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There’s a conversation going on that is beginning to get interesting.  It is always stirring, sometimes uplifting, frequently frustrating, commonly heated. The conversation is about religion, faith, belief, destiny, doctrine and tolerance to name a few topics.  Sometimes it gets some politics mixed in too.  I have strong thoughts and feelings about the topic and I want to join into the conversation, but I haven’t jumped in yet.  Why?

Even though I don’t believe it is true, intellectually, I have an emotional belief that I don’t have anything to bring to the conversation, so I should just keep my mouth shut, my keyboard quiet and listen.  So I listen and I read and I gradually I feel stirred to the point I feel like I will burst.  Then I don’t usually make the time to write. When I do start to write something, I don’t publish it.  I have a bit of a narcissistic belief that tells me that if I am ok, everything is ok, so I focus my thoughts inward.  These inward thoughts are a necessary part of being engaged with life and with the conversation, but they are not the end I really want.  I want to be part of the larger conversation.  I do want to share my thoughts with others.

One of the reasons I don’t publish is that my thoughts are too big.  I have 10 volumes of material in my head and organizing it then squeezing it out one word at a time is excruciatingly slow.  The slowness makes me lose momentum, which fuels distractions that keep me from writing.  The truth is that writing is just one of my desires.  There are other things that are just as important, frequently more important; like going to work and loving my family and friends.  Over time, I lose my train of thought and focus and I stop trying.  Not so much discouragement, but forgetfulness.  Next thing I know I get some margin back in my life and I find myself back where I am now; longing to be part of the conversation.

I do not like conflict.  Some people who I am close to may not believe that because they frequently see me in conflict and attempting working through it.  While I am usually willing to step into the discomfort of conflict, sometimes I do a poor job of working through it and it always drains me emotionally.  The anticipation of the emotional energy I will have to expend to stay in the conversation is daunting.  It is easier to just shrink back into my cave and leave the conflict alone.  But then I watch from inside the cave, wishing I was part of the conversation.

I do not want to impose my beliefs on others.  In my early years, I believed that as a “good Christian”, I should be in people’s face about what I believe.  I was pretty arrogant.  As a Christian, my beliefs about what is “required” now center more on loving God and loving people.  The words that keep coming back to me are grace, gifts and humility. I want to treat people graciously, give them gifts of listening and honoring even when I do not agree with them. And I want to hold my beliefs with open hands in a spirit of humility.  I don’t believe what I believed 10 or 20 years ago, and in 10 or 20  years I won’t likely believe what I do now.  I don’t have to win the argument, I just want to be in the conversation.  A friend of mine tells me that he loves competition, but it doesn’t matter in the end who won.  He just loves being in the game whole-heartedly.  That parallels my desire with the conversation.

Lastly (for now), I am afraid of rejection. This conversation seems to be dominated by strong voices of theologians and others who hold strong feelings about their beliefs.  There are many teachers and leaders and fellow Christians that I have studied under and followed over the years.  I do not want to disappoint them, so rather than express disagreement or doubt about what they taught, I usually stay quiet.  Ultimately, it is my own fear of being abandoned, deserted, ignored and/or shunned, which is both rational and irrational at the same time.  It is unfair and irrational because some of these people I am afraid of losing love me no matter what I believe or disbelieve and that’s that.  At the same time, it is a perfectly rational fear. Some would break ties with me if they knew what I really thought.  My cousin recently posted a controversial quote about faith on Facebook and was de-friended by someone who disagreed.  I don’t want that to happen, but I realize that 20-30 years ago that could well have been me that de-friended.  There’s a  thought; my 20 year old self de-friending my 52 year old self.  It helps me give grace to those who will not listen.

The price of keeping my thoughts to myself is too high.  I am ready to become part of the conversation.

The Conversation, spirituality, writing

When I tell people that I am writing a book, they ask what kind of a book or what it is about.  I don’t have a good answer to that question.  This may sound silly, but right now, I want to write a book so that I can experience what it is like to write a book.  I don’t need it to be wildly successful in the marketplace.  After all, I have a good job.  I don’t need people to love it or to even read it.  I just need to write it.  I do not fully understand why.  I just feel compelled to do it.  One of the reasons I started blogging was to practice writing.  This blog gives me a reason and a place to write.

There is a button on the screen where I write my blog that reads “Publish”.  All I have to do to publish my blog entry is to click that button!  What a great time to live.  In order to publish 1000 years ago, I would have had to manually copy or hire someone to print every individual copy of my manuscript by hand.  Every single printing would have been a manual process!  Just 500 years ago, I could have had it printed by machine, but I’m guessing there weren’t many machines around.  Truth be told, if I were around 500 or 1000 years ago, I probably would have been illiterate and this wouldn’t be an issue.  If I were trying to publish even as recently as 15 years ago, I would have had no choice but to find a publisher who would accept my work and print the books.  With the advent of better and easier blogging software, now I merely click a button and it is published. <clicks safe draft button before losing his work>  Never before in history could I type a few paragraphs and click the Publish button to find my words immediately available to almost anyone anywhere on the planet.

So why do I want to write a book?  What’s it going to be about?  Fiction or Non-fiction?  I don’t know yet.  Blogging is giving me the discipline to do the work of writing.  The hard thing is making the time and doing the work… especially when I am tired. <clicks the Publish button>

writing

I have been dissastisfied with my Photos page for a long time, but it wasn’t high enough on my list to do anything about it.  Actually I did try a few things, but nothing was satisfactory.  Now thanks to the kPicasa Gallery plugin, it now seamlessly interfaces with my Picasa gallery.  Thanks to Kag for writing it.   Click on the Photo tab to see the Photo gallery (In case you are reading the rss feed, the tab is on the web site).

random, writing

Why do I write? Who am I writing to. Of course this being a public blog, I am writing to anyone who wants to read it. When I first began this blog, I didn’t know who I was writing to and that is right where I needed to start… by just writing. After thinking about it, I realized that my heart’s desire is for my family to know who I am. I frequently find myself wondering about my grandparents and my great grandparents. What were they like at my age? What did they think about? What were the joys of life for them? What did they fear? What did they desire? What did they do for fun? I don’t know the answers to those questions because they didn’t leave a record. No journals or diaries. No books. I imagine there were lots of reasons that they didn’t write… but that is the best I have, my imagination.

