Words, Words, Words

At the beginning of the year, I challenged myself to write 13,000 words per month in the form of blog posts, letters, and prayer. I achieved success in January: with this post, my count for the month is 13,584

I put myself under the deadline because I was unhappy with who I was becoming, and who I was becoming was a direct result of what I was or was not doing. I knew that at the very least I would like my work, my hours spent, and my mental framework a lot more if I committed time to prayer, people, and writing.

I was right.

It's been a good month. This is my eighth blog post; I didn't have eight in any month in 2014. My two letters were two more than I sent all last year. I'm studying, reflecting, and thinking more; more importantly, I'm thinking of other people more as well.

The action that's seen the biggest improvement with the biggest results has been in prayer. I completed over 6,000 words and 11 pages of written prayer over the month. In comparison, in the final six months of 2014, I prayed 7,600 measly words. I borrowed words from St. Augustine for some prayers; I committed others to praying only for friends and family rather than myself. I faced my own weaknesses, admitted my dependence, and accepted that those weaknesses will not be strengthened through a one-time-only quick petition. I prayed in frustration and in praise, in failure and in success. After a month of consistent prayer, my life has not changed. My soul, however, has.

I read an interesting article on prayer this week entitled "8 Lessons from the School of Prayer." In those 8 lessons, one was particularly relevant to my journey this month: Much praying is not done because we do not plan to pray.

Hoping to pray is different than planning to pray. Putting myself under the gun to write 13,000 words and knowing that I needed to write approximately 500 words a day made it advantageous to pray. I defaulted to prayer, especially when I had no specific writing ideas. It often led to letter or blog ideas; it always created more peace. This idea of planning is not exclusive, obviously, to prayer. Whatever you want to do needs to be put in the schedule. Not doing something, even something you know you enjoy, is always easier.

A final reflection on prayer this month is this: it is shocking how quickly anger and frustration - whether rational or petty - dissipates with prayer. After the only loss this month for my beloved Panther men's basketball team (#18 in the country as I write this), I spent a good hour stewing. After a second half full of angry remote control throws and exasperated pleas (Just make a free throw!!!) that fell upon deaf ears, I sulked on the couch flipping through channels while muttering "stupid Panthers" under my breath every couple of minutes. It threatened to ruin my night. Eventually I got up, sat at the table, opened the laptop, and clicked on my prayer document. After fifteen minutes of prayer, I had forgotten all about the Panthers. Reason prevailed.

I could name four or five events from the month that stirred my frustration - parenting failures, financial pitfalls, etc. On the days when I was wise enough to open that prayer document and type away, rather than stubbornly default to persistent and bubbling rage, I regained an eternal perspective quite quickly. And the world looks so much better from that perspective.

February will be a challenge - I get 3 fewer days to get to 13,000. But the number remains. The deadline remains. I'm planning to do what I want so that I can be who I want to be.

The Bold

When I first came back from college, I came back brilliant. Armed with the knowledge of a month or two's worth of higher education, I held all the answers to the world's great questions. Fortunately for all around me, I was eager to share my new knowledge as well, wasting no opportunity to offer enlightenment.

I hear this is somewhat common for those just entering their first inkling of adulthood - this profound understanding of anything they've heard one lecture or read one article about. That was me. The world clearly needed me after my extensive reading: I knew everything there was to know about God, I knew how to cure all the ills in the education system, and I was a bit shocked that more people weren't asking me for how to fix sociological problems as well. I could tell you what to eat, how to live mentally and physically healthy, how to properly train athletes, and reading strategies that I knew would work for every kid if only employed properly. The world would soon recognize where to come for the answers; I was armed and ready.

I was bold.

Obviously I look back on this foolishness of mine and ashamedly chuckle. I had no business being bold about this to anyone who had lived a mere six months in any semblance of the real world, with real people, living real life away from the hallowed confines of a college campus. That does not mean, however, that my error was in being bold.

