Increase the Challenge

Posted on April 21, 2017 | 2 comments

PrincePrince died one year ago today. His death was a terrible blow to the music world, and it was also a terrible blow to my wife, who is the biggest Prince fan that I know. I never doubted that she loved me more than Prince, but then again, the three of us never were in the same room.

Regardless of your personal thoughts, Prince was undeniably an amazing performer and a musical genius. In the days following his death, I stumbled across a video produced by the NFL that featured his unforgettable Super Bowl halftime performance at Dolphin Stadium in 2007. Football is tough enough in a rainstorm, but I can only imagine holding a twelve-minute worldwide concert in the driving rain. Come to think of it, I couldn’t play a guitar in high heels under perfect weather conditions.

The video is worth eight minutes of your life, but since all Prince fans have probably seen it and the rest of you probably won’t take the bait, I will share the best part. With the storm bearing down on Miami and threatening to ruin the show, a producer said to Prince, “I want you to know it’s raining…Are you okay?” Prince calmly responded, “Can you make it rain harder?”

When I have work to do in this life and adversity rears its ugly head, that’s the attitude I would like to be strong enough to adopt. Make it more challenging. It won’t stop me.

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A Passing Truck

Posted on April 17, 2017 | 1 comment

17933944_1332678760146276_5840434144147931136_n(1)It was just a truck.

I was pumping gas at the Shell station next to the lively Pacific Coast Highway last Friday when I just happened to see a white pickup truck pass by sporting a black bed cover. It was nothing special, but it produced a memory from over a quarter century ago.

At the time I was in college a good five-hour drive away from home, and my meager possessions did not all fit in a regular truck cabin. A bed cover just made sense given the space challenge and the unpredictable Arkansas weather. We couldn’t afford anything fancy, so my dad bought some wood and some black, weather-resistant astroturf, made careful measurements and some posts to fit the corners, and before long my truck bed was in the dry.

It was just a passing truck, but it reminded me.

I loved that old truck: A maroon, stepside, 1989 GMC Sierra 1500 with a short wheelbase and a big ol’ 350 engine that made it fun to pass cars and tractors and chicken-hauling trailers on those long drives across the Arkansas hills. It wasn’t my first vehicle, but it was the first one that I was proud to call my own, and although it was out of my family’s price range, I’m pretty sure my dad wanted me to have it. He sacrificed a lot for me.

I know it was just a truck, but it was where I first kissed Jody and later (but not much) where I asked her to marry me. When we decided to buy our first house, we sold that truck to afford the down payment, not long before that sweet dad of mine died.

It was just a passing truck, I guess, but it caused me to remember another truck that represents home and the love that shapes your life, so it made me smile.

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Jody

Posted on April 14, 2017 | 3 comments

JodyToday is my wife’s birthday, and the specific number is none of your business (or, apparently, mine!).  Jody’s parents both worked as tax preparers back in 19-whenever when she made her grand entrance on April 14—talk about demanding attention from the very start!  She deserves a lot of attention.  Jody is, hands down, the most impressive person that I know.

I could list a thousand beautiful words that describe my wife, but let’s try a story instead.

Less than two years after we married, Jody was hired as a full-time houseparent at Children’s Homes, Inc., and I got to tag along for the ride.  Imagine the situation: a young married couple in their mid-twenties living with and “parenting” teenagers from a wide variety of challenging backgrounds.  Not sure who was more crazy–us or the people who hired us.  One evening early in our three years there, we were walking with several of the teenage girls at dusk when Jody and one of the girls got into it, and a battle of two very strong wills was on.  Given the body language of the two, my fear was that the battle would soon move beyond wills, and I should mention that the other combatant was about a foot taller and appeared to be twice as strong.  But there Jody stood in the growing darkness, eye-to-navel, looking up at the girl she was responsible for and yet somehow communicating that she would take her out in a second if anyone flinched.  None of us flinched.  There was never a question who would win.

Our daughters never really stood a chance with a mother like Jody who loves with such courage and ferocity.  She will stand up to anyone, anytime, anywhere for what is right, and particularly for (and if necessary, to) someone that she loves.  She is strength and beauty and goodness all wrapped up in one amazing person.

