of me.

6:00 pm: Back on the road. Was the cable worth two hours? At least the traffic’s thinned out.

7:30 pm: In goes Peter Gabriel’s “Growing Up Live”

7:35 pm: Holy Crap Growing Up Live is brilliant.

7:45 pm: BRILLIANT!!

9:00 pm (eastern): Pulling off in Knoxville for some food. Talk to Shannon for a few minutes. Ankle feels worse. I tell her I might have to go to the doctor when I get back.

10:00ish pm: Have had a religious experience with “Growing Up Live.” Seriously, I found myself wishing we sang Peter Gabriel songs in church. In goes “Studio 60.”

Friday Oct 10

12:00 am: Pull into Ridgecrest. Check-in and see the “Watch out for Bears!” flyer, it makes me chuckle, even though my ankle feel like someone hit it with a sledgehammer. Decline the meal plan. I’m in Black Mountain baby!! My Father’s Pizza! The Madison Inn! The Dripolator! El Camino! Thai Basil! I’m a Black Mountain local!

12:10 am: Two FOM couples check in right after me. In their defense, the room numbering in the Mt. Laurel hotel is bizarre and has absolutely ahnothing to do with floors. But they take the elevator the conference level, where there are no rooms. I look at their room number and tell them where to go. They’ve got a cart so I let them take the elevator without me. Mainly I don’t want them to see me limp. One of them asks me if I’m a “famous christian singer.” I find this bizarre but merely say, “no ma’am, I just work for Lifeway.”

12:15 am: Of course my room is at the end of the hall. I start to laugh the pain is so bad. And perhaps I need to visit the ER in the morning…

12:30 am: I’m giggling like mad because I can’t get my act together as I keep leaving stuff on the opposite side of the room. Grit my teeth and go back down the hall to get some ice.

12:45 am: Icing my ankle doesn’t feel as good as it should. Spend some time writing to give the ice time to work.

2:00 am: Turn off the computer and take the ice off my ankle. Ice didn’t seem to help a bit, but if I can get to sleep it should be fine.

Unspecified time: Awakened by pain in ankle. Can’t find a comfortable position.

5:30 am: Can’t go back to sleep. Take the Gayle Cocktail (4 ibuprofen, 2 acetaminophen. To the makers of Advil & Tylenol (respectively), I’d be happy to give you credit if we can work out some sort of promotional consideration). Manage to drift off to sleep after awhile.

Unspecified time: OW! Cramp! Cramp! In the same calf! Sweet mother Cramp! I can’t stretch it out because I can’t flex my ankle! AHHHH!!

8:00 am: Alarm. There’s no way I’m getting up.

8:45 am: Up, can hardly stand to put weight on it. Hobble to the shower. Call Satterfield to tell him what’s what.

10:00 am: Compromise with Shannon by telling her we’ll find a doctor or nurse at FOM registration to look at it. If it’s bad enough I’ll go to the ER.

10:15 am: Into the Black Mountain Rite Aid to buy a cane. That’s right, I bought a cane while at Ridgecrest. How many people can say that?

10:29 am: The lady at McDonald’s tells me I was the cut-off car for breakfast. Ha HA!! I’m awesome. Suck on that car behind me, I’m gettin’ the last Sausage Mcmuffin!

11:15am: My computer tells me it’s going to take 10 hours to transfer 2 gig worth of Propresenter background files off the Lifeway server. That shouldn’t be a problem at all. (Event starts in approximately 8 hours).

5:30 pm: Haven’t left my chair, ankle one big continuous throb. Spent the last six hours entering songs into Propresenter the hard way. Seriously, this is why we have interns. The network kicks me off about two-thirds of the way through the transfer. I guess that’ll have to do!

6:00 pm: Hobble up to the booth. Putting the show together, finding backgrounds, actors still haven’t shown up, and Mark tells me they have tech cues. The two RCC house guys can’t get the speaker’s mics to work. House opens in thirty.

6:10 pm: Slamming announcement slides into Pro. The tech guys just unplugged the wireless receiver rack and are hoofing it downstairs. Mark is having a panic attack. House opens in twenty.

6:15 pm: I’m barely ready to run media for the night. Actors show up. Mics still not patched. Oh wait, the screens aren’t on.

6:20 pm: Pro freaks out, nothing on screens. I’m having a panic attack now. Mics still not patched. House opens in ten.

6:22 pm: Get the screens working. Sound is a crapshoot. Mark has clumps of hair in his hands.

6:25 pm: Restart my computer. Screens go black while this happens. Mark about loses it until I tell him that was supposed to happen. Mics still not patched. House opens in five.

6:30 pm: House opens. Slides and preshow music roll. Mark brings up the drama’s light cues. Mics patched (we hope).

7:00 pm: Go flight. Show starts, people laugh at the video.

7:04 pm: Mark’s mic doesn’t work.

7:07 pm: Here’s a dirty little secret, I’ve never run Propresenter, Media Shout, or Powerpoint for any show or worship service. This is a lot of pressure!! My backgrounds are haphazard, and I discover, too late, that some of them wash the words out! Plus I’ve never worked with this worship leader, and while his notes say what he’s going to do, he doesn’t always follow it. Wait, what’s wrong with those backgrounds? Why are they so glitchy???

7:25 pm: The guy running lights sees something goes wrong with the wireless rack downstairs, so he takes off to fix it right as the drama WITH LIGHT CUES starts. It’s chaos in the booth as the sound guy and I struggle to cover it.

9:00 pm: The carnage is over. Plan time with the techs on Saturday to make sure the sound issues are worked out well in advance. Apologize to Mark, promising it’ll be better then next night. Set an appointment with the speaker in the morning to work out the rest of his slides. Talk with seminar leaders for a bit.

9:45 pm: Say goodnight to Mark, head into Black Mountain for food. Talk with Shannon, who’s working a puzzle with Jacob. Don’t want to wait at My Father’s for pizza. Get some Taco Bell. Head back to RCC.

10:30 pm: In the room, take the Gayle cocktail, watch “Charlie Bartlet” which I think is pretty decent. Obviously draws from “Ferris Bueller” and “Rushmore” but I like Anton Yeltsin and RD Jr. always great.

Satuday Oct 11

12:45 am: Think about writing. Think better of it. Turn off the light.

7:00 am: Alarm. Ignore

7:45 am: Meeting in forty-five minutes with Speaker. Have to get up.

8:30 am: No time for breakfast. Ankle feels better today. Meet with speaker, get notes for slides.

9:00 am: Make slides, finish entering songs, build show for tonight. Find Sports bar in Asheville to watch football.

11:10 am: I’m late! I’m hungry! I’m getting a caffeine headache! Hobble up to Clouds for a RCC “Starbuck’s” cuppa.

11:30 am: Headed into Asheville for football and wings. This is the one thing I want to do for myself this weekend.

12:00 pm: Pull in to the place right as OU/Texas starts. I’m awesome. And LO! What’s this? .25 wings? .50 oysters? Yes!

12:30 pm: I’m a multitasker. Eat wings, reencode background vids so they’ll play right. Read through a play a friend has asked me to direct. Keep an eye on TX. The Michigan couple next to me is not having a good time.

3:40 pm: Game runs long, no time for a shower. But TX wins, So I’m okay with it.

4:30 pm: Meet the tech guys, who ASSURE me the mics are good to go. Finish reencoding vids. Preselect backgrounds to go with songs. I’m awes.

6:30 pm: Doors open. Mark is much calmer. I am much calmer.

7:00 pm: Service goes off mostly without a hitch. Mostly. Worship leader freestyles a little more tonight.

9:30 pm: Seminar leaders make me feel good by calling Mark out in front of me, asking why I’m not writing this year. Mark takes my cane.

10:00 pm: Tonight it’s Wendy’s. Pushed my lunch too far to go to My Father’s tonight. Of my daily $35 meal allowance I have spent $34.72. I’m awesome.

10:30 pm: Room. Gayle Cocktail. Watch “Redbelt.” Wendy’s forgot the spoon for my Frosty.

Sunday Oct 12

12:30 am: Holy cow. Mamet delivers the goods. Chiwetel Ejiofor rules. Amazing.

7:30 am: Alarm. Up. Shower. Pack. Ankle feels MUCH better today.

