So, full confession, I have yelled at my boys. Maybe more than once.
It's been a bit, thankfully, but I can still recall those times. There were times when yelling was frustration. Others, it was anger. Sometimes it was some lunatic invading my body who just happened to be a whole lot louder and crazier than I am - I was never a fan of that guy. With that said, there were and are times when the tone of my voice changes - quite choreographed - because I want them to know that these next words - pay attention boys - they're important. I'm about to tell you things that are more about passing on my wisdom than transferring my emotions. Yesterday, my buddy Solomon and I were out running on a trail. And we got somewhat lost - if, indeed, there are varying degrees of lost. But in the midst of that challenge, I noticed something. Life got quiet. All of our attention turned to noticing the signs on the trail. We began to look around - haven't we already come this way? There's the lake over there, so the car must be the other way. We were suddenly in the middle of conversations with life that helped inform our next steps in life. Sometimes, when life gets challenging, we can feel like life is yelling at us. Maybe, even, it feels like God is yelling at us. He's angry. But I wonder if the challenges in life might be choreographed in a way. Maybe life challenges aren't life frustrated with us, or angry, or life overtaken by some lunatic version of life. Maybe it's life saying, hey Keith, what I'm about to say, it's important. I'm about to share wisdom with you, not transfer emotions. Sometimes I think we spend so much time trying to undo the challenges in life - get unlost - that we miss the conversation the challenge is trying to have with us. In the middle of being lost yesterday, in the middle of being a little more mindful of each next step and each next turn, my buddy Solomon and I found ourselves standing on a little bridge in the middle of the big woods, a small stream running beneath it. There wasn't another soul in sight. I said, you know, like almost no one in the history of man will ever stand on this bridge, and experience that water, that sound and those bare trees around us. It was like life - in that very moment - had thrown down a challenge to say I need you to fully embrace this space. It was like life had no other choice. If it hadn't gotten our attention, we would have run over that bridge. And it would have been just a bridge. Instead, it was wisdom. It was life saying I should pause on my own a little more often - prevent life from going hoarse from all it's yelling at me. Our challenges in life aren't meant to stifle us, or scare us - or keep us lost. No, more often than not life challenges us to help us get found. I don't think life likes yelling at us, but like me with my boys, because I love them, there are just some things I really need them to know. And sometimes a change in tone is the only way to let them know those things are coming. And us..
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Someone asked me recently, “why do you have so many books?”
I’ve thought about that a lot. Harassed myself about it. I guess it’s felt too easy – inauthentic maybe – to settle on “I love to read” or “I want to learn.” I keep landing on a conversation I had with a friend about a decade ago. I was working in one of the most random jobs of my life. Me and a co-worker – who became this friend – we were having a deep conversation about faith. Out of the blue he asks me, have you ever read the book Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I hadn’t read it. Then I did read it. And I haven’t stopped reading books since. Sometimes I wonder if that one conversation makes that job not so random after all. In his book, Miller wrote about the wrestling match he was having with his faith. I felt like I was in that wrestling match with him. In many ways, I felt like he was in my wrestling match with me. James Baldwin says, “it was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” I think that’s what books are to me. They aren’t fixes in this or that thing I’m wrestling with in life – as much as they do help sometimes. But more than that, books are my friends. They are people who died long before I was born, who get me - who’ve been there done that. They are people who are still out there today, wrestling with, fighting against – writing about – things that simply in their sharing – make my personal fights seem less lonely. Books are this beautiful reminder that life isn’t always about – quite possibly, maybe, it’s never about – overcoming every single torment in our life. Maybe it’s about discovering the peace that comes in sharing torment. This united we have in our collective been there done thats. Maybe the words on a page are a reminder that my friends in my books - they aren’t so different than the friends I meet outside of them. Maybe this unity I find in my reading, it’s also one that can be found in my living. Maybe James Baldwin is right. The things that have tormented me most are the very things that connect me with all the people who have ever been alive – and all who still are. Maybe reading is a lot like listening. What determines our happiness more, the world we wake up to in the morning, or the world we create throughout the day?
