April Review

I committed to reporting out on the progress of 3 major goals at the end of each month in 2013. Here are April's stats:

Goal 1: Read 25 books.
I read two more in April, and I've started a 3rd. If you're a fan of Steinbeck's East of Eden, pick up his Journal of a Novel. Great read. I've finished 9 for the year.

Goal 2: Write 75 blog posts.
I wrote 7 this month, despite an inactive week to end April. Twenty-seven down. I'm on pace. My favorites for the month are probably "I'm not a Devil, and Neither are You," and "Why I'm Glad My Wife Can Deadlift More than Me."

Goal 3: Write 25 letters.
Two more written, which puts me at seven for the year. Still running a deficit here.

Reflections:
April started with a bang regarding my goals, but it fizzled at the end. A killer cold at the end of the month rendered me sloth-like for the past week. This is a great month to display that doing first things first means getting it done even when obstacles like illness arise unexpectedly. I also had time to branch out to other priorities, like spending time with good people, spending energy and money on my bike, and building a youth soccer dynasty (if no one ever keeps score).

Memorable quotes from the month:

• "God doesn't think your crap is awesome, He doesn't think your arrogance is beautiful and okay, but He has ten times the patience with you than your friends. Your whining and complaining and relapses into old sins are not okay with Him, but they don't affect His love for you. He likes you more than your friends like you." - Donald Miller
• "Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become." - C.S. Lewis
• "Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality." - C.S. Lewis
• "God is far more willing to save sinners than sinners are to be saved." - J.C. Ryle
• "How can we expect to live with God in heaven if we love not to live with him on earth?" - John Mason

Interesting Links:

• The Socially Acceptable Sin
• Raising Bubble Babies
• The Christian Bus Driver
• Great Story on Reds 3B Frasier 

The end of the school year, the beginning of umpiring season, and occupational uncertainty loom. Come May, what may.

Why I'm Glad My Wife Can Deadlift More Than Me

I started a new workout program last night. It was my wife's fault, really. Tired of my numerous back problems from the last couple of years, she "encouraged" me to do something about it. Apparently, if a doctor says that I need to strengthen my core, it's optional. When my wife says it, it's a little bit more requisite.

The workout was miserable. I hurt then. I hurt now. While I consider myself a fairly active individual, the reality of the situation is that I haven't done many activities that are out of my comfort zone in the last 10 years. A few bench presses here, some shoulder exercises there, several miles of running or biking to mix it up. No squats. No lunges. Nothing that might, well, hurt.

No longer. Last night I was stuck doing side planks and split squats and Romanian deadlifts, all under the watchful tutelage of my loving wife. It appears that my days of relaxing workouts are over.

My goal in all of this, however, is not to be great at side planks and split squats. I could care less about my ability to do "lateral cross-behind lunges," whatever those are. There will be no test. These skills will not help pay for my children's college, widen my potential job market, or fix my car when it's broke. No, these are exercises that train, that help me to get to my goal of a stronger core, which is only a goal because I want to be able to pick up pieces of paper in my classroom or swing a wiffle ball bat without injuring myself. The onerous leads to the desirable.

Murray writes this in Wordsmithy: ". . . writers should fool around in their workshop with all kinds of writing. . . They should consider their forays into alien genres the way a boxer considers his pushups."

An aspiring writer needs to exercise, going outside of the comfort of familiar genres to struggle with the uncomfortable, stumbling weakly along in a string of disjointed allusions and cheesy metaphors until one day when they emerge stronger, better, and more complete.

Whatever success you chase, do your pushups. Do your planks and rows and deadlifts. And if you're a stubborn ass, ask your wife to make you. Chances are good you're going to run into onerous tasks that are way out of your comfort zone. They will seem like they are not directly connected to your goal. They may cause you immediate pain and lasting soreness. You will curse. But those people you don't want to deal with,  those tasks that are beneath you at work, the favor that you can't say no to but really want to, those might just be getting you ready.

And you'll want to be strong on the day that success calls. Weakness will not be a forgivable excuse.


***This is my fourth post from Doug Wilson's book Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life. The links for the previous three can be found below:

• If You're Passionate and You Know It. . .
• Skip the Sprint; Start the Hike
• Live Wide, Live Well

If You're Passionate and You Know It. . .

