Another book for the stick

Our "Community Group" (i.e. Bible Study) finished up a book tonight. I always have high hopes for new books. This one wasn't great. Mediocrity is nothing less than a plague in Christian bookstores. A friend and I have been encouraging each other to fight that mediocrity in our own writing. In this era of consumer driven manufactured entertainment, a reader has a lot of opportunity to tell publishers what we think. Here's a spot I posted to my Facebook bookshelf:

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When I pick up a small, compact book like this, I hope it will be packed with truth. I want it to read like "Practice of the Presence of God" or "My Utmost for His Highest." I want a small book to be the 100th re-write of a bigger, fluffier book - condensed to a simple, wonderful, pure truth. Or, I want it to be one experienced truth, retold.

This wasn't that. I wanted to know about Humility. Humility is profound, elusive, divine, paradoxical, and miraculous. This book was another generalized lecture on vague "Christian Living." Every chapter was a different subject, with a generalized connection to being humble - being humble while disciplining your children for example, or while trying your best at work.

Perhaps it was the irony that got me: writing about humility is instantly convicting, and yet the author had no problem offering a series of sermons on right living. None of the sermons got to the deep conflicts of the issues, and it cruelly left its readers with more questions than answers.

Critiques are difficult - see chapter 9. Here's my point: If we (Christians) are going to pursue humility as God commands us, let's sort this out! Let's pursue it! What does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself? What does it mean to lay down your life for your friends? What does it mean to serve your earthly masters? When God commands His people to humble themselves and pray, that their land may be healed, what does He mean? Our people, our nation NEEDS that healing. Our people don't have time for another generalized sermon series like this.

A Reading Anniversary

We just returned last night from a fantastic vacation up North with our family. We gave a little party for my folks' 50th wedding anniversary. We were each asked to give a 5 minute speech. It was a sweet opportunity for a family with good parents, but I knew my other siblings would say most of the mushy stuff. Here was my script:

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If you know my parents, you know that they’re always reading. When I think about my parents, about growing up in their home, about their marriage, about seeing them together now, that’s a major picture in my mind. I see Dad reading in his recliner and Mom beside him.

I heard a statistic recently that children’s performance in school can be directly related to the number of books in their house. According to the study, it didn’t necessarily make a difference if the parents read directly to their children or if their children simply saw their parents reading. If that statistic is true, I should have been a valedictorian. I saw my parents read a lot.

They read the newspaper: they get the local paper every day, and the New York Times because one paper wasn’t enough

They read magazines: their coffee table has strong legs, which is good, because the coffee table books on the table are covered in magazines.

And, books, always books. Mom keeps an enormous dictionary, atlas, and several bibles in her cabinet by the kitchen table. Dad has a bookshelf behind his recliner in the livingroom, and always one or two books on the side tables and on his bedstand.

When my parents visit, they devour anything printed that we have in the house. They read the parts of the newspaper I never get to, and they skim all our magazines. One time before they came to visit, I bought single issues of a variety of magazines I thought they would enjoy during their stay. I still think it was a nice gesture, but those magazines evaporated within minutes.

Recently, Mom looked at my bookshelves and asked what my favorite books were and what they were about. I named a few, but also had to admit that many books on our shelves are there for show.

Let me make a few main points:

1) When I started writing this speech, I was afraid that the topic wouldn’t come across as very romantic, for an anniversary speech after all. However, reading the newspaper together every morning, and sitting in the livingroom together every evening for fifty years, while children look on, is a romance I look forward to catching up to with my wife and my own family.

2) My Dad has always read enormous biographies about profoundly important people: presidents, statesmen, entrepreneurs. Some books have taken him years to digest. Only occasionally has he told me what he learns about those individuals. However, his habit of reading has taught me that people can do great things that are worthy of writing in books that are big enough to read for a very long time.

3) I’ve often seen my parents read the Bible. My mom with her reading schedule and all her pens, and my dad secretly in his study on Sunday mornings. This has been a persistent reminder for me of the habit of faith, and the wonder of never tiring of the one true Book.

4) Another literary habit my parents share is writing – Mom with her commentaries and Dad with his journaling. Their writing is very private – I’ve never read it. Their private writing reminds me that their marriage is still personal and intimate, with meaning that only they know between them.


I’ve heard it said that reading books allows you to live more than one life, as you share in the experiences of others. My parents have lived more experiences than most people I know, and the books have always been trying to catch up. Now their books are leading them on new experiences, from visiting Anne of Green Gables in Prince Edward Island to the world of CS Lewis in Cotswold, England.

