I Used to Be Smart.

Here’s the thing that I’ve discovered about writing (that’s a TERRIBLE first line, by the way). Writing is so valuable because it forces me to listen to myself.

I know that sounds crazy — we think that we listen to ourselves all the time in this constant monologue that plays in our heads (and often from our mouths). But the thing about writing is that it forces me to REALLY listen. It forces me to find words for the thoughts that I don’t think have words, and to describe the feelings that I think are beyond description. Writing forces me to display myself with a kind of honesty that I can’t otherwise display.

Conversation happens to quickly. I can’t always find the words that I need to say what I’m thinking, and by the time I can find the words, the moment has already passed. I do love talking, but it doesn’t allow me the honesty that writing allows.

Writing lets me be as slow as I would like, or as fast as my fingers can type or my pen can scratch (and I write both ways — fast and slow). Writing lets me wait on exactly the word I need rather than forcing me to settle for the sake of whatever word I can find for the sake of expediency.

But above all, the thing the writing does is to force me to tell the truth. Perhaps it’s just an odd character trait that I have, or perhaps I am the product of some books that I have read. Whatever the case may be, when I write, whether in public or in private, I refuse to write it if is not true. Something about writing things down transforms them from glib words to something more sacred, more important. And that transformation forces me to be honest with myself in ways that I would not otherwise be. My inner monologue is much too cluttered on its own accord. My brain is much too active (for better or for worse) for it to ever find the rest it needs to be honest on its own. Writing is the method I need to focus that restlessness into something quiet and intense enough that I can find an honesty. There is a clarity I find in writing that I cannot find elsewhere.

I don’t know what any of that means, or how to write a solid “conclusion” to something like this. So there you have it.

That’s the thing about writing.

If I write without being completely transparent, I always feel really guilty. I feel like you’re going to see through it anyway, and call me out on it. So I am being trasparent by telling you that this is completely contrived. It’s true. I can’t help it. I made a promise yesterday that I was going to stop pointing out the negative and start finding the positive, so I decided that I had better get to work on that. I’m also starting with an easy target, and one that it won’t embarrass me to gush about. This won’t be like admitting to some girl that I have a crush on her. This is more like writing a love letter to Natalie Portman than to a girl I actually know. At least I know Natalie Portman will never read it, and if she never reads it, she won’t laugh at me.

And now I’m sure that you’re ready for me to stop airing my nueroses and to get on with whatever contrived thing I’m planning, so I will oblige that request.

I picked an easy target (easy for me, at least). It’s both a familiar group, and a group that is doing a lot of things right. And, to be completely honest, it’s a group that I wish I could be brave enough to live like.

The Simple Way is a Philadelphia based community. One of their members, Shane Claiborne, recently wrote a book about the kind of life the folks at The Simple Way are trying to live. (And it’s a book that I recommend highly. He can tell you about what they’re doing well much better than I can.)

There are lots of things that are happening “the right way” at The Simple Way. First of all, they are committed to their faith. They are unapologetic about why they believe that life should be lived the way that they are living. Their faith and their committment to their faith is the thing that colors everything that they. There may be people (both Christian and non-Christian) who find their shared faith misguided, but that would not deter them. What they believe is foundational to who they are. It changes the way they see the world and the way that they react to the world.

For some people, that is scary. Some people’s faith has embittered them to the world. If (like me) you’ve grown up in a church setting, you probably know those people, and if you know those people, we’ve all probably enumerated their faults enough times for the next 50 years.

The Simple Way are not those people. Their religion gives them a deep love for the world, and a deep desire to see the world redeemed — not because they wish to be “right” or to “win,” because they wish to join with God in the deep love that they sense God has for the world.

For The Simple Way, this especially manifests itself in a community that orients itself toward the poor. For a reason that I’ve yet to figure out, such a strong orientation toward the poor is abhorrent to some Christians, and many people have been locked into many fruitless debates about whether helping the poor should be a priority or not. (And I freely admit that I am one of those people.) However, in this community, it’s not a question. It’s their identity. It’s who they are and what they do. And, most admirably, they do so unashamed, and without any (apparent) reservations.

