At the End of the Shot Clock

It is a blessing for me anytime I can compare basketball philosophy, particularly defensive grit, with New Testament writing.

On Sunday morning before church I was checking up on my beloved Panthers and the upcoming basketball season. I came across an article about the progress made early in the season, particularly among all the new faces in the program this year. In it I found this quote from head coach Ben Jacobson: "I've liked everything up to the point where we get a little bit tired," he explained. We've got some work to do at that point. Once we get tired, we aren't competing at the level that's going to be necessary for us to do well." This, he said is what it would take to "make plays when it matters most, and that is at the end of the shot clock or . . . late in a game."

That quote came to mind as I sat in the pew during our church service and listened to the sermon on 2 Peter. In his letter Peter writes that the proper response to grace is effort. While effort does not save, it is an appropriate form of gratitude for salvation. The effort Peter encourages his readers to exert is in supplementing faith with various qualities, such as virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love. It is the quality of being steadfast that stands out to me. My eyes always stop on that word when I come across it. That term has played a role in other of my blog posts. It is a word that I respect and revere and find central to my teaching and coaching. And it is at the heart of some of my greatest struggles.

Physically, I've taken pride in my ability to press on when tired, particularly in my younger, more athletic, less, well, humbling years. Now, however, I find it very difficult to make disciplined, wise mental choices in fatigue. Rather than remaining steadfast to the causes I've prioritized, I allow fatigue to win far too often. In writing, for instance. Or reading. I wanted to quit this post after five minutes of starting it. I rubbed my eyes and thought about shutting my laptop and "taking a break" that I know would have lasted far longer than 24 hours. And it was just a little fatigue. But the temptation to quit was there.

Would me quitting on this post tonight have been a big deal, in the scheme of things? Probably not. But it is practice. It's an opportunity to say yes to what I want to do and no to what I feel like doing. I need practice at not giving in to fatigue. When the shot clock is running down, when I've battled hard all day and don't have much left in the tank, can I string together a few defensive possessions, a few tiny decisions like getting words down on a post or writing a letter or studying some basketball or calling a friend? Will I be practiced at not giving in to fatigue? Or would I just prefer to hope I don't give in and fail in my steadfastness when the fatigue is big and the stakes are bigger? And am I able to see that many tiny decisions define a lifetime?

Also, failing in the small stuff affects far more than me. It convenient to think that I'm the only one I let down when I am not steadfast. But Peter goes on to say that qualities like this "keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful." In other words, without them I have little to offer to a world I'm quite certain I've been called by grace to serve. "For whoever lacks these qualities," writes Peter, "is so nearsighted that he is blind." Falling to fatigue shows I am too present-minded to see anything.

I was fortunate to have a friend of mine stop me after church and out of nowhere mention that he appreciates reading my blog when I get a chance to write. I've known this person for probably a decade, and I've never known he's read this. His words were an encouragement to me. They were also a challenge. I don't delude myself into thinking that the weight of the free world hinges on anything I think or write, or that the world is even that much different based on what I post here. But it is an opportunity for me to offer something to others, to encourage, to prod, to challenge, or even to just say, "you're not alone in this." When I succumb to fatigue, I lose that opportunity. I am unfruitful and so near-sighted that I can only see the discomfort in the here and now.

A few defensive possessions at the end of the shot clock or late in games can define a whole season. It can define a whole life too. And what the New Testament and defensive philosophy teach me is that the consequences matter to far more than just me.

Count tonight as one possession won.

Vote Like Thoreau

The slow, day-by-day inebriated stumble through the election season has been a maddening comedy of errors. It is ridiculous. It is depressing. It is undeniably real. And the hand-wringing from all corners of the country and the "what can I do" barrage of self and societal questioning has dominated all water cooler conversations in my water cooler-less life.

Of particular interest to me has been the muddled response from Christians, primarily those who feel the need to speak to and for the "Evangelical voting block" that is often (though less so now) coveted by major party candidates. It is both damning and comical to watch the "yeah, but . . ." doctrine of morality that makes a mockery of good and evil by trading it in for an argument of degrees of harm one candidate will do versus the other. No matter how ugly, how hateful, how denigrating the message, some in the Christian community cling to the battle-cry of "but at least it's not as bad as what a former president who is not now running for president did two decades ago." They sing the praises of the hog confinement they sleep in as they hold their nose in their daily hike past their neighbor's manure pile.

So what is one to do? Based on the conversations I am a part of and around in this never-ending political nightmare, the question seems to be one of how to vote. We talk, and we talk, and we talk, and soon there must be a mark on a sheet of paper that we can put our name next to. We complain, loudly. We laugh, and we watch Saturday Night Live sketches, and we watch debates wondering just what will happen next. We express disdain and hopelessness. We slowly approach election day. What should we do?

I found an answer of sorts while teaching Thoreau's essay "Resistance to Civil Government" in my American Lit course this week. In it Thoreau challenges his readers to stand up for the morals they believe in, as he has by not paying taxes in protest of the Mexican War and the slave trade. The essay is famous for its direct connections to the Civil Rights Movement and Ghandi's nonviolent civil disobedience. It is extreme in spots, but I suppose all foundational pieces of literature are.

But I found a few relevant gems as I read it this time around in the untenable situation so many of us find ourselves in. In one passage, Thoreau writes, "Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it." He adds later, "Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely."

Here I see wisdom and a challenge. In these words, Thoreau makes clear that the most monumental decision we have to make is not in how to vote. Instead, it's in how to live. Voting might be a statement of belief, but it pales in comparison to the statement of every day action. Our whole vote - our leisure and our money and our education and our time - those matter far more than the flawed holder of the office of President of the United States.

If one candidate cannot be trusted, and the other causes harm and embarrassment with every "honest" statement he utters, then we must look to ourselves. It is easy to speak about our disappointment in the direction of the discourse and politics of our country. But what do our actions say? How do we spend our time and money and emotion? On reality TV? On being entertained? Do we question the intelligence of our candidates at the same time we choose not to learn and grow and become educated in the values we claim to profess? Do we bemoan lying while telling half-truths to ourselves and others, always pardoning it away with excuses of convenience? Are we disgusted by the power-hungry, say-anything, win-at-all costs approach and yet chase the quickest path to victory, to promotion, to attention? Do we mock a candidate's Twitter idiocy and live on our own Twitter account more than a newspaper?

I know I don't share the same position as everyone. Perhaps not even most. But from this seat it looks like we will all lose in November, no matter what; and our whole votes, not just our paper ones, have put us here. Doug Wilson, in the most intriguing article on the election I've read, writes that "We have met the enemy, and he is us. . . We all pretend to be shocked, shocked, by something that we have allowed to become an acceptable mainstream standard."

The real question is not one of voting. Not paper voting anyway. It is not how bad are these candidates, but rather what in them do I see in me? Perhaps when these are the questions being examined, we will quit excusing the inexcusable, comparison-shopping for morality, and laughing at what is not funny. Instead, we will cast our whole vote.

We Read to Know That. . .

Last year we were facing a decorating existential crisis in our dining room.

It was time for a change, and the opportunity presented itself in the form of re-plastering the cracked walls in our hundred year old home. We decided to change what had not been changed in the near decade we had owned the house. Now, I'm not one who knows much or even cares about what interior decorating is supposed to look like. I couldn't tell you what's on the walls of any of our friends' homes with any sort of clarity.

However, this was something I wanted to take great care with; I knew that what we decided was worthy of hanging on our walls, in the room where we most often host, was going to say something about who we are. We searched randomly, never very seriously, hoping that inspiration or a fortuitous purchasing experience would strike that brought into our dining room an element of class, personality, originality, and a clear indication to guests that they were dining with the coolest people they'd ever met. It was no small task.

