I'm sitting in the San Antonio airport waiting for a flight to Chicago. I'm attending the 10th annual Christian Century Lecture & Workship. This year the speakers are Marcus Borg and Lauren Winner. I know less about Lauren Winner, but I'm looking forward to hearing her.
Marcus Borg, of course, is famous and infamous in New Testament scholarship. Few New Testament scholars have so inspired and frightened us. Not needing any help doubting the validity of the New Testament, I wasn't looking forward to reading Borg, but I cannot help but be attracted to his desire to find the truth. The opening of "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time" was so much like my own story of faith that I was moved almost to tears.
Here's the cool thing. I MAY get a chance to meet Marcus Borg and talk to him. I have some questions to ask if I get that chance:
I was touched by your devotion to Christ in "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time." Has it been hard for you to hear the negative reaction from so many Christians?
If we were to go back in time right now and meet Jesus in person, what do you think he would be like?
Has anyone ever said to you, "You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile?" (JUST KIDDING!)
But I may indeed get to talk to Marcus Borg. Christian Century has tried to arrange it. If I do, I'm hoping to pop open my Macintosh and tape the conversation. If that happens I'll release it as a podcast at CCblogs.
So if you were talking with Marcus Borg, what would you ask him? Leave me your suggestions in the comments. Maybe I'll get to ask him a couple of your questions.
It's 6:40 am on Thursday and I'm sitting in the parking lot of Journey: Imperfect Faith Community waiting for David Gentiles. Memo to Journey: Get a more secure password for your wireless internet. I guessed it on my first try.
We're on our way to Fort Worth to plan youth camp for next summer. I'm a part of a camping association that has been doing church youth camps for close to 30 years. This summer will be our third summer with the group.
My job has been to run the camp newspaper, which is online here. No one else wants to, and I like doing it. (Anything having to do with writing fun for me) I assume I'll be doing the newspaper again next year.
The camp is run by churches that I trust our kids with. Serious Christians and just as serious about not being manipulative with adolescents. Our kids love this camp.
Anyway, I'll be out of pocket until Friday late.
HELL NEWS: I've been getting inquiries about my hell project. I'll be posting some videos about the results soon.
I am in no way an expert in any behavioral science. Nor have I made a disciplined and thorough, academic study of psychopathic behavior. I’ve read a lot, thought a lot, and engaged smart people in conversations. Here are my thoughts, for whatever they are worth.
*****
Serial killers have strange sounding names. Corrl, Chickatello, Fish, Dahmer, Gacy. Or maybe they have the power to ruin a name, to twist it somehow, so that it sounds off-key in our ears.
Bundy.
See what I mean?
Clearly serial killers have embedded themselves, almost mythically, into our cultural consciousness. We are afraid of them, and even mentioning their names gives some people the shivers.
“They’re psychopaths,” people say. And then, as if you didn’t get it the first time, they repeat the word. “PSYCHOpaths!”
Psychopaths are people who cannot feel for others. They don’t feel pity or compassion. They seem to be missing some precious human component that most of us take for granted. Psychopathy exists on a continuum, as does almost everything. Serial killers are on the far end of that continuum. There are many people in our world who have a hard time feeling compassion. That doesn’t make them bad people or likely to become serial killers. Most of them do the best they can. You have probably known people like this. These are people who seem rather cold and distant. They can be a little selfish or even narcissistic.
I’ve read about psychopathy, but I can’t understand it at a gut level. If the psychopath cannot imagine what it means to feel love or compassion, I can’t imagine what it would be like NOT to feel those things. What I’ve looked for is some explanation of what a psychopath experiences, what life is like for him or her. So far I’ve not found anything that describes the condition emotionally in ways that help me to understand it.
So, like any good writer, I simply made something up. After a number of years of trying to understand the mind of a psychopath, I’ve come up with a way of thinking about how their minds work. I offer this to you for your consideration and with the complete understanding that it is simply my best guess.
I will describe this imaginary person as a man, because almost all serial killers are men.
Imagine that you are in a room full of people. All of them are holding bricks. To your great surprise, these people seem very attached to these bricks. They dress them in little clothes, coo at them, and tell stories about them. They take turns holding each other’s bricks, and they pet the bricks gently with their hands. Everyone seems to be having such a good time with the bricks.
Suddenly, a brick is dropped and broken. The entire room is seized by a collective spasm of grief and horror. Some people run over and desperately try to put the brick back together. Others stand about crying and sobbing uncontrollably. All the while, you stand there, stony-faced, trying to figure out what is going on. You’re a smart person, so you obviously understand that everyone likes these bricks a lot. But you cannot muster any feelings for them, either positive or negative. They are just bricks. So what if one is broken?
People look strangely at you because you aren’t showing emotions. You solemnly nod and try to look sad and concerned because you want to fit it. But it is impossible to make yourself feel something that you do not feel. No one can do that. You can't make yourself feel compassion or sympathy for a brick.
Over time you begin to understand that there is something missing inside you. And you can tell it is something that is very important and wonderful. You pretend to care about other people because you need to get along and because you would like to be a part of the game of love that everyone else seems to be enjoying. You become rather sophisticated at this, saying and doing the right things at the right time.
You do feel something that you call love, but it is only a very selfish and primitive kind of love, though you have no way of knowing that. For you, love feels more like possessing someone, having them for your own. You also have a sex drive. You understand that need. You are fascinated by women and drawn to them sexually, though you aren’t able to care for them as individuals. This causes you a lot of difficulties as you repeatedly try and fail at one relationship after another. Having the sexual drive without the caring component means that all of your attempts at romance have been stilted, awkward, and unsatisfying. You have a few relationships, but certainly not with healthy women. Over time you develop some very unbalanced ideas about women, and your anger grows.
There is one feeling that you have and recognize. It is the wonderful feeling of having your own needs met. When you get something you want, you feel a surge of happiness. Every human experiences happiness, of course, but since you have fewer avenues to find happiness, you cling to this one kind of happiness with an obsessive need that is very dangerous. You will stop at almost nothing to get what you want, because other people don’t really matter, and getting what you want is the greatest feeling in the world.
I don’t know how close to reality this picture is, but I believe it is a better way to think about serial killers than simply calling them monsters or saying, derisively, “They don’t feel anything!” as though they have some control over that. The psychopath is dealing with a limitation that causes extraordinary problems living with other people, and we should recognize that no one ever chooses to be a psychopath.
The psychopathic personality is but one component in the volatile mix that ultimately produces a serial killer. There are at least three components, as far as I can tell.
First, there is the psychopathic person, who is created by a combination of genetic, biological, and environmental factors that are not clearly understood by experts. I'm not sure our experts are even close to understanding these factors.
Second, there is the present environment or situation in which a psychopath finds himself. In the right environment and with some help, perhaps this person finds ways of coping. In other environments, his condition worsens.
And finally, there is the most mysterious component of all – human choice. Most people in the worst circumstances still do not become serial killers. There is the matter of our freedom and our choosing. In all human behavior, one choice leads to another. Choices along a certain path become both easier and harder. It is easier to hurt someone the second time and easier still after that. And it is harder to say no to an addictive need the farther you go along the addictive journey. But at the beginning, somewhere, you had some choices.
At the end of many paths are extreme behaviors that seem insane to most people. There are people who weigh 900 pounds and cannot get out of bed. They are not the only people with eating disorders, and they did not fall into that situation easily. There are men whose entire lives revolve around the acquisition and consumption of hard-core pornography. The end-of-the-line stuff. Any reasonable assessment of the content of that pornography would reveal that it is not beautiful or sensuous in any common definition of those words. Those who crave it might not even enjoy experiencing the acts depicted. But they lust after their pornography with an intensity that is frightening. In most of these cases, there were combinations of emotional and/or mental illness AND personal choice all along the way.
So too, those who lack any recognizable ability to love and feel for others. Some of these find themselves in some unique or tragic environment that feeds their psychopathy. And some of these, in weakness, make a series of choices that lead them down an unthinkable path to the end of the line. By the time they reach the end, they have very little freedom of choice left, if any. But it is this critical choice element that means they are responsible for their actions. To take away their responsibility is another way of dehumanizing them.
Serial killers must be held responsible for hurting others, but our growing understanding of the complex nature of their personalities must guide us as we decide how to deal with them.