This is the third post on my notes from Doug Wilson's book Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life. See the links below to read the first two.

One of my favorite C.S. Lewis quotes is this one: "God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than He is of any other slacker."

Wilson expands on this idea in Wordsmithy, encouraging aspiring writers to go out and learn. Learn about writing, learn about unfamiliar subjects, and learn about what you're passionate about. Some memorable passages:

• "With all your getting, get wisdom."
• "Writing is a vocation, and there is a body of professional literature out there - which is uneven in quality, just like every other kind of book. Read a lot of it anyway."
• "If you are really interested in a subject, you will be fascinated by it, and when you are fascinated by it, you will be going back to your workbench of words constantly, looking for ways to describe this thing that has your attention."

Whatever it is you want, whatever you might be chasing, you simply cannot skip the step of patiently sitting down, slowing down, and digging into its inner most recesses, analyzing what it is and why it's good. You might know it's good, and you might love it, but you don't know everything there is to know about it. Frankly, if you're not excited about learning more, about digging in, you probably don't want it that bad anyway. Whether you're a "good student" or not, if you want it or love it, you've got to be intellectual.

There are some really talented, knowledgeable people out there writing, speaking, and maybe even tweeting about what it is you want. Go find them. There's going to be some real idiots out there as well, people who know less than you, whose writing or speaking is below average and who you can't believe are getting paid to talk about something you could do so much better talking about. Listen to them, too. Even the foolish, the braggarts, and the boring have something to offer you. Go get it. Be an expert.

If you love it, you'll learn it. Even when it's hard. If you won't, maybe you're just kidding yourself about this "passion" that you have.

A note to all Christians: this includes Christ. The grace of God doesn't give you a free pass on studying God. You will be saved by faith through grace, but why would you want to stop there? Will your joy not increase, the more you study God? Is there any chance you will ever know all there is to know about our Infinite Lord?

2 Peter is full of this truth:

• "Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. (1:2)
• His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him. . ." (1:3)
• "And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it."
• "Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking." (3:1)

The equation is simple: Be passionate. Gain wisdom. Increase your passion. Share. Act. Repeat.



Note: The first two posts in this series were "Live Wide, Live Well," and "Skip the Sprint; Start the Hike."

Skip the Sprint; Start the Hike

This is the second post in a series I'm writing about the book Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life by Doug Wilson. For the first, I discussed the advice to live wide and live well. Tonight I want to mention the idea of "plodding."

For those chasing writing immortality, Wilson offers this advice: "Read until your brain creaks. . . Output requires intake, and literary output requires literary intake." As a literature geek, I believe it's sound advice for all. Regardless of the desired success, however, his ideas in this section apply to all:

• "Plod. Make time for reading, and make a daily habit of it, even if it is a relatively small daily habit. . . I believe firmly in plodding. Productivity is more a matter of diligent, long-distance hiking than it is one-hundred-yard dashing."
• "A little bit every day really adds up."
• "I am astonished at how many young Christians want to be writers and how few of them want to mess with all the prerequisites, which look suspiciously to them like work."

It is in the plodding where real gains are made. 

My goals for the year (75 blog posts, 25 books, 25 letters) seem daunting at times. It sounds like it's going to require a lot of me, and it will. But I didn't have to write 75 blog posts today. I just had to start this one. And starting may be the hardest part of plodding. As I've said before, I rarely "feel like" making progress. I have to break the barrier between wanting to have done something and actually beginning the process. I didn't want to get off the couch tonight and work out. I was tired and had already accomplished two rather difficult task - leading my  soccer team of 5 year olds to the spoils of a tie, and convincing my children to stay in bed. Instead of starting, I turned on the TV. Just for a minute. A minute turned into 30, as the quality of the Big Bang Theory rerun increased the longer I sat there. Eventually I broke through. I started. I plodded.

Then I had to plod to write this. I'll finish soon and crack open some Steinbeck, reading a few pages before I go to sleep. My goals won't get done today. But done isn't the goal today - progress is the goal.

If you want a better marriage or relationship or body or bowling score, plod today. Do a little bit. Inch forward. You won't get there today. You don't have to. If what you're chasing is really worth it, it will be a long-distance hike. You can chase the sprints; but when you're done with them you're going to wonder why you even bothered. 

