It probably says something unbecoming about me that when Liz went to New Orleans for the weekend, my first impulse was to check the Saturday night tv listings.
TV, after all, is safe. If I invite someone out to do something, I risk rejection. Or not having a good time. With tv, I know exactly what I'm going to get. Even if I will be unchanged for the experience, at least I know what lies in store.
But there's probably a reason why no one ever wrote a book about a guy who watched tv all the time.
Donald Miller may be the author from whom I draw the most inspiration. As I said in my initial post, the existence of this blog flowed directly from a passage from a Miller book:
"The ambitions we have will become the stories we live. If you want to know what a person's story is about, just ask them what they want. If we don't want anything, we are living boring stories, and if we want a Roomba vaccum cleaner, we are living stupid stories."
As a guy who used to own a Roomba, I can testify that Donald Miller is right. Our lives seem boring because we venture too little.
Last night, after three days of watching an avalanche of sports on tv, I finally ventured outside. When I did, I noticed an unbelievable night sky featuring a crescent moon accompanied by Jupiter to its left and Venus shining almost brightly enough above the moon to be its twin.
I couldn't help but think that, just as the night sky 2,000 years ago signified more than a rare celestial event to the magi in Babylon, this once-in-a-lifetime alignment was a message that the same God in charge of it all then still reigns today. As my brother starts six months of chemotherapy tomorrow, it was a message gladly received.
But I would have never noticed it had I not turned off the television and ventured outside.
Today, I took a day off from work.
I spent the morning, predictably, watching tv.
It wasn't a total loss. One of my favorite episodes of my favorite sitcom was on, and I do actually draw inspiration from it. It was followed by some breaking news about which I did actually care.
But after that, at about 11:30, I faced a choice: open a beer and listen to talking heads analyze a bunch of stuff I'd already heard, or go out and do something.
After more than a little hesitation, I did the latter.
After lunch at one of my favorite places, I went to the park and sat in sunny 78 degree weather, beside a lake complete with fountains, landscaped islands and geese hoping to find leftover tablescraps. As I soaked in the warm sun and pondered the world around me, and I thought of all I had encountered since I first fell in love with Centennial Park 13 years ago.
I thought of the all the prayers I had prayed from this same spot over the years.
Thirteen years ago, I prayed for a job. Today, I realize that I've never spent a significant amount of time without one.
Twelve years ago when I was struggling with being surrounded by people smarter than me and living outside of Alabama for the first time, I prayed to figure out who I was, and to find a place where I fit in.
Eleven years ago I prayed here for a girlfriend. A few months later, I found the love of my life.
When my sister came to visit 11 years ago, I sat here with her and silently prayed that she'd find love, and along with it the child she'd always wanted. When she happened to be in town with her daughter five years later, I took them here and prayed that God would bless my newborn niece's life.
When I moved back to Nashville five years ago, I prayed here that I'd finally find a home where I felt comfortable enough to settle down. Five years later, I'm still here.
As I contemplated all these things while praying for my brother and his family from the same spot that I'd prayed for most everything else that's important to me in my life, I was overcome by the sense that I really should come here more often.
And I will, if only I can force myself to turn off the tv.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
It's A Beautiful Day
The heart is a bloom
Shoots up through the stony ground
But there's no room
No space to rent in this town
You're out of luck
And the reason that you had to care
The traffic is stuck
And you're not moving anywhere...
It's a beautiful day
Sky falls, you feel like
It's a beautiful day
Don't let it get away
...
See the world in green and blue
See China right in front of you
See the canyons broken by cloud
See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out
See the Bedouin fires at night
See the oil fields at first light
And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colors came out
It's a beautiful day
Few things happen in life to which a U2 song doesn't speak. I've talked about this before. But notwithstanding these fine lyrics from the my favorite band, the last few weeks just haven't felt very beautiful to me.