I can’t even imagine how many people are better because Jody decided to care for them.  I just know that I am at the top of the list.

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Refuse to Be Overwhelmed

Posted on April 10, 2017 | 2 comments

Jody1

Some days it feels like my wife and I should move to Nairobi to be with the children we met there who live on the hard streets.  On others I consider Delhi where I learned that young girls are vulnerable to sex traffickers.  On still others I remember the poor Brazilians we saw living in the favelas of Rio.  But today, I live in California.

And then some days I drive down L.A.’s “skid row” and wonder how I can live in Malibu instead of with those in absolute squalor just a few miles away.  And then I open my eyes to Malibu and see homeless and un/under-employed friends looking for work at the Malibu Community Labor Exchange.

The needs are simply everywhere.

How does one live in this old world?  I have worked for several causes, from at-risk children to poverty housing to disaster relief to homelessness to day laborers…  

And then I see those heart-wrenching images of Syrian children on television.  And then churches in Egypt are bombed while celebrating Palm Sunday.

The needs are everywhere, and they are overwhelming.

My personal belief system leads to public policy opinions that seems to place me at odds with all presidents, not to mention most of my friends, but it also leads me to devote (some but far) less energy to public policy discussions and more to being with the sufferers.  Knowing names.  Sharing hugs.  Sharing tears.  

But there are so many.

So here is my plan: 

I will not let such overwhelming need harden my heart so that I give up on caring.  I refuse the temptation to apathy.

I will not allow the impossibility of being everywhere at once immobilize me so that I give up on trying.  I refuse the temptation to quit.

And I will encourage others to make similar commitments.  I refuse the temptation to think that it is all up to me.

May the privileged few share with the underprivileged masses.  Everywhere.  Together.  Today.

from international rescue committee

Syrian Refugee Children (via the International Rescue Committee)

 

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Sisters and Brother

Posted on April 7, 2017 | Leave a comment

Sisters and Brother

“I, who have no sisters or brothers, look with some degree of innocent envy on those who may be said to be born to friends.” — James Boswell

I grew up in a house with two older sisters.  Well, that’s partly true.  Given our age differences, I guess I grew up about halfway in a house with two older sisters.  They flew the coop before I hit the grand old age of eleven.

Both were so good to me.  I remember sitting on Sandy’s lap and reading my first little book, which totally freaked her out because no one had taught me to read.  (“Mom!!!  Al read a book!!!”). I remember riding in Jacki’s yellow Volkswagen Beetle  and getting to shift gears on our way to the nursing home to visit Miss Martha and Miss Jessie.  The words “sibling rivalry” meant and mean nothing to me from personal experience.  All I have ever known are sisters who love me.  As Boswell jealously observed, I was born to friends.

Sandy and most of her family came to visit this week, and it has been great fun to have them here.  It almost surprised me to notice how much I looked forward to their visit.  It is always great to have people we love come visit, but there must be something extra special about those words brother and sister, at least in our case.

Our parents have been gone for years now, leaving the three of us at the top of separate family trees with both sisters now at the grandmother stage.  It is hard to pinpoint exactly what happened with time, but I think a quote attributed to Clara Ortega says it best: “To the outside world, we all grow old.  But not to brothers and sisters.  We know each other as we always were.  We know each other’s hearts.  We share private family jokes.  We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys.  We live outside the touch of time.”  

That’s it: We live outside the touch of time.  We don’t spend much time together anymore, and as special as it is when we do, time does nothing to or for the relationship.  Our relationship is inviolate.

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Just Stop

Posted on April 3, 2017 | 4 comments

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The classic Christian hymn, Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, contains the line, Drop Thy still dews of quietness / Till all our strivings cease.  That last part just sounds terrible.  You see, I’m a striver.  Striving’s my thing.  I like accomplishment.  Give me a problem to solve, yours or mine, and I will strive all day and night to solve it.  One of my latest projects is striving to learn how to take a break from striving, which it turns out is just as complicated as it sounds.