That is not where their view of the world stops though. The Simple Way also realizes something important — to care about the people of the world means caring about the world in which those people are living. They care deeply about the physical world and ensuring that they are living in a way that is responsible. They find ways to live their lives in a fashion that helps to sustain the world rather than to continually deplete it. (Check out their gray water system for a concrete example of how they are choosing to live responsibly.)

I grew up in a red state. I have never spent a long period of time in any place that is not a red state. People like The Simple Way don’t get a warm reception in red states. Caring about the poor and the world (even if you’re a Christian) in a red state means one thing — hippies. It makes very little sense how such a “Christian” region can be so opposed to things that are so patently Christian. However, that is the case. Because of that, I have a great admiration for these Christians who are able to live out their convictions with such passion, and their inability to be dissuaded by the ignorant criticisms of others (unlike myself) is something that I find completely compelling and something that I wish I could imitate.

The trutht is that I could gush about The Simple Way for hours. However, I’m not writing a book about them, and because this post is contrived and because I am lazy, I feel the need to wrap all of this rambling up. So I will say this, a community living out its calling in the world, seeking to transform poverty and live in the world responsibly, and doing so unafraid of the criticisms that are inevitably levied against them is a community that is doing things the right way, and a community that needs to be emulated. They might not like of burden of being something that should be copied (or they may love it), but they truth is that these folks in Philadelphia are doing something right, and we would do well to integrate their lessons into our lives.

(There. That wasn’t so bad.)

I have made a decision.

(Revolutionary, I know.)

You see, I had this whole post in my head ready to go. It was going to be quite nice. I was going to tell you all about how American democracy is a farce, and that we would be better off understanding America as a plutorcacy — a society run by the rich.

I’m serious.

It was going to be insightful and scathing. I was going to wrap up with my sound conviction that the plutocracy that we have created is completely antithetical to democracy and utterly ridiculous in light of Christianity.

I do think that all of those things are true. I really do.

But I’m not going to write about them.

While thinking about the whole thing, I’ve been reading a bit of Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, is the name of the book. It’s not bad. It’s insightful and intelligent, even if it is a collection of things that I’ve heard before. (A review, however, is beside the point.)

In the book, Borg quotes a commonly quoted statistic — 95% of Americans claim that they believe. It’s such a grand and pervasive statistic that it probably doesn’t even have an effect on anyone anymore. But this time, unlike other times I’ve heard the number, I stopped for a second to think. And here’s what I realized.

(You shouldn’t be surprised that this revelation is about me. That’s par for the course that I’m completely internally focused.)

I expect too much from people. I think that’s why I’m constantly criticizing America and the American Church. I have my expectations set entirely too high. My argument goes like this.

95% of people in the country believe that God exists.

The vast majority of what happens in this country, on every possible level on which events can be classified is not at all the way that I think God would have people to handle those situations. (Again, first person singular pronoun.)

Therefore, that vast majority must not believe in God the way that I believe in God.

That’s not flawless reasoning, but it’ll do.

So here is what I’ve decided. I’ve been looking at things all wrong. I’ve been silly to think that America, or even the American Church should be doing things the “right” (as defined by me) way. That’s ludicrous. A great many of the misguided majority are the participants in these institutions. Of course they’re not doing it right. Of course they have a different version of what life should be all about. It’s stupid of me to expect them to do things the way that I think God would have people do things when it is obvious that they do not agree with me. That’s completely misguided. It would be like yelling at my dog because he cannot fly.

So, because of that, I’ve made another decision. I’m going to quit focusing on what everyone is doing wrong. I spend too much time ranting about what George Bush is doing wrong, and what the Religious Right is doing wrong, and what America is doing wrong, and what everyone else is doing wrong. It’s a completely negative approach, and, to be honest, it’s wrong. However, it’s easier. It’s much easier to point fingers at the things with which I disagree. It really doesn’t take any effort on my part. It’s the safe way out.

So, from now on, I’m going to focus on what people are doing right. My desire (whether I will act on this or not) is to seek out ways in which people are doing things the right way, and to write about those things. Rather than doing what’s easy and poking holes in the big target, I want to find the ways that good things are happening on small levels. That is more difficult.