8:30 am: Head into Black Mountain for food. I AM GOING TO THE DRIPOLATOR. I CANNOT LEAVE BLACK MOUNTAIN WITHOUT EATING AT ONE OF THE LOCAL PLACES I LOVE.

8:35 am: Dripolator doesn’t take credit cards. Crap.

8:36 am: Turn around, I’ll pay for it out of my pocket.

8:37 am: I don’t have any cash. Crap. Crap. !!

8:38 am: Settle for the gas station. Boo.

8:40 am: A guy approaches me as I get out of the car and asks for change. I offer to take him inside and get him something to eat. He says the owner will call the cops if I do that. I have one dollar. I give it to him.

9:00 am: Back at RCC, finishing slides and backgrounds.

10:15 am: Mark starts the giveaways. A church brought 32 couples. That’s awesome.

11:10 am: Speakers do the “longest married/shortest married” thing. There’s a couple here who’s been married eight days. Wow. Later I find out that a couple has been coming off and on to the FOM for seven years. The guy finally accepted Jesus last night. Amazing.

12:00 pm: It’s all over. We pack it in.

1:30 pm: Texas Roadhouse. We get steaks bigger than our heads.

2:30 pm: Quick stop at the ‘Bux for a cuppa. On the road. Listen to the Mamet commentary track on “Redbelt.” That guy’s the deal. More Studio 60 after that.

7:00 pm (central): Nashville. Lifeway. Home.

Breaching Whales (but actually 722)

2008-10-10T00:40:00.002-05:00

My bro-bro’s PJ and Mike and I have a theory that we’re like whales. We like to swim in deep water, but every now and then we have to surface and just blow it out our blowholes. (hee hee) I’ve been pretty deep lately. I’d say the broken arm post was me starting to come up. The last post I was breaching. I can’t be sure, but at least tonight I feel like wallowing on the surface, smacking my tail around.

Either there is an alien growing in my ankle or I’ve cracked/broken/torn something, and I have NO IDEA HOW! I was explaining to Shannon that every now and then it gets a little stiff, but usually goes away. Tuesday morning I got up and it was kind of stiff. I didn’t think anything about it and went about my day. Wednesday morning I got up and it was stiff. I went ahead and worked out, and it was kind of twingy, but not too bad. By Wednesday night I could hardly walk. Now it’s swollen and I can hardly stand to put weight on it. And I can’t for the life of me figure out what I did! Here’s the funny part: As I drove to Ridgecrest tonight to PD an event this weekend I told Shannon I might have to go to the doctor on Monday. In and of itself that’s not so funny except as hobbled down to my room I thought I might not make it to Monday, I might need to go to the ER tomorrow. This part isn’t funny either except I remembered that at some point in the recent past I gave my insurance card to somebody who was taking one of my kids somewhere, and I can’t remember who. So I’m at Ridgecrest without my insurance card, and my ankle’s mysteriously the size of a softball. It’s sound terrible, but I keep laughing about it, so it must not be that bad. Of course it’s 1:15 in the morning, and I’ve been up since 4:30.

So I’m pretty sure I had a worship experience the car tonight with Peter Gabriel. I say pretty sure because I was singing at the top of my lungs, grinning like the village idiot while driving the North Carolina hills. I was “listening” to “Growing Up Live.” “Listening” is a word used here to mean I had the DVD in my cpu playing through the car stereo. (I would steal an occasional peak at the screen.) I have to say, whatever you’re doing right now, stop it. If you’re sleeping, wake up, get in the car and rush to your nearest purveyor of live concert DVD and purchase this. Stop reading!! Put the computer down and rush, I say, rush to get it. Barilliant. Brilstinkinliant. Kevin Jordan, I blame you for not introducing me to this sooner. I could have seen this years ago! And why doesn’t Kevin have a Facebook so I can properly berate him?

Anyway, I say ‘pretty sure’ because I’m having a fantastic time singing with Peter Gabriel, and I think to myself, “you know, people talk about what they hope Jesus says to them when they get to heaven, but when my time comes, I hope Jesus shows up singing ‘Solsbury Hill’ to me.” And then later I thought, “and my response to Him will be ‘In Your Eyes’

He’ll sing:

My heart was going boom boom, boom
Son, he said, grab your things, I’ve come to take you home.

And I’ll answer:

In your eyes, the light, the heat
In your eyes I am complete
In your eyes, the resolution
Of all the fruitless searches
In your eyes, I see the light and the heat
In your eyes
Oh, I want to be that complete
I want to touch the light
The heat I see in your eyes

And I realized I was worshipping in a way that’s very rare for me: I was completely unconscious of it. And I think those are the sweetest moments for me: when find myself ten feet deep in worship without the slightest idea of how I got there.

One final thing. I got here (RCC) around midnight. On the check-in counter is a flyer with big letters at the top saying: “Warning! Bear Sightings!”

Go figure.

500 words of random drivel (but actually 451)

2008-10-09T15:50:00.001-05:00

I’m really trying to like “Fringe.” I really am. But it’s really kind of terrible. Apart from the J.J. Abrams injected unknown/supernatural/thriller elements there’s nothing good about it. And I mean “ah-nothing.” I could forgive the clunky dialogue if the character development was any good. I could forgive the cardboard characters if the plot was any good. I could forgive the paint-by-number plots if the story arcs were any good. I could forgive the frozen tv dinner story arcs if…you get the point.

I’m terribly disappointed in it, and while I want to go on detailing it’s failings, I feel it would be belaboring the point (for me) and boring (for you). I haven’t yet given up on it, but I don’t know why. I keep hoping it’ll get better, but I don’t see how unless someone wrests control from everybody involved with it (except Abrams. He gets to stay). I think it’s because there’s nothing else on (I gave up on “Heroes” a long time ago). Maybe “Crusoe” will be better, and I’ll probably watch “My Own Worst Enemy” just to see how they handle it. I like Christian Slater well enough—he’s got all the makings to be a great action hero in the Bruce Willis vein, if he’s tough enough, and that’s the question mark.

With all that’s on the plate (see posts 1 & 2) there’s not much time for TV, but I’m the sucker that’ll plop down and find SOMETHING to watch. A couple of years ago I was convicted about my TV addiction, so I cut it out except for football. And I was surprised by how little I missed it. Yet I feel it’s important for who I am and what I do (lest I become like the Hollywood execs & producers who are COMPLETELY out of touch). On Demand, the DVR, and seasons on DVD have become my main avenues. So I don’t watch “The Office” in real time. I missed “Chuck”, which I hear is good.

So all that to say…I have no idea what. I told you this post was drivel, didn’t I?

But then after Fringe I had the weirdest dream about bears. I knew I was dreaming, and inside my dream I was camping and someone warned me about bears, and I said I knew all about the bears. Then (still in the dream) I fell asleep and had a dream about a bear attacking me and how to handle it. Then (still in the dream) I woke up to a bear attacking me and I handled it exactly like I did in the dream (inside the dream) and it worked. Then I woke up.

Bears in dreams. Weird.

So Lorelei Broke Her Arm... (but actually 589)

2008-10-08T17:47:00.012-05:00

It actually happened Sunday, but I kept forgetting to take pictures with the cast, and now it turns out that’s a good thing as a trip to the orthopedist today revealed that she broke not just one bone, but both of them down in her wrist.

We were at the zoo for the opening of the new playground. But it’s actually more like a playmegalopolis. It’s three stories. It’s got a corkscrew slide from the top. It has cargo nets and tunnels and secret passages and more monkey bars and spider webs than I could count.

Lorelei and Jacob were on the zipline. (Not really a zipline, but a rail that has a track with a handle on it that you can ride back and forth.) My mother was with them and it was Lorelei’s turn. Mom pushed her, and evidently pushed her hard enough that when Lorelei reached the end of the rail, it hit hard enough for her not to be able to hold on. She fell and landed wrong.

MOM! THIS IS NOT YOUR FAULT!!! I PUSH THEM TOO HARD ALL THE TIME. DOWN THE STAIRS…OFF THE ROOF…YOU NAME IT! Seriously, anyone could have done it. I have always pushed them on those contraptions and they always fall it. They’re kids. It’s what happens. And need I remind you that I’m the one who caused Asher to faceplant off the swing just a week ago?

