April 26, 2008
Heart’s Desires
I wonder if it is a coincidence that the word “heart” begins with “hear”.
I learn by taking things apart. When I was a little boy, I took my toys apart to see how they worked. As an “old guy”, I still take things apart. Now instead of making my toys into a mess, I tend to take my thoughts apart to see what makes me tick. Sometimes I get all worked up and emotional and it leaves me wondering if the world is really the mess I have made it out to be. Thankfully, the One who put the wonder in me, who put the take-things-apart in me also built me with a reset button (called a good night’s sleep). You see, I started writing this over two weeks ago when it was heavy on my heart. I was feeling all mixed up inside and felt like I just had to get it out. I got as far as writing an outline then the distractions began… It was time to go out shopping for a while. When I came back home, I sat down to finish it and my web server was missing. It took all weekend to finally get the web hosting folks to admit that there was really a problem and that they would fix it. By that time it was Monday with all the distractions of the work week. Two weeks later, my internal reset button has evened all out those knotted up emotions, but the topic is still very real…
I feel like I am just learning to hear my own heart; my “heart’s desire”, the longings that are deep inside me. Although my squelch knob usually catches them before they become part of my outside voice, my heart frequently expresses itself to me in extremes like a toddler. You always listen to other people but you never listen to me! I know that it’s not true exactly. I can think of lots of times I have listened to my heart over the years, but it feels like something new to me. Maybe I’m beginning to listen better.
So what happens when a 50 year old codependent mess–a guy who likes to take things apart begins to listen to his heart? He watches things unfold and learns from what he sees and feels. There’s another thing you need to know about me. I am a learner. When I take things apart, I am learning about them. The learner is deep inside my soul. Here’s what I have learned about hearing my heart. There are at least three ways I can discover my hearts desire…
- Having what I want
- Not getting what I want or getting something I didn’t want
- Seeing someone else get what I wanted
Having what I want – When I have what I want, I am content with it. Contentment is an easily ignored emotion. Things are good. They are just the way I like it. I’m happy. No need to take this one apart. Except… I want to be more aware of it. I want more of whatever has me feeling content. It’s a clue to who I am. The places I find contentment are not likely the same places you find contentment.
This reminds me of the way the mind works as described by Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee in On Intelligence. The mind is constantly taking in information and predicting the future. As long as what it predicted is what happens, the mind ignores it. For instance, my mind expects the letters to appear on the screen as I type these words. I don’t even think about it because it happens the way I expect. (Of course I’m hyper-aware right now since I’m writing about it). Think about all the sounds we tune out like the hum of our computer. Have you ever turned of your computer and only then realized how loud it was? We tune them out because we don’t need to be aware of them. Our minds predicted those sounds and so it ignores them. If there is a unexpected, loud noise, or suddenly there is silence, we become instantly aware. Why? What we predicted didn’t happen.
Getting what I want is like that. It is what I want to happen. I’m satiated, comfortable, relatively pain free. So this is not a particularly effective way of learning what I want. Unless I intentionally focus on what is causing me to feel content, I won’t know. Funny isn’t it? The most pleasant way of discovering my hearts desire is the very one that is easiest to ignore.
Not getting what I want or getting something I didn’t want – Unawareness is definitely not the problem with this method. I am usually painfully aware when I didn’t get what I want… although I might not understand the pain I feel. As I am thinking of examples, I realize that it is not so much about getting things. I have more than my share of things to be sure, but tangible things is not really what I’m talking about. It’s less about that one special gift I didn’t get for my birthday and more like finding out my friend isn’t going to make it to my party after all… or I won’t be able to make it to their party. The feeling of disappointment doesn’t care why.
I feel a bit of disappointment and that disappointment tells me that there was something that I wanted. It doesn’t tell me that someone is against me, nor does it tell me that I should have it. Mining these emotions is not about letting the emotions have their way, it is about learning what they are trying to tell me. The emotion is a clue to my own hearts desire. Unless I am intentional about reflecting and examining them, I am likely to react to my feelings of disappointment by trying to fix them; to make the feelings go away and make me feel better. When I do that, I miss a great opportunity. Not only does it not help the situation, I miss a great opportunity to mine for gold. There’s gold in them-thar desires! God has put great desires in my heart and He is for me! I want to know more and more about what these desires are. Not so I can get everything I want, but to know who God has made me to be.