After an introduction for me to the world of Etsy.com, we settled on a literary theme. We already had a tribute to the settings of all of Steinbeck's California novels given to me by a friend who had recently visited the land of one of my favorite authors. To that we added some C.S. Lewis-themed art. One of the pieces is a dictionary page used as the background for the featured Lewis quote, "We read to know that we are not alone."

I have felt particularly not alone in the last two weeks, awakening me to the beauty of this quote.

A week or two ago, a good friend of mine texted to ask if I had read or heard of a book he was reading. I had not. He responded by ordering the book from Amazon and having it sent to my house. I've had books recommended to me before, and I appreciate it. Realistically, though, I'm only going to get to about 20% of the books someone else thinks are good. I'm typically four or five books behind in the list I've already selected and often purchased. At least that many brand new books stand waiting on my shelf right now. But this is a recommendation on a whole other level. Here - read this. It's showing up at your doorstep. So I read it.

The book was good. Really good. It's a book I would have never picked up on my own, but the writing was engaging and real. I enjoyed the read. More important, though, was the experience of reading. Because I knew that the pages I was covering each night were the same pages that had moved him, it felt like he was there with me in the room on a nightly basis. I read, and I was not alone. I was not only connecting the book to my experiences, I was connecting it to his and the history of our friendship.

Reading not only connects us to the world around us, it connects us more closely to those who are already the closest to us. My wife Emily and I gave our daughter Elise the first Harry Potter book for her 9th birthday. We had never read it, but we wanted to give her something different. Emily decided to read the book as well, and the two of them have had their own little book club conversations together as they each individually worked their way through the plot.

Elise and I read Calvin and Hobbes together to know that we are not alone. I get to watch her read the same strips I read at her age and see her reaction identifying with Calvin, while I now read it with a tendency to nod my heart knowingly towards the diatribes of Calvin's poor father. When we read together, she is reminded that I was once a kid her age, and I am reminded of the exact same thing.

Two separate former students who are now in college emailed me this past week to say hi and offer their own book suggestions.

Our family has come up with a group Halloween costume idea each year in which we all have a roll to play. This year's idea comes from a book the girls and I read together at the end of the summer.

18 years ago I knew it was true love when I told Emily to read two books that I loved and thought spoke about me, and she did.

Last week I sent a letter to another friend who had agreed to read the New Testament book of Colossians with me. I read it, knowing he also was reading it, and I sent him my personal reactions and thoughts, knowing that he cared. I knew that while I read those passages, piece by piece, I was not alone.

It's my turn, now. Emboldened, I purchased the next book on my shelf and sent it to the doorstep of my friend. One sword fight at a time, we'll be sharing our way through Steinbeck's re-telling of Arthurian Legend. One hundred miles apart from each other, we will not be alone.

The Long Road Back

So how do you turn a writer into a non-writer? How do you make a blog go silent?

One way is to get a dog. A puppy anyway. A big hulking chocolate lab puppy who drops toys onto your lap whenever you sit at the computer screen. A mass of energy who alternates between making you laugh and play and scream in frustration at yet another clandestine mission of destruction. That will slow a writer down in a hurry.

Or you ignore the laws of momentum until the snowball is rolling at uncontrollable speeds. One day of doing anything is nothing. But string two or three or four together, and the immutable laws of physics kick in, the gravitational pull hurtling your motivation downward at a steady increase of  9.86 meters per second. Make that six weeks worth of days and momentum, and you wake up and realize you don't have any idea how to reverse it. You want to, and you need to, but you forget how after so many days of just not writing.

You also start worrying about who your audience is and how to please them. You wonder who that audience is, and you forget that it never really mattered before. You start thinking about how to grow the audience. You become a marketer of that audience rather than a writer who needs none. And every time you want to write again, the doubting voice in the back of your head whispers, "Who really cares about this? Who would actually read this?"

You then want to make sure that whatever you write after an absence of writing is worthy of that absence. Finding nothing, the absence grows larger.

Worst of all, you fear that you really have nothing to say. And you realize that the reality is you probably don't. And you don't because you quit asking so many questions, quit viewing events as part of a larger story rather than an immediacy to be dealt with. You don't read as much and think as much and listen as much. You allow yourself to run near empty, believing that much activity is the same as good activity. You allow fatigue to produce fear and you call it rest. When there is nothing to say, there is no hunger to say it. The blinking cursor chastises. It is far easier to not having something to say away from the keyboard than it is right in front of it.

Then it just seems hard. Too hard. And it is hard. Momentum has made it so. You may want so badly to turn it all around, but every day of not writing, of waiting, has a price. That price is the feeling right now, the one making each clause seem impossible. That price is the long road back.

The long road back starts with a single post. Sometimes it starts with several single failed posts, or a handful of half-started ideas jotted on envelopes or paper scraps that sometimes make it to the table and sometimes don't. But those failures lead to something, eventually. Hopefully a small victory.

The first post is easier than the second. The second is probably easier than the third. But a third, and then a fourth, scratching those out when the renewed freshness is gone and the grind is back, those are the hurdles to getting momentum back in your favor. A mere relapse away from idleness becomes a rhythm. I seek the rhythm.

How does a writer become a non-writer? How does a marriage become distant? How does a prayerful life become prayerless? How does the disciplined diet become an extra 8-pound afterthought? For many reasons. Some of them good. But of more interest to me now is the long road back.

Help, Please

I've never liked asking for help.

More than anything, asking for help is admitting deficiency or need. At times it requires a sheepish shrug of the shoulders, a nodding "I know I should know how to do this but I don't" look on your face, a hint of pleading without clear desperation as you ask someone to sacrifice their time or resources to meet needs that are not their own. It is a pride-swallowing admission that "you know something I don't know" or "I don't have it all figured out like I want you to believe I do." Whether it's help moving, help fixing, help learning, or help providing, the request puts you in a clear position of inferiority.

There are people who take pride in never having to ask for help. They may want help. Help may make their situation easier. But they will not ask, because, just to be clear, they do not need it. I have never had the skills or resources to be one of those people. Now I don't even want to be.

This week I came to realize more fully why asking for help is one of the best requests you can make. At the beginning of the week I spent two days on RAGBRAI, a major bike ride across the state of Iowa. I love the ride and have been thrilled to have ridden parts of it over the past four years with a good friend of mine, but it can be an absolute logistical nightmare. First, my friend and I needed transportation to the western edge of the state. We also needed places to stay in two different locations. Then we needed someone to come pick us up in the middle of nowhere. Also, I needed someone to watch my kids and my dog. All this for the selfish cause of two days on a bike with a good friend consuming gluttonous amounts of roadside calories.

The favor requests began. And they were all met. My wife agreed to give up much of her weekend to drive us to the start. Her sister offered us supper and a place to sleep on Saturday night. My sister volunteered to watch both my kids and our 5-month old lab. An old friend from high school supplied food and lodging on the second night. Strangers we've never met before transported our bags from one town to another. My friend's parents picked us up after two days. Obviously we were blessed, blessed beyond belief, helped in every way to meet every need (or want) that we requested. We asked for help. We were provided for. But it was more than that.

Asking for help felt like I was making a huge burden of myself. And I probably was. But in reality, I see that what asking for help did was provide me the opportunity to build relationships, or strengthen them, and to share time and stories and laughs. Every person who agreed to help provided that. I would not have spent two hours with my sister and her husband on Saturday if we had not asked for help. Similarly, I wouldn't have had a couple of road hours with my wife, or a great meal and good stories with my sister-in-law and her family, or a stroll down the Iowa Walk of Fame on the sidewalks of Shenendoah, Iowa with an old friend and her husband. They were all so eager to offer help, and what I see now is that they were eager to offer themselves.