Here’s the bad part.

We put an icepack on it but didn’t think it was that bad. So we continued our merry zoo day. Lorelei and I had a particularly good time in the snake/lizard/frog/spider house. When we got home that night and she was still complaining of how much it hurt, Shannon took her to the emergency room and LO! Broken arm. But the quacks at the ER told us it was just one bone broken. I’m suing. But they did also splint Moosie’s arm (Lo’s stuffed animal), so they get points for that.

That was the end of the trauma, but merely the beginning of the drama. Lorelei got home and told Jacob he couldn’t give her a hug because her arm was broken. She wanted to sleep in her sling. She told Shannon she “can’t do ANYTHING!” because of her arm. My favorite: “I can’t read!” She walked into class Monday morning sharpie in hand for cast signing. Monday afternoon this girl who can’t read because she has a broken arm is swinging in the back yard. Later that night she couldn’t eat her ice cream (chocolate with sprinkles, whipped cream & strawberry sauce, “just so I’ll feel better”) because it was “too hard.”

And then comes bath time.

The Ziploc bag/
rubberband ghetto rig failed spectacularly and the ER splint got pretty soaked. “Inconsolable” is the word I think most aptly describes Lorelei’s reaction. I’m talking out-of-control sobbing and wailing. But the orthopedist appointment was this morning and now everything is right in the world thanks to the sweet pink cast. Although she can’t do anything.

I know my attitude is pretty cavalier. But I figure I’ve got four kids. It’s not a question of “if” or even “when” but “how many” and “how bad”. And considering Shannon’s and my liberal “freedom to fail” policy that we have with them, I’m surprised it’s taken this long for a broken bone.

P.S. Jacob just said, "Mommy, I want to break my arm and get a cast like Lorelei's..."

And here’s Asher as a dragon.

An open response to non-churchgoing believers (but actually 13 c's & some change)

2008-10-06T20:48:00.002-05:00

Hi Chris (and those who confess to being like him),

As I read your blog many things came to mind. But as I began my comment I realized it might be longer than your blog and thought that might be a little much for a comment. So I decided to give it full rein and let it be what it is. A lot of people will think I’m criticizing you. I hope you take it as encouragement.

When I was at SL Fish and I would often talk about how we felt our little traveling family was in many ways more like a church than the ones we attended. We spent MASSIVE amounts of time together talking about life and faith, eating, having devotionals and corporate prayer. We attended hundreds of worship services led by the best pastors and worship leaders out there. It felt a lot like church, and like the church should be. But it wasn’t the church. It wasn’t the church because I never made the decision to be there. I never humbled myself before God and submitted to his process, his plans. I didn’t do any of that because it was my job. Sure, I worshiped, I prayed, I learned. But I was working the whole time. I never submitted myself to God’s ordained community. I’d go to church and feel dead inside, disconnected. “I’ve sung this song a million times. I’ve heard this sermon over and over and over!” I’d leave frustrated, feeling as if church just wasn’t for me.

But singing songs and listening to sermons has very little to do with being a member of a church. What I finally learned to be the truth about the church is not the trappings: the building, the songs, the teaching. It is about commitment to the body. It is Ephesians 5: “just as Christ loved the church…Be subject to one another.” When I subjected myself to the body…when I (as Ms. Ten Boom says) obeyed, my feeling of commitment to the church developed. I spent a year keeping two year-olds, and I loved my church.

When Jacob was born we took the hiatus that we feel we deserve because WE JUST HAD A BABY. And when we came back I felt it all over again. Disconnected, world and church-weary. Every class Shannon and I went to we didn’t fit. Frustrated, our attendance wavered. And then I read this:

“Whether we like it or not, the moment we confess Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior…we are at the same time a member of the Christian church…Our membership in the church is a corollary of our faith in Christ…Membership in church is a basic spiritual fact for those who confess Christ as Lord...For Go never makes private, secret salvation deals with people…We are a family in Christ.” (Peterson, “A Long Obedience…, 175)

And I know you know this. You say as much in your post. But the next part is the one that got me.

“…So the question is not ‘Am I going to be a part of a community of faith?’ but ‘HOW am I going to live in this community of faith?” (ibid, 176, emphasis mine)

You don’t get to choose. You have to be involved. The only thing left up to you is how. And I know you know this too. Your acknowledgment and admission of your sin says as much. So I started teaching a class. It was a class I started for all my friends who felt the same way I do. I figured we could all get together here inside the church instead of outside. But none of my friends came. And for six months the class was on life support because I refused to submit myself to God’s plan for the class. Then, in the midst of my frustration, a funny thing happened. People started coming. They weren’t my friends. But they weren’t church-goers either. They were recovering addicts. They were outcasts that didn’t fit elsewhere. They had lived through harrowing and messy divorces. They were single looking for a community, not a date. They were married and were trying to figure out how to be married. They were broken and painfully aware of their brokenness. Our prayer requests didn’t contain health and wealth concerns. We were praying for people caught in addiction, people who were desperately alone, people who needed a community. I felt like I was swimming in the ocean with no land in sight and I heard God whisper “this is your church.” But I was so uncomfortable with these people! I liked my little insulated SL life. I didn’t want them wrecking things! And then I read this:

“You say that you have almost nothing in common with these people. But isn’t that just the point? YOU have nothing in common with them, but God does. This just happens to be the way that God goes about making a kingdom, pulling all sorts and conditions of people together and then patiently, mercifully, and graciously making something of them. What he obviously does not do is pre-select people who have an aptitude for getting along well and enjoying the same things. Of course you don’t have much in common with them. The church is God’s thing, not yours…The church is not a natural community composed of people with common interests; it is a SUPER-natural community. And the super in that word does not mean that it exceeds your expectations; it is OTHER than your expectations, and much of the other is invisible to you… (Peterson, The Wisdom of Each Other, 26-27).

When I read that and got over myself, I saw this rag-tag group of irritating and disturbing liars and narcissists for what they are: a God-collected group of beautiful believers. And it was never easy and I was ALWAYS uncomfortable but I was never closer to God and have never had such a tight-knit group of God community (or the church, if you must).

We moved to Nashville. We moved to disconnection. Again the world & church weariness. Again the frustration. I wanted to find a “cool” church. But none of the “cool” churches had a good kids program. Or they were too far away, or in bad neighborhoods. “Cool” churches in the hood are fine if you’re 24 and single, but for a 35 year-old father of four? Not so much. (And the whole “cool churches in funky neighborhoods” is a whole other discussion).

The church we kept coming back to was the church we grew up in and this absolutely galled me. I like the preacher well enough, but I’m not wild about his style of preaching. The worship is too adult contemporary. I don’t find many people like me here. I didn’t want to go to this church.

But here we are. Instead of if we choose how. We choose obedience, and we’re waiting for the feeling. It’s not the ideal church for us, but it’s God’s thing, not ours. A new class, new people, new challenges, new awkwardness, but I’m already fiercely protective of them. I still find small talk impossible as I try to get to know them, but I know that God’s in it, and that’s enough.

And there is the option of starting your own church. You could absolutely do that. I hear the ATL dream team is giving it a go. But I think that, like me, you’ve noticed our nation is filled with thirty year-old mostly empty buildings. We’ve got plenty of churches. We just need to be subject to one another and commit to them. We need to find one, roll up our sleeves and get to the work of allowing God to mold us into being part of his community.

I hope you take this in the manner in which I wrote it. I like you quite a lot and believe you’re one of the good guys that gets it. I know you already know all the answers. That’s not the problem. The problem is living them. The problem is getting over ourselves and realizing that being ministers doesn’t make us above it.

Engage. Participate. Even if it’s uncomfortable. Especially when it’s uncomfortable. Open yourself and see what God will do.

http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifOld College Friends

2008-10-03T06:56:00.004-05:00

This from one old college friend. (He said it right in this post.)

Going to have breakfast (right now, I'm late!) with another.

Caught up with a third on the phone the other day.

Nostalgia? Don't think so.

Richness. That's what I'm feeling.

The elevator and the swing set 2(but actually 534)

2008-10-02T08:51:00.003-05:00

I’ve been thinking a lot about the lady in the elevator and Asher falling out of the swing. I guess the thread is the unexpectedness of life. You’re cruising along, the weather’s great, you like what you’re doing, then bam! You fall out of the swing. The question is, what now?