Seeing someone else who has what I want – Again, for me this is not about coveting a nicer house or fancier car. I figured out a long time ago that every time I own something new, it owns me even more than I own it. I just got a new computer when the old one called it quits. As much as I love my new computer, in the couple of months I have had it, it has already taken many hours of my life that I will never see again. First there was the whole weekend I spent setting it up and learning things I never wanted to know… (like Money 2004 won’t run on Vista and the new version of Money called Money Essentials won’t open files created from any other version of Money). Then there was the weekend I spent trying to figure out why it decided to reboot itself over and over for no apparent reason. My things serve me well… when I’m not serving them.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not above getting more stuff… even coveting every once in a while. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a nice digital SLR camera… of course that means the images will be larger than my current cameras, so I’ll need a bigger hard drive and…
So if it isn’t about stuff, what is it about? Frequently it is seeing someone living in their strengths which happen to not be my strengths. I see God in them and I admire them. Who am I kidding? I feel jealous. When my friend Curtis asks one of his penetrating questions that cut straight to the heart, I am impressed, thankful for his gifting and a little jealous. When I see my friend John meet someone and connect with them in such an engaging way that they are immediately talking about important things, I am amazed… and jealous. When I experience the artistry and courage of my friend, Dave to step out and follow his dream of painting hot rods, I am impressed, inspired and jealous. I really don’t want to be Curtis or John or Dave… but my heart’s desire is trying to come through in my emotion.
Warning, I’m going to open up a little more than is comfortable and let you see the silly man behind the curtain… A few years ago, Jeanie and I went with Dan and Hope to see Chicago and Earth Wind & Fire in concert. When I was a young trombone player, I wanted to be James Pankow… understand me… not just be like him, but to be him. So here I am, a middle aged guy in the audience, ostensibly singing the horn parts… but in my heart, I was on that stage. I was playing those trombone parts just as clean as Jimmy P ever did. I danced his dance. I laughed with the band. I received the applause. I felt… jealous! Not too long ago, I told someone I love, “We see things in the lives of others that we want, but it’s just one small facet. We don’t get to see their whole lives. If we could wave a magic wand and trade places, it would not be fair to trade for just the good stuff. You’d have to trade everything for everything. My life for theirs.” Do I really want to be Mr P? Not likely. No other whole life would be worth trading for. I don’t know James Pankow. All I see is a 60ish guy who looks like he’s having the time of his life on stage… My emotion is not really about wanting to be him. It is about something that I want from what I see. It’s my hearts desire… and I believe deep down it is good.
My heart’s desire is not ultimately about my comfort. It’s surely not about leaving my family to go on the road with a band. My heart’s desire is a clue to who God made me to be. I don’t know exactly what it will look like when he’s done with me, but it will be somewhere in the middle of loving God and loving my neighbor. For me, the journey itself is the destination. The taking apart, hitting the reset button, learning and applying what I can along the way is what it is all about. My prayer is that living my journey “out loud” will help others find their way too.
April 19, 2008
Fifty is Nifty
It is now 12:08 AM on the 19th, so I can say with confidence that my 50th birthday was a great day. Thanks to all of you who made it so special… I am a blessed man! Check out this video my friends made for me…
April 6, 2008
Last Lecture
“What would you do if you knew you only had 6 months to live?” This is one of the classic questions we ask ourselves to help find what is truly most important to us is. The cover story in this morning’s Parade Magazine in our newpaper caught my eye like none other in recent memory. normally, I read the headline, look at the photos and keep going on my quest to find Ask Marilyn. However, this morning, I read every word. The story, My Last Lecture, told about a talk given by Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, last September after he learned that he had terminal cancer. Reading it merely whet my appetite for more so I spent the next 75 minutes or so watching the lecture (below) on youtube. It’s hard to get me to sit still for a 3 minute video, so watching for over an hour is saying something! I invite you to watch it when you have time. It’s only a little longer than a TV show and a lot more valuable than most. Randy is scheduled to be on a show called Primetime: Last Lecture this Wednesday night, which I also plan to watch.