Looking back, I know that every time I've asked a friend to help me figure out a home improvement project, or to borrow a tool, or to water my garden, it's given us more time together. When I ask my parents, or my in-laws for help, we become closer. And when I admit to my wife what I won't admit to anyone else, that I just can't do it all, that I need her, need emotional support, need energy, need prayers, need someone to help me limp across whatever finish line there may be, need her, that it is then that we are the strongest. I've built and grown many relationships on the premise of needing someone's help. I needed their help, but I mostly needed them in my life.

John Steinbeck said that, "people are more inclined to help each other in hard times. Good times don't bring out the best in people." In good times, we isolate. Pride swells. We are not vulnerable, we do not reach out, and we do not seek the connections that are the oxygen of living well. No matter how hard asking for help seems, we are always better, in many more ways than we sought, after having done so.

The best of times, it seems, is when we most need others.

Throw Away Your Novel

Martin Lloyd-Jones, in his book Preaching and Preachers, writes that "The best way of checking any tendency to pride - pride in your preaching or in anything else you may do or may be - is to read on Sunday nights the biography of some great saint." It is reading that will humble us, remind us that there is a vast universe, that we are a small part of it, and we are both nothing special in particular and also not alone in our pride and joy and fear and sin. Reading gets us out of our own way, out of our own world, and into a much larger reality. Biography, as Lloyd Jones mentions, is an excellent source for this. Not only does biography humble, it also inspires.

Reading about John Steinbeck's life and work has that effect on me. In my last post I discussed one of the reasons I love Steinbeck's works so much, citing his willingness to try anything that interested him, try it with passion, regardless of whether or not he thought he'd be good at it. Tonight I look at his doggedness, his ability to grind, and the understanding that he couldn't become a great novelist in a day.

In one of the interviews I recently read about him, the interviewer wrote this about him:

"He wrote hard for almost fifteen years before he had his first success. He has always written more than he has published. Indeed, he destroyed two full-length novels before Cup of Gold, his first published novel, made its appearance in 1929."

He destroyed two full novels. They're gone. Years of work, thousands of words, pages and pages of thoughts and ideas and communication of his heart and mind, and he threw them away. Gone. I typically have to cut and throw away 20% of any sermon I write for the purposes of time and clarity, and I am breathlessly despondent with each click of the delete key. But I've never had to throw away a whole sermon, or even a blog post, let alone a novel.

It took Steinbeck fifteen years worth of grinding out pages that would never be read to get to his first success. Let that one sink in.

What are you doing now, that in fifteen years, might define you? Can you name anything you do that will matter in fifteen years? Not because it lasted, but because you threw it away, and threw some more away, and threw enough time and energy doing what nobody would see to reach a lasting contribution?

Yes, this is a call to put hours and commitment into something and stick with it. Of course it's that. But more so than that, this is a call to be doing something today that might matter in fifteen years - something big, something that you love, something that feeds you and the world. It doesn't have to feed the world today. But might it, down the road, after it's fed you and you've thrown it away, be your contribution?

Steinbeck was beginning a life's work, a great literary career, and he didn't know it. He had no assurances that he was headed anywhere of significance. But he wrote anyway.

Someone asked him in an interview was his personal philosophy was. His response: "Like everyone else in the world I want to be good and strong and virtuous and wise and loved." Writing, unnoticed for a really long time, allowed him to do that. And it reminds me today to get down some words, take in another book, work on another sermon, and feed good and true and loving words into my daughters and wife as often as possible. No one may notice or remember any of it. But in fifteen years, that work will have produced something that matters greatly to me.

The Right Kind of Stupidity

I love John Steinbeck. It's an improbable love affair that has nothing to do with being introduced to his work in school or introducing him to students myself as an instructor now. Frankly, I don't know when it began. But his words squeeze truth and joy out of thin air, offering literary manna in the form of comedy and tragedy, whether written to alarm or agitate or educate or delight.

One of my first reads this summer was Douglas Wilson's book Writers to Read: Nine Names that Belong on Your Bookshelf. In it Wilson describes nine authors and their attributes that make them worthy of his recommendation, his admiration, and his desire to introduce them, on a personal level, to his audience. Writers Wilson, "If books are among our friends, we ought to apply similar standards to them that we apply to our flesh-and-blood friend. We should want to choose them wisely and well and hope that we will be the better for their companionship." He offers us, then, his favorite "friends" and the authors who have written them. 

It made me consider my own literary love affairs and why I would want anyone I know to be introduced. In that spirit, I begin with this post to attempt to share with you my relationship with Steinbeckian lyric and lore.

Steinbeck wrote a lot of stuff. A lot. Late in his career, he decided he wanted to try writing for the theater, which was far from what anyone would term his comfort zone. In an interview, he offered these thoughts: "I'm just determined I'm going to learn something about the theatre. Last time we were kicked around like dogs but I still want to do it. This shows a truly pure quality of stupidity. Just nuts. I'm so fascinated by everything about the theatre. I don't really care if the show's a flop."

John Steinbeck is the right kind of stupid, and I love him for it. Throughout his career, he tries. Just to find out. He just wants to see. See if part-time college work is for him. See if a California country boy can embrace living in New York. See if living in migratory camps and writing about it can change the American landscape. See if he can properly and accurately put his best friend Ed Ricketts into his works and have his audience be as pleased with him as Steinbeck is. Try war journalism, try breaking all the rules of writing a novel, try commentary on the past and commentary on the present and commentary on what it's like to get into a vehicle with a dog and drive across the country. 

Critics, be damned, he shouts with every swipe of the pen in a new direction. I don't write for you. 

And I am delighted by this. Reading a lesser known work of his, or one of his so-called "experiments" (which he considered such texts as Of Mice and Men and East of Eden), I can see him smirking, giddy at the attempt. There is joy in the words, in the tinkering, in the curiosity that must be satisfied. Can I do this? What will it look like? 

In Steinbeck's career, and sprinkled lightly in so many of his texts, I see his example, and it implores me: "Get out and do things, even if you'll be bad at them. Quit worrying about winning or being successful. Worry about doing. Find out. And find out for you."

Try. Experiment. Do. Wise thoughts, for sure. I can only hope to be stupid enough to dare them myself.

Changing Moods

I am fond of saying that an individual cannot let feelings dictate their reality. I know I've written about it here on this blog on more than one occasion, and I just mentioned it once again in the last sermon that I gave. It is an unpopular and difficult truth, and it is one that I struggle with consistently. Frustration and fatigue can be crippling for me when they strike. Six months into the year, and my blog output has been terrible. My reading list hasn't been much better. I've been too tired, or too stressed, or too distracted to get much done that I know I want to and need to and should get done. But how can you be tired for six months? Or distracted?

There are ways to fight this, of course. Mostly those ways are repeating this truth over and over and hoping it sticks. And it does, for me personally, until I'm tired or stressed or distracted again. Then I tend to forget. A bag of Doritos and 2 hours of re-runs later, I've accomplished nothing, done nothing to improve my "feelings," and ultimately I've stayed up late enough to ensure that I'm tired again the next day and more stressed due to a lack of personal productivity. In hindsight, repeating this truth hasn't necessarily helped in the middle of living it.