As you know by now, my brother was diagnosed with cancer a few weeks ago. After we recovered from the initial diagnosis, we found out that the outlook going forward might be a bumpier ride than we had hoped. It isn't the worst case scenario, but it's also not the best.
And it's going to be a long ride.
Meanwhile, my wife and I moved to Nashville from St. Louis five years ago and the market hasn't recovered well enough so that we can sell our former house there. We just found out that our renters there, who we thought might ultimately buy it from us, won't even be renewing their lease and actually want to end it early.
The company where my wife works is suddenly looking unstable, after she just had to switch jobs a few months ago for the same reason.
After a solid six months of non-stop car problems the second half of 2011, a check engine light inexplicably appeared on our new one, which we had just had inspected by our mechanic without incident.
All of these things happened recently, but three of the four came on the exact same day: March 15.
Suffice to say my family and I may have had the second worst Ides of March in recorded history.
Literary references aside, one other part of that day sticks out. When I went for a morning walk with my brother on the morning of the 15th, he told me something I'll remember for the rest of my life.
He never used to notice the birds chirping in the morning, he said. Since his diagnosis, he does. It's something simple he used to take for granted. But if cancer has granted him nothing else, it's to enjoy the beauty of life around him that he once overlooked.
Funny, but until he said something about those birds, I didn't notice them either. It was a beautiful day, and I was letting it get away.
His story made me think not only of one of my favorite U2 songs, but also of the things in life I've taken for granted lately.
No one forces any of you to read this space, but you're here, allowing me in ever-increasing numbers to live out my dream and be my sounding board during times like this. I have no constitutional entitlment to living in a city I love and making a decent living in it, but here I am.
Not everyone is so lucky. Five years ago, when I was stuck working 70 hours a week for demanding bosses in a job and city I hated, I would have given almost anything to face a stressful work day in the job and town I currently enjoy.
But it's easy to lose perspective of things like that.
Today, the birds sing. The sun shines. It sets and returns tomorrow. And more often than not, I don't even notice.
A chirping bird might not seem like much when life is falling down around you. But its symptomatic of a greater truth. Despite its imperfection, the world is filled with beauty, if only we will look for it.
Someone around you loves you, warts and all. Someone else around you loves you more than you know, but doesn't know how to say so.
There is some bigger purpose that you care about more than yourself. Through struggles beyond what seems fair, love overcomes, because God created no force more powerful.
These are the things that matter.
When life feels like more than you or I can handle, there is someone who will listen, who has been through something like it before.
At some point, someone did you a favor for no expectation of a return, just because it was the right thing to do. Someone else forgave you for something stupid you did, and that mistake you learned from made you better for the experience.
And even on a day when we feel like life's garbage dump, someone around us celebrates something wonderful in their own seperate world. And some day, we will too.
Our problems are just a drop in the bucket of life. It's tapestry is greater and more beautiful than our temporary circumstance.
What we don't have, we don't need it now. What we don't know, we can feel it somehow.
It's a beautiful day.
Don't let it get away.
Shoots up through the stony ground
But there's no room
No space to rent in this town
You're out of luck
And the reason that you had to care
The traffic is stuck
And you're not moving anywhere...
It's a beautiful day
Sky falls, you feel like
It's a beautiful day
Don't let it get away
...
See the world in green and blue
See China right in front of you
See the canyons broken by cloud
See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out
See the Bedouin fires at night
See the oil fields at first light
And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colors came out
It's a beautiful day
Few things happen in life to which a U2 song doesn't speak. I've talked about this before. But notwithstanding these fine lyrics from the my favorite band, the last few weeks just haven't felt very beautiful to me.
As you know by now, my brother was diagnosed with cancer a few weeks ago. After we recovered from the initial diagnosis, we found out that the outlook going forward might be a bumpier ride than we had hoped. It isn't the worst case scenario, but it's also not the best.
And it's going to be a long ride.
Meanwhile, my wife and I moved to Nashville from St. Louis five years ago and the market hasn't recovered well enough so that we can sell our former house there. We just found out that our renters there, who we thought might ultimately buy it from us, won't even be renewing their lease and actually want to end it early.