I was moved by what Randy considered most important for him to communicate to his children and incidentally to me. Helping others and receiving help; how reaching our dreams is important and helping others reach their dreams is even more important. One real kicker to me was what Randy said about allowing others to be an influence in our lives. He said we need to have “feedback loops” in our lives to tell us where we need to improve. As uncomfortable as it is, I want to welcome tough feedback! When someone takes the effort and risk to tell me their view of what I can do to make myself better, it means that they believe I am worth it. Conversely, if I am executing poorly and yet no one is telling me about it, it means they have given up on me. As my friend Curtis said recently, “If feedback is the breakfast of champions, I want to be fed like a champion!” There’s another great story in the lecture about how to give constructive feedback well, but I’ll let Randy tell his own story. Now get comfortable, sit back and enjoy…
February 25, 2008
The Cruise
We are back from our Disney Cruise. Yes, I said, Disney. On the advice of a coworker who did a Disney Cruise for his honeymoon, we decided it was worth a try. In a word, WOW. Disney is second to none in customer service! We did seven days in the Eastern Caribbean with stops at St Maarten and St Thomas islands. From St Thomas, we took an excursion to St John. Every night we had great food, excellent service and lots of rest and relaxation. Click on any of the photos or here to see a short slide show of photos.
The first two days at sea, I was still feeling sick. I have been feeling poorly since February 1st and the trip to the ship from Charlotte was more than I was ready for. Having two days at sea was just what I needed to get well. By the time we reached St Maarten, I was ready for the sailboat ride excursion we planned. Little did I know that this leisurely sailboat ride was really an America’s Cup sailboat race in which we were the crew! What a rush. Early on in the race, the boat was tilted so far that water was about to come over the side where Jeanie was sitting. One of the crewmen asked if anyone was uncomfortable with the current position of the boat. Jeanie said, “I am!” He shouted back, “Get over it, there’s nothing I can do about it!”
We met the guy who created Yoda for the Star Wars movie and picked up a neat gift for someone we know and love who has loved Yoda for as long as I can remember.
At St John, we visited Trunk Bay, which must be one of the most beautiful places in the whole wide world. There I did my first snorkelling. I enjoyed it with the one exception that it was hard for me to see without my glasses. They had markers under the water explaining what we were looking at. I could see them, but I couldn’t read them. I could see the fishes and the coral which was just beautiful.
After leaving St John / St Thomas, we had one day at sea before we would arrive at Castaway Cay (say “kee”), Disney’s own private island. They had a problem with one of the ship’s engines and the captain announced that, since we would be three hours late, they were going to refund everyone $100 and provide all rentals of floats, bikes and snorkel equipment for free. I thought to myself, “Disney even fails well!”
The final act of great customer service was the luggage handling. Like all cruises, they handle getting your luggage on and off the ship, nothing special there… however, Disney didn’t just take our luggage off the ship for us to pick it up, they sent it to the airport and transferred it to Delta who moved it on to our destination. We didn’t touch our luggage until we got back home! Unfortunately for us, they don’t have any control over the air traffic system. We spent the entire day in the Orlando airport waiting for our flight to take us home. We arrived safely though and we’re struggling to get back into the swing of real life…
I leave you with a recording of the coolest ship’s horn you will ever hear.
February 14, 2008
My Spiritual Journey – Part 3
This is literally the first day I have felt good in February. Thanks to those who prayed for me. It feels kinda selfish to ask for prayer from God for a cold when there are so many big problems out there; war, famine, big ugly dreadful diseases, broken relationships… In any case, I’m grateful to be feeling better. On to my journey…
As far back as I can remember, my family went to church every Sunday. Our home church was Deer Park Baptist. I “gave my heart to Jesus” at Vacation Bible School there. I must have been about 7 or 8 years old. The associate pastor called me into his office, which was quite intimidating… it felt sort of like going to the principal’s office. I had raised my hand when the teacher asked if anyone wanted to give their heart to Jesus and the next step in the process was a trip to his office. He asked me a few questions about sin and who Jesus was and what He did for me. I answered all the questions correctly and we prayed together. He told me that I was now a Christian.
I have some reservations today about the one size fits all formula in which we answer a few questions and we are “in”. Seems more like joining a club than a crucial life decision. In any case I took my decision seriously. I believed what my teacher taught me and I wanted to go to heaven when I died. As I wrote those words, I just remembered something my dad told me the day I was baptized. He said that he noticed that I was more serious than the other kids. I’m glad I remembered that. Thanks for saying so, Dad. I knew writing this would be good for me.