I may have run across a better way, though. I've been taking down notes and important passages from a book I read months ago and have meant to collect notes regarding for a while. Having been tired and distracted, I'm only now getting them down. Anyway, the book is Martin Lloyd-Jones' Preaching and Preachers. It is a meticulous and passionate collection of Lloyd-Jones' perspective on every possible aspect of preaching. As I collected the notes, I came across this passage:

"The preacher should never be moody; but he will have varying moods. No man can tell what he will feel like tomorrow morning; you do not control that. Our business is to do something about these changing moods and not to allow ourselves to become victims of them. You are not exactly the same two days running, and you have to treat yourself according to your varying conditions. So you will have to discover what is the most appropriate reading for yourself in these varying states. There will be times when you will be unhappy. There are these states and conditions of the soul, and the sooner you learn how to deal with them, and how to handle them, the better it will be for you and for the people to whom you preach."

Reading a book on how to improve my own occasional preaching, I unexpectedly found this paragraph that made my English teacher heart cry out triumphantly. Don't like your mood? Then read! Do something about your changing mood. That something is read. And read with purpose.

This is a far cry from my typical Nick-at-Nite marathon or glass of wine approach.

What does your anger need? Or your lethargy? What sets your distracted mind back on your priorities? What will fight against your own provincialism and victimhood? You need a plan. I need a plan. A literary plan.

Not only does reading attack a mood, it also works proactively to create it. I seldom walk away from Steinbeck without inspiration to write. The Bible keeps me grateful. Calvin and Hobbes comic books remind me to not think like a father all the time, and any book with two children on my lap listening makes me feel like the most valued man on the planet. Other authors, like Shauna Niequist, even make me want to cook, or at least enjoy what my wife cooks, and sit around a big table with good friends and loud conversation. I cannot point to anything on a screen, any screen, that comes close to producing any of this.

Whatever the mood, it seems that there's a book for that. If you're not sure what it is, pick one up anyway. It'll lead you to some feeling far more worthy of calling a reality than the predatory fatigue and frustration.

Father's Day Apologies

I'm not sure if it's a recent trend or not, but I've noticed that in churches on Father's Day, fathers commonly are in danger of being under attack. It's not on purpose, of course. Nor is it malicious. There are Father's Day well-wishes. Sometimes there is a celebration of manhood itself. But in an understandable rush to call God the ultimate Father, there is an admission and even an apology to all in the church body who have had less-than-stellar father figures. "Some of you have had absent fathers or abusive fathers or distant fathers," someone will say. And then they will point those to God as the faithful, love-without-end Father that He is. Rightfully so. But can you imagine the same thing being said on Mother's Day? On Mother's Day the lamenting and understanding tones are for those who wish to be mothers but either are not or can not for reasons out of their control. And they deserve those lamentations. But I don't hear the same for those who cannot be fathers. Instead, there are apologies for the bad ones.

There is a book that I teach to my juniors titled Until They Bring the Streetcars Back by Stanley Gordon West. In it the life of a teenage boy, Calvin Gant, is examined; and a major aspect of the plot is his tenuous relationship with his father. The father is distant but hard-working. He is generally serious with occasional flashes of frivolity. He served in the war, and that service changed him. He speaks sparingly of feelings and never of love. He demands much and provides much. He has a perfect record of attendance at work but a non-existent record at Cal's athletic events. It's been fascinating over the last 14 years in the classroom to hear student discussion on the merits and flaws of this father. Consensus has moved from generally positive and understanding to primarily critical in little more than a decade. Cal's father is a punching bag for them, a father who doesn't do enough, show up enough, express love enough. The flaws are memorable; the contributions, cast aside. For many of them, they say, the same goes for their own father.

This tells me that one of two situations is true: either we are too hard on fathers and quick to judge them if they are not the perfect balance of everything expected of men in the shifting expectations of the last 5 decades combined, or there truly are a lot of bad fathers out there.

I work hard to be a good father, but I admit that my great fear is that my children will remember me most in 30 years for my flaws rather than my contributions. That possibility haunts me if I allow it to. What flaws will stick out? My stubbornness? My fatigue-induced low tolerance? The frustration in my voice when they haven't obeyed as I saw fit? What have I missed that they won't forget or forgive? My daughters aren't even teenagers yet; I can't imagine the atrocities I'll commit during those years.

My father has the comfort of knowing that 30 years later, it is not the flaws that his son remembers. The flaws are mere foibles, and many are comical. One Father's day I remember we made my dad a shirt mocking his frequent and unmistakable use of the phrase, "You know?" in his conversational speech. It is "flaws" like this that make me remember and smile. I know who my father is, and I know he's not perfect. I'm not looking through some rose-colored glasses and waxing poetic about some non-existent past. Instead, I see who he was and is, and I know I see a good man and a good father who can rest easy knowing that.

I don't remember the absences so much as I remember the work ethic. I know he is stubborn, but only because he has stubbornly shown up every time I've needed him. He didn't let me choose the radio station, and he didn't let me choose when we were done working or what jobs were my responsibility. Because of those "flaws," I know and appreciate Paul Harvey and the satisfaction of a late night shower cleansing fatigue and manure from the day. He loitered when I preferred to hurry, and I learned the value of community.

Thank you, church, for your concern. But my father needs no apology for him. He is not God. But he helped me know God, and he helped me know callouses, and he helped me know the value of a face to face conversation. I hope I give my own children as much as my father gave to me so that they can look back at any flaws, hear the world's assessments of my shortcomings, and know that I did everything in love from the bottom of my heart, just like my dad taught me.

A Firm Foundation

This week my daughters had their end of the year AWANA award ceremony. AWANA is a church program on Wednesday nights for kids preschool through elementary ages at our church where they memorize verses and listen to speakers and play other games. Typically the AWANA director has a speaker for the awards night, but this year she decided that instead of one speaker to have a couple of speakers who had gone through the AWANA program when they were a kid and now had kids in AWANA. Having been an AWANA alum myself, I agreed when asked to offer a few words on the stage.

I talked about how being in AWANA as a kid, though I didn't realize it at the time, provided a firm foundation for who I am today. I learned verses and truths that I understood in part at the time so that I could understand much more in full now. I learned that a church building is a place for fun and friends and learning, not just a place to sit down and shut up and wait until I was allowed to leave. And I learned that a church is a place where I mattered to adults, and my faith mattered to them. Until I had to speak about it, I hadn't really considered those lessons. But I see those same foundations being built in my kids today because of the work of the AWANA volunteers every Wednesday night.

I went through the AWANA program, received my firm foundation, and was given the opportunity to speak about it and its impact now on my kids, because of my mother.

She took me there. It was not a program at our church, but she took me there anyway. She told me it was important and made it important in the home. I can still smell the crock pot full of chili when we got home Wednesday nights, cooking all day so that we could eat together and still have enough time to get there. She challenged me each week to work through the books and learn as many verses as possible. My mother decided 30 years ago that this was important enough for us to do, and she was right. It wasn't just another activity that would fill our time. Instead, it was a firm foundation.

A friend of mine who spoke before me at this year's AWANA ceremony thought it would be cool if he brought in some of his old AWANA awards to show while he spoke so the kids could see them. He was also a circa-1985 attendee (though in a different church than me), and I recognized his awards as the same I worked for and received as a kid. I remember the pride I had in having achieved some of the AWANA honors, often admiring all the work I'd done to get there.

I realize the truth now. It wasn't just my work. It wasn't just my activity. For me to accomplish anything, it required Mom. I know that now. I know that as sure as the Sunday and Monday and Tuesday nights in our home are spent learning verses together, sometimes through frustration and struggle, so too were far too many nights in my youth spent with Mom urging me to learn one more verse, or listening to me practice, or I'm certain tolerating my impatient frustration fits. She could have dropped me off at the door at 6:30 PM and picked me up at 8 and left it alone the rest of the week. But she couldn't. She was building a firm foundation. And she did.