The company where my wife works is suddenly looking unstable, after she just had to switch jobs a few months ago for the same reason.
After a solid six months of non-stop car problems the second half of 2011, a check engine light inexplicably appeared on our new one, which we had just had inspected by our mechanic without incident.
All of these things happened recently, but three of the four came on the exact same day: March 15.
Suffice to say my family and I may have had the second worst Ides of March in recorded history.
Literary references aside, one other part of that day sticks out. When I went for a morning walk with my brother on the morning of the 15th, he told me something I'll remember for the rest of my life.
He never used to notice the birds chirping in the morning, he said. Since his diagnosis, he does. It's something simple he used to take for granted. But if cancer has granted him nothing else, it's to enjoy the beauty of life around him that he once overlooked.
Funny, but until he said something about those birds, I didn't notice them either. It was a beautiful day, and I was letting it get away.
His story made me think not only of one of my favorite U2 songs, but also of the things in life I've taken for granted lately.
No one forces any of you to read this space, but you're here, allowing me in ever-increasing numbers to live out my dream and be my sounding board during times like this. I have no constitutional entitlment to living in a city I love and making a decent living in it, but here I am.
Not everyone is so lucky. Five years ago, when I was stuck working 70 hours a week for demanding bosses in a job and city I hated, I would have given almost anything to face a stressful work day in the job and town I currently enjoy.
But it's easy to lose perspective of things like that.
Today, the birds sing. The sun shines. It sets and returns tomorrow. And more often than not, I don't even notice.
A chirping bird might not seem like much when life is falling down around you. But its symptomatic of a greater truth. Despite its imperfection, the world is filled with beauty, if only we will look for it.
Someone around you loves you, warts and all. Someone else around you loves you more than you know, but doesn't know how to say so.
There is some bigger purpose that you care about more than yourself. Through struggles beyond what seems fair, love overcomes, because God created no force more powerful.
These are the things that matter.
When life feels like more than you or I can handle, there is someone who will listen, who has been through something like it before.
At some point, someone did you a favor for no expectation of a return, just because it was the right thing to do. Someone else forgave you for something stupid you did, and that mistake you learned from made you better for the experience.
And even on a day when we feel like life's garbage dump, someone around us celebrates something wonderful in their own seperate world. And some day, we will too.
Our problems are just a drop in the bucket of life. It's tapestry is greater and more beautiful than our temporary circumstance.
What we don't have, we don't need it now. What we don't know, we can feel it somehow.
It's a beautiful day.
Don't let it get away.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
A Parable of Two Brothers
There once was a man named Ash.
Ash spent all his days running uphill. He never understood why. It just seemed like what he had to do. Every morning, he woke up and began a new arduous trek.
Whenever he stopped, he felt unexplained forces poking him from behind, forcing him to keep running. But the path never evened out. Some days were a steeper incline than others, but the path was always uphill.
Ash was sad. He looked around and saw that other people he knew walked level ground, while life forced him constantly to run uphill, and always against the wind. Meanwhile, others seemed to be running downhill, or even laying in the sun.
It didn't seem fair. Nothing came easy to Ash.
For whatever reason, life just came harder for Ash than for everyone else he knew. He seldom got excited about much of anything other than seeing his friends, but he wasn't equipped with the right wiring to make that many friends, or to organize get-togethers with them once he had.
The only time Ash could stop running was when he had covered enough distance to stop and write something, or to fall into a meeting with one of his friends. Ash enjoyed those moments, but they didn't come often. And even if they did, pretty soon, he'd get poked by those forces behind him and have to start running again.
The doctors had a complex term for why life felt like a constant uphill climb to Ash, but to him, it was just unfair.
His older brothers and sisters never have to run uphill, nor did his friends. His siblings had been the most popular kids at their schools, while he had to spend his summers reading self-help books just to be vaguely normal. He did well in school, but once he got into the workforce, the act of actually accomplishing anything always seemed a Herculian effort.