I’ve been able to experience my parents and their marriage while they read their books. Sometimes, I secretly think the books merely provide a way for my parents to be together. Reading allows them time to not say all the things that after fifty years don’t need to be said. And, I also know that reading is a recreation they built through years of economy and responsibility, from times when going out was too expensive and when four kids were kept at home.

So, Mom and Dad, happy anniversary! Thanks for teaching us to read and for letting us watch you read. Thanks for teaching us about the world and faith and about others, as you learned yourselves. More than that, and this is my point, thanks for letting us see you always together.

Multitasking

[This post was originally delivered by email to our local Toastmasters Club.]

I enjoy multi-tasking. Almost always, I work with music in the background. At home, I have two computer monitors which allows me to pay bills and watch a little nonsense on youtube. Over the past few nights, I’ve been a little more deliberate about my multi-tasking. If you’re like me, and have an opportunity, I encourage you to do the same. Here are a few opportunities I’ve taken:

1) Catch up on politics – watch their speeches and compare:
This year’s election feels like it’s the most important one in which I’ve had the opportunity to vote. Maybe it’s an increased awareness with age, or because the world seems to be coming a little looser at the seams. However, I’ve lost track of what my presumptive candidates’ proponents are. Watching their speeches and interviews has been hugely helpful. I can learn about the issues and also admire or wince at their rhetorical achievemrnts.

McCain: http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Multimedia/Archive.aspx?gallery=07919950-D725-4C5A-B953-B192D9A547B4
http://www.youtube.com/johnmccaindotcom

Obama: http://www.barackobama.com/tv/speeches.php
http://www.youtube.com/user/BarackObamadotcom

In my opinion, nobody interviews as effectively as David Letterman. Do a search for your candidate with Dave.

2) Be inspired – watch the really great speeches on really great subjects
Martin turned me on to this site. Don’t miss this phenomenal resource: www.americanrhetoric.com.

“Top 100”: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/top100speechesall.html
Starts with “I Have a Dream.” Don’t miss Kennedy, Malcolm X, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Faulkner.

Tonight, I was blown away by Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” A professor’s last lecture, knowing he had three months to live. Entertaining, and fantastically inspiring. Definitely qualifies for speech #10.

Use the Speech Index to look up any of your heroes, secular or religious. If they said anything that was recorded, it’s probably here. Back to politics, I used this resource to listen to McCain’s Republican Nominee Address back to back with Obama’s Democratic Nomination Victory Speech. The difference in rhetoric and audience connection is staggering.

3) Be entertained and informed – Comedy Central seems to have the corner on cutting through the bologna.

Full episodes of the Daily Show with John Stewart and the Colbert Report are available free.

Watch Letterman take on Bill O’Reilly here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKftpGB03vU

And of course, this Caravan Race on TopGear is about the funniest car episode I have ever seen.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7897406168274581724


That’s it. Remember, watch these WHILE YOU’RE DOING SOMETHING ELSE! And, probably, never watch them at work.

Another Guest Spot

I've been invited to post on another blog, a new one, a political one. Politics is not my gig. I know nothing about the players. I have opinions like anyone else, but I have no statistics to back them up. But, in this season of what feels like real-deal issues, I'm thankful for an opportunity to say my piece, to explore my opinions through writing.

If you're interested, the new blog is here: resoundingtruth.blogspot.com

In other news, I had a fantastic lunch with my pastor this afternoon. We talked about architecture and how to relate to the six architects in our tiny church.

Look Ma! I'm on TLHH!

Got a surprising email today - I've been asked to "websit" one of my favorite blogs while the author is away. I made my first post tonight - it was a little dry, but fun to put up. I'm one of two sitters who were asked to contribute.

Tonight's post and Pastor Jones' insightful blog is here: http://twosons.blogspot.com/

andy's face

I've been a Facebook junkie for the last several nights. It's terse, and compelling. I have learned much about myself - significant things. According to my facebook profile, the following scores are true:

• I have (18) friends - varies.
• I have read 5 books.
• I was at home at 8:29pm.
• I am Truly Reformed.

Back from Calvin

With the generous persuasion of my good friend Steve, and sponsorship from our church, and from said friend Steve, I spent the last three days at a writing conference at Calvin College.

We're back in town. Just up from a nap. What a trip - I'm stuffed. I just read through Steve's blog posts, his sentence summaries of the sessions. It's going to take me months to digest and unpack what was so gracefully fed to us last week with a bulldozer.