Coming next: What we should do with serial killers when they are caught, both from a cultural and a spiritual point of view.
I'm reposting a three-part series on evil that I did a couple of years ago. The third part was published at the Christian Century website. I'm reworking parts 2 and 3 extensively for other purposes. Since they are taking up my writing time (That and an essay I'm working on for Christian Century) I'm going to post them here again. Most of you probably never read them the first time. Or if so, perhaps the reworked part 2 and 3 (most extensive reworking) will be interesting to you.
***
In interviews given while on death row, Ted Bundy seemed confused over the great concern about his crimes. He just didn’t get it. He couldn’t understand why so many people cared about a few missing girls. “After all,” he mused, “There are so many people.” *
This point of view, or perhaps I should say this lack of a point of view, is fascinating to me. I want to understand it. It seems important that I understand it.
I date my interest in serial killers to the summer of 1973 when my family moved from the desert climate of El Paso to the oppressive humidity of Houston. The weather change was like a slap in the face. I remember sitting on the curb with my brother and wondering how air could possibly feel like this. Wet was the word. Everything was wet, sticky, and green. The ground was squishy beneath the grass. The air was hot and heavy with moisture. It pressed itself upon you, squeezing your head until perspiration oozed from your scalp and collected on the ends of your hairs, binding them together in little clumps. Even the water in the pools was warm. It felt like diving into a bath.
I was eleven that summer and about to start junior high. Only two months earlier I had been kneeling on the ground of my school playground, one eye closed, shooting marbles into a big circle. I didn’t know it then, but that world was gone. Adolescence was about to roll over me with its smells, hair, and powerful feelings. Who can stand before the awesome power of puberty?
Your time in the garden is over, buddy. But while I have your attention, take a look at the incredible fruit hanging from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Looks good doesn’t it? Trust me on this; it IS good. Like girls and peaches.
That summer they began digging up bodies on the other side of town. Elmer Wayne Henley and Dean Corll had been killing teen-age boys for quite some time. They strapped them to homemade torture tables made of plywood and handcuffs. They did unspeakable things to them, unmoved by their pitiful cries for mercy, until finally the boys would die and then be buried under a boat shed. Every news channel in town was camped out at the burial site. Information and video came pouring out of our television sets and into our homes. Even the children could not be protected from it. What they didn’t see on TV, they heard from their friends.
These things happen in our world. They are horrible to consider, but particularly shattering when you are young and have no idea that anything like this is possible. I listened to the part about the plywood and the handcuffs. After that I couldn’t keep the images out of my mind. Laughing men sticking knives into naked boys and slowly peeling off their skin. It was unthinkable. A nightmare and a horror movie, but for real and right in my own hometown.
And then there were the television images of clay-colored bodies pulled one-by-one from the ground. Twenty-seven of them in all. Stiffened, body-shaped clumps of soil that came out of the earth with a sucking sound and were put into the backs of ambulances that came and went, shrieking, from the crime scene.
That wetness again. The wetness of the crime produced its own kind of horror. Tears and blood and sex and trembling flesh and Houston earth. The wet, sliding sound of a shovel plunged into clay. In all of its stages, life is wet work. The beginning of life and the ending of life and even the retrieving of bodies.
This horrible thing laid hold of my mind like my grandfather’s strong hands twisting the legs off cooked chickens. He would twist the leg until the flesh popped and the tendons broke free. Then he would hand you the greasy drumstick with little tubes and shreds of fat hanging from it and a white, knuckled bone sticking out the bottom. Tuck in.
I used to look away when my grandfather would seize a chicken leg and start twisting. But once you’ve seen a man twist the leg off a bird, you know what food is and what life and flesh are. You understand that it comes down to this. You’ve taken up this knowledge or had it thrust upon you, but there is no laying it down again. No going back to the garden.
And once you’ve seen wet bodies spaded from the earth and laid before weeping mothers, you know what life is and that sometimes it comes to this.
Here is the knowledge of good and evil, little boy. Tuck in.
What I’m trying to tell you is that there were some weeks in late July of 1973 when this knowledge came to me and would not leave. I swam in the wetness of Houston and death. I lived in a humid world of ugly knowledge, chunky, raw, and uncut.
I remember staring at the newspaper pictures of Elmer Wayne Henley and Dean Corll. I was both fascinated and repelled. Why would grown-ups do this to boys? And perhaps more disturbing, how could they have enjoyed it?
Mercifully, school started and the news coverage slowed and then stopped. Junior high gave me more than enough to occupy my mind. There was a girl I loved at church, another I kissed at school, and one I worshipped from afar. There were football and the locker room and whispers of sexual things. It’s strange, but now that I think about it, adolescence was wet too. Wet kisses I hungered for. The sweat under my arms that I suddenly noticed and became obsessed with. The spray of antiperspirants and the splash of my father’s Old Spice. The fights and the fears were wet. Love was wet. The longing and the sorrow and the desperation were wet.
Henley and Corll faded from my mind, and I thought no more of them. I lived in my body and in the present, as teen-agers tend to do. But the questions never left me. And they remain with me. I am still fascinated and repelled by serial killers. They are the bogey-men of the modern world. Because of them, we still fear the darkness. They are legendary and powerful in our minds, though in person they are weak and pathetic. And having entered the God business, so to speak, the existence of evil in our world has become something of a professional concern.
What is the deal with these guys? They hide in the shadows and prey upon us. The pain and suffering of others does not repel them or awaken in them any human compassion. No, pain and suffering excite them. They get erections when they stand in the presence of a tortured and suffering human being. Watching it helps them achieve orgasm. How is this possible?
rlp
* "Ted Bundy: Conversations With a Killer " by Stephen G. Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth
Coming next: Some thoughts and observations after twenty years of trying to understand evil.
Friday morning: 6:00 am. I'm boarding a plane to Syracuse. Then I'm driving to Ithaca to do some stuff with the Protestant student ministries of Cornell University. San Antonio's airport has free wi-fi, so I thought I'd post this.
I have about 4 hours to drive a short distance, so I plan to look around and take pictures on the way. I'll post here as I have a chance.
Wherein our intrepid hero, writer/blogger Real Live Preacher, explains why he means that question quite literally.
Yeah, I’m serious. Would you publish my book?
I published the one book, RealLivePreacher.com. It’s a collection of essays I wrote mostly in 2003. The book sold okay. Well, that depends on how you look at things. To me 3500 copies is a LOT. But not so much to a publishing company. I have nothing bad to say about Eerdmans. Their affirmation and encouragement was great. But after 3500 sold, they didn’t want to do much with the book. I bought the last 1300 copies for 25 cents each because even the discount book houses were uninterested in a book of some guy’s essays.
Now that I have the rights to the book, it has sold pretty well. I’m down to about 400 copies, having sold 900 online since last Fall. Not bad. Actually, it’s pretty amazing if you consider that I signed them and mailed them myself with little surprises stuck between the pages.
That’s a lot of work. That kind of thing will reintroduce you to reality. 900, as it turns out, is a helluva lot of books!
But I’m kind of tired of that book. And I’ve written a lot of stuff since 2003. I got to thinking that I would like to do a second book of collected essays. But no publisher seems interested in this. I was contacted by 3 publishers who were all very flattering and said nice things about my writing. I just beamed inside. But all of them want me to either write a novel or a non-fiction book about how to do something. Non-fiction “how to” books being the best selling kinds of books out there right now.
Unfortunately for me, I’m not ready to write a novel. As for the other, I’m too busy writing and blogging to write a book about writing and blogging, you know? Plus, I truly dislike “how to” books, even the good ones. I don’t claim that as a virtue or as a way of saying those books aren’t helpful to people. I just personally hate them. I haven’t got the attention span to read 250 pages of serviceable prose to get information that could be written on a few 3x5 cards.
“Well, call us if you think of a novel or a book about how to do something,” one of the publishers said. “Okay,” I replied, knowing in my heart that day will never come, so I’ll probably be pressing flowers and candy corn between the pages of my books of essays and mailing them myself forever.
THEN I HAD A CRAZY IDEA. Why don’t YOU publish me? Yeah you, the guy behind the computer screen. You could publish me. And I know how we could do it, he said, rubbing his hands together with an excited gleam in his idealistic little writer’s eyes.
