I am sitting alone, in the morning with my Starbucks instant coffee (Via) brewed and properly laced with skim milk, no sugar. I am wearing a sweater and jeans, both from second hand shops (which is where most all my clothing comes from nowadays). No radio is on, no stereo, and no television. It’s quiet. The violent noise of the modern world is just not there. I can hear myself sip my drink and I can hear the chair creak when I shift to turn the page in my book.

I can’t decide if I want to read Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot or Henri Nouwen’s Can You Drink the Cup? Both books are on my ‘to read’ list. Yet, I may finish an escape novel (lately it’s Bruce DeSilva’s Rogue Island) and give my brain a bit of a rest. But, the rest doesn’t come.

Instead, I feel a sense of loss that surprises me and frankly it hurts a bit. The loss begins with the retiring of the band, REM. They have been my favorite rock band for more than two decades. I have listened to all sorts of music, but I have lived with REM. I don’t know exactly why, but their retirement hurts a bit. It reveals not simply my love for certain music, but also my own identification with what REM stands for and has artistically produced. And I am driving quite a bit lately for work splitting my time between two cities, so I decide to spend some time creating a post-REM playlist that will both accompany me on the road, but will also describe where I am at in life. An hour later, my playlist is done and ready to be unleashed on the open road. For the record, here’s the playlist, in order:

1. 1. Lake Michigan—Rogue Wave
   2. Losing You—Boxer Rebellion
   3. Semi -Automatic—Boxer Rebellion
   4. Cities of Night—Blaqk Audio
   5. Blinding—Florence and the Machine
   6. Hurricane Drunk---Florence and the Machine
   7. Princess of China--Coldplay
   8. Amor Fati—Washed Out
   9. Where Once I Feared to Walk—Jason Clark
   10. Run in the Night—Jars of Clay
   11. If You Run—Boxer Rebellion
   12. Broken Glass—Boxer Rebellion 
   13. Open Your Arms—The Editors

I think to myself that thirteen is a good number and strangely, I am now looking forward to sitting in the car alone. This is a bit weird because I am already alone and suddenly my thoughts are back to feeling loss. I decide to check email, partly out of habit, partly because I really want connection. I like solitude, don’t get me wrong, but I also want to share things and explore ideas, maybe pour someone else a coffee, and sit, listening not to his or her voice, but heart. So, I open up my inbox and see several updates from the Washington Post and New York Times. I sometimes forget what I have subscribed to in my inbox, so I am surprised at the headlines about Iran and the threat of nuclear war.

I also see a note about a kidnapping in Latin America, a suicide blast in the Middle East, and borderline panic about the global economy. When did the international landscape become part of my morning coffee? Who dumped all of this news in to my inbox? Then, it hits me.

I am more connected than I often think and I don’t mean the plugged in version. I am part of an international community, a global economy, and a worldwide humanity. Not to mention the fact that this is just the visible world. I am also part of an invisible, spiritual world, a supernatural world, and an emotional world. The loss I feel turns in to all sorts of things as I think about friends in Africa searching for food, friends in Asia searching for dignity, and friends in Latin America searching for their parents.

Forget email. So, I shut down and go back to my cup of coffee and my books. I refill my mug, relocate my page, but I can’t recapture solitude. A new day has already run me over and I didn’t see it coming.

Tonight, I’ll vow to be better prepared for tomorrow. I’ll go to bed on time and fight the urge to watch any of the late night monologues or news updates or that one last, quick, ‘it’ll only take a second,’ glance at email or goodreads or linked in or any of those sites. I will simply try to rest, then get up, have my morning coffee and seek to make a difference in the world, unless, of course, I get distracted.

Then, what happens? What if I do get distracted again? What if I feel this aching loss about wanting to see her or talk to him? What if I don’t sleep well and my pillow doesn’t hug me back? What if I wake up on the wrong side of the bed and hurt the world before I even have my coffee?

“Relax,” I finally say to myself, “Quit over thinking things.” I agree with my inner voice of reason, but want to qualify it. So, I begin to argue with myself, finally ending it with these words: ‘we’ll deal with this tomorrow.’ Finally, I am back to silence. I can hear the chair creak again as I turn another page.

-bo 

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9/12 matters because it is Monday morning and I have already forgotten. 

 

It is hard to believe that I can return to the ordinary affairs of the day without even a blink of the eye, already violating the solemn and ubiquitous slogan – We Shall Never Forget. It’s not that I have forgotten 9/11 or everyone that was directly and indirectly impacted in profound and subtle ways. I have already forgotten that today should not be the same.

 

As I watched show after show over the weekend where survivors from the buildings were interviewed, first-responders recounted their feelings, or those touched by the tragedy explained the impact – several compelling threads emerged.