We are all bold.

In Acts 4, John and Peter are in front of a hostile crowd being asked to account for their recent gospel-spreading actions. Their speaking led to this response in verse 13:

"Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And the recognized that they had been with Jesus."

Most of us are bold about something. Speaking simply, clearly, and confidently, usually our boldness reveals a great passion (if not experience or education) and often speaks of our priorities. Some people boldly proclaim their own rights. Others are bold about their own accomplishments. Politics brings out the bold in many avenues, particularly those of the social media variety. I find that in my line of work many are bold about what the world owes their children. And I never cease to be amazed at how many people boldly proclaim the 3-second rule in basketball.

This begs the question: about what are you bold? And who or what does it say you've been around? For not only does your boldness proclaim your priorities, it also reveals your surroundings. What has been influencing your boldness? A bunch of people who agree with you about everything? Radio political personalities? Media you are consuming? A book your reading? The Book?

It was clear who John and Peter had been with. No one was confused about the source of their bold outbursts. They were no new converts to the university life. No, their proclamations said much more than that.

It is doubtful you or I will be able to refrain from being bold this week. Nor should we. But we must accept that our boldness will say something distinct about us; and if we don't like that message, perhaps we are in need of better Company.

Why My Students Don't Come First in My Classroom

This post may not make me very popular with some of my teaching brethren.

If you've followed this blog for any period of time or had many conversations about books with me, then you know that I am a voracious C.S. Lewis reader. I am by no means an expert, but I attempt to widen my exposure to his writings each year, reading some texts for a 2nd and 3rd time, others for the first. If I had a time machine, I would be hard-pressed to find a better location to visit than mid-20th century England; and my first order of business would be buying C. S. Lewis a beer and asking if we could hang out for a while. I'd certainly let him know that Tolkien and his other fellow Inklings would be a welcome addition to our conversation as well. I imagine that would be a pretty good day.

Most times when reading Lewis I learn so much, watching him meticulously sort through his worldview logically, weaving point by point in his non-fiction; or imaginatively, one mythical creature at a time, through his fiction. In others, though, I find in his writing the perfect words for ideas or beliefs that I hold but that I could only whisper of on my own. It is such a time as this that prompts this blog post.

I happened upon C.S. Lewis well into my adulthood, so I had taught English for many years before ever reading his works. In some passages I read this week from Alister McGrath's If I Had Lunch With C.S. Lewis, though, I found an educational ally in Lewis and his philosophy.

McGrath details what Lewis, a long time instructor himself, believes about the purpose for education:

"Lewis thinks of education as an 'enlargement of our vision,' . . . a way of rescuing us from our own limitations. . .  Education is about changing us - helping us realise that we are not always right, and that we can gain a deeper and better grasp of reality by experiencing the world the way others do."

In these words I found reason for why I do what I do in my classroom. 

I often find myself running somewhat counterculture to the current trends in education.  A buzz word now, and at many other times cyclically throughout the history of American education thanks to John Dewey, is "student-centered education." Today's educational world is all about student choice. Students should choose what texts interest them and read those; their research is based on what they want to explore. We are encouraged to use more and more technology to meet students at their level, where they are comfortable, and to provide them choice in how they want to display their learning. We are told that "relevance" is the key to student engagement; we must connect to their immediate world and make all learning relevant to them where they are now.

I must confess a desperate loathing for the "student-centered" philosophy. And Lewis provides the perfect explanation for why.

My students do not come first in my classroom; their opportunity to be far more than they are now does. I hope they read a hundred books about what interests them on their own time. But I'm going to ask them to read books that they wouldn't choose during their educational time, books that require them to see the world differently, books that ask them to weigh their ideas and beliefs against the sharpening iron of time and history and people with different experiences than them. I want in their hands literature that shakes and shatters their worldview, requiring them to piece that worldview back together with glue and tweezers and a magnifying glass, connecting fragments of their past with some new pieces they didn't know existed.