Last week Pepperdine hosted theologian, Miroslav Volf, who in his final lecture extolled the Jewish practice of Sabbath as a weekly event where one stops striving.  I have long agreed with that concept but am just terrible at it.  Since my new preaching gig sees Sunday as work day, I approach Friday-Saturday as weekend and Friday in particular as a personal sabbath.  Well, that’s the idea at least.  It hasn’t gone well so far.

For starters, I don’t want to stop striving for a day.  I prefer catching up on unfinished striving and go a little bonkers ignoring things that need attention when I actually have time set aside to do them!  But even when I try, presumably non-striving activities morph into things to accomplish.  A nature walk becomes the quest of the perfect picture or story.  A novel becomes a mission that needs to be completed in a certain time frame.  A sport becomes a personal competition.

I am more than a little nutty.  How exactly do I not strive?  I could say that I will work on it, but that is exactly the problem.

John Greenleaf Whittier wrote that 19th century poem-turned-hymn that imagined the cessation of strivings.  Ironically, he hated the very idea of singing in church and wrote the poem to promote silent meditation in contrast to musical worship, but his poem became a tool of the thing he despised.  Life is funny.  He was also an abolitionist, who in his lifetime saw the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing the practice of slavery in the United States.  So he was a striver, too! 

Well, obviously striving and Sabbath are teammates, not opponents.

Breaks are important for any endeavor, which obviously includes life itself.  This may not come naturally to me, but the secret just may be when it no longer feels like something to accomplish.  Stopping is the opposite of accomplishment.  It is a gift.

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A Night at the Orchestra

Posted on March 31, 2017 | Leave a comment

17267869_230418650696729_6304749396227522560_n(1)Last week, my oldest daughter and I attended a concert of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, or as we sophisticated people call it, the LA Phil.  The specific concert was titled, “Tetzlaff Plays Dvorak,” which as it turned out, was not a tennis match after all.  

You may be surprised to learn that I did not attend orchestral performances growing up in Paragould, Arkansas.  We had our share of drama, sure, but not much orchestra.  The closest I came was purchasing the soundtrack to Close Encounters of the Third Kind on vinyl.  

But who knew, if you purchase a ticket and have a beautiful date, “LA Phil” will apparently let pretty much anyone into the crazy cool Walt Disney Concert Hall.

I really did enjoy (most of) the performance, but my cultural unsophistication did allow my mind to wander to less-than-cultured places from time to time.  Like whether the guest conductor also played Captain Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation.  And how one particularly animated violinist looked like a marionette under the influence of a tipsy puppeteer.  And how two gentlemen with a remarkable resemblance to Stephen King and former NBA coach Jeff Van Gundy were playing an unidentifiable instrument that made them look as if they were smoking fancy grenade launchers.

But the best part of the evening came shortly after intermission when a woman in our general vicinity began to painfully unwrap a piece of candy, which in that hall of hushed reverence sounded like she had trapped a squirrel in a bag of potato chips.  The surrounding patrons were silently livid, which my daughter and I discovered to be the funniest kind of livid to watch.

Much more seriously, as we sat side by side listening to classical music in Walt Disney Concert Hall, it occurred to me how far Erica and I have come in our precious years together.  I did not feel smug in this thought–as this essay shows, I remain far too ignorant to feel arrogant.  And yet I did not feel out of place either, even though that was obviously the case.  Instead, I just felt happy .  Happy at the honor of allowing such beautiful music to wash across my soul in that spectacular venue in this magical city with such a lovely young lady that I have been privileged to walk alongside for all these years.

I never imagined an evening like that one.  I wonder what other evenings I have yet to imagine?

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One Big Family

Posted on March 27, 2017 | Leave a comment

wbcDodger Stadium hosted the World Baseball Classic championship game last week, and I was honored to be in attendance as the United States claimed the title with an 8-0 win over Puerto Rico.  Like the Olympic Games, the WBC takes the field every four years, and it seemed appropriate that the USA finally won a title in its fourth try seeing as how we invited the sport and all.