As the years went on and I learned more about God at church, I grew more serious about wanting to follow Jesus. At some point, the repetitious Sunday School lessons weren’t doing it for me anymore. If I had been smart, I would have talked to someone about my journey, but I was a loner and I was pretty sure I could figure it out. In my mind, everyone needed to go through the same steps of learning and growth in series; 1, 2, 3…. Because of that, it was important for me to get them in order so I wouldn’t mess up or miss anything. I knew that they had these racks in the vestibule of the church filled with tracts and I reasoned that this was where I would find out the next steps to take. What I found in the tract rack were pamphlets on how to become a Christian in three easy steps and why the Mormans or Jehovah’s Witnesses were wrong and what to say to them when they came to your door. I didn’t find anything like what i was really looking for; the next steps after giving your heart to God. How to grow closer to God.
The church that I grew up in emphasized evangelism. Nothing mattered more than “The Great Commision” from Matthew 28:19-20 “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” It was our job to share Jesus. For a painfully shy little fellow, this was like asking me to walk on hot coals. I reasoned that the main thing was getting the message out. So, I took the tracts that told about how to become a Christian and distributed them liberally. Once on vacation, we stopped for gas and I went to the restroom. While I was in there, I unrolled the toilet paper and re-rolled it with tracts so they would fall out when the next person used the toilet. As we drove away, Dad had something to say about it. It seems that he was the next person to use the toilet. I was so embarrased!
When I was a young teenager, I had a Sunday School teacher, whose name is gone from my memory. He was a short blond firecracker of a man. He really loved Jesus and was full of excitement. He was as anti-speaking in tongues as he was on fire for Jesus. I don’t know why that was such a hot button for him. His teaching was my only knowlege about speaking in tongues and my only perspective about the matter. Whatever speaking in tongues was, he was worried that we’d get involved with it. I took his teaching as gospel and learned chapter and verse why “speaking in tongues was of the devil.” There was no way I was going to get involved with that! In his class we also studied a popular book called “The Late Great Planet Earth”. This was the first popular book I had ever read about what to expect at the end of time. Mostly what I remember about it was that Jesus was coming back in 1988! Whoops.
In the group of four boys that were my age at Deer Park Church, three of them went into fulltime ministry. I alone pursued a secular vocation. Many times I have asked myself what happened to me. For some reason, even then it was important to me that I should be able to be serious about following Jesus without earning a living as a minister. That is not a criticism of anyone in ministry. It is a value I hold dear, not just with regards to ministry, but also taking leadership in groups without being given a formal leadership role. To me, that’s the way the world ought to be. So many people wait to be told what to do instead of using the gifts and talents that God has built into them. There’s a reason we are all different. We need each other.
February 10, 2008
My Spiritual Journey – Part 2
Gran-Great
The next logical part of my journey is my relationship to those who came before me. I was blessed to know all of my grandparents and three of my great granparents. I was pretty young when my great-grandparents died. My dad’s mother’s father (M. C. Lewis) died before I was born. I barely remember her mother, (Naomi) but I called her Gran Great (my grandmother was “Gran”). Mostly, I remember an old lady who I would “perform” for. At Christmas, we had a gathering of my grandmother’s family (the Lewis’s) at which all the kids were expected to say a piece for Gran-Great. My parents tell me that one of the pieces I recited for her went like this… “The chimney’s small. Old Santa’s fat, but he get’s down in spite of that.” I guess for a little guy that was pretty good.
Great Grandpa & Grandma Anderson
I knew both of my dad’s, dad’s parents (Rom & Bertha Pearl Anderson). We visited them many times and I remember my dad telling me each time that this might be the last time we would ever see them alive. The fact that I remember hearing this more than once testifies to their longevity. It also tells me that the sadness I felt cut pretty deep. Many of our memories that stick do so because they are attached to strong emotion. This photo is just how I remember them. I even remember being that wallpaper, which struck me because of its “oldness”. Everything in their house seemed so old. It even smelled old. My great-grandfather liked to put me on his knee and tell me bear (pronounced “bar”) stories. His voice was airy and soft and he had a gentle laugh that I liked.
Hymns
My great grandmother was impressed with my singing hymns when we visited. I do not remember this, but my mom tells me it is so. My mom sang hymns a lot when I was little and, being the little musician that I was, I picked them up and sang them too. I still remember most of the standard hymns very well. I suppose it is because of hearing them so much when I was growing up.