If you want to find out more about my crazy “the hell with everyone I’m just going to publish the thing with some friends I met online because they are the only ones whose opinions matter to me anyway” idea, Go to Consafo.com
You will be taken to a page with a lot of information. I didn’t put it here because I wanted to be kind to the people who just came to read a blog and weren’t counting on getting involved in a whole “stick it to the man” kind of publishing thing. If that’s you, check back later. I write stuff here all the time.
Everywhere you look, the old forms are passing away. There is movement away from centralized sources of power and information and toward local sources, local networks, and personal relationships. In the past, with no way to easily communicate, we relied on many gatekeepers. But now the Internet has made it possible for us to network ourselves and share information in ways that are nothing short of revolutionary. I'll leave it to you to work out the implications of all this. You might check out the following video and do some thinking on your own.
As a passionate blogger since 2002, I've been a part of the changing world of information. One question everyone is asking: "How will traditional media sources deal with the rise of social media?" No one knows the answer. It's clear the recording industry didn't get it. They reacted with fear. While they spent millions prosecuting college students, Steve Jobs got creative. He wondered if there might be a way to make money with mp3 files and podcasts. Apparently he was right.
I'm proud to announce that I've been working with the Christian Century to develop a network of thoughtful, progressive, Christian bloggers. Christian Century is taking quite a risk. Rather than react with fear, they've decided to help support a social media network. They've invested some money in creating this network, even though it is not clear exactly how it might benefit their magazine. I think it will. The answer to how it will help the Christian Century will reveal itself in time.
I've always felt that it was an honor to write for the Christian Century. It is an old and respected magazine. I'm excited to be working with them in this new venture as well. I am the mentor/organizer/facilitator of CCblogs. We have 55 bloggers in our network so far. Most are clergy, but not all. All of them are real blogs. Christian Century has no editorial control whatsoever. In true, social media form, CCblogs simply points you to good content. I review blog postings at CCblogs and will begin to do some of my writing there. I hope you'll drop by and check us out. Leave us comments and suggestions. We welcome them.
And if you are a writer who fits into our community, you can apply to be a part of CCblogs. It's a great way for people to find your blog.
In January I went to Santo Domingo with Edge Outreach to install water purifiers. I wrote about the trip in a series of articles. I absolutely LOVE the folks at Edge. This is the kind of Christian organization I've always dreamed of. Loving, close-knit, passionate about doing good in the world, and willing to let their actions speak louder than their words. I'm hoping Jeanene and I can go on another trip with them. Who knows, maybe some of you could go with us. How cool would that be?
Mark Hogg, the executive director of Edge, has become a good friend. Check out his new blog. Mark is also hilarious - one of the funniest people I've ever met. I'm really hoping he'll do a series of blog essays telling some of the funny stories about cultural missteps in the third world.
I'm hoping you'll stop by the blog and give him some love!
After I got back from Santo Domingo, I noticed I was having some emotional struggles. As a part of my journey to understand myself, I wrote the following essay, which was published recently by the Christian Century.
***
In January of this year I went to the Dominican Republic with Edge Outreach to install water purifiers. We were in the capital city of Santo Domingo. I was surprised to learn that the city does not provide clean water to its residents. Those who can afford it drink bottled water. Poor people drink the water from the tap and are frequently ill. No one knows how many children die in the poor neighborhoods from water-related illnesses.
The story of our trip can be told simply: we went to the Dominican Republic, and we built two water purification systems. We hope and believe they are continuing to produce clean water for the people who use them. That's one story.
What has happened to me since I came home is another story. I seem to have lost my appetite and along with that, a fair amount of weight. Like most Americans, I can always stand to lose a few pounds, so I'm not worried about the weight that I've lost. But the way it has happened is interesting to me. I'm not sure I understand it...
Because there is really one one fitting title for this piece about the little present I found recently at the communion table. And turd is the only word that works in that title. Because turd is a great word. When you drop turd into a sentence, it shouts its presence with a coarse, rolling resonance that sounds like a springy sound effect in some cheap comedy.
Boi-oi-oi-oing.
My wife and I joined two friends recently in leading a retreat at a lovely retreat center on the Frio River in the Hill Country of Texas. The retreat ended, and we four presided over a communion table to celebrate our final time of worship with the group. I was setting up the communion elements while people were filing into the room for the service. That’s when I noticed a mouse turd sitting right in the middle of the table.
At this point in the story, I’m afraid it’s going to become quite clear that I’m not a normal sort of person. Your average person would have hurriedly disposed of the turd, following this with a thorough cleaning of the table. I, on the other hand, ran to get my camera. I began snapping shots of the turd. Close, far, with the macro function, without, turning the camera this way and that.
“Okay, mouse turd, work the camera. Yes. Beautiful. Give me some attitude. Sweet!”
“Why, why, why?” you ask me, shaking your head in disbelief. “Why would you take a picture of a mouse turd on a communion table?”
I actually didn’t know at the time. I instinctively knew that this was a beautiful thing and a thing I would write about. I knew there was something important attracting me to this mouse turd. My policy in these situations is to take pictures first and ask questions later. And later I came up with the answer. I was attracted to the mouse turd because of it’s wonderfully earthy juxtaposition with communion, which is perhaps the holiest of moments in Christian worship. The whole thing reminded me of something I read about nativity scenes.
Ancient nativity scenes were not like the ones of today. Modern nativities usually contain nothing more than a stable with a few figures and animals gathered around the manger. Nativities from the 17th and 18th centuries in Spain and Europe often depicted the entire town of Bethlehem. The houses, the shopkeepers, the peasants, and the leaders of the town. The stable with the baby Jesus was only a small part of the whole.
And sometimes, squatting behind a door or hiding in some lonely corner of the nativity scene, you would find the Caganer.
The Caganer was a well-known figure. He wasn’t as important as the Christ child or the Magi, but he was important enough to have an official name. The Caganer was a boy or a man with his pants down, taking care of business. Yes, going to the bathroom. Taking a dump. Why mince words? There was a statue of a man squatting behind the holy stable, sometimes with a fresh pile on the ground below him. Will euphemisms somehow make this more palatable for you?
“Why, why, why?” you ask me, shaking your head in disbelief. “Why would they put such a thing in the nativity scene?”
I’ll tell you why. Because ancient people were not shy about earthy realities. Their religion was many things, but it wasn’t afraid of the body or ashamed of it. That shameful stuff started with Queen Victoria, but that’s another story for another day.
Spiritual leaders have long known that whenever we get too lofty, too spiritual, too separated from the body, God has other servants who bring us back down to earth. Children have a natural affinity for this kind of spiritual work. I was in a church service once when a little boy returned from the bathroom with his pants around his ankles and 6 feet of toilet paper sticking out of his bottom and trailing down the aisle like the devil’s own bridal train.
Sometimes God’s earthy servant is a person who simply will not be tamed. We once had a church member named Lyle, whose offenses against taste were so numerous and egregious that they cannot be listed here. For years I had to avoid making eye contact with Lyle during the sermon, lest he make some vulgar gesture that would cause me to laugh in the pulpit.
Lyle is not longer at our church, but I really miss him.
The forces behind these little church revolts are much like those behind real revolutions. When the government gets oppressive, the people revolt. If the revolution gets out of hand, a strong government rises to power. There’s an inevitable, “Ying and Yang” to it all. You can count on it; when church people get too spiritual for their own damn good, one of God’s other servants will bring us back to the body.
That’s why I didn’t flinch when I saw the mouse turd. I loved it. I’ve learned to watch for these earthy moments that pop up in the middle of all things holy and spiritual. They’re funny, and they are a good sign that we might be taking ourselves a little too seriously.
On the night before communion, all through the house, God’s children were sleeping, except for one mouse. After four days of prayers and singing and other religious hoo-ha, this little mouse - our own caganer - crept into the room and mounted the communion table. He lifted his fur and left us a little present.
“There you go, humans. That’s what I think of your religion, your cleanliness, your arrogance, and your pomp and circumstance. Here’s an element you weren’t expecting. Transubstantiate that, you bastards!”
I do not know the mind of God. I have no idea what God contemplates or what amuses God. But if God’s attention was drawn that night to our little mouse and his nefarious, after-hours activities, I bet God was smiling.
This was wonderful to watch...and a little sad. As much work as it was having small children, and as much fun as I'm having with them partly grown, I must admit that I miss things like this.