Like running up a hill.
One day, when Ash was running up one of those hill, he was surprised to look over and see his brother Sal, who had seemingly never had an uphill climb for which he didn't volunteer, reluctantly pushing a boulder up a mountain.
"That isn't fair," said Ash. "Why must you push a boulder up a mountain when so many people around us don't even have to walk uphill?"
"I don't know," Sal said. "But my master told me I must do it. And I will be stronger for the experience when I finish."
"But why have you been given this task?" asked Ash. "It seems so much harder than what others around us have to do. And what good does strength do at all unless your master arbitrarily assigns you more boulders to push? Surely this master of yours is a tyrant to assign you such a job while others around us seem to have such an easier path."
"Quite the opposite," Sal said. "You see, I am strong. Strong enough to push this boulder up this cliff. If you look around us, you will see that many of the people that you see would not have been able to push this rock at all. If my master were not good, he would have given this task to someone not strong enough to push this boulder."
"But what is the purpose of this? Why does your master want you to push this boulder up this hill at all? Why can't you just run unencumbered wherever you choose?"
"The boulder is a burden to me now," Sal said. "But once I reach the top of this hill, it no longer will be. And others who see me push this rock successfully may be inspired to do the same."
"But why must anyone push rocks at all? What's the purpose of it all?"
"Oh, I understand now what you mean. It is true that pushing a boulder seems hard and unnecessary now. But once I get to the top of this hill, the boulder won't seem such an impediment. In fact, instead of being a burden, it will become a tool. You see, once I reach the downslope of this hill, this boulder is powerful enough to break down walls that others have built to separate themselves. Because of this boulder, I will be able to break through the barriers and talk to people who otherwise wouldn't have listened to me. My master will use this boulder to burst through walls that people have built around themselves.
"This boulder is a burden now, but it will be a blessing once I reach the other side. This boulder is heavy, but the impact of this boulder on the other side of this mountain is directly proportional to the burden it feels like now."
Ash finally understood.
Compared to pushing a boulder, running uphill didn't seem so bad. And even if he had to run uphill, perhaps the strength he gained in doing so would someday allow him to carry someone else when his life's trail had flattened out.
And then, suddenly, he noticed that the path before him didn't seem to lead uphill at all.
Ash spent all his days running uphill. He never understood why. It just seemed like what he had to do. Every morning, he woke up and began a new arduous trek.
Whenever he stopped, he felt unexplained forces poking him from behind, forcing him to keep running. But the path never evened out. Some days were a steeper incline than others, but the path was always uphill.
Ash was sad. He looked around and saw that other people he knew walked level ground, while life forced him constantly to run uphill, and always against the wind. Meanwhile, others seemed to be running downhill, or even laying in the sun.
It didn't seem fair. Nothing came easy to Ash.
For whatever reason, life just came harder for Ash than for everyone else he knew. He seldom got excited about much of anything other than seeing his friends, but he wasn't equipped with the right wiring to make that many friends, or to organize get-togethers with them once he had.
The only time Ash could stop running was when he had covered enough distance to stop and write something, or to fall into a meeting with one of his friends. Ash enjoyed those moments, but they didn't come often. And even if they did, pretty soon, he'd get poked by those forces behind him and have to start running again.
The doctors had a complex term for why life felt like a constant uphill climb to Ash, but to him, it was just unfair.
His older brothers and sisters never have to run uphill, nor did his friends. His siblings had been the most popular kids at their schools, while he had to spend his summers reading self-help books just to be vaguely normal. He did well in school, but once he got into the workforce, the act of actually accomplishing anything always seemed a Herculian effort.
Like running up a hill.
One day, when Ash was running up one of those hill, he was surprised to look over and see his brother Sal, who had seemingly never had an uphill climb for which he didn't volunteer, reluctantly pushing a boulder up a mountain.