Yesterday Asher wanted to swing. And he wanted to go fast. And he wanted me to push him.

(smile)

I’m not a big fan of using my blog as a devotional tool—there’s guys a lot better than me doing that. And that's why I read them. (Some of them are bookmarked on the right!) But today…

Jesus talked about having faith like children, and we theologize that and hermeneutic it and put it “into practice.” But I really think Jesus was saying, “LOOK AT THE KIDS!! They don’t make it any harder than it already is! They take it as it comes, deal with it as it hits, forget it as it passes! Live like that!”

Asher fell out of the swing and busted his face up pretty good. He came up crying. He wanted me to pick him up and hold him. He wanted his mommy. We pulled the grass out of his nose, cleaned him up and held him until he stopped crying. He wanted his blanket and “do” (pacifier). He wanted to sit on the couch and watch Diego. And then the next day he wanted to swing again.

In other words: he got hurt, grieved the moment, got comforted, then got back to work. The key here is that he wanted me first, then his stuff.

We don’t do that. We get the crap kicked out of us and go looking for solace and comfort everywhere BUT God. In the Asher analogy, when we fall off the swing we don’t go looking for our Father. We lay on the ground and wail. We grab the lighter fluid and the matches and burn the swing set down. We clutch the pacifier and blanket and live on the couch in front of Diego.

Sure we turn to Him, but it’s usually after we’ve talked to everybody and Oprah first. It’s after we’ve self-medicated with our numbing agent of choice. It’s after a month of living in funk of self-pity.

I got on the elevator with someone going to six and asked if they knew who the lady was and they didn’t. I don’t know what I was hoping to accomplish. I think I just wanted to know her name. I’m sure she’s fine and was just emotional walking into the building for the last time, but I still wish I could talk to her again. I wish I could encourage her to run to and be held by her Father, and let Him pull the grass out of her nose. I wish I could tell her to watch a little Diego (because we all need a little Diego) and get back on the swing.

(edit)

It’s flawed, it’s messy, it’s all over the place, but it’s in there somewhere. And I just used three phrases that mean the same thing.

And here's Seth's blog, where he learned something from his kid too.

The elevator and the swing set (but actually One Large even)

2008-09-30T08:26:00.000-05:00

I got to work early this morning. Walking in I held the door open for a lady I don’t think I’ve seen before. I can’t be sure because there’s a lot of people I don’t know that work here, and I tend not to pay attention. She said thank you and then when we got on the elevator she asked me what floor I was on. I said five and she pushed it, as well as six for herself. She looked at me and said, “this is my last day here.” It’s 6:30 in the morning and people don’t normally talk to me in the elevator. I think I said something profound like “really?”

Her: I’ve been here twenty-five years and my job got deleted.
Me: (oh wow am I not prepared to have a conversation like this) Well, what are you going to do?
Her: I don’t know. Probably cry a lot.
Me: (trying to be funny, but also inspiring) You should do something awesome like go to the roof and throw stuff off. (it doesn’t work)
Her: (starting to cry) I just don’t know.
Me: (swimming in it) I’m sorry.
Her: thanks.

The elevator reaches five and the doors open.

Me: I hope it’s a good day.
Her: (fully crying now) thanks.

And I got off the elevator.

(edit)

Yesterday I got home from work and I don’t know what it is about the drive home, but by the time I get in the driveway EVERYDAY I’m fighting, like shaking my head and yelling out loud fighting, to keep my eyes open. Something about the drive home just exhausts me. I put the car in park and have to immediately get out or I’ll fall asleep in the driveway. Crazy.

So when you’re sleepy tired like that, the last thing you want to do is…well, anything. Jacob and Asher were out on the play set and something happened and Shannon was feeding Piper, so I got nominated to go outside and manage the issue. So I drag myself outside and intervene—I don’t remember what it was about. Maybe the plastic shovel for the sand box. Anyway I get out there and Jacob disappears to do something else, leaving me with Asher, who now wants to go across the street to play with the fifth grader.

I convince him to stay by starting to swing. Once I start swinging, he of course wants to swing. Asher loves swinging. He just loves it. He’s not big enough to get in the swing by himself, but yesterday I taught him to stand with the swing on the back of his legs and reach high on the chains and pull himself into the swing. He’s not strong enough to pull himself into the swing yet, but with just a fraction of help from me he did it. And now I’m fully awake and have forgotten that I’m a selfish jerk. It’s a beautiful afternoon and I’m really enjoying being with Asher.

He loves swinging. I know I already said that, but I really can’t emphasize that enough. He loves going high. So I’m pushing him and he’s laughing and we’re talking the way a thirty-five year-old dad and a two year-old son do. We’ve done this a lot and it’s something we both really love.

Then he fell.

I play it back in my mind and I can’t identify what went wrong. I pushed him exactly as I had pushed him for the previous ten minutes. He reached the bottom of the arc and then tumbled backward out of the swing. I can only guess he let go of the chains. He did a back flip and appeared to land on his hands and knees.

As a parent you learn to recognize the difference between when they just fall down and when they’re really hurt. He only fell like two feet or so, and the grass is thick where he fell. So I played it for “just a fall” and waited that fraction of a second between the actual event and his response to see if he’d come up laughing or crying. He came up crying so I scooped him up and headed for the house.

We can talk about how I played this one wrong, but I think you already see it.

We’re walking up to the house and he’s got a good cry on. We reach the steps and I think he’s probably had enough time to cry the scare off, and any pain that might accompany it. So I say, “that was pretty scary wasn’t it?” He cries his yes. “Ye-he-ess.” And then in my best conspiratorial voice I say, “but it was kind of fun too, wasn’t it?” I get an emphatic no through the tears. I still haven’t looked at his face.

We get inside and Shannon says, “he fell?” And I say yeah. Shannon walks around behind me to look at Asher. “Neil, he’s bleeding!”

I am the worst parent ever. This at least ties with the time I dislocated Jacob’s elbow.

I set him on the counter and now it’s pretty obvious he didn’t land on his hands and knees. He landed on his face. He landed face-down in the grass. Face-planted in the truest sense. He’s bleeding out his nose and mouth. Not a lot of blood, but enough. He’s got bruising on his forehead, nose and upper lip. His upper lip is fat and his nose looks broken. He actually has grass up inside his nose. We’re pulling grass out of his nose.

Like I said, worst parent ever.

And that was the worst of it. He’s got all his teeth. He didn’t bite his tongue and he can breathe through his nose. Nowhere near what Weston went through with the bathtub incident, but still…

(edit)

These two things are somehow connected, the elevator and the swing set. I can’t see how yet, but there’s a thread there I need to pick up.

An open and flawed rant about Hollywood producers (but actually 354)

2008-09-29T11:24:00.003-05:00

So here's this from Don Miller.

And it's funny in that, "I couldn't think of anything else to write about today" way. But the part that gets me is the Michael Poryes interview. I'm not sure which part is scarier:

1. He' a mega-Hollywood exec responsible for the biggest tweener show on tv. But he doesn't watch content on the web. THE ONLY TIME HE SEES WEB CONTENT IS WHEN MILEY SHOWS HIM SOMETHING!!!

2. "House" is his favorite show. Okay. He doesn't come out and say it, but you only reference the stuff you think is awesome. And this was his reference. Now, I'm sure "House" is a great show. I know lots of people who love it. But for me, it falls into the whole "CSI, NCIS, Criminal Minds, Blah Blah Blah" dumpster. It's not a show other writers talk about (Arrested Development, The West Wing, Lost, The Office). So this guy loves "House", which is fine EXCEPT HE'S SUPPOSEDLY THE GATEKEEPER OF WHAT'S COOL FOR CHILDREN & YOUNG TEENS!!! And he doesn't watch content on the internet. Did I mention that?

3. His son cracked the whole portable screen technology for him. He says it like he didn't know people were watching movies like that. AND HE'S GOT AN IPHONE!!! Hey buddy, you know you can watch movies AND get the internet on that cool little gizmo, right? YOU CAN WATCH CONTENT OFF THE WEB IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND!!!

And this is the guy responsible for Hannah Montana.