Live Wide, Live Well

Last month I read the book Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life by Doug Wilson. It's a great read for aspiring writers like myself; but I also think the advice in it carries to those aspiring to anything. We writers like to make the process of writing sound mystical, like it's some exclusive skill that one must be born with and then attend to carefully as it is molded by wizards, hobbits, and the occasional Oxford scholar. Don't believe a word of it. Writing is like anything else people aspire to - the formula for success is generally the same. In the name of universal success, then, I intend to write my next few posts about the advice offered by Wilson that is relevant to all.

The first tip I want to address is this: live wide, and live well.

Some quotes from the book:

• "When you are out and about, you are watching the gaudy show called life and are trying to learn from it. This is harder to do if you are busy being the star of the show."
• "Interesting people are interested people."
• "This kind of life experience is not distracting you from your appointed task of writing. It is, rather, the roundabout blessing of giving you something to say."
• "The world does not exist to provide raw material for your notebook."

Living wide simply means going out and getting some life experience outside of your comfort zone. Comfort zone-living is dangerous because it's difficult to learn something new from the same people, places, and participation you've always had. There's also no risk involved. There's no danger. Without risk and danger, you can't practice facing and overcoming adversity, being excellent in less than ideal circumstances, or feeling nervous. And feeling nervous is living. If you haven't felt nervous about anything in the last year, it's probably time to lay something on the line and show some passion.

Many of the greatest moments of my life are times I went out and did something outside of my comfort zone: spending the summer working at a camp in Pennsylvania when I was 21, moving out to western Nebraska, dancing the fox trot in front of 300 people, trying Chinese food. What these experiences provided was not only adding variety to my life, but also adding quality to the rest of it. I have better stories to tell as a writer. I have deeper empathy as a friend. I have events to celebrate, pictures to show my kids, and mistakes to learn from. With every test of uncharted waters, I also built relationships founded on the shared trials of risk.

To live well means simply to live. Quit viewing your time as a resource only for improving your skill. Instead, improve yourself through actually being in the moment with the people you are with, doing what you're doing,  soaking in whatever life is giving you. As a writer, I'm constantly looking for material. The danger for me is for everything I read, every conversation I have, every prayer I attempt to be viewed immediately through the lens of How can I write about this? When I first got Facebook and Twitter accounts, I often thought if what I was doing was worthy of sharing. Instead of living well, I (and I assume many others) are too busy living through the lens of how what we're doing can be used to our advantage. Stop it. Have conversations, and not to hear yourself talk. Drink a cup of coffee slowly, reading a magazine or an article for fun, not necessarily to learn or to share. Watch a game with a friend, regardless of how busy you are. Ask about your spouse's day, and listen for longer than ten seconds. Eat with good people.

Don't do it because you're building contacts or building knowledge or building future opportunities for whatever success it is you're chasing. Do it because this is life, this is the stuff that matters, and these are the moments that will feed whatever it is you're chasing.

The success you seek won't matter if you don't live wide and live well. And it will probably be all the more sweeter if you are.

I'm Not a Devil, and Neither are You

Once upon a time I got into a little tiff with a fellow staff member about some manner of contested educational philosophy or practice. In this particular bout of verbal sparring, the other individual walked away in great anger. The next day I requested to sit down with them and smooth things over. After sitting down and taking a deep breath, I looked up and said, "I don't think I'm nearly the a--hole that you think I am." Fortunately, after a much effort on my part, I think I convinced them.

I think the world would be a little better if we all walked around with signs that said that exact phrase. It's most likely true. And it's true because we've come to love the caricature of others; whatever the worst in them is, we'll often blow it up into a cartoonish image and ignore the rest of them. We chop up the world into two categories - people we like and agree with, and devils from hell.

This especially happens in matters of faith, morality, and politics. The old adage about not speaking about religion or politics among friends is probably true because disagreements in those areas are the quickest to produce caricatures. If I can't trust you to get on the correct side of social policy or theology, what can I trust you with?

Perhaps that's why on this blog I've generally stayed away from the topic making headlines every day now - that of "gay rights." In fact, I hesitated just then to type that phrase, because I'm not sure if my wording is politically correct or emotionally charged. Inside this social issue, my people  - "the Christians" - are both very quick to caricature and be caricatured. Anyone with any sort of loyalty to Scriptural inerrancy is often labeled a bigot, a Bible-thumper, an intolerant and self-righteous prig who hates love and equality and damns all others to hell. And unfortunately, some Christians are quick to see homosexuality as the one sin from which one can never return, a mark of paganistic devil-worship in purely hedonistic beings.