I don't get worried about meeting them where they are, for I fear leading them to believe that staying there is a good idea. Or fear having them believe that the world is "student-centered," that they are the sun that all else spins around, altering the orbits of their surroundings to suit their own comforts. 

Students do not come first in my class because their future does. To put them first puts their limitations, their biases, and their assumptions first. Their current self probably will not sprint to Shakespeare or Steinbeck or sonnets. They do not immediately want to ask how their sins and concerns and successes and obstacles are similar to mankind throughout the history of humanity. And they probably don't think that "old books" have much to tell them about the modern world.

The kind of reading I want for my students is the dangerous kind - the kind that might make them change their course, question their place, and walk away wiser - armed with the kind of wisdom that often results in less certainty. 

So students do not come first when they walk into my room. At least not the students as they are today. And lest I commit the same errors I attempt to keep them from, I offer these observations not with confidence and the goal of exclaiming myself to be right; rather, I find myself, as McGrath writes about Lewis' view of learning, "'trying on' ways of looking at the world, and seeing how well they work." 

The learning process should not end with graduation from high school, and I don't pretend that the most formative of years are the ones spent in my classroom. But those are the years I am responsible for, and the opportunity to learn will be present on my watch. And it will be the kind of learning, as Lewis suggests, that diminishes the student's current self in favor of who they might become.

On the Shoulders of Saints

I have found myself moved by the prayers of St. Augustine in his book Confessions, written in approximately 400 A.D. I slowly worked myself through that book at the end of last year, and I'm now reaping the rewards of the notes I took and the passages I've collected.

Missing consistency in my prayer life but seeking improvement, I've tried to sit down at the keyboard more and type away my petitions. So many times, though, I find no words. Amazing, I know, that I would find myself without something to say to anyone, let alone the Almighty. Facing that obstacle, though, has led me to borrow from Augustine's words in order to find my own.

Using his soul's outpouring, I've discovered what I did not know was there. I've found words to describe intense longings, sorrows, laments, joys, temptations, and dependence in a way I routinely could not on my own.

Perhaps the most powerful  of his prayers is found throughout Book 10 of Confessions: "Give what you command, and command what you will."

This is a bold prayer. I've always been hesitant to say to God, "Give me. . ." But here the request is for the strength and opportunity to follow whatever God's commands for Augustine might be. It is bold also in that it almost dares God to command whatever he may. There is a swagger to this prayer, a sureness that Augustine can accomplish whatever he is commanded to do.

From where does this confidence come? From knowing that it is God who provides it. From knowing that God's will shall be done, and whatever command is His will is not only possible, but inevitable. Paradoxically, it is a confidence based on dependence; Augustine knows he can do all, for it is God who does it through him.

I've spent a great deal of my life seeking "God's will" for my decisions. It is a worthy question to ask. But God's will, I believe, is in this prayer. That confidence, that dependence, that willingness to do all and conquer all and face all and suffer all, regardless of the command, that is where we should be in all of life's questions and decisions. Give me the strength, Lord, and I will do whatever you ask. I will join in your work, I will serve where you want me to serve, I will claim my corner of the universe for your glory and boldly proclaim your love and strength and my helpless dependence.

A bold prayer indeed. Do I have that kind of faith? Am I ready for such a prayer? I don't know. But I find my faith, weak as it may be, reaching, growing, and taking shape the more I stand on the shoulders of the saints who have gone before.

A Lesson from the Hy-Vee Deli

I've always dreaded the question, "So how can we pray for you?"

I don't have a good reason for this. It's not a bad question, and I don't fault those who ask it. Honestly, I wish I were more like them. That does not change the fact, however, that when I hear this I activate the invisible sequence of firing up personal privacy fences coupled with repeating "Danger! Danger!" alarms screeching in my soul, protecting my space from intruders. Perhaps it's a pride thing. Or a lack of faith thing. No, I'm not sure at all why I'm not all that excited to offer my prayer requests to a group of people, even those in the church who are called to pray with and for me. But I've cringe a little whenever my turn has come, when expectant eyes are on me, smilingly asking for me to bare my demons.