 

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I miss this part of school. What is the adult version of show and tell? At this point, I have no idea, but the word 'and' seems important to me. Since this is a blog and since the internet is loaded with people sounding off, we currently have no shortage of 'tell'. 

In fact, that's part of my concern. I have read in recent weeks some articles and blogs from Christians about Christians and the tone is, well, unloving at best, hateful at worst. For many readers, this will be nothing new, but the language tells me something about the 'show' part. The other day, my daughter caught me singing one of my new favorite songs and burst out laughing. 

"Daddy what are you doing?"

"Singing this cool song," I replied. 

And then, the fun part came that was a bit unexpected. My daughter wanted to join in and learn the song. So, my little fantasy rock and roll stint turned into an impromptu show and tell. We danced around the room belting out the chorus (I only taught her the chorus as it was easier than the entire song) and something interesting happened. I actually learned more of the song by trying to teach her the song. Now, this isn't a new idea or brain surgery and some would remind me of how elementary such an idea is (to which I say, duh, my daughter's in elementary school), but the thought remains the same for anyone claiming to be a Christian in an interconnected and globalizing world. It is often only when you try to teach another person that you find out what you truly understand or truly know.

In some small way, maybe that's one of the great benefits of the information age; we now know, in part, that we don't know much. But, as we process life together, as we attempt to teach new ideas, we'll be the better for it. A life changing moment for me in my own Christian walk came in the early 90's when I was teaching in China, the summer before my senior year in college. A devout Buddhist student sat down with me one afternoon and asked me to explain the Christian faith. I told him I would do so on one condition: he would explain the Buddhist faith to me. So, for several hours we talked about Jesus, Buddha, and life. We walked in and out of Buddhist temples nearby and looked at Bible passages together. In short, we played 'show and tell' and I remember that day very well. Let this simply be an encouragement to return to something many schools have dropped and many schools of thought are missing: let's show AND tell.

By the way, in case you'd like to join in on the little exercise with my daughter, here's the music video to the song we sang. Be sure to twirl around when you sing 'that planet earth moves slowly'.... we even found that twirling around in slow motion with our arms stretched out worked really well....

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Editor’s note: This is a guest post from a dear friend of mine, William Melendez. He is like no other person I have ever met, his battles unique and his writing, hauntingly good. This is an honest account of his literal fight with death. Being that he wrote this article, we can assume he won that fight, but not without walking through the valley of the shadow of death.

Being a person who suffers from mental illness I have dealt with the vicissitudes of aberrant mental and physical states. Nevertheless, after enduring years of mental illness and several gastric diseases, dear reader, I began to succumb to the lie of a sick man’s philosophy: life, with its ups and downs, was always something that happened to me, and of which, I had no control over. I was clinging to a deflated lifeboat, buffeted in the winds of an unruly sea. Two things controlled the course of my raft, sink or swim: the happenstance of life and the constant intervention of God on my behalf. Mostly, I spent my time praying to God that He would get me through whatever was happening to me. My only contribution to my circumstances seemingly consisted of begging.

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so. REALLY need to preface this. PLEASE take it for what it is - a comment on life in this world, and not a plea for sympathy. 

i found out via a ct scan today (pictured) that there is a small polyp in my inner ear. for you doctors out there, you know that this is no big deal. a minor surgery, and viola. but i must admit that on my way to the hospital today, before my ct scan, i felt these thoughts of death coursing through me - similar level of nag that you feel when a telemarketer calls during dinner - but a bit more dark. i prayed and found comfort in the promise of salvation that i walk in daily - but then thought about my wife, our dog. my parents. brother. sister. it was odd. i didn't know what to expect. google, a great source of info (but sometimes knowledge isn't very comforting) told me all sorts of things the night before. i tossed for over an hour before my brain let me rest. 

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Sometimes I have the great fortune of working from a café. It’s “great” because I get to drink coffee, utilize free wi-fi and, with subtlety, act like I’m working on something life-altering on my laptop. The only downside to working at a café is that there are a lot of people. I don’t mind people overall, but it’s a specific type of people—the ones that talk a huge game.

Whether they’re talking about the last stock they bought that just returned a hundredfold profit or how their recent house they flipped was a steal or how they saw such-and-such at this place-and-place, it gets rather deafening. Think Ron Burgundy sans ridiculous clothing.