Interestingly to me, I do not “treasure” the hymns the way I hear from so many people who grew up in the church. So many times I hear people my age and older wish we sang more of the the old hymns in church today. To my mind, they seem distant and old fashioned. It seems as if I should cherish them and hold them dear since they were clearly such a huge part of my childhood, but they do not. The reason, at least partly is because my musical taste and my love of variety are not met in the old hymns (you don’t get much new and avant-garde with hymns). It could also be that I unconsciously associate hymns with a “by the rules” religion that I attach to my grandparents’ generation… a religious attitude that I find repellant. For whatever reason, the fact is that I loved hymns when I was a youngster but today, I do not prefer them.
I was sharing this dicotomy with a friend the other day and he reminded me of some of the “remakes” of old hymns to a more modern sound. I like very few of them. The ones I like are the ones in which they make interesting harmonic changes instead of merely “changing the beat”. Most of these remake productions lack depth musically speaking. They are merely rock and roll facades on old hymns. It isn’t that I consider what they are doing sacreligious. It is hard for me to imagine that any musical style in and of itself is unpleasing to God. I believe to my core that God is mostly concerned with our hearts.
The Attitude of the Heart
Samuel, in the Bible, says when choosing the next king for Israel, “The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” 1 Sam 16:7. This is a principle that I hold very dear. God is more concerned with my heart than my actions. I once knew a man who loved to perform gospel music ( good-ole hillbilly, bluegrass gospel music). He didn’t love Jesus, but he surely loved gospel music. Something about that bothered me. To sing for Jesus when you don’t love Him, just doesn’t make sense to me. I believe that as a musician, I can perform secular music with an attitude of worship to God that is pleasing to him. Likewise, I could sing a hymn with a poor attitude and I do not believe it would be pleasing to God.
Thinking about God’s looking on the heart also reminds me of Jeanie’s and my philosophy of raising children. When our daughters were little, it was very important to us to try to discern the reason they did something wrong. Did they have an attitude of defiance, or was it a childish mistake? Were they truly sorry, or just embarrased that they got caught? Once I was so exasperated with Danae that I shouted at her. I said, “Why don’t you stop acting like a three year old?” This broke the spell for me long enough to laugh at myself… because she was three years old at the time.
Way over here at the other end of the parenting continuum, I have also asked my daughters many times to judge me by my motives more than my actions. As a parent there are many times that I have just not known what to do or say. I know what I want, but I don’t know how to get it. I have made some real hum-dingers of mistakes with my words. Hurt feelings, miscommunications. I am blessed that my family is so forgiving.
A Prayer Request
I have had a cold for the last week and a half that has wiped me out. Just sitting up and writing for a while is draining all my energy. Please pray that I will recover quickly. I am sick and tired of feeling sick and tired… if you know what I mean.
February 4, 2008
My Spiritual Journey – Part 1
Beginning
Everything is spiritual… so how can one write about their spiritual journey without writing about everything? My purpose in this series is to explore what I believe about God and why I believe it to be true. It will be a very personal journey. My purpose is not to say that I am right and why, but to say, “This is who I am.” Like everything I write on this blog, my purpose ultimately is for my friends and family, to know me better. The unexpected gem for me is how much I learn about myself in the process. If it is encouraging to others, so much the better.
I expect it will be mostly chronological, but not completely. As I get into some particular thread of thought, I may chase it through time. You will undoubtedly meet a few people who helped to shape my spiritual thought from Mom and Dad to my own children, from my Sunday School teachers and Youth Leader to a few very influential pastors and friends. Much of my journey has been shaped by trying to please others. A desire to please others is good, but it is also flawed. The simple fact is that I cannot make anyone happy. I can do acts of kindness, but whether the recipient truly receives them is not my choice. Whether it is enough to make a difference is not my choice. I hope that in the process of exposing the unhealthy addiction to making others happy, I can be freed to explore my own heart deeper… and continue doing acts of kindness, but with no expectations.
Before the Beginning
At least, before my beginning… It occurs to me that as a chronological journey, I should tell what I know about the spiritual journeys of my ancestors. It isn’t much…
I know that my Dad’s family was from West Virginia. He was born and raised in an area on the Kanawha River nine miles from its intersection with the Ohio. The area was called “Nine Mile”. His father’s family (Anderson) had bounced all around West Virginia and even into Kentuky and Tennessee having children as they went. They made a living by building or fixing up a house then living in it a while, selling it and moving on. When they arrived at Nine Mile, they stayed to have several children. My guess is that the nomadic lifestyle was a bit much with a lot of children. No matter why they chose to stay, they took up farming and became part of the Nine Mile community. They attended church at Pine Grove Church, which is now gone. There is still a cemetery there where many of my ancestors are buried (none of them are Andersons though). Pine Grove Church was a Methodist church, I believe.