That gradually changed in the past year when I met with a handful of guys once a week for discussions in the biblical exposition course we were taking. At the end of those meetings, one individual was chosen as the subject of the concluding prayer. One by one and all together, we prayed for that individual around a table in the deserted Hy-Vee deli late on Wednesday nights.

The first time my turn came up, I privately bristled, loath to share, to reveal, to admit need, to discuss my hidden journeys. But I'm no liar. I hate fake, and my desire to keep it real with people I was going to have to learn to trust for the next several months trumped my discomfort. So I went ahead and spoke, offering up what most did not know, what perhaps I even kept from myself: my fears, my weaknesses, my pride, and all that I knew I could not do on my own. It was an important step. I soon realized the power of prayer.

I don't say that because anything really went the way I wanted it to. In many ways 2014 was an exercise in learning that "Thy will be done" rather than "My will be done" is a not so subtle contrast in faith. No, I did not get the outcome my limited mind had hoped for in nearly every aspect of my life that I sought prayer from my classmates. The power of prayer did not reside in getting what I wanted. Rather, I found individuals willing to share in my struggle.

Towards the end of Paul's letter to the Romans, he writes to them, "I urge you, brothers and sisters. . . to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me" (15:30). Reading that passage this week was like reading it for the first time. Join me in my struggle, says Paul. In those words I saw a significant act of friendship.

Last month I wrote that eighty percent of friendship is just showing up. Praying for each other may just be much of the other twenty. To make someone else's struggle our own in the midst of our own seeking and struggling, to pause long enough to remember and care for them, and to carry around the knowledge that somewhere somebody is doing the same for you, certainly makes each struggle a very different struggle. I find myself asking, then, am I in a position to do this for my friends? Just as importantly, do I put myself in the position to allow them to do this for me? Am I willing to let others join me in my struggle? To join in theirs? Are you?

You can't do this for everyone. Nor should you. This is not a call for you and I to post every prayer request to Facebook or Twitter, or to pray for every individual you meet on the street. No, this is reserved for deep friendship, and act that states specifically and purposefully, "I am with you, and I want you to be with me. I will know your struggles, and you will know mine, and we will find joy in struggling together."

"Thy will be done," will still ultimately be our prayer. But perhaps much of His will for us is the rewards to be found in the act of joining with our friends.

I Want to Throw Up Volume II

In my previous post, I wrote about the quest for opportunities that require risk and fear and possible failure and all the subsequent queasiness that accompanies. A few more words on that here. . .

Too often, the risk is right in front of me and I'm too self-absorbed to see it. It is less event-based; rather, it is a daily risk, a steady march towards victory or failure. The game day, or the speaking date, is not on the calendar. It will sneak up and surprise, unannounced yet full of all the dread of knowing that in that day is the winning or losing, the evidence of my preparation being called to account to be presented for all to see.

I read the words from the last post: "I want work that costs something, work that matters, opportunities to face mountains and to shake my fist at them and declare my impending arrival. I want risk. And I want to be counted on to do the difficult." It is here, everyday, right in front of me.

What greater risk is there than the lives of my children and the moments they will have spent with their father? Or the strength of my relationship to the woman I've been blessed to spend my life with, the woman who knows me better than anyone, the woman I've been called to love sacrificially? Or my eternal soul, and my opportunities to pour out a little of the love I've been given by Christ when those opportunities present themselves - ready or not, here I come! - to my neighbor, to my co-worker, to my enemy, to my friend on the day he asks me from where does my help come.