I was driving the other day. The August sun was pounding on the car. Everything felt heavy. Things were moving slow and the traffic noise was incredibly intrusive, like it was from some other world. How dare this awful noise break into my world, into my inner world, into the place where I think I know who I am. The noise reminded me that I had so much to do. So many obligations - family stuff, money stuff, work stuff, life stuff.
And then Elton John came on the radio. It was Rocket Man, but it could have been Philadelphia Freedom or Someone Saved My Life Tonight. They all work the same for me. Elton always takes me back to the late '70s, when I was a boy turning into a man and my life was fast and muscular and uncomplicated and pushing the edges of innocence. My hair was thick. It hung raggedly over my collar and you couldn’t see my ears. When I would sweat the ends would clump together in pointy little spikes.
I remember that world so well. Rooms were dark with paneling and thick with shag carpet. The appliances were harvest gold or avocado green. Plastic was heavy and shiny and durable. Faux-leather bags were lined with felt so that they were stiff and stood upright. Their zippers were fat and designed to last 100 years. There was a lot of new technology, but it was still in wooden cabinets with meters behind glass that measured things you didn't understand. The switches and buttons clunked into place with a solid feel that you knew meant quality. Solid State.
Curvy was cool back then. Curves in your hair and in your bell bottoms. Fat, curving shoes with thick heels. We threw frisbees in giant, arcing curves, and when we danced in the school gym we tried to make our bodies nothing but curves and waves. Curving, parallel lines you drew on your paper when you weren't paying attention in class. You drew the curves all the way to the edge of the page, and you never knew why you drew them. School films would get hung and the expanding curve of a bubble would melt the celluloid. The teacher would come running to fix it with little panicked steps, and you would turn and talk to your friends in your world while she tried to fix hers. Curves were bubbling and breaking. Music was changing and the hippies were fading and taking corporate jobs. The '80s were coming, and none of us knew what that was going to mean.
And every summer was the summer of love. A girl would walk by in her designer jeans and Farrah hair, and my head would tilt a little to the side while I watched her. I wondered if there was some secret to knowing her because she seemed to be a beautiful creature from some other kind of world. Sometimes I would say the right thing and her face would light up with a smile, or maybe she would even laugh with a bubbling sound that made my heart seize in my chest. Oh God, when I fell in love I was gone. Out of my mind, pining, adoring, cherishing, dreaming. And when my heart was broken the sorrow hit me like a fist in the chest. I would go to my room and howl like a gut-shot dog. A kiss was everything to me in those days. Walking her to the door and trying to find the courage to kiss her, and it was like being on top of the world. A soft, romantic kiss outside the door before her father turned the porch lights off and on.
Broken hearts and sorrow. Passion and joy and exhilaration. Love was one glance away and death had no place in our world. Faces drift by. Girls I loved and boys who stood by me back in the day when we stood together against the world. The song fades. Traffic noise. Heat. Remembering things done and things left undone. Don’t go away Elton. Don’t leave me here. The memories hurt so good. Hurt me again, please. I’m not ready to be old and burdened and slow and out of shape and balding. I’m not ready to have my desires and feelings muffled by such a heavy cloak of responsibility.
The old Gordon is gone. He had his day, but now he is sinking below the horizon like the Big Dipper dropping so Cassiopeia can rise and point us to the North Star. I can see him just before he goes into the darkness. He’s flipping a football around in his hands, and it’s so natural the way he does that. The last thing I see is his wavy hair and boyish smile that is so pure because it is so innocently selfish.
He will go into the darkness, of course. Every season of life has its turn. But every season also leaves its mark. The mark young Gordon left on me is desire. It is a painful desire, yet I love it. My mind returns to it the way your tongue probes a sore place in your mouth.
That desire is for one last soft kiss at the door before her father turns out the light.
I'm about to make a plea for an important
cause. You who come here often know that I rarely do that. I think that a site
like this only gets to plug a few causes before people get numb. So I pick mine
carefully.
Hey, I know what it's like for you. You want to
be a good person; you want to help in the world. But every time you turn around
there's another cause popping up. You can't fix everything, and you're not even
sure how to get started. I know. Me too.
What you have to do is listen carefully to the
world's needs. And you have to seek diligently to find an outlet for your own
efforts. Then pick a few things and get involved. Don't let yourself get
overwhelmed. Learn
about the needs of the world. Find a way to help. You will feel better, but more importantly, you
will be a part of goodness in this world.
So there is this thing happening, and I believe
in it. So I'm going to tell you about it.
My dear friend Darrell Adams recently brought an
issue to my attention. People are dying all over the world for lack
of clean water. I mean, I knew that people in some countries didn't have clean
water, but I didn't realize how bad the situation is. We take clean water for granted, of course. But in many parts of
the world, there is none. Children drink whatever water is at hand. Sometimes
their immune systems can handle it. Sometimes they get diarrhea and die from
dehydration. As it turns out diarrhea is a huge killer of children in
underdeveloped countries. 1.8 million children died from diarrhea last year,
just because they couldn't get a glass of clean water. The World Health
Organization says that about 80% of the sickness around the world comes from
impure water.
Darrell is a part of SWIM, a movement of people
who are trying to bring simple, easy-to-install and maintain water purifying
equipment to people who desperately need it. (If you want to see the system they use,
click here)
In 2008 Jeanene and I plan to
go on one of their trips and be a part of installing some of these water purifiers
ourselves. That's cool of course, and I'll tell you more
about it later. Heck, maybe some of you can go with us. But you can help right now by
getting the word out about
the world's need for clean water.
Do me a favor. Take a moment and check out
SWIM's website. The current thrust of the movement is to mobilize college
students, but that's not the only way they work. This organization is for all of us.
Take a look. Read a little bit. They did a good
job of keeping the message short. Consider joining or even donating a small
amount. Like $10 or something. I'm telling you, these are good people. The
organization is honest and it has only one purpose. Getting water to people who
need it.
First, thank you for your kind comments and
emails regarding Monday's post.
Well, there was a knock at my door yesterday.
FedEx had 27 cases of books for me. I hadn't really considered how many boxes it
would take to ship 1300 books. Nor had I counted on the freight cost. You know
you're in trouble when they stop calling it "shipping" and start calling it
"freight". I'll just say this: the freight was considerably more than the books.
I got word last week that Eerdmans
is going to remainder my book. I didn't know what that meant, though I was
pretty sure it wasn't a good thing. One of the people from Eerdmans had to
explain it to me.
If a publisher has a quantity of books in its
warehouse, and the books are either not selling or selling so slowly that they
don't justify storage and all the costs (including taxes) that go along with
that, they "remainder" the book. Yes, remainder is a verb as well as a noun.
That means they get rid of it. It's better to unload it than to keep it in the
warehouse. Obviously this also means any question of a second printing has been
settled.
Perhaps you're feeling a little sorry for me
right now. "Oh, Real Live Preacher's book didn't sell very well, and it's
getting dumped by the publisher. Poor guy."
Don't feel bad. I sure don't. Yeah, it would
have been fun if the book had sold a lot of copies and went into a second
printing. But the hard reality is this: I am an unknown author of a book of
funky, religious essays. Books of essays are the worst selling books in the
world right now. And mine is full of f-bombs, meaning you don't want to give it
to Aunt Petunia for Christmas. And, while Eerdmans treated me as well as they
treat any of their authors, my only publicity was their catalog and this blog.
And of course, if you're here, you can read read every essay I've ever written
including about 42 of the 50 essays in the book.
This book is not exactly a marketer's dream, is
it? It's really kind of a miracle that they took a chance and published this
thing at all.
Now here is where the story gets kind of funny
and surprisingly fortunate for me. Eerdmans sent me a letter some months ago,
notifying me of their intention to remainder the book. They offered me a chance
to buy the remaining stock (1300 of the original 5000) at an 80% discount. That
would have been about $3600. Fortunately, I never got the letter. I admit that
after the first year or so, I quit reading things Eerdmans sent to me. Not out
of disrespect, but most of the time it was new catalogs and stuff that had
nothing to do with me. I'm sure the letter came. I just never opened it. If I
had, I would have tried to scrape together whatever money I could find to buy a
few hundred copies.
Eerdmans took my lack of a response as a no and
moved on to their next step. They offered the book to a series of closeout
buyers at an EXTREMELY discounted price. A pennies-on-the-dollar kind of price.