Another family in the Nine Mile area who also attended Pine Grove Church were the Lewises. Bernice Lewis was my grandmother. Her father, Miles Clement Lewis, was a school teacher and a devout Christian. He spoke in church on at least one occasion, for which I have published his notes here. Bernice Lewis and Preston Anderson met at Pine Grove Church where both of their families attended services. They told me about going to social events there for dates. Anyway, that’s not the point of this entry. The ancestors I spoke of were from the Lewis side of my grandmother’s family.
They married and made a life for themselves very close by that area. For their whole life, they were members of the United Methodist Church. They believed in God and raised their two sons in the church. Their younger son, my uncle, is a Christian pastor and a great mentor to me. He comments frequently on my blog. Their older son is my father and also a great influence in my life. He has occasionally left his mark here too.
My mother’s family came from Alabama. I believe they were Baptists, but I don’t know much about that. Her parents moved to Charleston, SC when she was a young teenager. Her father became a machinist in the Charleston Naval Ship Yard. They attended Charleston Heights Baptist Church, which was very near the Naval Base (that little fact will become important soon).
My dad joined the Navy when he graduated high-school. He had high hopes of attending the Navy School of Music. He had passed the entrance audition and was well on his way when life took a different turn for him. In his physical exam, they determined that he didn’t have enough teeth to be a navy musician. I can only imagine how dissapointing that must have been. The Navy sent dad (of course he wasn’t my dad yet) to Charleston. While there, he went to Charleston Heights Baptist Church to worship. Guess who he met there… yep. He and my mom were married about a year later.
Mom and Dad took my brother, Ken, and me to church in the Baptist church as long back as I can remember. Some of my very early memories were of my dad directing the music at Highland Creek Baptist Church in Hanahan, SC. I remember singing from the hymnals and feeling embarrased when one of the ladies would look at me and smile with that “isn’t he cute” smile. When my mom was recovering from having my brother, she tells me that I would go to church with my dad and I would sit on the front pew very still and good while he directed the singing. Then he would come sit down with me for the rest of the service. People would just rave about how good I was. I liked that attention and I’m sure it had a big impact on my being “good”.
So there you have it. It’s a beginning… not an earth shaking beginning, but it is the one I have. Next time, I’ll talk a little more about my childhood experience in church, what I remember of it and move into the teen years. Until then…
January 21, 2008
MLK
Thoughts on Martin Luther King Jr. Day…
- I was ten years old when Martin was assasinated. I do not remember ever having heard of him, which was not unusual given the fact that we didn’t talk about world events in my home. It wasn’t that world events were taboo, my parents just didn’t discuss it. I feel sad that he met such a tragic end.
- Being a white guy from the south, I grew up immersed in a paradigm that thought of people like King as trouble-makers. He was a trouble maker. Sometimes we need trouble-makers to stir us out of our complacency or worse, our bigotry. It disturbs me that we need to be shaken up because we ought to be able to examine ourselves and make the changes that result from that examination. Alas, people aren’t very good at self-examination. I am thankful for the courage of Martin and others who risked everything to make things better.
- Our garbage pickup is delayed one day this week because of the holiday. Jeanie already heard one person make a smart-assed comment about how “they” have to have this day off, don’t they? Will we ever get past having an us and a them? I feel angry and sad that a whole group of people is marginalized because of the color of their skin.
- This morning, I was reading a newspaper article on King’s legacy and I was thinking about my African-American friend, Chris. (Chris is not my token black friend. He is my friend because we relate to one another well. We used to work on the same team at Wachovia. We no longer get to work side by side because of corporate reorganization decisions. I picked up the phone and called Chris. I told him how I had been thinking about how much of an impact King’s dream and work had on our ability to be friends at all. If it were 40 or 50 years earlier, there is no way we would be working side by side in an office. I celebrate our friendship today!
There you have it. Joy, because I am living Martin’s dream and sadness because it is so far from a complete reality. Hope that we will be able to one day truly judge one another by our character and not by our skin color or any of the other differences that divide us. Call me crazy, but I believe that is what Jesus wants. I believe that only when we truly embrace Him and follow His teaching can we have any hope of true reconciliation. Only when we learn to embrace one another, only when we see the “fingerprint of God” in everone can we experience Martin’s dream. Only when we learn to disagree well can we celebrate our differences as we together celebrate the One who made us all so different! We have so far to go, but I see movement. Movement in my life and the lives of some of my friends.