"That isn't fair," said Ash. "Why must you push a boulder up a mountain when so many people around us don't even have to walk uphill?"
"I don't know," Sal said. "But my master told me I must do it. And I will be stronger for the experience when I finish."
"But why have you been given this task?" asked Ash. "It seems so much harder than what others around us have to do. And what good does strength do at all unless your master arbitrarily assigns you more boulders to push? Surely this master of yours is a tyrant to assign you such a job while others around us seem to have such an easier path."
"Quite the opposite," Sal said. "You see, I am strong. Strong enough to push this boulder up this cliff. If you look around us, you will see that many of the people that you see would not have been able to push this rock at all. If my master were not good, he would have given this task to someone not strong enough to push this boulder."
"But what is the purpose of this? Why does your master want you to push this boulder up this hill at all? Why can't you just run unencumbered wherever you choose?"
"The boulder is a burden to me now," Sal said. "But once I reach the top of this hill, it no longer will be. And others who see me push this rock successfully may be inspired to do the same."
"But why must anyone push rocks at all? What's the purpose of it all?"
"Oh, I understand now what you mean. It is true that pushing a boulder seems hard and unnecessary now. But once I get to the top of this hill, the boulder won't seem such an impediment. In fact, instead of being a burden, it will become a tool. You see, once I reach the downslope of this hill, this boulder is powerful enough to break down walls that others have built to separate themselves. Because of this boulder, I will be able to break through the barriers and talk to people who otherwise wouldn't have listened to me. My master will use this boulder to burst through walls that people have built around themselves.
"This boulder is a burden now, but it will be a blessing once I reach the other side. This boulder is heavy, but the impact of this boulder on the other side of this mountain is directly proportional to the burden it feels like now."
Ash finally understood.
Compared to pushing a boulder, running uphill didn't seem so bad. And even if he had to run uphill, perhaps the strength he gained in doing so would someday allow him to carry someone else when his life's trail had flattened out.
And then, suddenly, he noticed that the path before him didn't seem to lead uphill at all.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Thank You
Thank you.
I'm sitting in a hospital waiting room awaiting the results of my brother's surgery. As I sit here without the mental energy to think of much, the one thing that keeps running through my mind is how grateful I am for the support of so many of you.
Thanks again to all of you who have said a prayer on behalf of my family, passed along an encouraging word, or otherwise made it known that my family and I aren't in this thing alone.
For reasons I hope you understand, this will have to do for a blog post this week. The blog will be back in full force next week, but until then, please continue to keep my family in your thoughts and prayers.
While I'm here:
this hardly seems significant at the moment, but enough of you shared my hatred of February in general and Valentine's Day in particular to push the blog to its highest readership ever last month. The blog got 699 hits last month, falling just short of an even number, but blowing away the previous high of 551 hits. Last February, the blog got 121, so we've come along way.
Thank you all for reading. Each blog hits brings me one step closer to my dream of using this space to make a living. In the meantime, keep my family and me in your prayers and I'll meet you back here next week.
I'm sitting in a hospital waiting room awaiting the results of my brother's surgery. As I sit here without the mental energy to think of much, the one thing that keeps running through my mind is how grateful I am for the support of so many of you.
Thanks again to all of you who have said a prayer on behalf of my family, passed along an encouraging word, or otherwise made it known that my family and I aren't in this thing alone.
For reasons I hope you understand, this will have to do for a blog post this week. The blog will be back in full force next week, but until then, please continue to keep my family in your thoughts and prayers.
While I'm here:
this hardly seems significant at the moment, but enough of you shared my hatred of February in general and Valentine's Day in particular to push the blog to its highest readership ever last month. The blog got 699 hits last month, falling just short of an even number, but blowing away the previous high of 551 hits. Last February, the blog got 121, so we've come along way.
Thank you all for reading. Each blog hits brings me one step closer to my dream of using this space to make a living. In the meantime, keep my family and me in your prayers and I'll meet you back here next week.
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