There were no takers. None. I can imagine what
the conversations were like.
"Real Live What? Preacher? Never heard of it
or him or whatever. What's it about?"
"Eh, it's this guy in Texas. Allegedly an
actual minister. Pretty good writer. Writes about tamales and stars and stuff
you might find in your pockets. There's some religious stuff in there too. Kind
of liberal. A lot of cussing. Sort of a weird mix. The editor who found him and
brought him to our attention is no longer with the company. It does have a kind
of interesting cover, though."
So after my book was refused by every closeout
buyer who deals with Eerdmans, I got a last email from them. Since no one wanted
it, they were just going to donate it to someone...anyone. Unless I wanted to
buy the stock for $0.25 a copy. This was the first I heard of any of this. "Hell
yes I want it!" I said. I did the math. It comes out to $325. The deal is done,
and they are shipping me the the last 1300 copies of RealLivePreacher.com.
I'll tell you why this is so cool. First,
I am now in complete control of this book. It's my book. All the rights to the
essays have reverted back to me. The first thing I'm going to do is post the 8
or 9 essays from the book that have never been published online. Hey, it will
give me some material to post here, and I can work harder on a little project I
have in mind for our friend Foy Davis.
(Don't ask. It's a secret)
Second, I don't have to give this book
to anyone. I'm hoping Amazon.com will sell a copy and write me asking for one.
I'm currently crafting my response to them. I want to find a really funny way to
say, "Hell no, you incentive-crushing destroyer from the nether regions!"
Third, I get to have a lot of fun with
this book. People still find this blog and want to buy the book sometimes. I'll
have them all at my house. I might make a chair out of the cartons of books in
my living room and watch Cowboys games from there. When someone buys one, it
will be a big deal. I won't have pre-printed labels. Handwritten all the way.
I'll have to find an envelope and dig though my wife's purse for stamps.
I'll probably write little notes on the inside
cover to the people who buy them. Maybe like a little letter to them or
something. Just to say hello and ask how they are doing. Maybe mention
whatever's happening in my life at the time. I'll probably put a surprise
between the pages. Maybe a pressed flower from my backyard or a ticket stub from
a Spurs game.
Ooh, how cool would this be: Maybe there
will be one copy that I give away for free, with the understanding that you have
to mail it to the next person who writes me and asks for it. You sign it, date
it, then mail it to the next person. They do the same. Maybe some day it would
come back to me.
Who knows what I'll do? That's the point. I can
do whatever I want. Do you get this? Do you get how fun this is? I can't wait
for them to arrive.
My babies are coming home to me. I love every
essay I wrote for that book. Each creation was like a birth. There was
inspiration and pleasure then hard labor and delivery. This is where they should
live anyway, don't you think? They belong with me. And if people want a copy of
the book, I should be the one to hand it to them.
Doesn't that seem...absolutely right? The way
it should be?
rlp
Covenant Baptist Church is a very mysterious place on
Sunday mornings before dawn.
It's dark, but the stars are bright in the
clean, morning air. Just before dawn you see the constellations that are below
the horizon in the evening. The summer constellations are visible in the
pre-dawn hours of winter and vice-versa. Orion is well up these days, and Leo
the lion will be chasing him soon. Just before first light, you can see a navy
blue glow of light above the black outline of the trees leading to the woods
behind the church. It looks like an award-winning set at a fancy theater.
The birds begin to awake, then light seeps
through our windows. If the clouds are just right, the light can be pink in the
early mornings. There have been times when I went to the
window just to make sure I wasn't seeing things. No, it is pink outside
sometimes.
And on rare occasions, like last Sunday
morning, the light is blue. Blue, I tell you, as blue as ancient ice. Blue like
the bottles on your grandmother's shelves. Blue like rare diamonds. Blue as if
the whole world was an aquarium and there you are, sitting inside a sanctuary of
warmth.
Just when I think that I know the world, a
splash of color on Sunday morning reminds me that I do not. I do not know
anything, really. I'm only just learning to see.
Dawn at Covenant - September 16, 2007
rlp
In the late 90's, when we were planning our
first building, we decided against pews, pulpits, and most of the things that
mark usual places of worship. We were used to somewhat casual settings, having
worshipped in a home, a daycare center, a fire station, a bar, and an elementary
school. It's not that we didn't recognize the value of sacred spaces. We just
had some different ideas about how sacred spaces might look.
Yes, a bar. It was the
Duckblind Lounge, and I'll warrant we were the only Baptist church meeting
in a bar at that time.
In the end we opted for a large room with
moveable chairs and a fireplace at one end. We had in mind a kind of "retreat
center" look and feel.
Click for a larger view
We did have a couple of actual fires in the
fireplace during worship in the early days. The unwritten but understood rule
was: "If you want a fire, bring wood and build one. But you have to clean up the
fireplace afterwards."
That second part of the equation slowed down
the fires quite a bit.
I don't remember when I put the candles in the
fireplace, but it must have been sometime in 2001. I brought a candle rack and laid
it on top of the heavy, iron bars that held the firewood. Since then we've had a
fireplace full of candles. For years we bought matching sets of candles, and I
must say that they looked very nice.
But recently I noticed that my candle cabinet
was full of odds and ends. There were candle stubs from this season or that,
unused candles, candles from weddings and parties, and some candles I'd never
seen before. I don't even know how they got there. So I loaded up the fireplace
with a variety of candles from our past. Different colors, different shapes,
some kind of new and others almost used up.
I thought it looked rather nice, myself. It
kind of reminded me of looking out into the congregation on a Sunday morning.
I few weeks ago I invited the children of our
church to bring a candle from home and put it into the fireplace. "You could
have your own candle," I said. So candles started appearing. The first was
Madeline's candle. Madeline, who just turned four, has rather captured my heart
these days. But then, I was a little vulnerable, having realized that there are
no more little girls in my own home. Sloan brought the next candle, then Anna
brought one.
Yes, this
is the same Anna from my CC essay, "The
Gospel According to Anna." You can
view the actual manuscript of Anna's gospel here. Don't miss the footnotes.
Next appeared a candle that had been owned by
Barbara, who died a couple of years ago. Then some candles from a
wedding showed up. I added a pink candle stub from Advent 1997 that I
had been saving in my office. With all of this new activity, I thought I'd
better keep a photographic log.
Click for a larger view
Honestly, I had no theological reasons for
putting candles in our fireplace. Like much that I do, I was just following a
whim. BUT, as I am watching the fireplace change, it does occur to me that the
candles in our fireplace make up a splendid symbol of our community. They come
in all shapes and sizes. Some burn brightly, while others slowly flicker and die
out. Each one appears in its own time and for its own reasons, and all of them
contribute to the whole.
The body of Christ.
rlp
I don't get ringtones. I mean, I know what they
are, but I don't care enough about them to download any. I'm happy with whatever
ringtones come with my phone. But my kids like them, and I understand some people buy them
online.
Buying ringtones? Why? I'll give you a
selection of RLP ringtones for free. Enjoy. Note: You'll have to have a
phone that can import an mp3 file and use it as a ringtone for these to work.
Right click to download.
Official Real Live Preacher
Ringtones:
Traditional
- download mp3
A state of the blog address, of sorts.
Blogs have a shelf life. Some
are abandoned along the way. The last post remains there, a mute testimony to
someone's hopeful writing. Others change in various ways. Writing is a seasonal
thing, and writers have less control over their writing than some people think.
You follow what is inside and write about it. Live, listen, and follow your gut.
As you change so does your writing.
So this is my blog. Real Live Preacher, as I
named it back in December of 2002. It has survived a number of significant
changes along the way. I think of my blog as having stages, like a child.
The early stage I think of as the wild days of
the salon blogging community. I was anonymous and free, and very few Christians
came to read. Mostly pagans and people of our world. I loved them, and many came
to love me. I shot from the hip, wrote like hell, and sprinkled F-bombs around
just because I liked the way they sounded. This stage lasted until perhaps the
middle of 2003.