God help us to embrace You, embrace Your ways, see the world the way You see it. Help us to see Your fingerprint in every person and love them the way You do… the way Jesus showed us.
January 17, 2008
Funeral Programs
One of my hobbies is documenting my family’s genealogy. I say, “documenting” and not “researching” because my joy comes from listening to and reading the family stories and organizing all the information that others already know. I get no pleasure from doing research. I also love using my talents to publish this genealogy and family history on the web so that all can enjoy it.
I started going through papers and photos that I got when my grandmother (Anderson) died in 2005. She was faithful to keep records (letters, stories, charts) of our family history. Documentation like that is of vital importance when one is recording genealogy. Sometimes you will come up with two conflicting pieces of information and without documentation, you would not know which was more likely to be true. Interestingly, Gran was practically obsessive about saving funeral programs. They are little cards that tell the barest of details. Who died, when they were born and when they died, where the services are to be held and who will officiate. She has them from her parents, her brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles… As much as I understand their value as documentation, it seems a bit odd (even morbid) to save them.
As I was sorting through things tonight, I came across Gran’s own funeral program that I had saved. I thought about how she had passed this job to me and how I was the one now filing her funeral program. It then occured to me that someday, someone else will file my funeral program.
I don’t mean to scare anyone. This is not meant to be morbid or some kind of prediction of my demise. It is a reminder that death is a very real part of life. That’s the way it is supposed to be. For me, it helps to keep the worries of life in perspective. I wonder if Gran ever thought about that…
January 9, 2008
A Clearing in the Distance
Lately I find myself enjoying more biographies. I love experiencing other people’s stories. Seeing things from the perspective of other people helps me to see the world in new and different ways. I especially like biographies that are “real”; ones about well known people, but that show them as real people with their weaknesses and failures as well as their giftedness and strengths. I am about a third of the way through reading, A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmstead and America in the Nineteenth Century by Witold Rybczynski. (The title and the author’s name are enough words to consider them a blog entry alone!)
Olmstead is famous for his landscape designs including New York’s Central Park and the Biltmore Estate in Asheville , NC (just a couple of hours away from here). What strikes me about Olmstead is that, unlike so many famous people, he didn’t start a career and stick with it the rest of his life. In fact, a full third of the way into the book, the closest he has come to doing anything related to landscaping was his strategic planting of some trees on his farm. He dropped out of college, was a shop keeper, became a farmer and toured Europe looking for better farming methods. Wrote books on the farming and returned to continue farming. Eventually, his writing skills take him to a job as a writer for the N Y Times newspaper. I can relate to this guy. He does not know who he is. I still am not sure who I am.
Another thing I love about the book is his perspective on America in the 19th century. In the mid 1800’s, slavery was by far the biggest issue in America. Reading this book gives me the perspective of a regular guy (with whom I very much relate) on these kinds of issues. He is not a politician and has no ambition to try to solve the issue singlehandedly. But that does not mean that he doesn’t have an opinion. Olmstead is against slavery, but like many others, he wants to ignore it and let it die a slow death. He fears that to ban slavery would be the end of the Union of the states. An abolitionist friend tries to persuade him otherwise to no avail. In hopes that seeing the conditions of slavery for himself will change his mind, his friend convinces Olmstead to take a job with the Times. He becomes travels throughout the South, reporting on the conditions there and his perspective is fascinating. He makes great economic arguments against slavery, showing why it just does not make sense.
I could go on about the book, but this blog is not about Frederick Law Olmstead. It is about Jimazing Jim Anderson. I have often wondered what I would have done if I had lived during those times. I would like to think that I would have been an abolitionist… that I would think for myself and stand up for what is right. However, it is easy to cast stones from the safety of 2008. Unlike Olmstead, I was born in South Carolina, which was a slave state (not after I was born, thankfully). Slavery would have been a fact of life for me… whether I was for it or against it. What was it really like? Many who just stood up in arguments were killed. How many of those “unreported incidents” would I know about? Would I speak out in spite of the danger, or hold my tongue out of fear?
I’ll keep plugging away at the book and hopefully Olmstead’s life will continue to stir me. Who knows what I might find out about myself in the process.
Jimazing Thoughts 