So, powers that be, I know you were scared, but you’re safe from me for another day. That is, until I get bored and lazy again, and you know you’re an easy target.

(If I’m going to post a Sprinsteen post, it’s only fair that this follows it.)

I was reading Wendell Berry today (of course), and he was laying down some great thoughts about conservationsim and agrarianism, and how the two have to go hand in hand. He was talking all about how conservationists have to wise up and realize that how they eat has an effect on the land that they are trying to save, and that if they blindly submit to the American agricultural industrial complex, then they are actually hurting the land that they are trying to save. It’s quite a good argument, and Berry lays down a really stunning version of what the American economy could look like outside of the current agricultural-industrial paradigm. It’s obvious that it’s a better way of doing things — for everyone. In fact, most people who would read it would probably say, “Yeah. I want things to happen like that.”

I must admit that I am well trained. My first instinct when presented with any argument is to find the counter-argument that will be the strongest, and to see how the argument holds up against that counter-argument. While doing that in this case, one thing kept becoming increasingly clear to me.

The bottom line will always win.

As much as I wish for that not to be true, I cannot see it being any other way. I have no faith in the American people to consistently do things in a way that will cost them more, even if that means that they are adhering to some principle that they think is good. And that discourages me.

Sure, I can live an agrarian sort of life on my own, adhering to principles of good land use. However, if I don’t think that large-scale changes can come from that, I get frustrated. Sometimes I am tempted to throw my hands in the air and think that it isn’t worth trying. I’m sure that’s a flaw in my personality.

I don’t know. Does it matter? Is it a problem if the changes that need to happen in the world never happen on a large scale? Help me out here.

I feel that I need to apologize for another Springsteen inspired post, but I just can’t help it. There’s always something from a Springsteen song to write about.

Today, it’s from The Rising. Springsteen wrote and released this album shortly after September 11, 2001, and that event’s influence on the album is obvious.

One of the songs is called “My City of Ruins,” and there’s a phrase near the end of the song.

“With these hands I pray…”

I’ve been thinking about that all day. My guess is that Springsteen is going for imagery — the imagery of hands clasped together in fervernt prayer. However, I started to wonder if there wasn’t something more.

So here goes.

Do we pray with our hands? There are several other ways that we can ask the question. Can we pray with our hands? Should we pray with our hands?

I like the first one the best.

Do we pray with our hands?

For the vast majority of us, we make an unquestioned assumption about prayer. Prayer, we believe, is a thing we do with our minds. Perhaps, we think, there is some physical correspondance to the mental activity. However, we are mostly sure of one thing. Prayer occurs within the realm of the mind. That is the only way we know how to pray, because it is the only way that we have ever thought to pray. Prayer, we believe, is not much more than us yammering endlessly to God. Most of the time that yammering involves big words and complex setences that we would never think to utter in casual conversation. That is, we have come to believe, prayer.

(So as not to be seen as unfair, there are many mature Christians who have realized that listening in prayer is just as important as talking in prayer, and they seek to incorporate the disciplines of listening into their prayer. I am aware of that, and I think that it is a very good thing.)

Has the mind/body dichotomy that we have falsely created mean that we lose an important dimension of prayer? Is there a significant level of our interaction with God that should come through the things that we’re doing with our bodies?

Shouldn’t our work be an extension of our prayer?

I think it should be. The problem is, it just gets all messy trying to decide what tha t looks like. And it makes me think that I have to quit my job (again) and go live in the woods.

That’s all. I have no answer. I just sit and wonder.

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?
–High Fidelity

there is something aboug coming home to this same bed. the tangle of sheets is the slam of iron bars; the pillow the cold of the damp cell wall. and all of the things that i know will be just the same when i wake up start to press in so tight on me that i feel like my chest can’t rise to catch a breath.

so i try all i know to make a jailbreak. my misguided consumption becomes a rope of dirty linens, but it’s never long enough to reach the ground. and i use all my words to chisel at the stone behind the poster of pinup beauty, but each pocketful of dirt reminds me that i am no andy dufresne.

and the walls are always too high to climb. and the dogs are always too close to my trail. and no matter how i flail and pound at the bards, they never give.

so i start to believe that these sheets are my only option, and i convince myself that this pillow is my only home. and i lie enough that i believe this mattress is my comfort.

because they do not change.
they grant me no clemency.