I know now that to build that foundation, the Wednesday night routine at home is disrupted. Supper is sooner. Bags and Bibles and books and vests have to be rounded up and ready. Bedtime is later. The weekly routine is also disrupted. If it matters, if a kid is to learn and grow and put down brick by foundational brick that will be remembered, it has to matter to someone else as well. And that someone else for me was Mom.

This week my daughters got a note in the mail. It was from my mom. On the top of it was a handwritten verse from her, followed by a few words congratulating them on all their work and success this year. It seems she's still building that foundation, even if she lives two hours away. Building it through notes, the same notes she sent to me with a verse at the top when I was in college, two hours away.  Building it through verses inside of plastic eggs on Easter morning, next to those precious M&M's and assorted pieces of chocolate. Building it through phone calls asking to hear the books of the Bible recited by them after hearing of their success. Building it because it was important 30 years ago, and it's important now.

My foundation has many bricks that have led to who I am and how I work and on what I build my family's foundation. I am thankful for all the AWANA bricks and a mother who quietly mortared them together.

Happy Mother's Day.


****To read more about how cool my Mom is, see these previous Mother's Day posts:

• She Showed Up
• A Mother Multiplied
• Honesty and Enthusiasm
• Why I'm Glad Mom Didn't Like Rap Music
• Battling a Mother

My Month in a Bathroom

I've been unable to write for the past month, as I was busy in the bathroom.

On the road back to Iowa over Spring Break, Emily and I decided to do a quick bathroom remodel in our upstairs bathroom. We actually said and believed that - quick. We had no lofty goals; we were merely in it for functionality: a toilet that flushes consistently, tile that wasn't cracked, and a sink with room for soap. After making due for ten years with the secondary, second-class bathroom, we figured a fix-up would be low cost and low hassle. Tile, a toilet, and sink: how hard could it really be?

Not that hard, actually. But not that easy, either. Easy enough that it's finished now. Done. Mostly by me, a 36-year old without an official man-card and hands much more accustomed to keyboards and books than hammers and nails. It's amazing what one can learn from YouTube and a patient neighbor willing to teach. After a month of nights and weekends, this tiny 25 square foot space is like new. Or at least functioning.

I experienced a range of emotions during the project, which I'm sure many who have undertaken similar projects with similar levels of experience can attest to. The overconfidence of demolition came first. The momentum created by the ease and quick process of destruction is intoxicating and disorienting, leading one to actually believe they may be ahead of schedule. This is followed by a small dip of apprehension predicated on the knowledge that you have no knowledge and are paralyzed by the fear of beginning. But then, if you're fortunate, comes success. Sweet success. You do something for the first time. You create. You finish. You thump your chest, berating the project with derogatory epithets as if it, your opponent, had been defeated by your strength and moxie. You speak of your success, telling people about the project and the journey and how far you've come and how you, yes you, the one who nobody ever thought could, has indeed laid tile.

I was there. And it was sweet. Staring at the installed tile, the finishing touches having been completed in an adrenaline-packed flurry 30 minutes prior to dinner guests arriving, the swell of pride made me a believer. I could do this. I could be trusted with tools, and I would win. I had already won one battle. The war was at hand. Medals of valor, all around!

And this lasted for one day. One. Because after that one day, after the tile had settled and dried and cemented itself into permanence, I went to check on the project. I saw the flaws. All of them. They mocked me. They proclaimed their permanence. I knew I must stare at them and recognize their authority all my days in this house, and I sunk into a fog of dejection. I felt crushed under a mountain of despair. I ripped up my imagined man card.

My wife was there to pick up the pieces. My wife who understands me. My wife with the realistic home improvement expectations. In her wisdom, she laid it out there for me: "You know this isn't a sermon or a speech or a blog post, right? You can't spend hours pouring over every sentence, shaping it and revising it and re-revising it into submission. It doesn't work that way. Get over it." Ouch. She was right. A few weeks later, my imperfect, but pretty darn good for a renovation rookie bathroom is up and running.

This real-life story serves up many a metaphor. Pride cometh before the fall. Listen to your wife. Don't bite off more than you can chew. Or even Teddy Roosevelt's "the credit belongs to the man in the arena who strives, and errs, and falls short." Those all seem appropriate.

More so for me, though, was the realization of how much those tiny flaws in my home remodeling bothered me, how much I want to revise and refine and perfect them out of some sense of irreparable mark I was making on my home, and how few aspects of my real life with real consequence receive similar scrutiny. I almost never fixate on the inches, on the level, or on the cracks in my faith. Or in the way I use my time. Or in my relationships.

The bathroom flaws may never be recognized by guests, and that gives me comfort. But the same lack of recognition of the flaws in my spiritual house should not. If anything is worthy of intense scrutiny, it is that, visible to an audience or not.

So I go back to my real work now. I put down the power tools that I just learned to use and put away the mortar and grout and caulk. I collect my Menards leftovers and mistaken purchases and get my refund. I trade them in and scrutinize the flaws and mistakes I can work on and that do matter, and I roll up my sleeves.

A Purple Shirt and an Open Book

When I was in San Antonio last week on vacation with the family, I purposely wore a University of Northern Iowa shirt because I knew we would run into somebody, somewhere, who was a Panther at some time. It happens every time we leave the Midwest - invariably someone will see our proud purple gear and we'll get a "Go Panthers" and perhaps a conversation from a complete stranger. We are part of the same tribe: we've lived in the same community, had classes in the same buildings, hold many of the same values, and feel the strong tie of supporting a university who has few casual fans, but many loyal alumni. In the few hours we were on the Riverwalk and at The Alamo, it happened twice: both times with smiles, well-wishes, and the knowing and comfortable look of shared experience.

As Panthers, we like knowing we are not alone in the world. There is not one around every corner;  in fact, I know of no other Panther flag flying in our community on game day, whereas Iowa and Iowa State flags and apparel are as common here as snow in March. There is a shared pride and boost in loyalty in the midst of fellow grads, an uptick in casual conversation and camaraderie. So the opportunity to wear the purple and gold outside of the state, particularly somewhere as far removed as Texas, is an opportunity for reciprocal gain.

The same seems to be true for those who dare to dawn superhero attire. I make this assumption as one who is not a superhero aficionado. I've seen some Batman movies, if that counts for much. But that is not my tribe. I do, however, now own a Superman t-shirt. I obtained this to satisfy the whims of my youngest daughter, a burgeoning member of the Wonder Woman clan, and her desire for all attendees to her most recent birthday celebration to be appropriately adorned in accordance with her theme. The shirt is comfortable, though, so I dared to wear it last week. I am afraid to do so again. In my few hours in public supporting the iconic "S," I was greeted as one of the tribe. It was clear I was somehow taking a side, making a claim of my love and history and rooting interest in the new Batman vs. Superman film. It was a little scary. I felt like apologetically explaining, that I was wearing this attire for the soft cotton, not the external brand. I was a poser, a fake, but I produced the same spirited response as if I had been legit.

A few days after our trip in San Antonio, I woke up earlier than my wife and kids in our hotel room in Oklahoma and decided to head down to the lobby to read before everyone got up. I picked up my iPad and a Time magazine and tip-toed out of the room. Upon entering the lobby, there was a separated square of love seats and couches next to a fire place and away from the televisions and breakfast area, perfect for avoiding distractions. There was already a woman sitting and reading on one of the couches, and I noticed she was reading a Bible. I sat down adjacent to her and asked if it would bother her if I sat down next to her. "No," she replied. "I'm just getting in my daily reading." I asked her which book of the Bible she was reading from, and we had a nice conversation for several minutes following.