I went to the funeral of a man from our church who died unexpectedly just before the New Year. I had known him and his family for a long time; I taught his son when he was in high school, his son who is now a teacher himself. The service was an emotional one for me, though many in the full church were much closer to him than I. I think one of the reasons is because there was a man with ample evidence of having won - won the love and admiration of a son and a wife, won the respect of his peers, won by spreading joy in all directions, won by overflowing the love of Christ from inside him with everyone he met. And I see that I lack that evidence in many regards.

Game day for him was not death day. He had accepted through grace a victory over sin and death long before that. Game day was each day with every interaction, every jesting comment in love, every smile, every act of service, every time he got to perform. And game day for him as a parent was long before. It was when his son joyfully brought friends into the home because he knew they would be embraced. It was when his son sought out his company, his companionship, and his leisure time when he became a man. It was then I'm sure that he could look back on the journey and see that all the time, all the emotion, all the risks of parenthood were not in vain, because he had done good work at work worth doing.

This post in not a rejection of my previous one. I will continue to seek out events that force me to be nervous and stressed and scared and nauseous. And I believe so should you. What this post is, though, is a recognition that in the absence of those events, or in the interim between, there is much to be nervous about. There is much for which it is worthy to fight. And though an audience of 500 or 5,000 will perhaps be replaced with an audience of one (or One), there is still a game to prepare for.

And the risk, oh the risk, is sweet risk indeed.

A Nauseating Chase

"So what was your anxiety level going up there?"

It was an important question, but it was one I felt immediately confident in answering precisely. The answered wasn't rehearsed, but it was thrashing below the surface all along, through the last couple of months, through all the longings I've had, through the angst, through the processing that is required during transition.

Barely pausing, I responded. "I felt like I was going to throw up. But sometimes it feels good to feel like you might throw up."

It was during an impromptu catch-up conversation with a friend of mine who had gone through the biblical exposition course with me last year. He had recently been out of the country teaching through his organization, and he had missed my inaugural run at delivering the sermon in our church. We talked about his experiences, challenges, stresses, and successes on his trip; soon the conversation turned to my sermon on Jonah. He has delivered sermons at our church before, and he wanted to know how I felt about my experience.

That's when I expressed gratitude for the opportunity to feel like my breakfast was on the verge of projectile motion.

"Frankly," I continued. "I miss feeling like that. Like something's at risk. Feeling like throwing up generally means something important is going on, something that matters, something that you've worked really hard on and you hope goes well. I felt like doing the sermon was work worth doing, work that mattered whether I succeeded or not. And when you're in that position, you get nervous. In the absence of what I used to have, this was my game day."

And there it is. Game day. I don't have twice weekly "game day" any more, during this, the winter of transition. I'm out of coaching.

And how has it gone? I wish I could say better, but I'd be lying. It's fine. It really is. But because I'm writing, and when you're writing you don't have to put a good face on a situation for others to see, I'm willing to admit that I'm lost in a lot of ways. And I'm learning to attempt to deal with being lost, with not knowing exactly where I'm going or what this looks like, with not doing what I've always done in the winter. That is to say that I don't have any choice, so I'm reluctantly reaching out in the dark, sometimes grasping forward, sometimes lunging backward, always reaching, always blindfolded.

There are things I don't miss. I don't miss the bus rides on Tuesday nights that return at 1 AM to sub-zero temperatures. I don't miss the mornings after bad losses when I'd hang out with my kids or head to church, present but not present. But I definitely miss the nausea - those two minutes before tip-off where it was clear exactly what was at stake: hours of work, the trust of players, the belief of the community, the pride of my family, winning.

You cannot wake up one day and become not competitive. You cannot shut that off. You can bury it, and you can tell yourself that "winning" is simply another form of pride and selfishness and desire to make a god out of the self. But winning can also be the validation that the work you did, that the time you sacrificed, that the emotion you forfeited and the scars you opened were worthwhile in regards to the little corner of the world you're allowed to influence.