Then the Christians found me. I really hated
that. Suddenly Christian people were all over the comments, starting arguments
and carrying on theological discussions. I got a lot of email challenging me to
defend myself, my theology, and my views of the Bible. I took up the challenge
often enough. Sometimes I was too tired. Many who came were wounded Christians
who were also tired and disgusted with church politics, fighting, etc. I think I
gave them a voice. Who knows? But the pagans and people of our world slowly
disappeared from the comments. It broke my heart, truly. I was deeply sorrowful,
but you cannot control the comments. They have a life of their own. So be it.
This period was from the middle of 2003 until May of 2004.
The next big change was losing my anonymity.
People found out who I was, some of them in my church. A book was coming out,
and I decided that I wanted my name to be on it. And I was tired of hiding.
Anonymity is hard work. I came out of the closet, so to speak, in May of 2004
with
this post. Things changed. I lost a significant
chunk of freedom, but writing is always defined by a set of filters and
boundaries. I just had to adjust mine a bit and get used to it.
The next stage began when I started to unravel.
My church is small and pays about half a salary. I was holding down two jobs –
pastoring a church and running a web design and hosting business. And I was
trying to be a husband and father of three daughters. Somewhere in that mix I
was making time to write about 20 hours a week. Some of my essays take 10 hours
of work. Some less, some even more.
I began to be emotionally unwell. I didn’t
recognize the signs of it, though my family noticed that I had disappeared into
a world of writing and isolation. I met with a dear friend from my faith
community to talk about things. We agreed that I could do two things and be
healthy, but not three.
Pastor, web designer, or serious writer (say 20
hours a week). One of the three had to go.
I decided that I would try to transition away
from web design and hosting and into writing as a second vocation. This was a
big change because I could no longer write for free. I had to find some kind of
income from writing, though I was determined to keep the blog going.
But it’s much harder to make money writing than
I imagined. I picked up a couple of regular gigs, but it was slow going.
At this time, around the summer of 2005, two
angels appeared. I kid you not. Two people came to me and said, “We’ll pay you
to write at Real Live Preacher. Well send you a check every month for a period
of time while you try to figure out how to make some kind of a living as a
writer. We think your writing is important and a good thing in this world.â€
It’s a very humbling thing to accept an offer
like that. For one thing, taking money from people can make you dependant. But
more importantly, I had to admit that I wasn’t going to be able to do it alone.
In truth, I would have done just about anything to keep writing. I wanted
this…badly. So I said yes.
I will never be allowed to reveal their names,
but truly Real Live Preacher exists today because they helped me with the
transition. I dropped the web design business immediately. It was something of a
leap of faith, because the interim money had a definite ending. But it “felt
right,†as they say, so Jeanene and I decided to go for it.
Then began another stage of Real Live Preacher.
I left salon.com in July of 2005 and began blogging with custom Drupal software
at my own domain – RealLivePreacher.com. At the time I was hopeful that this
blog might generate enough income to combine with my regular writing at the
Christian Century and The High Calling and justify the time I was spending
writing. It seemed like a little community had developed at Real Live Preacher,
and I thought I would try to nurture it a bit. So I put in a chat room and
created users with an internal messaging system. And I made it possible for
people to “subscribe†to this blog. Just voluntarily send money if they wanted
to help with the expenses.
A good number of people did. You can see their
blogs over to the right. Most are signed up for $5 a month. Some for $10. I’m
grateful to them, because that helps. But truly, not many people are going to
subscribe to a blog. That’s not how this culture is developing. Subscriptions
peaked at about the level of a nice car payment. A few drop each month and a
couple join. It stays about the same.
Now it’s been two years at RealLivePreacher.com.
I think I have a good idea of the kind of money you can generate with a blog.
Not much. Advertising doesn’t do much for you unless you turn your site into a
freakin billboard. I love Real Live Preacher too much for that. I’ve had a
couple of modest ads along the way, but I’ve avoided making the site look
commercial. I don’t have any paying advertisers now. Anything you see on the
menu is there by my choice.
I had a grand plan to publish my own Christmas
series. Seven stories in seven books. I got the first two done, but I lost about
$1000 starting my own publishing company to get them in print. I can’t afford to
spend any writing time on that project right now. It’s on hold. I might shop it
around to a publisher someday, but that publisher is going to want me to write
all the stories at once. I like writing one every year or so. More than that is
too much Christmas for me.
The crazy thing is, I get a ton of traffic now.
Somewhere between (sit down) 4000 and 8000 unique visits a day. That estimate is
based on two different programs analyzing my server log files. One is
conservative and the other less so. That traffic has opened some doors to a new
kind of relationship with The Christian Century and The High Calling. When I
write for them I send them traffic, and that’s a nice bargaining chip for a
writer.
I’ve had some people say, “You just need to get
a publicist, get your name out there, do some interviews, blah blah BLAH,
blah blah BLABBITY blah.â€
Yeah, maybe. Maybe that kind of thing gets you
writing opportunities that pay. Maybe. Still, I think you either write or you
spend your time figuring out how to “get your name out there.†I don’t have time
to even think about getting my name out there. It feels good to let go of that
and not think about it.
I’m going to write. That’s all I ever wanted to
do. Because I want to write seriously (meaning with a significant amount of my
energy and time), I’m willing to do various things and make some sacrifices
for that privilege. I don’t have the luxury of being able to ignore money. I’ll
need to take advantages of opportunities that come my way. But I think I’ll just
take them if and when they come to me.
So I’m entering a new stage here at Real Live
Preacher. This one is marked by my letting go of a dream that a blog like this
can make enough money by itself to justify the time it requires. I need to
upgrade Drupal (my blog software) because I’m getting KILLED with comment spam.
A lot of my earlier essays have terrible spam in the comments now. A Drupal
upgrade will allow me to take advantage of its new spam tools. BUT, that means
I’m going to lose the chatroom. It was kind of a custom thing and keeping it
tied to users is hard. And I’ll probably just get rid of the user accounts
except for the subscribers. Why log-in? That’s kind of a pain. You’ll be able to
leave your name when you comment or be anonymous, just the way it is at most
blogs.
The subscription possibility will stay, and I
hope some people will do that. That “car payment†helps a lot. It would be nice
if that would at least hold at its present level.
I’ve got my eyes open for new opportunities to
make a living as a writer/blogger. Just write and keep your eyes open. That’s
what it’s all about anyway, right?
rlp
Jason Byassee has an article in the current issue of
Christian Century that interests me. He gives his impression and
analysis of Jacob's Well, an emergent church in Kansas City.
The emergent and postmodern movement within
Christianity is nothing new for ministers, but if you are not a part of the
Church, you might not know about it. I think a revolution is happening. I don't
think the current forms of the emergent movement are any more sacred than any
that came before, but clearly many within the church are shrugging off a lot of
excess baggage.
I'd be interested in your thoughts on Jacob's
Well.
Here are some thoughts/questions I have about
the emergent Christian movement:
First, I think if you are trying to be
postmodern, you aren't postmodern. Be yourself. Do what you think is right and
leave the results up to God, or whatever you want to call the intelligence
behind the Cosmos. Emergent Christian churches have this feel to me. I like
that. I notice that many people who attend Jacob's Well have never heard of
Brian McLaren. That's a good thing.
Second, I like the emphasis on practice along
with theology. This is an approach to spirituality that makes sense to people.
And anyone who thinks practice and devotion are less important than doctrine has
not been reading the gospels.
Finally, I like the idea that at Jacob's Well,
you don't begin with doctrines and eventually find your way into the community.
Instead, you can become a part of the community and see where it takes you. My
friend
George became a Christian in just such a
way.
Like all ministers, I have my strengths and my
weaknesses. To have a knowledge of both is necessary for a pastor. For many
people, what I do is important. Very important. Eternally important. That can be
a bit of an ego trip. It may also lead to the crazy idea that my life and work
is more serious and important than someone else’s. That’s not true, and it is a
dangerous way to think.
My life, my theology, my practice of devotion,
my best days and my worst days are all a part of me. How they affect others is
always on my mind. That’s the necessary burden of this calling. And yet, I must
show grace first to myself. Otherwise I will be unable to show grace to others.
In my case, I believe I know my two most
serious pastoral shortcomings.
First, I have a tendency to disappear. You look
around, and I’m gone. I came out of my shell on Sunday morning, smiling and
shaking hands. I seemed genuine because I was genuine. I preached, I sang, I
shook hands, I loved on the children. And when it was over, I disappeared. Who
knows where the pastor went?