Most people are now fed, clothed, and sheltered from sources, in nature and in the work of other people, toward which they feel no gratitude and exercise no responsibility.
–Wendell Berry

(You shouldn’t be surprised. You should know that I’ve gone entirely too long without something inspired by Wendell Berry. Don’t pretend you’re shocked.)

Gratitude is something that we have lost, especially in economic contexts. We have no idea what it means to be grateful. That is a sad commentary on the people that we have become.

Every day I served at Rafferty’s, I got the lack of gratitude first hand. I encountered more people with an attitude of entitlement than I did gratitude.

I think it could change our lives if we live with the gratitude (and responsibility) that Berry talks about. If we’re grateful to the person who takes our order at the drive-through (even if they struggle), if we’re grateful to the gas station attendant, to the person who checks us out at the grocery store — won’t that completely change the way that we live our lives every day?

I think so.

Someone help me out.

The FBI is investigating the Thomas Merton center?

Wow.

Why are we still NOT outraged?

I usually don’t do the sports thing on here. I try to keep that to myself.

However, I’m going to do it today.

Like most of America, I am convinced that Barry Bonds took steroids, and lots of them. I am convinced that performance enhancing drugs are responsible for the record breaking numbers that he has established over the past few years. Short of God himself informing me that this is not true, I cannot be convinced otherwise.

Like most of America, I am convinced that Barry Bonds is not a nice man. Furthermore, he’s not a nice man who happens to be black. He’s not exactly in much of a position to be liked by most of America, or by a lot of them media that has covered him. That unfavorable position has, in turn, embittered Barry toward the folks that already do not like him. It’s a vicious cycle that is good for no one.

So, from the start, Barry Bonds can’t win. That’s understandable. I don’t like Barry. I don’t want to defend Barry. In all honesty, I want Barry’s numbers to be taken off the books (along with some other players’), and for baseball to start all over, valuing integrity above profits. (But who has ever chosen principles above money? Really?)

But all of that is secondary. I really want to ask this question: (and I think the way I structured this proves that I’ll never be a sportswriter)

Does Barry Bonds have a point?

The newest controversey about Bonds is a conversation with Ken Griffey Jr. that is being quote in a new book. The conversation details his frustrations about the McGwire/Sosa homerun race, and his acknowledgement that he and Griffey are, in all honest, far superior players. However, they are being overshadowed because they cannot put up the same power numbers (though they have superior numbers in other less glamarous categories). For Bonds, that is too much handle, and he is willing to level the playing field by using the same means as those who are getting the great power numbers — all in an effort to make sure that his legacy isn’t overshadowed by a single, sexy stat-column.

Does Barry have a point? Is Bonds really to blame here, or is the man just a product of what baseball let happen?

I have a hard time blaming Bonds. I think what Barry did is wrong. I think baseball needs to act on what Barry did (as well as McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro, Giambi, etc.), but I do not think that the world can blame Barry for his choices.

Instead, the corporation that is Major League Baseball deserves the scathing indictments that have been reserved for Bonds. The company that has created the environment that backs its players into corners by means of negligent ways of securing power, influence, and money is more to blame than the aging superstar who cracks under the pressure to leave an indellible mark on the game.

Baseball owes Barry Bonds an apology. They owe Barry an apology for not only creating an environment were steroids were an available option, but for creating an environment where Bonds (and other players) felt forced to turn to performance enhancing drugs simply to keep up with what was becoming the status-quo.

Barry did a lot of things wrong, and Barry keeps doing a lot of things wrong, but I’m not sure if our fingers needed to be pointed at the superstar as much as they need to be pointed toward the thing that intiated his fall.

Thank you, Major League Baseball, for nothing.

Madrid is full of boys named Paco.