I got a taste, as it were, of that digestion process Friday night when Steve and I stayed up late at our respective mobile keyboards. I tried to chew apart the very first talk we heard as we arrived Thursday. This was a speech neither of us really liked, so a little reflux came in the analysis. My summary is longer than the speech, and much more confusing. Rewrite #1.

A few quick points I remember, without going to my notes:

1. Art isn't moral. Several authors, including the first one, made this primary point. As we talk about Christian writing, this cuts especially to the heart. I'll be processing this for a long time. It's something about how art is only confessional, or that the morality comes in the interpretation of art. Like I said, it'll take some time.
2. Writing is work. Except for one beautiful example of an [autobiographical] novelist who published his first draft, what I heard was rewrite rewrite rewrite rewrite rewrite. In an editing lesson, we heard, "Editing is more like reconstructive surgery than painting your toenails."
3. Write specifically. The specific will get you to the universals. Be direct, be conversational, tell a story.
4. Pray for Yann Martel. He's made the unreasonable leap of faith; he just doesn't believe yet.
5. Set aside an invulnerable time to write. Then, write like you have all the time in the world. Learn to write on command, vocationally - unless you're that guy who published his first draft: if so, then prepare for some long nights.
6. Trust your idiosyncrasies. Write what you and only you love.
7. There are no rules to poetry.

Okay, I'm peaking at my notes now, so I'll stop. Would you mind if I keep gnawing on all this with my mouth open? I know it's terribly impolite, but we're all friends. My goal is to kind of nibble through each of these sessions, reviewing my notes. I hope this will get my fingers going, help me get into a habit. This blog will be a good place to chew. It'll take a long time.

Thanks for reading.

Yard Art Books

"It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed." Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451

For the last, oh, three months, probably more, I've driven my car with a trunk full of books. Plastic grocery bags briefly held the books, until they shifted and the books flooded out of the bags and settled themselves.

On one winter night, my wife and I reorganized our bookshelves, and purged a set we were sure we didn't need, and placed them in said grocery bags. I brought them optimistically to the local book re-seller, who lightened the bag by two or three which he considered re-sellable, leaving me to return the grocery bags, mostly unchanged, to my trunk, where they sat until today.

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". . . that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, 'What do those stones mean to you?' then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever." Joshua 4:6-7

We've had a lot of blessings, especially over the past few years - obvious things we don't want to forget. I've thought often of making a pile of [something], just so we could remember how God has provided. The Israelites' stones were placed by the tribes, taken from the scene of their trials and God's providence. The stones weren't significant in themselves, but were significant because of who placed them and where they originated, and because of the stories that would be told.

- - -

I had to get these books out of my trunk. It's been embarrassing. I carry boxes in my back seat because I don't want to open the trunk. One morning, my wife went to open the hatch, and I shouted, "No! Don't look in there!" I've never said that to her before. I've never kept a secret like this. It's embarrassing.

For a while, I tried to think of a redeeming metaphor for carrying books in one's trunk that no one wants. I tried. I thought of it almost every day when I went to work. I'm carrying these books around, like Coleridge's albatross, like DeNiro's suit of armor in The Mission - no, it's not like either of those. These are terrible books, they mean nothing to me, no regret, no guilt, no potential, no metaphor. These books were wasting my gas.

I've thought of tossing them in the recycling bin. That's not bad. Almost did it this week. But I didn't. After all, these are books. You can't throw them away.

I starting trying to think of other uses for them. Storing secret things by hollowing the cores, shellac effects, etc. This week, I got an idea. Ran the idea by my wife, she confirmed it was plausible, and had a chance to mean something. That was enough, and today I did it.

A 4' #4 rebar at Lowe's costs $2. Large galvanized washers are 45 cents. I drove the rebar vertically into a rotting stump in our backyard, secured a stop at about 8" above the stump, dropped on the washers.

I brought the plastic grocery book bags to the shop in our basement. I sorted them, to be sure, and marked an "X" in pencil on the exact center of the back cover, and drilled straight through.

Drilling through a book is more challenging than I expected. I started with a 7/8" hole saw. This worked well - the pilot bit pulled the sheets up a fair amount, but the saw pushed the books back together easily. The trouble came after drilling each book, when I had to drive out the cores of sheets packed up inside the bit. I tried a spade bit for a few books, but that really chewed up the pages and the soft covers. For the larger books, I had to drill half way through, from each side, cleaning out the bit in between sides.

And, there was a risk of fire. I often saw smoke and had to slow the process. The flits of print would make easy kindling, and there was a kind of fear of some retribution for the act, by forces unknown.