That in itself isn’t so bad, but I’m apt to
disappear at almost any time. Having dealt with my depression and anxiety
attacks over the last 18 months, I now know that when I start to lose control of
my feelings, I become frantic in my attempts to disconnect from what causes me
anxiety. Writing, reading, movies, and solitary manual labor are the things that
take away my anxiety and depression. They are my drugs of choice. And they are
things that have to be done alone.
I tend to do things at the church when nobody
else is around. I’m like the little elven cobblers from the fairy story. You
come to church and the chairs are in place. There is a sermon, printed
materials, and sometimes a table is set for communion. Then I emerge from my
office, smiling. I’m on.
Once a woman in the church said, “You remind me
of a little hermit crab. If anyone makes a sudden move, you dart back into your
shell.â€
She’s right. Sometimes I think maybe being a
pastor really IS that important, and I think that I have failed miserably, and I
begin thinking crazy thoughts. The anxiety is a salty tang on the edge of the
depression. It keeps me jumping. Sometimes the best I can do is flinch and force
myself to stay engaged, but I’m often looking for a new shell, a place to be
alone.
Occasionally I become so anxious and
overwhelmed that I collapse in on myself, like a dying star. When that happens,
I MUST be alone. It is no longer an option. I fear those times greatly.
Medication has greatly lessened them for me. It’s rare now that I fall apart
inside.
The end result of this is that I am a pastor
who will probably never seek you out. If anyone asks for me, I pop out of my
shell and give myself away. I listen hard. I am good listener. I will engage you
and be all yours for a time. But you will have to ask for me. I will probably
not ask for you.
My second great weakness is organization. I am
the world’s worst administrator. I have terrible trouble with calendars anyway,
and I loathe organizational tasks. They tend to depress me and fill me with
anxiety. And you know what happens then. (See #1 above)
I remember when our elders started paying a
very organized woman to help with the administration. One of them helped me work
out a plan for keeping her supplied with tasks and duties. It all sounded good
until I left his office. Then I had no idea what to do.
I’m not organized enough, apparently, to tell
an administrative assistant what to do.
I began to be afraid of her. I would see her
coming and think, “Oh shit, I should have some things written down for Helen to
do.†Then my mind would go blank. Finally we stopped paying Helen to help me.
Bless her heart; I imagine she was very frustrated working with me. Currently,
things somehow run on their own at our church. Seriously, it’s a miracle, but we
exist. We thrive even. A bunch of people show up at this church with a crazy
dreamer for a pastor, and somehow we get the bills paid and do what we need to
do. Year after year.
I administrate like an alcoholic. One day at a
time. What’s happening right now? How am I needed right now? As a result I’m
always facing deadlines and running around trying to fix stuff at the last
minute.
I’m not proud of that. I try hard to do better.
But seriously, this is Gordon Atkinson. Most of
his life he has dealt with his anxiety and depression secretly, all by himself.
He has some odd coping skills. If you are looking for someone with the right
words to be very present with you in the right moment, he is your man. This man
loves the present moment and lives there in a way that is impossible for many
people. But I doubt he’ll be able to plan for that moment. And when that moment
comes, you’ll probably have to go looking for him.
It's dealing with what went before and
organizing what will come after each moment that give him trouble. One out of
three ain't so good, but there it is.
rlp
Update (9-26): I have
more blurbs than I can use. Thank you so much everyone. I'm disabling the blurb
email address below because it is getting spammed, big time.
There is no feeling quite like the feeling of
finishing a major writing project. I finished "The Shepherd's Story" today. I
can't tell you how relieved I am. This thing has taken up most of my writing
energy for several months now. I do not write fast. I do not crank out words. I
am a plodding, careful, slow, methodical writer. The Shepherds' Story is about
13,000 words. Or if this helps you - 28 pages, single-spaced, size 10 font.
For me, that is a LOT of words.
This year's story intersects with last year's
story. Last year the story began in Nazareth and ended up at the manger. This
year the story begins with the shepherds going out on the night shift, but it
ends up at the same place - the manger.
Chapters 6 and 7 take place in the same time
and place as chapters 7 and 8 of last year's story. But this time, you get the
scenes from a different viewpoint. Last year Mary and Jesus were central at the
manger, with the shepherds, Joseph, and others off to the side. This year we
find out what they were talking about over there in the corner. Turns out
something important was happening.
Things that were hinted at last year are
fleshed out. And things that were detailed last year are only mentioned briefly.
And this year you find out how Mordecai lost his voice.
But the important thing is I'm done. Finished.
Over. Recorded it today. It's being mixed and that's all there is besides
sending the files to iTunes for downloaders and getting covers printed. The CD
will be available the first of November.
Blurbs Needed:
Some days ago I asked
for blurbs about last year's Christmas story, which comes out in
print this year. I don't want famous people blurbs. I want YOUR blurbs. Yeah
you, the regular guy. The back cover will say, "What people you've never heard
of are saying about "A Christmas Story You've Never Heard."
All the blurbs sent to me so far are, well,
nice. Very flattering and I thank you for them. But I'd like a couple of edgy
ones, you know? Maybe a funny one. Maybe one that pokes fun of me a little bit.
You know what I'm saying? If you want to write a blurb about last year's
Christmas Story, send it to
blurb@reallivepreacher.com. If I use yours,
I'll include your blog below your blurb along with your name or blog handle. You
stand a VERY good chance of getting your blurb on the cover if it is funny or
strange or just quirky in some way.
THE CATCH - I need these by Monday. Yes,
this Monday. September 21st.
The finished cover with the actual
title.
I couldn't think of anything clever that wasn't
cheesy, so I just went with plain and simple.
rlp
I found out yesterday that my college roommate
died last week. His name was Kenny Cameron. I wish I could have gone to the
funeral, but it was over before I knew about it.
My father was the associate pastor of Tallowood
Baptist Church in Houston in the 1970s. I spent a lot of time at church, as you
can imagine. Two of my closest friends also went to Tallowood - Kenny Cameron
and Mark Carter. Mark sent me an email yesterday and told me about Kenny’s
death. I hadn’t heard from Mark in years either, maybe not since I officiated at
his wedding close to 20 years ago.
Kenny and Mark. Kenny Cameron and Mark Carter.
If I say those names, I can almost feel the 70s. I can feel the heat of Houston;
I can hear the Doobie Brothers; I can feel my stomach fluttering when I tried
talking to a girl. I can remember the church stuff - the youth camps, the
revivals, and youth choir on Sunday nights. The memories are right inside me and
also far behind me. Near and far.
So that you can have a feel for what Kenny
meant to me, I’m going to break a sacred trust I have with myself. I’m going to
tell you the truth about one of the Foy Davis
stories. There are six Foy stories so far. Most of them are
fictional. But one of the stories is true. “Freckles
and Blue†is my best and most faithful recounting of some things
that actually happened to me in middle school. If I close my eyes, I can still
feel the heartbreak of losing “Emma,†but over the years that memory has become
tender. It brings a smile to my face when I remember what a little boy I was and
how deeply I felt the things that wounded me.
Kenny and Mark were on the bus from that story.
I left for camp a stranger, and I came home a week later, having had my first
romance and with Kenny and Mark as my best friends.
That was quite a summer.
Kenny Cameron is dead. I have to keep saying it
because I can’t feel it. Kenny was funny. He laughed a lot and had a killer
smile with perfect white teeth. He was handsome and smooth with girls. I tried
my best to imitate him in this regard, but I was not smooth. Honestly, girls
scared me to death until I was halfway through high school. After that they only
made me nervous, but after being scared to death, nervous feels pretty damn
good. But Kenny was never scared around girls or anything else, or so it seemed
to me at the time. That's how I remember him.
Kenny wanted to be a doctor, and we went off to
Baylor University together, along with “Emma†from the story and a few others
from our church. Kenny and I lived in a tiny dorm room for one year. We hung
everything on our walls upside down, for some reason. We thought it was funny.
Believe it or not, they used to have an organized panty raid for freshmen at
Baylor. The boys would wear their freshmen beanies and sing outside the girls’
dorms. The girls would toss panties out of their windows – specially purchased
for this event, one hopes – with their phone numbers written on them. I have
seen a thousand boys crowded around a tall dormitory and the air filled with
panties. I have seen this. I bear witness to it.