Yesterday, before I went on my morning run, I wrote about this possiblity I'd been pondering. The possibility that the secret to life is found in serving others. I based much of that conversation on the scripture Philippians 2:3, which says: Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Well, then on my run yesterday I listened to Dr. Rangan Chaterjee interview Laurie Santos about happiness. She's a professor of psychology at Yale University and hosts a podcast herself called The Happiness Lab. Santos is also an atheist, which made much of her conversation with Chaterjee interesting to me, given I'd just written about the biblical implications of happiness. She spent a great deal of the hour and a half interview talking about the things we can intentionally do to bring happiness into our lives. She suggests that happiness is something we produce -not something we inherit. One of those "produce" things she focused on was serving others. She said research shows "others focused" people are significantly happier than self-centered people. Santos talked about a study where three different groups of people were given a sum of money. Then, they were given one of three assignments - spend the money like you normally would, spend the money on yourself, or go spend the money on others. The results? The people who spent money on others, even though they were doing it as an assignment, were the happiest people in the study. This same study also bore out that the more income people spend on other people, the happier they are. You know, the bible says that when it comes to inheriting everlasting life - heaven - in many cases those who are currently first, well they will be last. And those who are last - they will be first. Science seems to suggest that biblical standard applies to earth as well. It seems to suggest that happiness - or heaven on earth - is tied to our desire to make those who are last - first - AND, at the expense of what would appear to be our own shot at being first. The bible - and science - suggest there is no expense involved in serving others. Going from first to last isn't a downgrade in happiness or in life. Quite the opposite, really - serving others seems to be the quickest way to go from coach to first class. The beautiful news? We don't have to wait for someone to come down the aisle and offer us the upgrade. We can get up this morning and simply choose it. Is that maybe the secret to life? To embrace those who are in need with our compassion, and see them in our mind's eye as their most true selves?
I was reading in scripture this morning. In Philippians 2:3 it says: Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. I found myself wondering, is the answer to living life well, to happiness, to world peace - is it really that simple? Like, if everyone today, no matter what God they do or do not follow, if suddenly they made the choice to start counting every other human as more significant than themselves, what would the new world look like? That's when I was drawn back to the beautiful words McConaughey wrote in his book Greenlights. In his book, McConaughey doesn't write a lot about his spiritual journey. It's clear, though, through what he does write, prayer is important to him. In reading his thoughts on prayer (I'll share his full piece in the comments), I couldn't help but notice how much his idea of prayer is to take the focus off himself and place it on others. I think that's important. Because I guess I like to give humans the benefit of the doubt. I think somewhere in all of us is a desire to see other humans as good. Some of us wear that desire on our sleeves. Some of us have it buried so far beneath our tainted view of humanity that we can barely feel it, let alone call on it. But still - I believe that desire is there in all of us. That desire gets easily tripped up by the reality that we see people as they present themselves to be - and not who they truly are. I guess that's an opinion built on my belief that as much as people want to see the good in others, they want to be that same kind of good themselves. But very few of us - if ANY of us - are presenting the human to the world that we truly want to be. That we truly are. Maybe we lack the discipline to be that person. Maybe the faith. Maybe having someone in our lives to remind us we are that person. But for whatever reason - very few of us see others for who they want to be, and very few of us are living the lives of the person we want to be. That makes for a complicated world. Which makes me wonder again, is the answer to that as simple as embracing those who are in need with our compassion, and see them in our mind's eye as their most true selves? For me personally, I'm sitting here additionally wondering, how on earth can the simplest answer in the world be the hardest thing in the world to do? And once again - for me personally - can I do that without the power of prayer? A prayer that points me wholly away from myself and squarely and compassionately at all others. I don't know - but it's sure worth a try. Last week, a friend sent me this stuffed onion. I can safely say no one has ever sent me a stuffed vegetable before. I reached out to thank her. I offered gratitude - gratitude maybe not well disguised as a question - "why on earth did you send me an onion?"