It's no wonder every episode reminds me of "I Love Lucy." (Don't get me wrong. "Lucy" was a great show. Groundbreaking in its day--45 years ago.) And has anyone else noticed that while the sitcom in its traditional form is dead, Disney is the only network that continues to produce shows in that format?

(Sigh) Why do I even bother?

I understand he doesn’t have to be the cool one or the one most in touch with the audience. I get that. It just galls me that guys like this control what gets on TV. It doesn’t make any sense.

Bono on the Fed Bailout.

2008-09-25T14:55:00.001-05:00

how about this?

Quoted from The American Prospect.

It's extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can't find $25 billion dollars to saved 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases.

- Bono, rock star and anti-poverty activist.

Advent Conspiracy

2008-09-25T12:12:00.002-05:00

I first heard about Advent Conspiracy two years ago. It changed the way I see things. I'm going to make a concerted effort for my family to participate this year.

No Press for Character (but actually 418)

2008-09-22T17:29:00.002-05:00

If you’re a fan of the NFL, football or sports in general, you know the story of what happened in Denver last Sunday with referee Ed Hochuli. If you don’t, you can find it here. Do I think the NFL competition committee should make it possible for referees to correct mistakes like this during the game? Absolutely. But I’m more concerned with the integrity and character that Mr. Hochuli has shown. I wish more people were talking about it.

Hochuli blew the call. Knew he blew the call but couldn’t do anything about it. He apologized publicly for his mistake. He spent the week fielding—and even answering—hate mail from fans. Then on Sunday he flew to Baltimore, put his stripes on and did his job.

This is the kind of guy I hope to be. I wish guys like him would get more press for how they respond to the adversity they face. But because there’s no meltdown, because he didn’t do anything else to cause a headline, because he did exactly what a man of integrity should do, the culture monster lost interest and went looking for juicier fodder.

And this is what I don’t get about our society. We all say we want better role models for our kids. We lament the lack of integrity found in Hollywood, on football and baseball fields, on the hardwood. We talk in public forums about the need for better values, better morals. And then we get what we ask for. A guy like Hochuli passes through the headlines for something he did wrong. He responds in EXACTLY the way we say we want our heroes and role models to respond. But we don’t take notice. We all but ignore him.

Why? Because he didn’t rush out of his house without his cell phone with a gun in the glove compartment? Because he didn’t refuse to do his job? Because he didn’t act like a spoiled celebrity? I can’t think of any other reason.

Isn’t this the kind of role model we want for our kids? He does his job, admits when he makes a mistake, and then gets back to work. Why isn’t Ed Hochuli at the center of our national conversation right now?

Situations like this expose how broken and upside-down our cultural machine is. Which in turn exposes how broken I am, because as much as I want Hochuli to recognized and heralded, I’m scanning headlines for the latest on VY, waiting for the next meltdown.

Now this you gotta see.

2008-09-11T08:26:00.002-05:00

I can't believe this happened. (Mom, click on the "this", it's the link to the blog I want people to see.) I gotta think about it.

Don Miller for president...or something!

2008-09-09T08:56:00.001-05:00

This = a smile on my face.

double-long ramble (but actually 960. YIKES!)

2008-09-05T09:44:00.002-05:00

It’s been two weeks since I’ve written anything. Awesome. I’ve got 500 lb block of cheese kind of writer’s block.

So here, a ballast-blowing emergency writing exercise. The stream of consciousness. The only rule is you can’t stop.

I’m still flossing, so I’ve got that going for me. And I’ve even begun exercising. I’ve resorted to getting up near-Starbuck’s early to make this happen, but I’ve been at it a week and I don’t hate it, which I usually do. Except the alarm at 4:30. I do hate that. And I hate rushing to bed so I’ll get up at 4:30. I’m not a morning person, but everybody else I work with is.

Shannon and I constantly talk about our need to exercise, but we never do. We claim victory when the kitchen is clean and the kids are all in bed. Sometimes just when the kids are in bed. But recently I’ve noticed that I get nervous on the stairs. The kind of nervous when you’re carrying something and can’t see the stairs. But I’m not carrying anything. Maybe that’s a bad sign…

Football has finally started. Finally. Again. Finally. It’s the new Christmas for me. And although the Olympics took the edge off my Jones this year, these last two weeks have been pretty jittery. But finally, salvation in the form of the G-men/Skins. Let’s just acknowledge how bad the ‘Skins looked. It’s the first game, sure. New coach, sure. But dear Lord this is the NFL!!! And when you’re down two scores with five to go you don’t hand the ball off!!! YOU CERTAINLY DON’T HUDDLE! You throw outs and screens and GET OUT OF BOUNDS. You HUSTLE to the line! These guys are getting paid astronomical sums of money and when it came time to get it in gear they looked like my movers that took TEN HOURS to move me one mile. Even I know when you’re down two scores you go to no huddle somewhere between six and five minutes to go.

But it’s football so I’m glued to it to the very last tick even though the ‘Skins have no chance but have FINALLY started playing with some urgency. I’m yelling “what’s the point? You blew it!” at the TV and I don’t even care about the ‘Skins, but still I’m not changing the channel because it’s football.

And then we have the RNC. Any person who ever studied Theatre History will be able to tell you that plays written in Renaissance and Post-Renaissance eras were over-written with frequent plot summaries inserted because of the nature of how plays were viewed back then—with people constantly coming and going, much like today’s sporting events. And this is exactly what the RNC was to me. I watched Giuliani out of the corner of my eye as I cleaned the kitchen, then gave Palin my undivided attention. Giuliani told me all about Palin. He told me all about McCain. Then Palin came out and told me all about McCain, (even using some of the same lines). Then she told me all about herself. Basically recapping what Giuliani had already told me. Last night I flipped b/n Cindy McCain and the ‘Skins debacle. She told me all about Palin. She told me all about her husband. Then we get a video. And what a video. I mean wow. A video that tells us…wait for it…all about McCain. And finally, McCain himself. It’s was like the Beatles. People went crazy. People were crying. He gets up and proceeds to do what? Tell us about Palin? Yes! Tell us about himself? Yes!

I know this is their moment. I know this is primetime and maybe the only time they may get the attention of a large part of the country. And I know there are distractions. I know people are idiots. But for the love, do I really need the “said no to the bridge to nowhere” line six times in two nights? Do I need four speeches (just the ones I saw, I’m sure there were others) and a video to tell me McCain spent five years as a POW?

I KNOW I’m a West Wing junkie. And I know EXACTLY what that qualifies me for when it comes to political speech writing, especially at the national level. But I really think I could have done a better job writing McCain’s speech. The opening was good. The respect to Obama was great. The personal recounting of his time in Hanoi was good, when he talked about his fundamental shift in perspective. The outdated policy stuff was excellent. But I would have stopped him there. I would have had him say something like this:

We’ve been here four days. You’ve heard a lot of speeches about me: about my life, my campaign. About our strategy to relieve your financial struggles, about our strategy to make good for our boys and girls fighting overseas, for my sons, for Sarah’s son. You’ve heard about our plan for energy alternatives. You’ve heard about our plan for schools, for teachers, for families. You’ve heard about how we will make a better America. And you’re going to hear a lot more. Senator Obama and I will discuss the issues for you in just a few weeks. But tonight I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for your belief in me. Thank you for your support. I love our country, and I’ll do everything necessary to see we right the economy, right the war on terror, right the environment.

And that’s just off the top of my head.

(edit)

There you go. Random ramblings and an off-the-cuff speech for the RNC.

I’ll eat my way out of this block yet.

Asher goes to the hospital (but actually 496)

2008-08-21T10:01:00.001-05:00

Asher had minor minor minor outpatient surgery on his ear this morning. We got up at 4:30, which sadly for me is not nearly as early as it used to sound, and popped Asher and Piper in the car, with leaving grandpa on the couch to get Fric and Frac off to school.

Asher is a trooper.
Asher is a champ.

We walked into the hospital and waiting room no problem. When they took us back to the pre-op he got a little freaked out, but after being there for five minutes he realized nothing bad would happen, and reverted to his awesome personality. He played on the rolling cart and slid around in his socks, being the Big Hit that he normally is everywhere he goes. He told the anesthesiologist that he’s not The Man. But he did say he’s the King of Rock. We sang “Itsy Bitsy Spider” for an audience. He got his meds in him and it got funny. When they came to get him he was singing and talking to himself.