(I stole that from Hemingway. It has nothing to do with anything that I’m going to say, I just think that it’s a great opening line for a story. Too bad that I’m not even going to tell a story. I am, sadly, no Hemingway.)

I’ve been struggling with something recently, trying to make a decision, and I can’t get anywhere. I can’t get anywhere at all. It’s like I’ve got this puzzle in front of me, with all these pieces that have to in the right places. None of those pieces make sense. It’s like I’m staring at the cardboard backs of all the pieces, and I can’t make any matches, because I don’t even have the little bits of the picture to go on. So I just keep fumbling around, guessing, hoping that the two random pieces I’m trying fit together.

And all the time I’ve been struggling with this puzzle, life has been moving on. I’ve given up a full scholarship to a really good seminary. I’ve moved back home and spent over a year in my parents’ house. I’ve spent a year at a server in an environment that couldn’t have been more opposite from my personality. I’ve met all sorts of new people, made all sorts of new stories. I’ve lost 100 pounds. I’m starting a job selling cell phones.

And I’ve come no closer to solving the puzzle than the day I started it. I’m still just trying to shove random pieces together, hoping that a few of them fit, hoping I can outlay the boundaries of the puzzle, than I can at least survey the territory and figure out the scope of what I’m working on, but no such thing happens.

So that’s the waiting. It’s the same waiting that I’ve been doing for over a year now, and it persists. It always persists. And I don’t mean to keep being this vague. I can only come up with so many silly metaphors that are completely vapid.

I’m trying to figure out “what I’m supposed to be when I grow up.” Because I know that none of this is it. I know it’s not a server, or a cell phone salesman (I mean, “Communications Consultant). Those are just stopgaps. They keep the debts paid off while I wait. And the waiting, to be honest, has been frustrating.

The thing about waiting is that I have to give up all control. When we decide to wait on something, we can do things to fill the time, but, in the end, we have no control. We are at the mercy of someone/something else. We become contingent.

That is hard. It is hard to make other people understand the waiting. It is hard to not make other people the standard by which we judge ourselves. It is hard not to make other people the means by which we validate ourselves. It is incredibly hard. It is hard to just be still, and to just wait. It is hard to feel like you’re stuck in one place, and it is hard when you cannot see an end to that place where you’re stuck.

What’s a guy to do?

I’ve been wrestling with the future lately. (And, in turn, I think that means I’m wrestling with God.) And I feel like I keep losing. But I’m scrappy. I get pinned to the mat on something like a daily basis, but I keep jumping back up and asking for more. And I keep getting nowhere. I try everything. I just on the future’s back and try to ride it to the ground, but it’s too big. It just plows along, driving with it’s strong legs, oblivious to my percieved encumbrance. I try to take out its legs, but will have none of that. It is too agile, too mobile for any of my tactics to work. I try to wear it down, but I always tire long before its supply of energy has even begn to be wasted. And sometimes, I just sit cross-legged on the floor, staring at this mammoth of a thing, frustrated at all my defeats.

This is the second time I’ve begun to write the same thing, and both times, it has taken places that were completely unexpected. When I expect a resolution to the issue that has caused these posts (and I haven’t actually reavealed what that really is yet, for the record), I end up exploring something completely different.

I’ve been trying to decide whether or not I should go back to seminary. That is the issue. And the last two times I’ve sat down to explore that issue, I’ve gone in the completely different direction of exploring what it means to wait. That’s interesting. So I’m going to keep it that way. I’m not going to tackle that question yet. I’m going to wait a little while.

And do you think that Madrid is still full of boys named Paco?

I’m sorry for this. I really, really am. I know you don’t care. But I have to do it anyway. I can’t help it.

Here’s the truth of the matter. I can’t listen to Bruce Springsteen enough. I can’t do it. How in the WORLD is this got not in every list of top 5 American songwriters ever made? How in the world is this guy not regarded as one of the greatest artists that 20th centry America has ever produced? I just can’t get past it. I can’t get past his storytelling ability. I can’t get past the characters about which he chooses to tell stories.

I can’t figure out why Christians haven’t seen his uncanny ability to tell the stories about “the least of these.”