Being very athletic at the time and rather
determined, I snagged 13 pair, which was pretty impressive. We hung
them all on our wall, upside down, and left them there for the entire year. But
I never called a single phone number. You know, that whole nervous around girls
thing.
Yeah, Supertramp playing on Kenny’s 8-track
tape player, drinking Cokes and sitting in our dorm room, surrounded by upside
down posters and panties. Those were the days, right?
But then Kenny joined a fraternity, and I got
very serious about philosophy and my religious studies, so I made the cocky
decision that
fraternities were ridiculous - and I passed up no opportunity to say so. We drifted apart and by the end of college, we
were saying hello if we happened to pass each other on the campus.
Life moved on, as it does. I heard that Kenny
never made it to medical school and that he had a daughter. Then at some point I
heard that he had multiple sclerosis. I never called him. I didn’t know his
number, and his friendship was long gone by then. And I missed his funeral.
That’s the last chapter I have for Kenny, and now that I write it in that way, I
suddenly feel very sad.
Mark Carter lives in Austin now, with his wife
and two daughters. We've agreed that it has been too long. We’re going to meet
soon for Mexican food, cold beer, and about four hours of long overdue
conversation. I’m sorry that it took the death of an old friend to remind us of
how precious these early friendships are, but that’s the way it often happens.
Precious things pass quickly. Life and living
wrap themselves around you and hold you fast to the present. Years fly by, and
you find new friends and new ways of being. But the truth is, new friends are an
infinite possibility, but old friends are fixed in stone. There are only a few
of them, and no more will be added to their ranks. Some will be taken away.
So I’m coming to Austin, Mark. I want to see
what 25 years has done to you and for you. I want to hear about your life. I
want to talk about Kenny and the old days. I’m coming to Austin because there
were only two of you, Kenny and Mark. And now there is only one.
rlp
It's Sunday, September 17th, 1:54pm CST, and
we're a few miles south of Eden, Texas. I had no digital phone service yesterday
on the road, so I couldn't blog. I posted the Geocache thing from the motel last
night. They had high speed internet access, as do almost all hotels now. I even
saw a roadside rest stop with free wireless. The revolution continues.
Okay I promised I would tell the story of the
strange women I met in Taos some years ago. I present this as a faithful
reproduction of the conversation with no overt commentary or conclusions drawn.
Let me say that I am always aware of the strange nature of the core story of
Christianity. So I am gentle and patient when I meet people whose beliefs are,
well, unusual. Who am I to pass judgment, right?
This took place about 10 years ago. We were on
our way to Creede and stopped in Taos, as we often do. Jeanene was looking
through some stores, so I stopped into a coffee shop to pass some time. I was
sipping my beverage peacefully, when I overheard a fascinating conversation from
a table nearby. Three women were deeply immersed in a passionate conversation
about planets circling some of the stars that we know as the Pleiades
constellation. Their conversation made it clear that at least two of the women
were convinced that they were, in fact, from one or more of these planets.
I listened for a few minutes, and then I
realized that if I did not get into this conversation I would regret it for the
rest of my days. When in doubt, straight-up honesty is usually your best bet. So
I walked over to their table and said, "Excuse me. I'm sorry to bother you, but
I couldn't help overhearing that some of you are not from our planet, but are
from some other star system. The Pleiades, I think?"
"Yes," they said with no embarrassment or
further explanation.
"Well, I confess that I've never met anyone
from another planet, at least not that I'm aware of, and I would very much like
to hear about this. Would you mind telling me about your planet, what you are
doing here, and how you got to earth?"
They couldn't have been friendlier. I was
offered a seat and had the pleasure of asking as many questions as I wanted.
They were only too happy to talk with me. Indeed, I began to have the feeling
that not many people took them seriously enough to sit and listen to them.
I assure you, I was only to willing to lend
them my ears.
The conversation was much too long to recount
here, so let me tell you what I learned of them. They became convinced that they
were from other planets because their artistic, sensitive, and spiritual natures
set them so at odds with the world around them, at least as they understood it.
They were so different, they simply could not be from earth. And I imagine a
number of people would not debate that point with them.
How they discovered they were from planets in
the Pleiades constellation was unclear to me. I think the delicate teacup shape
of the Pleiades - certainly very pleasing to the eye - combined with a previous
meeting with a man who claimed to be from that region of the skies and who bore
some resemblance to them philosophically had something to do with their
discovery of the exact point of their origins.
They spoke of how difficult it was to live
among common humans, delicate and spiritually attuned as they were. At one point
I almost felt I was back in my youth, hearing the preachers talking about living
"in the world but not of the world," as they so often said.
One of the women was also adept at performing
"spiritual readings," as she called them, using Tarot cards. I was offered such
a reading at a small fee - $30 if I remember - but I refused, not having the
cash, the time, or the inclination. Nonetheless, they all agreed that I was also
a spiritual person who exuded some kind of mystical presence. They affirmed me
strongly in this regard. One of them asked if I knew that I had a Native
American spiritual guide. "No," I said, very interested. "How would I know
this?"
"He's standing right behind you," she said.
I turned but confessed that I could not
see him.
"My grandfather was part Cherokee," I offered.
This seemed to make sense to them and they thought my guide might in fact be my
deceased grandfather, which I thought was rather touching, were it to be true.
Finally the conversation drew to a close. One
of them asked me what I did for a living.
I'm a Baptist preacher," I said boldly and with
no further explanation. This revelation shocked them into silence. I told them
how much I had enjoyed the conversation - which was certainly true - and bid
them goodbye.
As I walked away I thought to myself, "I will
never forget this day as long as I live!"
Mexican Food and Cole Slaw
One more thing. We ate lunch in Eden at the
City Cafe. The Tex-Mex food looked promising, so we ordered fajitas and
enchiladas. I was surprised to find that coleslaw was included on every plate of
Mexican food. This is something I've never heard of before.
I tried mixing a bit of enchilada with
coleslaw, as an experiment. I'm always up for new experiences. Jeanene watched
with interest as I chewed. How is it, "she asked."
My answer was simple and clear. "It's an
absolute abomination."
Well, that's all of my blogging from the road.
We are a couple of hours from home, and next week it is back to life as usual. I
finished the Shepherd story and go into the studio to record on Thursday.
If you are not familiar with Geocaching, you
might
click here to find out more. Basically,
people leave little treasure caches all over the world, listing the GPS
coordinates at the Geocaching website. You can find these caches with handheld
GPS units. If you are traveling, you can find cache listings wherever you are
going.
There are many kinds of caches. Some simply
point you to some kind of historic site, one that perhaps is not well know.
Others are treasure caches with trinkets inside. If you find one of these you
may take one item, but you must leave something in its place. There are other
types of caches as well. You get the picture. It's very much like a treasure
hunt.
My daughters and I have been Geocaching for
about a year now. We like it. We generally stick to the treasure caches. My
youngest likes the little toys.
I planted my first RLP Geocache near Creede. If
you are traveling in Colorado, north on 149 from South Fork to Lake City, look
for Deep Creek Road, which will allow you to bypass the city of Creede. I
planted this cache near a very interesting historical place that is not well
known. It's an old site that you can't find unless you know it's there. The name
of the cache is "Ancient Grief."
The site of historical interest lies in easy
walking distance from Deep Creek Road. Here are the coordinates of the
historical site:
N37° 48.832
W106° 54.919
The RLP geocache is about 150 feet away at:
N37° 48.793
W106° 54.901
Inside the cache is a variety of small objects,
many from my office. A green ninja, an Amish action figure, and some other fun
things that I've found in geocaches myself. If you find the cache, sign the log
book and send me a picture of you and the cache. I'll post the picture and a
link to your blog if you have one.
Happy hunting. Look for
more RLP geocaches to come. I'll be planting one in Louisville in November. And Dallas
in December.
Spoiler alert: If you know there is no
way you'll ever get to visit this cache, I've posted a photo of the historical
site here.
rlp
Unfortunately for me, I’m not ready to write a novel. As for the other, I’m too busy writing and blogging to write a book about writing and blogging, you know? Plus, I truly dislike “how to” books, even the good ones. I don’t claim that as a virtue or as a way of saying those books aren’t helpful to people. I just personally hate them. I haven’t got the attention span to read 250 pages of serviceable prose to get information that could be written on a few 3x5 cards.
I got word last week that