The surgery and post-op together were shorter than the time we spent in pre-op. We were in the car thirty minutes after they took him back for the surgery. No drugs, no drops, just keep the ear dry for a few weeks.

As easy and painfree as this was, you still get a little antsy. I take stuff like this in stride, but I never like it. I get the little worry flutters in my stomach. But Asher’s at home now sleeping, and he’ll enjoy a day of sprite and jello on the couch with Diego on the big screen.

I came on to work and checked my feeds, and was smacked to my knees for these families and how blessed Shannon and I are. This is a link to my friend Michael’s family blog about his four year-old who is in remission from Leukemia. While they’re over the worst, they still live with it on a daily basis. And this is a link they put me onto. Please, please pray for this little boy and his family.

The truly hearbreaking thing that I can’t get past, is that he represents thousands just like him that I’ll never hear about. And most of those don’t have any kind of support system.

I cannot hug my children tight enough.

(Edit)

I started reading Narnia to Jacob last night. My dad read them to me when I was his age, and it’s something I plan on doing with all four of mine. One chapter and he’s hooked. He knows the story a little from movie and toy commercials and the Chik-fil-a books, but when I told him there are seven books, and all the stuff he had heard and seen was part of only two, he got excited. When I told him the fifth book explains how the lamp post got in the middle of the woods, his eyes got huge.

Parenthood 5: Road Trip (but actually 550)

2008-08-14T11:59:00.001-05:00

I’ve started and deleted this installment three times, which is kind of the opposite point of a blog. I know. But it all sounds wrong. I can’t quite get my mind around it. I know God loves my kids. I know He’ll guide them the way He guides me. I trust Him.

I trust Him.

But still, I feel like I’m playing chicken with Him over their future.

I trust Him with the big stuff. That’s what it is. I’m not worried about relationship and growth and all the stuff I probably should worry about. If there’s one thing the Starbucks Years taught me, it’s to trust God even when there’s no earthly reason to. Even when everything looks and feels wrong, He taught me—he whispered in my ear—“do you trust Me now?”

So that’s capillary action for me, and I trust Him in the same way with my children. I don’t worry about their relationship with Him. Maybe I should, but I don’t.

No. It’s the little things I’m struggling with. But those little things turn into big things. Momma Phelps needed an energy release (and a break!) for her hyperactive son, so she sent him swimming.

I trust that God’s going to lead my kids to a relationship with Him. I trust that he’s using me as a part of that process. But gymnastics or taekwondo? Swimming,? Tennis? Drama? Golf? Dance? Baseball? Piano? Soccer? Wait. Not soccer. There’s no future there.

It’s not that I don’t trust God with this stuff. I’m just not getting a lot of direction here. Paul doesn’t exactly cover water sports when he talks about Spiritual Gifts. So I end up stepping onto that spiritual interstate, this time for my kids, willing to barrel headlong toward God, willing to take the devastating crash, because it’s important enough. They are important enough.

And it’s not because I’m one of Those Parents. This is not a vicarious living thing. I couldn’t care less about whether it’s football or badminton, journalism or ice dancing (okay, not ice dancing). I just want to help them find That Thing that they love and are passionate about and excel in. I want to help them succeed, but more than that, I want them to love it, and love God through it.

I blink and suddenly I’m sitting in God’s passenger seat. I’m no longer barreling at Him—we’re barreling together. Without taking His eyes off the road (which is really my kids), he says, “you know we want the same thing. I’m as eager to see them discover It as you are.”

Then, with His eyes still on the road (my kids), he picks up a bag of sunflower seeds from the bench between us (God’s driving a big old land yacht, like a Caprice Classic. But it’s been converted for bio-diesel, of course.) and offers them to me. “It’s a long trip,” he says. “Spit the shells out the window. I like the breeze.” He flips on the radio and it’s Costas doing his Saturday morning radio spot, talking about the Olympics. “How about that Phelps?” God asks. He gives me a sidelong glance, and then He laughs.

I’m laughing with Him.

If my kids turn out to be Olympians or if one writes the Great American Novel? Bonus.

Parenthood pt.4: Meta Chicken (but actually 561)

2008-08-12T09:12:00.002-05:00

I feel like I’m locked in a meta game of chicken with God.

When Michael Phelps was seven his mom enrolled him in swimming because Michael had been diagnosed with ADHD and she needed an activity to help release some of his excess energy. Michael’s parents divorced at nine. At eleven Michael’s swim coach comes to his mom and says, “it’s time we started training for the Olympics. Or he can walk away.”

Of course she says, “whatchu talkin’ bout? He’s eleven.” But she agrees and four years later, at fifteen, Michael Phelps is in Sydney, swimming in the 100m freestyle final. He doesn’t medal, but we all pretty much know the story from there. Couple of things I notice:

1. It’s impossible to say, but with another coach would we have “Michael Phelps?” What if the coach had had a bad year? What if he was looking for another job? Would Phelps have been just another kid? The greatest club sport swimmer in the history of UMASS? (In an interesting footnote, when Phelps chose Michigan, Bob Bowman (the coach) became the head coach of the Michigan swim team. Now that Phelps has graduated and is moving back to Baltimore, Bowman will be the CEO of the swim club Michael will swim at.)

2. What if mom had said no?

3. What if she’d dropped him at the rec center to play basketball instead? Did he have a say? Did he choose swimming? Did he ever want to quit? What if he did? What if they had let him?

I’ve played this game of chicken with God before: In which we barrel down the spiritual interstate at each other to see who will ditch first. Of course He doesn’t ditch. God’s not the ditching type. And He’s not so much barreling toward me because He’s God—He barrels away omnipresently and I choose to step in His path. I can get on board or get smashed by the God barreling.

But somehow it’s easier for me to play this game when it’s just me. I’m pretty comfortable with my actions and the repercussions that go along with them. I can deal with the mistakes and life course-locking decisions I’ve made. I’m content in and understand the whole “God’s in charge and I can’t screw that up, even with this pesky free-will thing on the side”. I think part of it is also that I’m 35 and pretty much know who I am by now. I know there’s still some radical stuff out there for me that God hasn’t barreled at me yet, but I know I’m never going to be an Olympian. While that’s terribly disappointing for me, I can (finally) accept it as reality and live with it.

But now I’ve got this seven year-old who probably won’t be 6’4” and isn’t interested in the piano. Behind him is the five year-old who’s only interested in being a princess. (In China if you don’t exhibit world-class gymnast tendencies by five, after two years of intensive training, you’re relegated to the Old Navy factory or something.)

And I’m thinking, CRAP!!! We’ve got to get them started! We have to find THE THING that they’ll be brilliant at!

Asher I’m not so much worried about. He’s going to be huge. He’ll be an outside linebacker for the Titans. That one’s sewn up! Whew!

(Edit)

Pick up here tomorrow.

Is that Bob Costas I hear? Must be time! (but actually 500 on the nose!)

2008-08-08T12:58:00.006-05:00

I’ve decided to embrace my nature and admit that I’m a huge sucker for the Olympics. In the past, every time they’ve rolled around I’ve been cynical and unenthusiastic. But every time, at literally the first note of the opening montage, with the first image, at the first word of Bob Freakin’ Costas’ amber-toned opening monologue, I’m hooked. I’ll stay up till two in the morning coasting the NBC channels, flipping between archery and women’s team handball. I’ll watch rhythmic gymnastics. I’ll watch the freakin’ trampoline. I love the Olympics. I spend two years completely blasé, and then sixteen days in rabid adoration. Clockwork. It’s time I admitted it.

And every Olympics I discover new sports to be crazy about. I discovered men’s volleyball in 1988. In '92 it was fencing. In '96 rowing grabbed me. In 2002 I found Curling, which still fascinates me, and Speed Skating. '04 brought me water polo. 2006? One word: Biathlon. And now? In 2008? I can’t wait.

I have a confession to make. I’ve already started. Did anybody else get hooked by the trials? I couldn’t tear myself away from those. We’re talking about some serious drama. Amanda Beard makes the Olympic team on her last shot? Dana Torres is older than me! And she’s going to Beijing.