And none of that touches on the fact that the man is incredibly aware of what rock ‘n’ roll is.

Maybe I’m just a broken record — but seriously — this guy gets it, and I can’t get enough.

The next time the Kentucky General Assembly convenes, I believe that there is some important business that they should discuss. I think that they should call it “The Bobbitt Bill.” It sounds pretentious, I know. But the truth is, I need help. You see, the contents of the Bobbitt Bill would be simple. I would be forever banned from listening to Jimmy Buffett.

It sounds completely asinine, I know. But I assure you that it is not. See, Buffett has this uncanny ability to make me realize how boring I am. And I am definitely boring. When I listen to Jimmy Buffett, that becomes too clear. It becomes SO clear that the task of not being boring starts to loom so large that escaping boredom becomes something too big to even attempt. Jimmy shackles me to my boringness.

It’s not his fault, really. It’s mine. We can’t hold Jimmy accountable for the fact that I’m boring. So I must be held accountable. Either I find a way to NOT be boring anymore, or I give up Buffett altogether. With spring just around the corner, the prospect of not playing Buffett songs with the windows down is a sad, sad thing.

If this gets much worse, I will be forced to lobby for a rider that also bans me from reading Hemingway, but I hope it doesn’t have to come to that.

—

I got a school boy heart, a novelist eye
Stout sailor’s legs and a license to fly
I came with nomad feet and some wandering toes
That walk up my longboard and hang off the nose

I suppose
The need to focus never arose
So something like a swiss army knife
That’s my life
Frankenstein had nothing on this body of mine
The villagers still flockin’ to see, to see me
Breaking free, breaking free

Cause I got a school boy heart, a novelist eye
Stout sailor’s legs and a license to fly
I got a bartender’s ear and beachcomber’s style
Piratical nerve and a Vaudevillian style

I suspect I died in some cosmic shipwreck
With all hands spread all over the deck
What the heck
Then some kind of obscene and unscrupulous mind
Began to pick up what he could find
Added ice, shook me twice, rolled the dice

Now I got a school boy heart, a novelist eye
A sailor’s legs and a license to fly
I got a native tongue from way down south
It sits in the cheek of my gulf coastal mouth

I got a school boy heart, a novelist eye
Stout sailor’s legs and a license to fly
I came with nomad feet and some wandering toes
That glide up my longboard and hang off the nose
–Jimmy Buffett, “School Boy Heart”

Nick slipped off his pack and lay down in the shade. He lay on his back and looked up into the pine trees. His neck and back and the small of his back rested as he stretched. The earth felt good against his back. He looked up at the sky, though the branches, and then shut his eyes. He opened them and looked up again. There was a wind high up in the branches. He shut his eyes again and went to sleep.
–Ernest Hemingway, “Big Two-Hearted River.”

(I apologize in advance if this is incoherent rambling. It’s one of those things that I just have to write “using the best words I know how.”)

Here I am, over a year removed from a decision to give up a free seminary education and to reinterpret God’s calling in my life. Here I am, still at home, in my parents’ house. Here I am. I’m free of almost 100 lbs. of excess baggage. I’m a few days away from having been a server for a year, and almost exactly the time it becomes a year, I will no longer be a server. I am different, I know this for sure. I have discovered things about me that I did not know existed. I am beginning to find a confidence that I did not know I could ever have. I am beginning to learn what it means to live life with character — to be the man that I need to be.

There are parts of me that are reawakening — parts that I thought were long dead. I see it in the strangest places. It’s in my iPod playlist. It’s in the things that are easier to talk about now. It’s in the desires that I have and the desires that I don’t have.

It’s been a big year. A lot has changed, and a lot is still changing. I know that I’m getting somewhere. It’s slow going, that much is for sure.

But there is still the waiting. There is still the feeling that this all just temporary, and that I am waiting for my real life to come along any day. (Thank you, Colin Haye.) And the waiting is difficult because I feel that I am getting nowhere. I keep straining to look off in the distance to see if I can see that slow train (Thank you, Bob Dylan), but I never can. And I strain my eyes toward the horizon so hard that I begin to see things that aren’t really there. It’s just my mind telling my eyes what it wants them to see, so I prepare for the arrival of something that is not coming, and the anticipation of something that was never real always ends in a new frustration.