And so what I really want right now are opportunities to win. Or at least to want to throw up. I want work that costs something, work that matters, opportunities to face mountains and to shake my fist at them and declare my impending arrival. I want risk. And I want to be counted on to do the difficult. The sermon was that for me.

This journey to find vomit-worthy endeavors, I'm coming to understand, is more spiritual than it is anything else. It exposes faith and doubt. It reveals that which I've made sure I was too busy to see about myself. It is internal and eternal. Everyone wants to congratulate me on losing a great stressor from life. What they don't realize is just how stressful it is to not have that stress.

So many people want to tell you not to be afraid of failure. I don't buy it for one second. I was scared to death of failing when I delivered that sermon. I'm afraid every day of messing up my kids, or my marriage, or the precious few seconds I'm allowed on this earth and the treasure with which I've been entrusted. I walked around with an ulcerous pit of fear for nine months waiting for the arrival of my first born after dealing with two miscarriages. I'm an admitted, card-carrying scaredy-cat. No, fear is not the problem. It's when you have nothing to fear that's the problem. Real courage is having something worthy of fear in your life.

I realize now that I have probably three or four essays inside of one here in this blog post. I thought I was going one way, suspected another direction might beckon, and a third has required a detour. But I let it stand. Wandering around in the dark can be like that.

The connecting thread here is the vomit. It's something we can all relate to. And I want to encourage you, as I also encourage myself, to find what makes you scared and nauseous, and go do that. Exactly that. Maybe not all the time. But risk. Fear. Seek. And in the seeking you will find what is worthy of the stress in your life.

Word Count

Two and a half years ago, as I was finishing up my second masters degree, I knew exactly what I wanted to do when I finally finished and had more time. What was missing when I was consumed with all the homework was writing and relationships. I was in short supply of quality time for both. I locked that in as a point of focus, knowing well what a lack of both was doing to me.

In 2013 I sought those two goals by putting a number on them. I decided that I would write 75 blog posts, write and mail 25 letters, and read 25 books. I reported on my progress monthly on this blog. I successfully completed each goal and reaped the benefits of living purposefully.

In 2014 I counted nothing. I made no such public statements about my path and progress. I took my foot off the pedal of personal pressure to do what I knew I wanted to do. The result: 40 blog posts, 18 books, and zero letters.

I'm going back to the numbers. I felt stifled by the constraints I placed on myself towards the end of 2013. In 2014, I drowned from the freedom. I feel a moral lesson coming on here about rules and biblical guidelines, but I'll have to save that for another post.

The number this year is 13,000. Every month, my goal is to write 13,000 words. I know who I want to be, and I'm not him right now. I want to be a writer, I want to be a friend, and I want to be a follower of Christ. Writers write. Friends keep in contact. Christians pray. Between my prayers, my blog posts, and my letters, I'm aiming for 13,000 total words each month.

13,000. That's approximately 7 blog posts, 20 typed prayers, and two letters. It is manageable. It is reasonable. I have found myself entirely incapable of the manageable and reasonable the past few months.

I have heard some say that in disciplining yourself to do something, by forcing yourself and putting yourself on a schedule or a timeline and gutting it out, doing the act when you don't necessarily feel like it, it takes the heart out of it. It doesn't really count. It's unhealthy and dangerous, because you are just going through the motions and not really doing the thing that you are forcing yourself to do.

Those people are wrong.

Here's what I know. To be who I want to be is a daily battle, a constant struggle, where the victory is sweet but the path is thorny. Without a purposeful plan and imposed self-discipline, I am too weak not to slide into mediocrity. And the mediocre is so grossly unfulfilling that a pattern of accepting it turns me from fighting for who I want to be to fighting not to hate who I am. That fight, my friends, is dark and lonely. It's a foolish fight to fight.

Flannery O'Connor once wrote in a letter, "Don't let anyone or anything cut into your time with words." I'm taking her advice, 13,000 at a time.

Happy New Year, everyone.