I don’t think everyone comes to a place in life where they ask these kinds of questions… but some of us do. The smart ones ask while their grandparents are still living. Unlike them, I waited until one by one, they passed away. All is not lost, however. My dad recently shared a sermon that my great-grandfather M. C. Lewis delivered which I published here. I took some video of my grandmother Anderson telling stories before she died. I hope to edit and publish her stories too. The Family History section of my blog is dedicated to these family stories. Another project that I have begun is transferring video from old 8mm movies to the computer. I published some of these on my old Home Movies blog. One day I’ll get around to incorporating that with this blog site, but not tonight

The Dream

I had a dream a few years ago that I hope will explain a little more why I write about me… publicly. In my dream I had died, but I was able to walk around and experience everything as if I was alive, but no one could see me. It was much like in the movies. The dream begain after my funeral was over and everyone got together for fried chicken and potato salad (mom makes a mean potato salad). I didn’t see everyone there, but I did see my mom. She was standing and staring into space with a despondent look on her face. I felt so bad for her that I walked up and hugged her. I knew she wouldn’t be able to feel it, but I wanted to hug her so badly. When I put my arms around her, I couldn’t really feel her, but her eyes opened wide and she gasped! It was as if she could feel my presence.

Now I was feeling excited. I thought that if I could make her feel me, maybe I could interact with the “real world” in other ways. I tried moving things to let them know I was there, but nothing worked until I picked up a pen and wrote on a piece of paper. I could actually write notes to them! I found myself writing to them about what I thought was important. My daughters were making decisions about things and I wanted to tell them how I felt about their decisions, so I wrote it down.

Suddenly, I woke up. I was dazed and unsure if it had been a dream. It felt so real. I sat up on the side of the bed and waited for a minute or two as my mind cleared. I soon realized it must have been a dream, but I was still feeling rattled. I prayed and asked God what He wanted me to do with this dream. I knew there was more to it than just a dream, but I was confused.

I felt God whisper to me. Not audibly, but it was like a knowing, complete thought. He said, “It is real.” You will have the ability to communicate to your loved ones after you die. If you write the things that are important to you now, they will have them when you are gone.

That dream has driven me ever since. I want my writing to communicate to those I love now and those I love and care about in the future. I want you to know who I am. What I think about. What I dream about. What I fear. What I long for. I want you to know my questions and my doubts. I don’t want my ancestors to put me on a pedestal as if I was some kind of super man who never doubted or feared. I am a man who struggles and wrestles with life and with my faith.

That is why I write.

family, writing

My posts are boring!

Why do you keep reading my blog? You say it is good. you say you like it, but you don’t… not really. If it were a great movie, you would have told your friends, “You have got to go see this!” If it were a funny video on YouTube, you would emailed it out or hosted it on your blog… if my blog entry had really been all that, you would have told your friends about it… at least once. Tell me what you really think. That’s what I need to hear.

Read more…

writing

There are a few blogs that I routinely read. One of them includes some proverbs from different cultures. This one stuck me as really profound:

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today.

I’m too busy to write on my blog today. I have things to do in order to maintain the things that matter to me:

Read more…

family, friends, reflection, writing

When I started this blog, I had aspirations of writing a book. I decided that this would be a good first “baby” step in the process. I still have a book in me, but I realize more than ever that it will require a discipline that I have not yet demonstrated. I am going on record here and now that I plan to write a blog a week. It may be something really heavy on my heart or not. I don’t know. Of course, my blogs so far have been varied and don’t seem to have any rhyme or reason behind them. That’s the way I think and the way I process things.

An Observation
I saw something one morning this week that I found to be quite bizzare. As my carpool buddy and I were driving to work south on I-85, we saw going north, a row of police or highway patrol cars with blue lights flashing. They had effectively stopped traffic going that direction. On second glance, they were moving at what I guess was the speed limit. There were no cars in front of them and a mass of bumper to bumper traffic following them. We quickly turned on the radio for news of what was happening. At the first update, we heard that it was a “rolling roadblock”. I have never heard of such a thing.

I googled for “rolling roadblock” and found two definitions, neither of which fit what we saw. the most common definition is what might happen if the police wanted to apprehend someone who would not pull over. They could surround the car and force it to stop. The second was from places that enforce the “no passing on the right” rule of driving. In this case, someone who was driving slowly in the left lane is effetively a “rolling roadblock” since no one can pass them.

I don’t know what the police were trying to accomplish by this other than a display of force. If their goal was to reduce speed on the interstate, they accomplished that for the duration of their little game. If they wanted to reduce speed overall, they failed miserably. Only the first few cars would have known what was happening. Everyone else would merely assume it was typical slow traffic. This appears to be a silly show of force that will result in doing little more than angering drivers.

If the law enforcement officers are really serious about slowing people down, I believe they should 1) Actually enforce the laws that are out there. Give out tickets to speeders. Most of us don’t want to get a ticket and we will slow down. 2) Model the behavior you are trying to inspire. No one is inspired to slow down by law enforcement personnel speeding. Come on, show us what you are looking for.

Nuff said

wondering, writing