So I keep trying to fill the waiting with things to make it feel like it is over. I keep finding new noise to drive away the silence, because I’m afraid of what I might find if I just remain there.

The truth is, the waiting makes me feel like a failure. It chips away at my self esteem. I feel guilty for waiting. I feel guilty for not having it figured out, and for not being on my way. I wish nothing more than for it to come easy. I wish I could be like everyone else, and be well on my way to a career and my American Dream. But I can’t. It just hasn’t come that easily for me. And the thing about the waiting is that I have to be true to it. If I declare the waiting over before it’s time, then none of the waiting has been worth the time. So I will just keep waiting to find whatever it is I am looking for.

—-

(And here are some song lyrics that will make this all seem incredibly melodramatic. But I’m okay with that.)

It’s enough to drive a man crazy; it’ll break a man’s faith
It’s enough to make him wonder if he’s ever been sane
When he’s bleating for comfort from Thy staff and Thy rod
And the heaven’s only answer is the silence of God

It’ll shake a man’s timbers when he loses his heart
When he has to remember what broke him apart
This yoke may be easy, but this burden is not
When the crying fields are frozen by the silence of God

And if a man has got to listen to the voices of the mob
Who are reeling in the throes of all the happiness they’ve got
When they tell you all their troubles have been nailed up to that cross
Then what about the times when even followers get lost?
‘Cause we all get lost sometimes…

There’s a statue of Jesus on a monastery knoll
In the hills of Kentucky, all quiet and cold
And He’s kneeling in the garden, as silent as a Stone
All His friends are sleeping and He’s weeping all alone

And the man of all sorrows, he never forgot
What sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought
So when the questions dissolve into the silence of God
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
In the holy, lonesome echo of the silence of God
–Andrew Peterson, “The Silence of God.”

So maybe it’s just too late (and because it’s so late, I don’t have much to say). But I listened to an old Caedmon’s song tonight, and I’ve been thinking. I don’t know if that’s good or not, but I’ve been thinking. It’s called “Where I Began.” Maybe I’ll share what I was thinking when I’m not so tired. It’s kind of a big deal, rest assured.

The grass looked greener on the other side
So I tried to, snatch myself from your hand
Caught a boat to anywhere but Nineveh
And, well, you know, I got spit back on dry land.

Give me purity and give me continence
But oh no, not yet
Like a coin hiding in the corner
Trying not to be swept
I was trying not to be swept.

Kicking against these goads
Sure did cut up my feet
And didn’t your hands get bloody
As you washed them clean.

Here I am again, back where I began
Try as I may I can’t get away from you
And all these roads that lead me to roam,
Bring me back home.
Here I am again, back where I began.

So you have yourself your ninety nine
Isn’t that enough for you
Still you followed me to the shadowed valley
Carried me on your shoulders too.

I’ve done the work of Sisyphus
Thinking that I could get over this hill
But the one thing I can’t get over now…(is the)
Is the force of your will.

I know that you can’t stand the wait much longer. I know that you’ve been checking back compulsively these last 24 hours, just praying that I would have told you my grand idea so that your life can be forever changed.

Okay. So I know better.

However, before I start the rambling that I know this will be, two things:

Read the previous entry if you haven’t yet, just so it makes sense where this one is coming from. (Context is key.)

Check out this site, especially the rotating statistics beside the pictures of cute children from all races.

I will first make a confession, since some of you are — no doubt — on to me by now. This is not an original idea. This is nothing I came up with my own. I am stealing, and I cannot help it. (Where is the line between thievery and inspiration anyway? I am never sure.) I have only begun to think of this idea after reading To Own a Dragon. So, please, don’t think that I’m anything too special. I’m just a product of my influences.

My idea is probably clear by now. (I’m sorry that I’m going to give it up in one triumphant moment of epiphany. I would write horrible movie scrpits.) There are lots of boys “out there” who are lacking fathers. They are lacking a strong, male influence in their life. They have no man around that can validate them, show them that they are fit for the world for men, and show them what it means to the kind of man God would have us to be in the world. That presence is lacking from their lives.