She said it's a reminder to giggle. I told her I don't giggle much these days. I said, "giggling isn't something you can remind yourself to do. Seems it's more complicated than that." My friend knew I was spending time with my boys this weekend. She said, "be on the lookout for giggle moments this weekend. Try to notice them." Try to notice them? Giggling is something that happens after life gets happy, right? Not the other way around. Turns out, it actually CAN happen the other way around. I purposely chose two comedy movies to watch this weekend. Two I knew would make the boys laugh. It worked - the boys laughed all the way through both of them. As they did, I found myself laughing right along with them. My youngest - my 12 year old Ian - I always have a hard time knowing if he's laughing or if he's "laughing." We'd get to a funny part in the movie and I'd get to wondering if he was going to laugh himself right into convulsions. With Ian, though, you never know if it's the movie being funny or if it's Ian being Ian. The boy can just decide it's time to giggle for no apparent reason and suddenly lose himself in a quite controllable fit of laughter. The thing I noticed about those fits of laughter this weekend - when he does that, every single time, everyone around him starts laughing too. There's been a lot of research done on laughter. It's been found that laughter can: ⏹Boost immunity ⏹Lower stress hormones ⏹Ease anxiety and tension ⏹Relieve stress ⏹Improve mood ⏹Strengthen relationships ⏹Attract others to us ⏹Enhance teamwork ⏹Help defuse conflict So it turns out, laughter actually can add years to our lives. And as I discovered this weekend, laughter actually IS something we can remind ourselves to do. When Ian is in one of his manufactured giggle fits - his body doesn't know if that's because something truly funny just happened in his world, or if Ian just decided to start laughing at his world. I've shared that my song for this year is "Say I Won't". One of the lines in that song is: While I've been waiting to live My life's been waiting on me I think one of the things life is waiting on me to do is giggle. While I've been waiting on life to make me giggle, life's been waiting on me to giggle. I now have an onion to remind me to do just that. (Although, aren't onions supposed to make you cry? - maybe an article for another day.....) 🤣 According to the Pew Research Center, in 2018-2019, 65% of Americans called themselves Christians. This was down from 77% just a decade earlier.
Additionally, the number of people who identified themselves as atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular" stood at 26% - up from 17% in 2009. As a Christian, I find this concerning. Not because other people aren't following my faith, but because to me, it's a sign that we Christians aren't following our faith. I think my fellow Christians and I have seen and felt these numbers dropping. We've seen it in our churches and in our bible studies. In our family and friends and co-workers and neighbors. We've seen them dropping in conversations and on social media. And the Christian response - part out of panic - a lot out of ego - has been to double down on convincing. We've gotten louder with our arguments for Christianity and against everything else. We've doubled down on embracing politics and special interest groups that echo our arguments. We've doubled down on screaming our bible verses to others instead of letting them whisper to ourselves. Somewhere along the way, we've lost sight of the truth that Jesus didn't come into our world to win any arguments - he came into the world to out-love any argument we had against him. The Jesus story wasn't a story designed to convince us that love was the answer, it was a story that loved us in a way that left us feeling like there couldn't possibly be another answer. That is STILL the plot of that story. Joshua Fields Millburn says: "Each time we advise someone, it may feel like it's arising from a place of love, but it's actually the ego saying I know what's best for you. The implication of which is disconcerting: I am right, you are wrong, and if you subordinate yourself to me, I will fix you. How is this loving?" The answer is, Mr. Millburn, it's not loving. You know, I do believe Jesus came to this earth to "fix" us. And - I believe he knew that many of us would inherit his heart for helping - he knew he wouldn't be the last one on earth to have a passion for "fixing" people. That's why Jesus spent so much time demonstrating the cure. That's why he spent so much time revealing to us that what people need isn't advice - they need loved. That's why Jesus spent so much time entering the struggles of others and not screaming advice from a distance as to what they needed to do to fix themselves. If Jesus were to give us Christians any advice today, I think it would be this: I think he'd tell us we need to get back to the plot of quietly entering people's lives and loving them in a way that leaves them with no doubt that they are loved, and ditch our efforts of standing on the outskirts of their lives loudly trying to convince them they are. Running has taught me this. Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.