This kind of chatter is difficult to escape from. It lives on Twitter, Facebook posts, blogs, glossy magazines, etc. But nothing compares to seeing it in person. Even if you’re not contributing to this conversation, hearing it can sometimes lead to secondhand exhaustion. So, for your personal enjoyment and sanity, here are 5 tips to know when you are about to walk into secondhand hyperbole and embellishment:

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For those of you who follow my humble little blog, you will have noticed that I’ve been absent for the last couple of months. My last blog entry was dated April 11, 2010 and I’ve not been able to get at my passion as much as I’d like. I do apologize for that. Should I give the more and more common excuse of, “Man…I’ve just been busy!” Should I just say, “Work got the better of me!” Or should I just say, “Shoot, I’ve been too dang tired to even do what it is I actually love to do!” Well, there is a little truth in all of those statements and the reality is, the busyness of life can be a daunting drudgery done in vain labor at points. I mean, what are we really that busy for?

Yes, yes, I get the common worldview that says we do this for our family. But what does our family get in return? Moreover, what does all that busyness actually add up to? I also comprehend that having a good work ethic is also good and that, especially for men by way of gender role socialization, work is a powerful tool for social capital and social status. Some of us actually love to be told “Wow, look how hard you’re working! Good for you!” So there is that whole deal as well.

There is also the worldview that says work hard now, and later you can play. Yes, that good old delayed gratification comes into play here. But again, how is the 60 hour work week taking its toll on those latter years in our life? What if hypertension and heart attacks actually hold us back from enjoying those “play years?” Work is good though, right? We all have to do it, right? Well, sort of.

Some don’t have to work all that much, others work for them, their money works for them, their parents help them out, maybe they won the lotto, maybe they’re a celebrity, or maybe they’ve just been fortunate enough to have money coming in. So no, all of us do not have to work in the same manner or form.

But, for the rest of us, work is a reality and the ensuing busyness will demand it’s levy on our life, family, and mind. Is there a way around this? I’m not sure. Here in American culture we have created a type of congratulatory ethos for those who work the most. In other words, we reward workaholics. Yes, yes, those people who put in 60-70 hours, work multiple jobs, sacrifice time and energy for the company, and put in the “extra mile for the team” are given their labor remuneration in the form of promotions, more money, television shows, titles, degrees, and even glory in death (Boy that Sam sure was a hard worker when he was alive; Sally sure did hustle, wish she was still here). Being busy is just part of the American way; we love it; in fact, we adore it. And don’t be in a professional ministry position (pastorate and or a faith based non-profit director), because once Jesus get’s put into the mix, people will work even harder and do just about anything; not to mention get paid little to nothing. One of our close friends, who recently switched jobs because her last one wanted her to put in well over 65 hours a week including weekends on the job, told us that what her last company wanted was basically her life in exchange for a paycheck. Hmmm.

So where do I fit into all of this? Am I somehow above all this and now about to offer up a simple and ergonomic solution to our busyness woes? No. I’m right there in the mix. I work at 6 different schools, teach 7-8 classes a semester, mentor, hustle my books, write articles, and try to get paid to pay rent just like most of us do. No, I’m no better. I fit into the “I’m trying to pay my bills and live my life” worldview on the busyness scale. I don’t have much to offer up other than to say occasionally, every now and then, once in a while, when the moon is right, and when the air is just blowing…I take some time off and go out with my wife; no kids, no connections to the outside world, just us one on one. And you know what we did? Nothing.

Is that the answer? I don’t really know. But the reality is that we live in a society that is obsessed with work and as Dr.’s Roberth Hemfelt, Frank Minirth, and Paul Meier say in their book We Are Driven: The Compulsive Behaviors America Applauds, are we really having fun? I don’t think so…I hope to somehow break this cycle and get back to doing what I love…writing.

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Over the past several weeks, with the impending launch of Humanitarian Jesus, I have been asked numerous times what the basic point of the book is all about. The question is not always asked the same way, but when you get down to the bottom of it, the person really wants to know the punch-line in a sentence or two.

If you have ever written anything longer than your name, you probably know trying to reduce your writing to a single sentence is a hard and fairly aggravating effort.  My first thought is always that if I could do that, if I could tell you the story of the book in a sentence, I probably should not have written a book.  My second thought is that my one line answer always seems to be changing, so maybe I really don’t know or maybe I am giving a bad answer most of the time.

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The problem with journals is that we don't go back and read them.  If my life is worth writing down, it might be worth reading, assuming I am honest when I write it down.

As a writer you are constantly asking, “Was that worth writing? Is this just brain drivel? Am I really that lame?” And so from time to time I go back and read things I have written. If it is a journal entry by me, it was normally composed in the middle of an insomnia induced 2 AM anxiety attack of self loathing fears of failure and uselessness. Always a good time had by all.

Whilst reviewing some writing today I found the following essay I wrote six years ago. It revealed a lot to me about who I was, what I feared, and what I have become. In retrospect I am glad I wrote it, but even more glad I read it.

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