"You know," she said, "not many years ago I wouldn't have ever dreamed of picking this book up. Now I start every day with it. It's such a treasure." I agreed, and she went on her way. On cue, I put the Time to the side and opened up my Bible app to start my day with some Psalms. A treasure indeed.

That brief exchange changed my day. Like me wearing my UNI shirt days before, she was stating her tribe in a hotel lobby at 6 AM. She gave someone else from the tribe an opportunity to not feel alone, a chance to exchange knowing smiles and connected conversation, and the motivation and pride to revel in that citizenship as well. A woman I'll probably never see again, in a hotel lobby in nowhere Oklahoma, during a morning I was merely killing some time, unintentionally joined with me. She properly turned my attention away from basketball scores, Twitter, and Time, and instead into words of Life. Later I met her family in the line for waffles, and she offered smiles and small talk with my daughters. We were all the better for it.

Some days that's all it takes: an open Bible and a smile. Seeing that made me a better father, husband, and disciple that day all the way north on I-35.

When a Strip Club Comes to Your Town. . .

When a strip club comes to your town, you realize a few things. . .

One thing you come to realize is that you may be poised, like a diver, arms pointed, feet ready, for a dip into hypocrisy. Because when it comes, particularly when it comes two blocks away from your own residence, you bemoan its existence. Loudly. You cringe at the thought of what it will do to your property value, to the reputation of your community, and to the atmosphere of your small town Main Street. You wonder how you will explain to your young daughters the taunting, hulking banner with provocative dancing women obnoxiously and unavoidably displayed on your walk to the post office and diagonally from one of their favorite restaurants. You hope the City Council can find a way to banish the establishment to at least the outskirts of town, to where the drunken imbeciles won't puke on your sidewalks or drive into your parked cars. Not in my backyard, you say. We have got to get this "business" moved. There's got to be a way.

And then you realize there isn't a way. Not right now. Not legally. Not without a book of matches and an accelerant. You become more educated. You realize more fully the plight of the the dancers. You realize they are victims in so many ways. You find out about the possible prostitution, about past rumors of organized crime and drug deals and forced labor. You look around, and you realize that what many see as victimless entertainment leaves a string of victims: the long-time shop owner next door who can no longer be open in the evening, the apartment-dweller above with the young children, the "dancers," and every other young girl who walks past and is told that she is worth more with her clothes off than her clothes on. These victims become your message.

It is at this point that you realize you're in the deep end of the hypocrisy pool. At least you do if you're me. Because the goal is to move the business. But the message is of the collateral damage. And removing the business will merely make the victims someone I can't see, in a neighborhood in which I don't live, where I am not directly affected. And then I see that my problem isn't with evil, isn't with victims, it's with my discomfort and inconvenience. 

Dear world: I repent of this hypocrisy. At least I will try to. I repent because in the past strip clubs were just a punchline for me, in the same way my town is a punchline to others. I casually ignored all the ways sex is sold in culture. I will joke no more. 

I cannot prevent every strip club in the nation from business as usual. I cannot protest or speak out against each one individually. But I can take the matter more seriously. I can speak about it as more than harmless, victimless tomfoolery. I can work all the more fervently each day to teach my daughters where their worth comes from. I can take the lead of the citizens of another community, the community that endured the most recent strip club from this owner on their own Main Street, the citizens who cared enough about the damage and the evil and the ethics to come to our town and help long after theirs was safe. Ambivalent acceptance and a mere shrug of the shoulders is no longer an option.

We are only a few weeks into this experience in my backyard. So far I've been so busy pointing out what's wrong there that I've been unable to see what's wrong with me. Hypocrite. This is what I've learned thus far. I am certain there will be more. 

Reaching for True

Sometimes in writing you begin with the one true thing you want to say, and you spend all your time trying to find the best way to say it. This is called clarity. You have discovered something profound and worthwhile, and you see it so clearly that you can boil it down to a tightly worded sentence or phrase, and that is all you allow yourself to see as you're writing. You check everything within the writing with that sentence as it's guide. Does this help me say my one true thought? Will this illuminate it? Provide a universal example of it? Wax metaphorically, cleverly, shining ever-brighter and more colorful pulsing lights on the various aspects of that truth? Or does it distract? The true thing guides the writing, and you write because you've found this true thing, and you have no choice but to get it down, hoping to either share it or find someone else who's seen it and believes it, all to convince yourself that you either have something to offer in this world or that you are at the very least not alone in it. The truth thing compels you to write, and you have no other choice.

Sermon writing is like that for me. I do not want to get in the way of the singular true idea that must control the message. So I spend hours, days, even weeks, looking for that truth. But when I find it, it controls all 30 minutes of my speaking. I do not say it unless I believe it will get my audience closer to the idea. It is the standard-bearer. I instruct my students to boil down some of their essays into 20 words or less. Or entire novels. There is comfort in knowing exactly what you want to say.

Some conversations with friends are this way. Sometimes you discover a true thing, but it just isn't for a wide audience. It isn't for any audience, really, other than this friend who knows you and your previous thinking and will understand the true thing when you are able to talk about it. So you know ahead of time, when you sit down for a cup of coffee with them, or for dinner, or for a tasty beverage around the fire, or a bike ride, or a run, or a letter, exactly what you want to say. You have your truth, and you want to get it out. You want to try it out. It is no test of friendship to determine if they agree; no, you already know from previous experience with them that you are not alone in this world. It is because you've already agreed on so much that you must get this out to them. So you practice ways to bring it up before you see them. Or you realize it, and you count down the days until they're back in town, or back in the country, available for uninterrupted conversation after the kids have gone to bed. And your piece of truth guides you, guides all you have to say, and you know that more than likely it will still stand, and stand strong, daunting or comforting, the next morning.

It is comforting for a true idea to guide you. It can also be rare.

So many other times, a little like this one, you're just not sure what's true. You haven't found it yet. You just know what's real. And you've got to tease out the true and discover it. Or not discover it, as the case may be. But you notice, you observe, and you see a little glimmer. You've been watching for it, not knowing what it would look like or from where it would come, and you've seen it. You don't know what it means, but you know it is real, and you know that it matters. So you write.

You write. You explore. You examine. You don't know where you are headed, but you know it is better than standing still. The engine is running and the foot is on the gas, even if the compass is broken. And you come to the finish line, paragraphs or pages later, and perhaps you've found the destination. You found the land you didn't know existed even though you'd seen the postcards. You know what you didn't know, know why it matters, and know what is has to do with last week and next week. And you couldn't have gotten there without the writing. And you wouldn't have written without the watching.

I have been spending too much time waiting for the true sentence in order to get me started. The true sentence is my security blanket, my self-assurance that I have something to offer, that I have a little wisdom, that what I'm getting down is worth reading and worth writing. It allows me to do what I know how to do and go where I know I want to go. There is no danger in finding that which I don't want to find. And there is no danger in an audience finding that either.

I'm reading a lesser-known John Steinbeck novel called Sweet Thursday right now. I can feel the joy and freedom in the prose that Steinbeck must have felt writing to please himself in the advanced years of his career. At the beginning of every chapter is a pithy phrase that points to the truth of that chapter. They are witty and instructive. The are fun and true. If you've ever seen the sitcom Frasier (Emily and I are greedily devouring a season that just became free on our Amazon Prime Membership), it also uses this style to introduce it's scenes. These titles, these declarations of content, originally made me jealous. Then I realized: for many of them, Steinbeck had no idea what it would be until he got there.

I do not know exactly what journey I've been on in these 600 or so words. But my engine is running. These words reach for the true.

A Coach's Response to Post-Season Basketball

This weekend marked the end to a basketball season I wasn't sure I would ever have again.