With running it's literal. When you fail, you either lay down or you get back up and run again. You hide from the starting line or you put the toes of your Brooks right up against it and say, bring it on. You either see failure as "the end" or "once upon a time." There's a difference in the kind of people who lay down and those who get back up. The people who lay down, they lay down because they didn't accomplish "something" they hoped would set them apart. They didn't experience a victory they hoped would define them. These are people who allow "something" to beat them. The people who get back up - put that toe against the line - they are people who are setting out to be someone, not achieve something. They are people looking to be defined by an attitude, not a victory. An attitude that says, I was bad enough to try it once, oh be sure, I'll be bad enough to try it again. Responding with enthusiasm to failure is the opposite of fear. Enthusiasm knows no failure. In fact, it might delight in it. Enthusiasm jumps at the chance to remake failure into an attitude of "oh no you don't." Fear looks to remake failure into a belief of "oh no you can't." The key is understanding success isn't some end point. It's a journey. And failure along the way, well that's probably the surest sign we have that our journey is one that is making us the best person we can be, even if that means we don't achieve everything we think we want to achieve. We can look to the end of life and ask, do I want to say I became the person I was called to be, or that I achieved everything I ever wanted to achieve. Only one of those is worth being enthusiastic about. Only one of those sees failure as the beginning, and not the end. 1/22/2021 0 Comments Words MatterAs you can tell by my writing the last few days, I was taken by this young woman Amanda Gorman. I'm mesmerized - captivated by - in awe of - people who can use words in powerful and lifechanging ways.
I listened to Anderson Cooper interview Amanda Gorman after she read her poem on inauguration day- The Hill We Climb. Cooper asked her what kind of images were going through her head as she wrote her poem. He seemed a little shocked by her answer; I totally got it. She said, none. There were no images going through her head. Instead, she's been reading what people say about the challenges facing our country. "I don't work in images - I work in words and text," she said. For me, from a young age, I've always understood the power of words. There are things I wish I'd said; things I wish I hadn't. I have words I hold onto - deep within me - wishing I could say. I have things I wish I'd hear from others. I have wounded and been wounded by words - I have healed and been healed with them. Maybe stronger than I believe much of anything - I'm with you Amanda Gorman - I believe words matter. You know, to be frank with you all, over these last several years as I've watched us get taken aback by the way some of our politicians talk to one another - the way they talk to us - I've wondered if we've noticed the way we've started talking to one another. There have been days I've wondered if the de-sanctification of words by people in roles above us, has quietly permitted us to de-sanctify the lives of people around us with our words. My big fear in some of the collective hope I hear about a change of tone at the top, is that we've somehow overlooked the change of tone we've developed toward one another down here. Much more often than I've found myself saying, I can't believe I just heard a president say that - and I've said that a bit - but much more than I've found myself saying that, I've found myself saying, I can't believe I just heard people say that to one another. Proverbs 15:4 says, A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit. You know, no matter how pure and sanctified the capital building gets, it will never be pure enough or sanctified enough to heal the spirits we are breaking in one another with our words. Because words matter. As much as I'm clinging to any hope Amanda Gorman offered through her poem, I'm clinging to the hope she offered in her interview with Anderson Cooper. The hope that comes when we all recognize a gentle tongue is a tree of life. When we'll all take as a personal challenge for ourselves and not one pointed at someone else - the challenge to repurify and resanctify the power of words. Because words matter. 1/21/2021 0 Comments What hill will you climb?The other day, a friend and I had a conversation about what our lives would look like if we lived more driven by our love for God. I didn't expect to hear what she said.