So, to be direct, my idea is that we do something about it.

There is no way to replace a father. That much is true. However, having a steady, male influence in a boy’s life could change a lot of things. If we could validate those young men AS men, if we could help them with the process of showing them how it is to live in the world as a man, that could make all the difference in the world.

It all sounds very “live in the woods and kill bears with our hands,” I know. But that’s not how it’s intended at all. To be a man, and to be a Godly man lies in things that go much, much deeper than that.

How the whole thing works out is not yet clear. Here’s what I’ve thought so far:

I’m starting a new job, one that is only 20 hours a week and still pays pretty well. That would leave me a lot of time for something like this. I could pay the bills AND invest a significant portion of time to something that would make a real difference.

There are resources available to tap into. We know people.

This has been an issue that has shaped me. It’s not something passing that I think about when I’m bored. These sorts of issues have been a big deal in my life, so the desire comes from something real.

So that’s what I’ve been kicking around in my head. I like the idea. I like it a lot. It doesn’t entail lots of travel to exciting foreign locales (or even exciting domestic locales). It probably won’t solve the crises of world hunger and violence. But it could at least be away to be doing something to help tilt the scales. It may not do everything, but it’s at least doing something.

I hesitated in even posting this. I know how many times I’ve had ideas, and how many times those ideas have come to absolutely no fruition. I don’t even want to articulate this idea without solid intentions of making it a reality. I don’t want another failure to act documented for the world to see.

So what do you think?

I have an idea.

(And we all know how those go, so either turn back now, or stick it out until the end.)

You see, for a long time now, I’ve had this feeling. I can’t say where the feeling comes from. It’s way down deep in my stomach somewhere (so that probably just means I’m hungry), and it finds its way to the surface at the strangest of times. It’s the feeling that there must be something else to my life. It’s the feeling that I know that I must be doing more. I think that feeling manifests itself in all sorts of ways. It makes me feel the desire to be somewhere else. It makes me feel the desire to feel certain feelings. It leads me to write these blog entries that are entirely too honest (see: below) and completely unintelligble.

Usually, those feelings don’t get me anywhere. They just leave me frustrated. I can’t pair the emotions with intellect in a way that makes any sort of resolution possible. I just dream in a distant sort of way and wait for it all to pass. “Making a difference” and “changing the world” is just too much for me to handle. I get bogged down in the problem of scale. There is too much to change. I have too few resources. I have too little knowledge.

As a recovering fat person (I have decided that it’s like alcoholism. Nobody ever actually recovers, we will all always just be recovering. We should really start a club or something.), I feel qualified to make this analogy. It feels like I ordered a cheeseburger that is entirely too big to eat. And I REALLY want this cheeseburger, because, damn, it looks amazing. But the bun is too high, and there’s too much meat on the thing, and the lettuce and tomato and the onion are all stacked up too high. It looks incredible. The cheese is starting to melt and drip down over the side, but I can’t figure out how to fit my mouth around it. I can mash it all down, but that doesn’t help. It just sends everything spilling out the sides and makes the whole thing uglier. I’m at a loss. I turn the thing around, looking for an angle of attack, but it’s hopeless. The cheeseburger is just too big.

Sometimes, that’s honestly how I feel when I get this thing in the pit of my stomach. I’m just turning the cheeseburger around, and mashing it down, but no matter what I do, I can’t find a way to fit it in my mouth. And even if I do figure that out, there’s a good chance that I’ll never be able to finish the whole thing.

I am smart enough to know that I will never be able to attack the problem as a whole, and that in order to come to any resolution, that I must find a way to cut my problem into something smaller, something more managable.

I think maybe I’ve had an idea. It’s definitely still nascent. There will be work to do, people to convince.

This is a cliffhanger. You don’t get to hear the idea yet.

I’ll just leave you with this quote from Lost in Translation (and don’t take it too literally).

“Can you keep a secret? I’m trying to organize a prison break. We have to first get out of this bar, then the hotel, then the city, and then the country. Are you in or you out?”