The year ended with a tear-filled locker room, the sting of coming close but not quite close enough draped palpably like a wet blanket over all of us in our final moments together. But of course it did. Looking back, I remember now that this is how it ends every year. I've now coached basketball for 14 years, and each year has ended this way. For all but one team in each class of the state, this is how it must be.

Before the game I offered these words to the team: "No matter what happens tonight, you will remember this. You won't remember every game you've played, but this is a district game. Whatever happens, win or lose, you will remember this game and what you did in it." Looking back over those fourteen years, I say that out of experience. I do remember the district games. For each team.

I remember the ball screen at the top of the key giving us fits in the 4th quarter of one district game that would have likely propelled us into a state tournament. I remember the night a senior took a quick two with little time left when we needed three. Then there was the missed defensive assignment coupled with the missed shots in overtime from another senior in another year. There was the night that was the last ever post-season game for the school, the last one I'd coach in for this district that was merging with another, and I remember none of the school leaders who had been responsible for that decision bothering to be in attendance. And in all of them, sobbing seniors saying goodbye, both boys and girls, the reality of an end they could never truly feel come crashing down.

I've been furtively cursing the outcome under my breath at random times during the past day or two, spouting off stats, or pivotal officiating decisions, or the name of the opposing player who had been averaging 4 points a game and somehow scored 19. Relaxed one minute, engaged in a routine task; the next, I know (or perhaps my wife knows) a tone of exasperated incredulity takes hold.

It is a difficult pill investing that much time, energy, emotion, and not feeling the reward. Each entry into the post-season you fool yourself. It will end badly. Despite knowing that, you don't allow yourself to believe it through all the preparation. You painstakingly stare at stats and film, diagramming every scenario, refusing to get outworked. In the end, though, it will just not be enough.

Post-season basketball only works out well for one team. The rest are left to rot in a sea of regret and what-ifs. But lest I paint too grim a picture, lest I sound like a wounded victim questioning the sanity of it all, I move to this realization: much of life is that way as well. It will not always work out. In fact, often times it won't. If you dare to commit and risk big, you will be let down at some point. That's why it's a risk. That's why many simply don't.

And that's why in basketball, and whatever life pursuits in which you engage, if the end result is the ultimate, and the journey is only the immediate, you are on a futile path.

Of course the end result matters. We wouldn't be there, committed, working, if it didn't. But it can't be it. It can't even be most of it. It's got to be worth it knowing that it very well could end up unsuccessfully. I've gotten a lot of mileage in the classroom out of one of my favorite catch phrases: "Success feels good." I'm now thinking it needs a little modification: "The pursuit of success feels good." If it doesn't, if the chase isn't worth it regardless of the result, then it's probably the wrong success to be chasing.

The day after the game, after a couple of inches of snow covered my driveway, my friend, fellow coach, and occasional snow-blower fairy came over. There was nothing left to say we hadn't said. But we kept talking. It's hard to let go of it. It's hard to quit fighting, quit trying to find a way to eradicate the outcome. And it's hard because the journey was good. The pursuit calls. Eight months away from the next season, we're hungry for the work again.

It will end just as poorly. There will be disappointment. There will be tears. If I am lucky enough to be a part of it, another season, another journey, I will choke back my own emotion as I hug good-bye to tear-stained teenagers who I won't have the opportunity to journey with any more. The buzzer will sound, at some point, and somebody else will be high-fiving; I will watch but try not to, stewing in envy.

And I will remember it. Just like each one before it. But more importantly, I will remember those kids and those coaches and the days we spent together, pursuing a worthy goal, sharing a commitment, and smiling along the way. The end is ugly and hard, but only because the journey itself was colored with joy.

Writing Naked

My senior students have been working on college scholarship essay writing sporadically over the first semester. I decided to start the second semester with a real-world contest of sorts: "Dykstra's Great Scholarship Challenge." Each student worked for a week on their best 400-word scholarship prompt from earlier in the year then turned it in without their name on it. I randomly assigned each essay a number, and those essays were then placed in an NCAA tournament style bracket to essentially face other essays in one-on-one, win-or-go-home competition. I have two sections of seniors, so to maintain anonymity I had the opposite section be the judges for each matchup. The field of 32 has now been whittled down to a Final Four, and those four have been sent on to ten faculty members to decide on an ultimate winner. At stake for this scholarship: pride, my undying love and respect, northeast corner of the 2nd story fame, and perhaps a Snickers bar.

The conversations from students have been tremendous. First, listening to them discuss with each other the qualities of each essay and its worthiness (or lack thereof) to move on in the competition has been of great value. Hearing what impresses them and their classmates as an audience, what rings hollow, and what draws their sharpest criticism should speak to them for the next high-stakes essay they sit down to write.

Additionally, listening to the way students talk about their own papers speaks volumes. Some are much more engaged because they perceive more to be on the line than with other essays for class. Not everyone will be a winner. There is no "good enough." There is only best. It has raised their game. Or it has raised their anxiety because they know it didn't raise their game until too late.

More prominently, though, is the anxiety of realizing that nothing matters other than what's on that sheet of paper. They are being judged solely on their ability to communicate and what they portray about themselves using a measly 400 words. Their name isn't on the paper. They are, in many ways, writing naked. And writing naked, like I suppose many activities performed without clothing, can be quite intimidating. Place yourself in their shoes for a moment.

The frightening thing about writing naked is knowing that this is it. This communication. These words. There is no protection, no cover from your reputation, your previous actions, your money, or even your best intentions. None of it matters. These words do. There will be no making up for them later. There is no averaging it out if your best doesn't get down on that sheet of paper. Your mother or grandpa or best friend cannot convince the committee later of what they have convinced you of so many times - that you're a good person, a talented person, a person worthy of recognition. If those people were reading this - your friends and family - they would immediately assume the best and see the best and understand what you might be saying. But they aren't there. Nor is their recommendation. All that's there is a blank slate, a brief interaction, and an audience who will walk away with a clear and firm and confident judgment of who and what you are.

You will want to use previous words. You will want to go to your file and find something that was perfect before, something where each sentence inspired, where every metaphor illuminated, where you know you were at your best and you were well-rested and enjoying life and feeling really really good while the characters flashed effortlessly before you on the screen. But it will not. Not this time. It just won't fit. For this is a new time, a new prompt, a new audience, and in many ways, a newer and slightly wiser you.

My students want their resume to be attached. They've lived for that resume. They've worked hard for it. They've put in hours - hours of activities, hours of studying, hours of volunteering. And perhaps that should count for something. But here's the difference: in the writing, the pressure is on now. Today. The actions matter, and everyone knows it. It's harder. No one has organized this essay for them. They have to do more than just show up. They have to do more than do what they've always done: participate and even work hard when it's been requested of them or when it's regarding something that draws great passion from them. Instead they have an imperfect prompt, an audience they can't control, and a medium that intimidates them. In the writing they can display who they are and what they can do under pressure, under circumstances they didn't choose, in a situation they couldn't necessarily prepare for.

So they've got to use their words to be memorable. To grab attention. Now. They've got to say something that matters and approach with great purpose and attention every syllable they attach to this, the representation of their character. They will not get this opportunity, with this audience, again. And in this desire to be noteworthy, they know they must compete against a whole host of other essay clamoring in each clause for the same attention.

Perhaps we all would do better to write naked more often. To write naked at the grocery store when checking out. To write naked at the restaurant for those serving. Or with the co-worker we just met. Or the co-worker we've known for a long time and can't stand. Or with our spouse. Writing with this care, with this focus, with this pressure on each and every word. Every day, an essay due; every day, a blank slate with no past resume and no recommendations to lean on; every day's word count doing all the speaking for our character, for our values, for our worldview.