I was fortunate to read an article this week that broke those stereotypical models, instead portraying individuals in these two groups as just that - individuals - ones with great qualities despite the fact that they disagree on issues of morality. More articles like this one, rather than the much more common demonizing commentary that sells to both camps, could truly change the nature of this issue.

I enthusiastically recommend the article from The Atlantic, "Being Gay at Jerry Falwell's University," to all who have the time. Two cautions: First, the article will push many out of their comfort zone simply because it doesn't resort to caricatures. You will be forced to see those with whom you disagree as people, regardless of where you stand. Second, don't quit halfway. If you do, you will walk away with faulty assumptions. The quality of this article lies in its entirety, not in mere quotes or paragraphs.

I also offer a second article I read on the same day, this one by Donald Miller called, "Why I Now Like George W. Bush." It is much much more brief, but it also challenges the reader to go beyond caricature. It's well worth your time as well.

These are just a few articles I came across this week that I hope some of you find as much value in as I do. They certainly won't make headlines - they're much too fair-minded for that.

Write a Little, Say a Lot

Back at my parents' house over Easter weekend, I did what every 33 year old guy should have done ten years ago - I packed up my stuff. No, I haven't been living at my parents' home; I haven't stayed there for longer than a weekend since 2000. I've just kept all my childhood "memorabilia" tucked safely in a pile there until I found a good place for it. Or until I turned 33 and guilted myself into clearing it out. The latter motivated me to go through the pile and load up my truck over the weekend.

While sorting through it initially, I found a lot that could be trashed. Suddenly, when value is weighed in terms of the space it will take up in my own house as opposed to the space it will take up in my parents' house, certain items become expendable. MC Hammer cassette tapes, for instance. Any evidence of my junior high comb over, perhaps.

There were, however, a few treasures tucked away in boxes or totes or tins. Most near and dear to me were all the notes, letters, and cards I had kept from elementary school through college. Priceless anecdotes written in the hand of my childhood friend Josh spoke of the priorities of young boys - the girls we sat next to in class and baseball cards, most notably. "I-wish-it-meant-love-but-it-really-means-you're-bored" notes from a junior high crush were also carefully placed in an old folder. Congratulatory cards or notes of encouragement from friends and family marked my high school years. My college collection held sentiments of early love from my future wife, Bible verses and regular news from the farm from my folks, as well as assorted letters from sisters, aunts, cousins, grandparents and other friends. I had a great time shuffling through the stack, pausing here and there to get a pulse on life at the time, shuffling from one card to the next, remembering, failing to remember, and laughing a whole lot.

Those words meant a lot to me at the time. They mean so much more to me now. That collection is physical evidence of the thoughts, emotions, and sentiments of various times in my life and the life of others. They represent the fact that those people chose to use their time to sit down, write with me in mind, address an envelope, and put it in the mail. For me. I got to remember what I'm too often so busy that I forget: that some really good people have done a lot for me in my life, not the least of which is sitting down and writing me a note to show that they care. I wouldn't have remembered that without the evidence sitting in my lap while I sprawled out on the floor of the upstairs bedroom of my parents' house one rainy Saturday morning.

Here's the point. Email is great. So is Facebook. So is texting. They are quick and easy and allow us instant access to our loved ones. I had a great birthday in March, and a big part of that was all the Facebook well-wishes from people who remembered to say they cared on that day. I appreciated them this year, last year, and every other time I get to hear from somebody whether it's on a birthday or not. I'm definitely not trying to minimize that.

What I am trying to point out, though, is that email and the like is so quick and easy that we tend to forget to use it. Or we use it just as quickly as it allows, with no real time or emotion invested. When we do use them, they're just as quickly gone, lost somewhere into the digital oblivion. Notes, cards, and letters, however, have some lasting power. Not only does the recipient get to sit down and feel important immediately, they get to have that same feeling five years later and fifty years later.

It doesn't have to be much. Many of the writings I went through weren't. But if you say a little, on paper, your words will say so much, for so long.

And thanks to all those who wrote me. You made my day years ago, this weekend, and someday many moons later when I rifle through the stack again.