She said, "Creating without fear. That comes to mind first. Writing without fear of judgment. Sharing ideas without fear of judgment. If I can somehow convince my mind to be creative and forget what other people think, that would be a miracle. But one God wants for us." I'd had the McConaughey quote in the image below written on a note card and sitting on my desk for weeks. I wanted to write about it at some point. I sent that quote to my friend yesterday - I told her to read it - and that she needed to decide what her hill was. Then I told myself when I went to bed last night that this morning, I would write about that quote and that conversation with my friend. When I woke up, though, for some unknown reason I decided to write about something else. I know the reason now. I hadn't yet heard Amanda Gorman read her poem, "The Hill We Climb." Like when I heard her read "the hill we climb", I literally looked down at that note card and had goosebumps. God needed me to hear her, to be moved by her, before I wrote a single word about climbing hills. He needed me to hear Amanda Gorman say: Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree And no one shall make them afraid If we’re to live up to our own time Then victory won’t lie in the blade But in all the bridges we’ve made That is the promise to glade The hill we climb If only we dare It's because being American is more than a pride we inherit, it’s the past we step into and how we repair it Gorman is referencing a scriptural promise in Micah. This promise that one day we will all live in peace. A peace that will be granted us by the Lord our God forever and ever. That's the promise of Micah. Here's the thing, though. That Lord, that Lord our God forever and ever, he chose a hill. Actually, he chose a cross. He came to this earth, completely unafraid of what anyone said, no interest in winning any popularity contest, and spent his entire ministry climbing hills for the world's least popular people. He didn't sit around waiting for the government to create peace, he went around climbing whatever hill was in front of him to deliver it. Deliver it to the people to whom peace seemed most impossible. Listen - I get the celebration today. I get that some are celebrating this day more than others. But soon, the celebration fades and we're right back where we were. We're right back to having to make some choices about what hills we're going to climb. Maybe the hills get easier because someone else is in charge - who knows - but we still have to climb the hills. being American is more than a pride we inherit, it’s the past we step into and how we repair it Jesus came and stepped into the pasts of people who were hurting. He stepped into them to show us the path to healing - to repairing. He showed us the way to that repairing - to that forever peace - is love. Most importantly, he said - and demonstrated on his hills, love for our enemies. Oh, I know loving our enemies sounds like a tough hill to climb. But now, more than ever, we all need to start deciding what our hills are. No election will ever take the place of choosing and climbing our hills. No forever peace is ever coming without that choosing and climbing. Yesterday, I shared a conversation I'd had with a friend who said she wanted to be able to create and write and share ideas without fear of judgment. She said, "if I can somehow convince my mind to be creative and forget what other people think, that would be a miracle."
I've thought about that a lot since our conversation. This idea that, to her, to be the real her, to freely share the ideas and stories that are in her mind and on her heart, that would take a miracle. To free herself from the cage of fear of what others will think - seems unimaginable to her. The saddest part of that is, this friend has a beautiful imagination. It's an imagination that sees the best in the here and now, and finds hope in the future. I got to wondering - what if she's not the only one who can imagine healing and freedom in her life - and in the world - but won't travel that road because of an imaginary line of people blocking it. People who might be disappointed. People who might be judgmental. How many people do you see in that imaginary line in the road; how many do I see? I wonder how much different the world would look if people created freely - if they traveled the roads in life they've been called to travel and not the roads that best avoid disappointing people, or angering them, or inviting disagreement from them. How many of us are hiding from the people who will never have any interest in what we have to offer at the expense of people who truly need it. And is it a numbers game? Is it truly worth avoiding the displeasure of 10 people we'll never be able to please at the expense of the 1 person whose life might be changed by the thought or idea or decision we've buried deep within us to protect ourselves? Yesterday, many in the world were moved by a young poet named Amanda Gorman. Her inauguration day poem inspired many. Thanks to social media she became an instant star. But Amanda Gorman has a speech impediment. She has a hard time saying words with the letter "R". Gorman said when she first started reciting poems in public at a young age, "I would be in the bathroom scribbling five minutes before, trying to figure out if I could say 'Earth' or if I can say 'girl' or if I can say 'poetry.' And you know, doing the best with the poem I could." I find myself wondering this morning, what would the world have missed out on if this woman would have let her fear of being made fun of stand in the way of sharing words she knew in her heart only she could offer? Many of us needed to hear what she had to say. We thank her for it. We applaud her for it. And there are those who didn't appreciate it. Didn't applaud it. But they were never going to. Not yesterday and not today. Amanda Gorman said, "I really wanted to use my words to be a point of unity and collaboration and togetherness." She wanted it so bad that she refused to crawl in the cage of fear of what others might think - and climbed confidently up on an inauguration stage. What do you want you words to be? What change do you want to forge? And when you think about those things, do you think about the people who will never accept them, or the people who may never be who they were called to be without them? |
Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
November 2024
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