My youngest daughter was home for spring break and agreed to hang out with old dad for the evening, and we knew it would be fun before we made it through the gate as the Puerto Rican fans made themselves known honking and cheering their way into the parking lot.  It just got better throughout the evening as fans of both nations/teams made their patriotism clear.  Our personal favorite was a gentleman who never stopped banging on a wok with a ladle throughout the marathon four-hour game.

At one point, the national cheers even melded into an antiphonal chant that resembled the cadence of the goofy (and potentially culturally-insensitive) Three Wandering Jews song from my childhood Vacation Bible School days.  “Puerto Rico!” “U.S.A.!”  “Puerto Rico!” “U.S.A.”

The game was sort of terrible.  United States’ pitcher, Marcus Stroman, mystified the Puerto Rican bats while the American hitters scored early and often.  There was some excitement when Stroman carried a no-no into the seventh inning, but Angel Pagan’s base hit took away that fun and the victorious American squad anticlimactically went on to complete the blowout.

Most headed for the exits after the fireworks and confetti declared the world champions, but we stuck around for the trophy presentation.  So did the Puerto Rican team.  At one point, probably predetermined, after the victors paraded around the stadium and the runners-up watched in silence, the two teams met and hugged that from our vantage point beyond the left field foul pole looked like two sets of interlocking fingers.

And there was applause.  

After hours of two competitors cheering, chanting, and heckling one another out of love of country, the two sides came together, and this apparently made everyone happy.

There is much contempt in this old world.  But the applause at Dodger Stadium last Wednesday evening reminded me that respect still has a chance.

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Head Out Anyway

Posted on March 24, 2017 | Leave a comment

Blog Run PicI crawled out of bed at half past five on Tuesday morning and stumbled downstairs to snag my running shoes.  That’s when I heard the light rain.  Fifty percent chance of rain, they said, and it appeared that the morning glass would be half empty.

And it was really dark.  Daylight Savings Time makes for great evenings, but for now it guarantees that my morning run occurs in the dark from start to finish with no hint of the glorious Malibu sunrise.  No sympathy from most of the world, but I felt sorry for myself anyway.

And I didn’t sleep very well the night before, as if I needed more reason to consider whether running was a good idea.  And I forgot to charge my phone, which I took as a bad sign, too.

But I laced up, drove to my typical parking spot, and took off on foot down the Pacific Coast Highway in the morning darkness.

There is no glorious ending to this story, nor should you expect a tale of woe.  Instead, I noticed more than usual the heavy traffic at six in the morning and suspected that few of the travelers were overly excited by their morning commute.  I ran by a homeless individual sleeping on a bus stop bench, covered with a tarp and two strategically-placed umbrellas for protection from the morning rain.  Construction crews were starting their days.  I heard the ocean waves but could only see darkness.

It was just another day as I ran along, listening to my breathing pattern, feeling my heart beat, watching my steps, and participating in the world.  It was a good run, but nothing special.

I took a random picture of the dark trees in the parking lot and shared it on social media along with the stats of my run and added the commentary: “50% chance of rain.  100% chance of running.”  Which wasn’t even true.  But it is my aspiration, and on that particular day, it was my reality.

Some days do not arrive with great promise.  Some days actually campaign to keep you down.  Get up, and hit the ground running on those days in particular.

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Seasons of Life

Posted on March 20, 2017 | Leave a comment

Baker
(Photo credit: Jeff Baker)

Spring starts today.  Blues, greens, and yellows.  Sunshine.  Seeds.  Awakening.  Renewal.  Fragrant flowers.  Planting.  Warm breezes.  Imagination.  

Unless you live in the Southern Hemisphere, of course, where autumn starts today.  Browns, oranges, and yellows.  Moonlight.  Abundance.  Rest.  Crunchy leaves.  Earthy haystacks.  Harvest.  Crisp air.  Reflection.  

We share the same planet and yet find ourselves at very different stages.

I once read of a particular culture, possibly a group of Eskimos, who believed that you died every cold, dark night when you succumbed to sleep and that each morning you awakened to a miraculous new life.  What a concept: spring every morning and autumn every evening!

Instead, our world is, to put it precisely, polarized.

We share the same planet and yet find ourselves at very different stages.  It will be the same with those you encounter today.  Be sure to notice.

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