Maybe the best thing about the summer Olympics, though, is that it provides the perfect distraction for my normal August routine of checking nfl.com every three minutes for football updates. I mean, August has to be the longest month in the year. Not only does it feel like I live on the planet Mercury, but I’m toyed with by football, which starts but doesn’t REALLY start. The NFL in August is like fat-free sour cream: it resembles the real thing in name only.

Really though, this year is the first Olympics Jacob and Lorelei will remember. That’s what I’m excited about. I was talking to Matt about this and he said he felt like the Olympics weren’t that big a deal anymore. And sure, without the U.S.S.R. some of the political tension has drained out. Staggering the Winter and Summer games has diluted it’s impact some. But part of it is just that we’ve seen ‘em. We’re not impressed anymore. But not for Jacob and Lorelei. I remember the magic and majesty from my childhood that went along with this world event. Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton. Flo-Jo, Matt Biondi and Greg Louganis. The Dream Team. The Paralympic archer lighting the torch in Barcelona. Muhammad Ali in Atlanta. Kerri Strug vaulting with a bad ankle and sticking the landing WITH ONE FOOT!!! In Sydney a Wyoming farm boy named Rulon Gardner came out of nowhere to beat the THIRTEEN YEAR UNDEFEATED Greco-Roman wrestling champion, Russian Alexander Karelin. Karelin hadn’t surrendered a point in ten years.

That’s the stuff I want. It’s the stuff I’m eager to share with my kids. And its starts tonight.

Also, I can’t wait to discover a new sport.

Addendum

2008-08-08T07:53:00.002-05:00

Getting some questions about the source of my last post.

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008808020333

The article will give you the background, but it's the comments that set me off.

The Cuts (but actually 495)

2008-08-07T08:23:00.002-05:00

Alright.

Let’s talk about it.

I work at LifeWay.

I am personally affected by six of the one hundred. My boss, four coworkers and my father-in-law. My boss and my father-in-law volunteered to retire. Two people have a job today because these two men stood up and said “I’ll take it.” The severance and retirement packages they’ll receive is irrelevant. They’re like Brett Favre. They don’t do it for the money, they do it because they love what they do. And while Mr. Favre loves throwing a ball, these men love serving people. My boss is the ONLY boss Fuge has really had. You want to talk about the unknown? They’re sacrificing the thing Culture identifies them as so that others (like me!) can keep their jobs. Of my four coworkers? While shocked and saddened, to a person they choose to look at it through the lens of God, instead of their own. They want to make sure they finish well. They want to make good handoff’s, because they love and care about who they served, both client and coworker.

Yesterday I went to a meeting in which my boss’ boss’ boss’ boss walked through the process by which this decision was made. And while he was clear in his method and reason, while articulate and forthright, it was evident how painful it was for him. He grieves over the decision. Say what you will, but I believe him.

The truth is I don’t know many people here at LifeWay. And the stories people are telling about corruption, hypocrisy and legalism may well be true. But the people I work with? They are servants. They believe in our calling and in what we do. Some days they drive me crazy. Some days I want to drive my yardstick through my eye over how insane they make me. But isn’t that true about anywhere you go and any place people work together? At least I know that it’s that way here because of how committed and passionate my friends and coworkers are about what they believe, about how good they want our product to be.

I’ve been following the comments people are leaving in various places concerning the LifeWay “story.” It just infuriates me the things people say. How small and petty and spiteful and bitter they are. But as I sat down to refute the things they said, as I rushed to call them out, asking if the view was good from the cheap seats where no hard decisions have to be made, I stopped and thought about the bitterness in my own heart. The bitterness I still feel toward old bosses and jobs. I realize that I’m no better than those leaving the hate-fueled comments. Given a forum to do the same over some of my old jobs, I’d be hard-pressed not to do the same.

I am so freaking broken.

Onetimothyonefifteensixteen. This is my prayer, for myself and my bosses, past and present.

placeholder haiku

2008-08-06T23:28:00.001-05:00

Fun with Matt tonight
a new post, a new topic
in the manana

Parenthood pt. 3: Where Neil gets Existential (but actually 548)

2008-08-05T10:23:00.004-05:00

I often wonder about famous & historic people’s parents. I wonder what kind of relationships they had, the famous people and their parents. I know greatness is often born out of adversity, but surely some greatness is born out of security and positive environment. But I wonder about say, Billy Graham’s dad. (I’m sure there’s a book, multiple books, but I haven’t read them so humor me.) I wonder what Mr. Graham did to help shape Billy into the man he would become. And I wonder if that might be my role. What if my role isn’t to write the great American novel? What if I’m not the next Billy Graham? What if my job is to raise the next Billy Graham? I think of the carpenter Joseph. God tapped him to raise the Savior of the world. Did Joseph do things differently than he would have because he knew? Would I? Whether he did or not, it’s an awesome responsibility, to be the earthly role model for the Savior. I look at the genealogy of Jesus in first chapter of Matthew. There’s some names I recognize, but a whole lot that I don’t. Yet they had a role. Their role was to be an ancestor of Jesus, which is important. It could be argued that without them: no Jesus. Of course that’s ridiculous, but at the same time, it’s the way God chose to bring Jesus here, so it’s kind of a big deal. And I’m rambling.

I guess what I’m trying to say is this: would I be content sacrificing my dreams of significance if I knew that one (or all) of my children is a prodigy or world changer? A .44 caliber mind in a .22 caliber world? And since it’s impossible for me to know that on the front end (God didn’t send any angels concerning my children’s upbringing), am I still willing?

It comes down to two things: love & trust. Do I love my children more than I love myself? Do I love Jesus more than myself? Maybe I’m the biggest jerk in the world, but I have to be honest, so I have to think about the answers. If the answer is based on my actions, I could be in some serious trouble.

And trust. I see Jesus holding his hand out to Peter to get out of the boat. Except it’s not Peter, it’s me. And I’m out of the boat already, but I’m not in the ocean, I’m working at Starbuck’s for two years. Jesus holds out that hand and says:

“Do you trust me now? Even if nothing looks or feels right, even if you think your location and/or life situation sucks. Do you trust me now? What if you spend the rest of your life making coffee? Do you trust me now? What if you never Make It? What if you live and die in obscurity? Do. You. TRUST. Me now? (and now, in what I think of as my post-Starbucks life) What if you spend the rest of your life mowing your yard, raising your kids & making funny camp videos? Even now? Do you trust me?”

Anyway, this is the kind of stuff I think about when it comes to my kids and my dreams.

(Edit)

Missed a few days, but still feel pretty good about this whole attempt to write daily. I thought 500 words would be hard, but I'm obviously having trouble staying under it. I think it might be a new goal, to stay under it, because I don't want to waste your time.

New Mexican Haiku 3

2008-08-01T02:39:00.003-05:00

A successful trip

But I simply cannot wait

to get home to you.

New Mexican Haiku 2

2008-07-31T01:41:00.002-05:00

Ate at Bobcat Bite
Back at the Glorieta
Ready to come home.

New Mexico is my new favorite state. (but actually 84)

2008-07-30T02:21:00.006-05:00

New Mexican tidbits.

1. You have to pass through a government run checkpoint to enter the city of Los Alamos.

2. Locals call Truth or Consequences “The TRC.”

3. The name IS the draw for “The TRC.”

4. South N.M is lousy with giant killer black beetles.

5. Here’s the tarantula we found in White Sands.

6. There are U.S. border patrol stations sixty miles inside the Country.

Finally finished the script we’re shooting. Maybe I can write again. Like in the three hour car ride back to Glorieta tomorrow.

Desert Shoot Haiku (but actually 9)

2008-07-29T01:53:00.001-05:00

In New Mexico
Scrapped the original plan
Shooting Adventure

3: Later v. Absolutely (but actually 554)

2008-07-26T18:31:00.003-05:00

I read an article about this subject, being a good parent. Basically the guy said that when he was growing up his dad would drag in from work and collapse on the couch. Whenever he (the son) would ask his dad to play with him: throw a ball or anything, his dad would say “later.” The guy said now that he’s grown up he totally understands how his dad felt, but when he’s tired and on the couch and his son comes and asks him to play, he remembers, and he says “absolutely.”

I want to be that dad, and I try. “Tickle monster” is a favorite. Jacob and I play a mean Ratchet & Clank, and Lorelei and I color Disney princesses like pros. But I find myself saying “later” to way too much.