Whether we feel that pressure or not, an audience will read our essay every day. They will get our words, and nothing else. And what we represent, whether that be ourselves, our family, or our God, will be spoken for right along with it.

The Power of Six

The longer I write and teach writing, the more I see that living well and writing well are one in the same.

This week in my AP Lit class we've been working with the Six-Word Memoir form. Taken from the Smith Magazine website, a history of the form is as follows:

Legend has it that Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in only six words. His response? "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." In November 2006, SMITH Magazine reignited the recountre by asking our readers for their own Six-Word Memoirs. . . Since then, Six-Word Memoir project has become a global phenomenon and a bestselling book series.

I've introduce the genre in class as we attempt to refine our writing and be more effective at the sentence level and in our overall focus. Students created their own six-word memoirs this week that describe their day, week, semester, first love, life philosophy, etc. So far, the process has been fun for me; I get to see a lot of student personality in a short bit of writing, and they get to be creative, personal, and entertaining. They get to be real. It's amazing what kind of energy the opportunity to be real can inject into a high school classroom.

I told them this week that there are three main goals that using this writing form serves:

1. Maximize your writing space. Waste no words. Say more with less.
2. Pay attention to what your audience is seeing and thinking.
3.  Know exactly what you want to say. No verbal throat-clearing. No meandering. Just precision.

As I reflect on these activities and the goals therein, I realize that most interactions we have with others each day are six-word stories, one after another, with the same demands on the author.

For we should be able to say more with less. If we make each action count, seeing the consequence and value in every word in every conversation, we no longer run the risk of miscommunication or missed opportunities. If we maximize our metaphorical writing space, in this case the minutes we spend, and try to purposefully use each minute available, relationships will be strengthened, both with those whom we already know and those with whom we should. If you only had six words to say each day to your children, what would they be? Or your spouse? Or your best friend? If you only had six minutes to spend with them today, what would your actions say? The ability to select words and actions that matter, that speak beyond the time they take, is the ability to multiply influence and grace.

And we must pay attention to our audience. To what they're seeing and thinking about our words and actions. As I said to my students this week, intentions don't really matter. What matters is the reality for the reader. Their perception is king if they are, in fact, your audience. It matters not what you meant to say. They don't care what's in your head if what's on your face and in your tone doesn't match. I had my students take an essay they had written and boil it down to six-words. I then had them exchange essays with another student and ask them to write six words on what they thought the point of the essay was and then compare. This allowed students to not only consider an audience, but to hear from them as well. 

In your interactions tomorrow, there will be an audience. There will be audience members you speak to, and audience members you don't. Some in the audience will get more words and actions from you than others. But they're all reading. And that should increase the pressure we feel and the urgency to act and speak on purpose. Audience matters. To pretend, as many are in the fashion of doing, that "I don't care what anyone else thinks," is a first-rate cop-out. It's a fallacy. We all publish, every day. Someone will read it. 

Two statements from me generally get my students' attention and focus: "Other people will read this" and "Your grade depends on this." They view everything else as practice or inconsequential. I rarely get their best under any other circumstance. We do not have the luxury in our daily dealings of waiting for an announcement that we will have an audience to answer to or a sovereign grade-dispenser. It's simply a reality. Consider that audience. Embrace the heightened responsibility for your words and actions.

Finally, we should have that level of laser-focus in who we are and what we want our story to be. Certainly we are far more complicated than a six-word statement, and our lives tell a much more complex tale. But should they? Or should what we believe in and value be so firm in our minds and so central to our being that it affects every action and relationship and conversation? And should others be able to see that story and that philosophy in everything that we do? If our actions tell various and varied six-word memoirs, perhaps we have more thinking to do about the skeletal structure upon which all the muscles and ligaments of our lives hang.

The six-word memoir has it's limitations. But is has power in it as well. And to be better at communicating in other writing forms, viewing them through the lexical limit of six is an effective strategy. Placing the same constraints and pressures in all forms of communication, therefore, should have a similar effect.

The Blogger Returns to Run

In January I gave a sermon on Hebrews 12, which contributed (in part) to my blog writing absence of late. The passage the sermon was over compares a life lived in faith with running a race. As part of the metaphor, the author of Hebrews encourages the audience to "throw off everything that hinders," just as a runner sheds all extra weight or burdens when competing. Referring to all in our lives that isn't necessarily sin but that keeps us from running hard and running well, the text is a call to examine our lives, or our "race," and see what's slowing us down in our pursuit of the finish line.

One of my favorite statements from the sermon is this: "If you want to know what good in your life is getting in the way of your best, start running hard." When that sentence popped up during the creation of the sermon, I knew I had something that I wanted to hone in on personally.

It's easy to carry around a lot of extra and convince myself that it's good and brings me joy when I forget that I'm running any kind of race. I even allow myself to think about my life as many different races, that all have different race days, and all deserve some training from me. But when I commit, or recommit (as is so often the case) to running hard and running my race, I notice I can barely get out of the gate with all that I'm carrying.

If you want to know what's slowing you down in whatever it is you are pursuing, start pursuing it with a singularity of purpose. Decide that you're going to make it happen, no matter the cost. Hold all else loosely, and see what you must give up. If giving up what you have to give up to get it isn't worth it, you'll know the race you're running is the wrong race. Count the cost, and see if you're okay with the price. It's a question that deserves to be asked, whether your race is career success, strong family life, marathon running, or a devoted life of faith. And you'll never be able to truly answer the question unless you run hard.

And if you find out it's not worth it, that you don't want to throw off that which is slowing you down in this pursuit, if you're not willing to run hard, should you really be running in that direction at all?

Unfortunately, the race we are often most tempted to run is the race of comfort. The weight or hindrances that slow us down are ambition, love, sacrifice, and even joy. Those things slow down our immediate comfort. They delay our resting, slow us down in our pursuit of a comatose sameness, so much so that we are willing to shed them in our run. Dreams and risk endanger comfort. Love worth having spits in the face of contentment and relaxation. Lasting joy is often paired with immediate difficulty. So we shed them, casting them aside like superfluous clothing on a sweat-drenched summer run.

I'm not sure anyone knowingly does this. No one says, "Today I'm giving up love so I can just be me," or "my life goals are really slowing down my race to the couch." But how often are the little battles for love and faith and dreams shirked aside in the present for another hour in front of the TV?

We have become a culture of "feelings." I know this because I'm on the front lines of cultural shifts in the high school classroom. The changing public opinion polls and wavering priorities of society are reflected directly in the mouths of those of 16--18 years old voices reacting (however unwilling) to literature. And what I am blown away by now, as I've seen it progress in frequency over the past couple of years, is the number of sentences coming out of their mouths that begin with "I feel. . ." Whether talking about breakfast, politics, Shakespearean poetry, or the NFL playoffs, I hear "I feel" begin their responses at an uncanny rate. Feeling is reality to them. They've been told to worship at that temple.

Running a worthy race, and running that race well, is about far more than a feeling, though. You will almost always feel like comfort. That is your soul's default race. On most days you will not feel like training, whatever that training may be. I don't often feel like praying. I don't feel like writing. And I don't feel like sacrificial love. I know the value of a training routine, regardless of what I feel like. I wrote more prayer in 2015 than I did in the previous four years combined because I knew I needed to establish a routine. I didn't always feel like it. In fact, I rarely did. But I always felt like I wanted to be a guy who ran hard and ran well in the race of faith. And I never felt good about the race of comfort.

So I go back into training. I poke and prod for the extra that hinders, for the good in the way of the great, and for the discipline to cast aside the not so good that decays all running pursuits.

Feelings beware.