Some of the books were gifts of one kind or another. These were gifts from very special people, on special occasions. Some titles: Love for a Lifetime, Heart Centered Marriage, Stories for a Kindred Heart. Some were devotionals: Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy. One book, The Art of Natural Family Planning, with its unmentionable charts, seamed like a good idea at the time, but now seems so profoundly irrelevant. One was a gift from a missions organization, which I'll never read. Anything with discussion questions was apropos. There was a book titled How to Talk to Your Cat.

We did rescue a few books from the plastic grocery bags: Ice Bound, about the lady who had cancer at the South Pole, because it was interesting and true; a copy of the New Testament, which we were giving away because we had so many already; and, we found a book with an inscription, which meant we had to keep it.

Even as I set the last of these books on the stake, the sky started to rain. These stones, these inanimate objects are piled up now. Maybe it's a memorial, maybe it's a marker, maybe it's a way to get something out of my trunk. The colors in the yard are vivid now, but the books will weather and fade away, like prophecies, tongues, and knowledge. But, we remember the loved ones who gave us these books, and the occasions they represent, and the study groups who prayed with us: that memory and those gifts remain. We'll watch and see what happens to the rest!

A Weekend in VA

We spent the past weekend with family in south-west Virginia, in a house that was bought to be a project-house. The house has good "bones", open and connected spaces, plenty of rooms and a luxurious garage. It's convenient to the interstate and convenient to the gorgeous surrounding hills. The neighborhood is quiet and improving.

But the house is a project. The last time we were there, I drew this sketch (above): two floors. I crossed out all the rooms we couldn't use. An office was finished and functional. However, two small chairs set at a cafe-style table in a non-functional kitchen. A single sofa in a living room faced a television. Upstairs, bedrooms and baths were in any one of the following states: newly finished and shining, storage, or demolition.

At that time, we visited within a paradox, within the contrasts of that project house. We were welcomed and happy to visit, yet no room had chairs enough for four. We ate wonderful food, yet we didn't have a table to share. We rested peacefully, yet we awoke onto bare plywood floors. The kitchen was the center of the home, but an oven was removed, flickering tube bulbs were bare, "white" cabinets were in shadow and dirtied with age and style. The unfinished spaces crowded into the useful spaces. Piles of debris filled the rooms where we wanted to live. We had a happy time with our family, but a difficult time with the architecture.

This time was different. The score of finished rooms increased. We celebrated together at a dining table in a dining room with walls painted a modern color. We again ate wonderful food, but mostly ate out, comfortably. The cramped, dark, shadowy kitchen was fully gutted: cabinets and awkward island chateau happily removed. In its place, a fresh setting of new floor tile was progressing hopefully. The unfinished spaces seemed to be in check - a tide had turned. What was unfinished now highlighted the wonderfully fresh, newly opened rooms. We sat in the comfortable dining room and looked at the contrast outside. It was as if snow was falling cold and heavy outside, but we were inside and we were warm. It was order within disorder; it was a better percentage of done to undone.

And there was more. We could think about other things than the house. We thought about family. We enjoyed the holiday. We rested. We enjoyed the outdoors and we explored the town.

I thought about art. In this newly opened dining room, in this comfortable space, a single work of original art set against the head wall. It was not hung, it was not pulled apart from the room, it was not an applique on a wall; it was set, on a buffet, leaning into the room. Art was in the room with us.

It was a painting of a seated nude, seen from behind, hair tied behind the head. Colors were pale and thin. It was an academic piece, the folds of fabric artfully done, the hair carefully articulated, the body represented with some blushing modesty. The painting surprised me, for example, as our family ate breakfast together. In the lulls of conversation, or in moments when I preferred not to be engaged, the painting was asking to be observed, starting a conversation. And the painting had a story - we learned about the day it was painted, and we discussed other family's reactions and suspicions, and we reacted together ourselves. Of course I could not be caught staring at the work, lest my intentions be misinterpretted, but I was thankful that the painting was there. The painting let me feel less unconfortable in some ways with my in-laws. It reminded me of school, of studying, of trying new things, of real personal expression on a canvas, of conveying what cannot be carried in words. Perhaps simply an image of someone unclothed reminded me that I was clothed, as a speaker might envision when in front of an auditorium of colleagues. To be certain, it did remind me of beauty, and beauty always lets me relax.

And, there was more art. Our hosts had set provocative and interesting books on our nightstand, to be enjoyed, and we did enjoy them. Kindness also leads to rest, and we were thankful for that.