Shannon and I talk about them being teenagers a lot. We talk about the kind of parents we want to be. We don’t necessarily want to be the “cool” parents. We want to be the parents their kids can talk to, the parents that their kids want around; the parents their kids respect, not because they’re told to, but because we’ve earned it. And I think we’ll be those. I hope we will. I spend a lot of time thinking about the education I want to give my children—the stuff they won’t learn at school or church or with their friends. How to make awesome salsa. Music and movies. How to shoot & edit good video. What the word relationship really means. I can’t wait till their old enough to appreciate Aaron Sorkin.

But that’s just the thing. I can’t wait. It starts now. It started when they were born. If I want them to listen to me when they’re thirteen and eighteen and twenty-two, I have to listen to them now. I have to make them a priority. Even if it’s easier to park them in front of Noggin. Even if I don’t really have time to color because the script isn’t finished and I’m leaving town for a week and the yard has to be mowed.

I’m a dreamer and have big dreams. I have major goals I want to accomplish. And I look at people that have accomplished stuff like that and I wonder what kind of parents they are. I wonder if they have sacrificed their relationship with their children to Make It Big. Or are they Superhuman? Are they amazing artists or professionals AND top-notch parents? Do they sleep? Is that my problem? I sleep too much?

I like to think I’m superhuman. But maybe I’m just mediocrehuman. What if I don’t have the chops to be both? Can I live with that? I know I’m going to wound them in some way. Many ways. I’m too broken not to. It’s unavoidable. But I also know that one of my biggest dreams is to help them find their passions and cultivate those. Will I sacrifice my dreams to cultivate theirs? It comes down to my major character flaw as a dreamer. When I look at the romantic Big Picture I say “absolutely!” But in the day to day? In the moment by moment living out of that Big Picture? I say “later” way too much.

(Edit)

Not done yet. One more day, I think.

2: What a mess. (but actually 642)

2008-07-24T15:44:00.001-05:00

Of course as soon as I posted yesterday I started freaking out about what to write for today. I considered posting something previously written, but thought it was too soon to do that, since it’s only day two. You, The Reader, might not know, but I would, and I’d feel like a cop out. Piper (9 week-old daughter) cried out around 3:15 this morning and I lay awake for the next hour thinking about What To Write. And then I started thinking about my upcoming trip to New Mexico and what a butt it’s going to be to try to keep this up while I’m out there. The consequence of this was oversleeping.

Awesome.

But that’s the deal. It’s what I signed myself up for (“foolish!” he thinks now).

So what to talk about?

I had lunch with an old high school friend I hadn’t seen in years. Of course there was the slightly awkward “we used to be best buds but that was fifteen years ago and now we’re catching up and kind of feeling the situation out” vibe. But really, it was just great. He’s recently (four years or so) begun a deepening relationship with Christ and his passion and joy were etched on his face and in his words. It was beautiful. Even more beautiful is his desire to serve, to do whatever his Lord and his church need him to do and, as an extension of that, the impact it’s had on his family. How it is changing his wife and molding his children.

Later Shannon and I were talking about the blog and flossing and good habits and she said “it’s about discipline.” She pointed out that we have crappy discipline and we agreed that we have to be more disciplined in our own lives if we plan on doing anything other than scarring our children. But how does one go about being more disciplined? And THAT made me think about a conversation Ben Moon and I had a couple years back about the difference between commitment and discipline. (I’ll write about that tomorrow.)

Raising a kid is like drinking from a fire hydrant. Keep them clean, keep them fed, baseball, taekwondo, golf camp, swim lessons, zoo camp, soccer, school, after-school clubs, reading, homework, bike riding, computer: and that’s just one. We’ve got four. Shannon doesn’t recall the last time ALL the laundry was done. The dishwasher runs at least once a day, and only once leaves the sink full of dishes. Shannon’s friend’s son (he’s six) is already doing piano recitals. Piano?!? Crap! Our kids aren’t doing anything musical! We’ve got to have some sort of music education!

We don’t read enough with them. We don’t sit as a family for dinner enough. We don’t have a “Cohesive Parenting Strategy.” We talk about doing these things. A lot. But between laundry and cooking and dishes and baths and practices and a job that travels…

(Edit)

This is messy. I wanted this to be about the decision to be a good parent, an involved parent, about making “being a good parent” a higher priority, but all I’ve done thus far is show what a lousy parent I am. And I’m over my word limit.

This is me living, as P.J. says, naked & unashamed.

So I guess I’ve gone from not knowing what to write about to having too much. I’m going to put a cap on it here and pick back up tomorrow. For those of you who think it’s okay for me to go over my limit and that I should just keep going…that’s kind of the point of this whole exercise, and this blog in particular. Being a better parent is about being responsible. And being responsible is about setting limits. I’m already past my word and time limit today.

So tomorrow…

Day 1: 500 or less (but actualy 685)

2008-07-23T10:18:00.001-05:00

I’ve had a lifelong struggle as a writer. Creativity wages war on Perfectionism. Perfectionism turns around and forms a secret alliance with Laziness and they lay siege to Creativity, hoping to starve it into submission.

I love words, especially words spoken. I love crafting them. The well-crafted spoken word is the most triumphant and inspiring instrument man has. Words are what place us in the Imago Dei. Without the capacity for words (thought) we would be just another animal. I learned a while back that this is what I want to spend the rest of my life doing—crafting words: telling stories. And while I read a lot and love reading, it is the spoken word that stirs my soul, that incites my passion and drives me to action. So every word I write I hear in my head out loud. The Words I write, I write to hear them heard.

But every word comes hard. I believe there are two kinds of writers: writers for whom WORDS COME EASY (Stephen King, C.S. Lewis: the prolifically good, I call them), and writers for whom WORDS COME HARD (J.D. Salinger, Brennan Manning). I definitely fall in this second class of writer. Every word is a struggle, a battle to get on paper. Because I want it to be perfect. I want it to be inspiring and funny and brilliant. I want you to think it’s the best thing you’ve ever heard (or read, although I’d rather you hear it). I think it all comes back to my primary sin, pride. I want to be the best and, more importantly, I want you to know I’m the best. It cripples my daily thought, and my writing. But my pride is not the topic today, my writing (or lack thereof) is.

I’ve read, listened, asked questions, blah blah blah about how to get over this. And while my head knows the answers, he and my heart don’t see eye to eye and wrestle for control of my fingers, so that I stare at the blinking cursor. But what everyone says is that it’s a habit, something you have to build. My problem when it comes to good habits is that I can’t ever make it the twenty-one days. I get bored or distracted or it’s just not exciting enough for me to continue. (Postscript: Just read that last sentence Wow. How shallow am I?) But recently I’ve encountered writers in several places talking about the therapeutic and encouraging habit of blogging. They’ve all said it’s the thing that keeps them writing, that keeps the pump primed. My pump needs some desperate priming.

But I wasn’t ready to tackle trying to form a writing habit (see above writing struggles). So I performed an experiment on myself: Form a good habit. I needed something simple, something I could do in a minute or so each day, an accomplishable goal. I decided to floss. I’m the guy that NEVER flosses, except right before a dentist visit, because I feel guilty about not flossing. (Sidebar: this sounds eerily like my spiritual life, which is frightening. Something else for another day.) So in the interest of forming a good habit, I began flossing. And both to Shannon’s and my surprise, I’ve become a flosser. Woohoo! Good habit created.

So based on my flossing, I’ve decided to try another good habit: I’m going to see if I can blog every day. Stephen King says he writes five thousand words a day, and he won’t allow himself to leave his cpu until it’s done. Since he’s in the WORDS COME EASY class I support him in this habit whole-heartedly. My pride problem causes me to want to match him, which is the source of most of my failings. So I swallow said pride, and assign myself a far humbler goal. I’m thinking 500 words or less. And while I’ve already exceeded my limit for the day (YES! I’M AWESOME!!), I’m sure there will be many days when all we get is a sentence or a haiku.

So let’s see what happens, if I can form this good habit, if I can make the words flow a little easier. I’d appreciate your help.

Once more, with feeling.

2008-04-09T05:26:00.000-05:00

I call myself a writer.
But haven't written in months.

Let's see if this bike rides.