Negative, critical voices from the past can be so loud! They send hurtful messages. They drown out rational thought and cause us to misunderstand what others mean. They cause us to believe things that are not true. Why do they stick so much more tenaciously than positive messages?
Can you believe all the recent celebrity deaths? Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson and I just got an email from CNN Breaking News stating that pitchman, Billy Mays died today. Since I’m not much of a TV person and I despise commercials, I honestly have never heard of the guy before today. I looked him up on Wikipedia, where they had a link to his Twitter page. I thought it might be interesting. What does a guy tweet about when he’s nearing the end of his life?
- Just had a close call landing in Tampa. The tires blew out upon landing. Stuck in the plane on the runway. You can always count on US Air. – Sat, 27 Jun 2009 19:01:09
- Getting ready to fly back to Tampa from Philly. Monday is the big day (HIP REPLACEMENT NO.3) Keep you posted. – Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:40:05
- Just got done shootong a new product with my production company 4 Blind Mice. – Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:28:57
- Just finished up a brand new oxi-clean show in Jersey. On my way to Princeton to meet with Arm and Hammer and then to Philly and then hi … – Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:59:26
- Just got done with the Tonight Show. Had a great time. The episode airs tonight – Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:21:04
- Just got to Conan’s studio. About to go to the pre-pro meeting. – Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:47:53
- Happy Fathers day. Just relaxing with my wife and daughter in Boca. One more show tomorrow and then Conan on Tuesday. – Sun, 21 Jun 2009 19:45:59
- I am attempting my most dangerous demo to date. I am about to repair a scuba divers puntured air hose and bring him safely back from the … – Sat, 20 Jun 2009 14:02:03
- Today is the Big Mighty Brand Shoot. Keep you posted. – Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:36:19
- One commercial down two to go. Tomorrow is the big one the brand new Mighty Product and this one will be the Mightiest of them all I gua … – Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:32:20
- Was just on the .MJ Morning Show live with my son and brother inlaw Dan promoting Pitchmen – Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:26:29
- On my way to Boca Raton to shoot
- . . .
So the guy was clearly living an extraordinary life… a bit strange, but by definition, extraordinary is not ordinary. I don’t know what exactly I was expecting, but I felt a bit let down. Couldn’t he have left us with some words of wisdom? Didn’t he know his time was up? If this sounds disrespectful, I do not mean it to be. I think it is interesting how little we talk about the one thing we all have to look forward to. We don’t know when our time is up, but we all know it will be one day.
I have lots of questions about what the end of life is like in general and what it will specifically be like for me. When someone dies, I think to myself, “Now they know.” For me, I will be adding a new question to my list… “What will my Twitter page look like when I’m gone?”
Last weekend, Molly came to visit (with her parents and the dogs of course). It was rainy the whole time they were here, so we did a lot of sitting and watching TV. On Sunday we were watching the movie, Taken. I was holding Molly, so I wasn’t completely engaged with the movie. When the movie got a little violent, I quietly got up and took her out on the porch where I introduced her to the rain. It was so very cool to see her scanning everything around her and taking it all in; the sound of the gentle rain, the smells, the splash of the raindrops as they hit the ground… we even stepped out and felt the wetness of the rain. With the inspiration of Danae, I even made up a little rain song for her.
While we sat there I explained it all to her. I told her that she wouldn’t remember our time together, but I would. I got Danae to take this picture (and now I have a blog post) to make sure I won’t forget. I began wondering what difference it really does make. I feel certain that mollypops time matters. I am just sure that sitting quietly watching the rain and singing a little song makes a positive impact in her life, but how specifically? It isn’t as if this is the kind of thing one can do an experiment to determine. I can’t love up on her in one life and not in another and compare the results. It just makes me wonder… Does it help to shape her values in life. Will she like the rain because of our Mollypops rain time? Did she actually did learn some things about the world from our time? There are so many things that I know, but I don’t know how I know them. I just do. Is this how one receives that kind of learning?
Although I can’t be sure how it specifically matters to Molly, I can tell you that our time together impacts me in a deeply. While we were together on the porch, I felt a warmth and a real sense of purpose. I am feel it now as I remember. I had a sense that it really matters. I dearly love being the grandpa.
Here’s a slide show of the latest Molly photos…
Click here if you can’t see the slideshow.
Yes! After much wrestling with the puzzle of life, I have now figured it all out. In case you were wondering, you will observe from the accompanying Rubic’s Cube , the puzzle is now solved. I have the whole Jimazing answer. There is nothing else to say.
Now I will have to think of something else to write about.
Today on my way to lunch, I was carrying on a conversation with my friend, Will. We opened a door to a small elevator waiting area where I saw someone who I had hadn’t seen for a few years. We had a casual work relationship with a few years ago, so I wouldn’t say I ever knew him well. Without missing a single beat, I said, “Hey, Drew. It’s been a long time. How are you doing…” [insert 5 seconds of small talk here]. How did I know his name so quickly? I marvel at the way my brain works so very efficiently sometimes.
I heard a podcast recently in which the speaker was describing how memory and creativity work. In his comparison, he said that storing information in memory was like finding items and putting them on shelves. Creativity happens when someone takes two or more items and sees something new in common between them. In other words, no one really creates anything completely from scratch. I digress.
Right after seeing Drew and remembering his name, I imagined the process my brain went through to pull off this amazing feat… A few years ago, when I met Drew, I stored his name on a shelf somewhere in one of the great empty rooms that is my brain. For a while I visited it regularly as I would see him in the hall and need to use his name. Then I didn’t see Drew for a long time. His name grew dustier as I forgot about it. After all, I wasn’t using it. When I stepped into the elevator lobby, instantly flashing lights went off inside my mind. Sirens started screaming and the memory-librarians in my brain went rushing faster than the six million dollar man to get that name to the front of my mind. Somehow they dusted it off and had it there fresh and solid right when and where I needed it. To me on the outside, it was as if I had just been talking to him or about him. Unbelievable!
A little later, while we were sitting down to lunch, Jeff walked up to me and said hello. Now I don’t know Jeff very well. He’s in a church men’s group that meets at the same time and place that my men’s group meets, but we haven’t spent a lot of time together. I’m guessing that it has been four to six weeks since I last saw Jeff. I looked up, shook his hand and said, “Hey Ken.” (Wrong name!) Ken is another guy in Jeff’s group. Ken and Jeff don’t even look much alike at all. Why didn’t it work right that time. I said something silly to mask my mild embarrasment and went on with my lunch. No big deal, right? Why did my memory work so efficiently for Drew and so close but not quite for Jeff? Who knows. I still think it is fascinating.
Reminds me of a joke…
An elderly couple had dinner at another couple’s house. After dinner, the wives went into the kitchen and the gentlemen went into the parlor to smoke a cigar and talk. One of them said to the other, “Last night we went out to a new restaurant and it was really great. The food was scrumptious and the service was impecable. I would recommend it very highly.”
The other man said, “It sounds great! I would like to take my wife there sometime. What is the name of the restaurant?”
The first man thought for a moment and thought some more… Finally he asked his friend, “What is the name of that flower you give to someone you love? You know… The one that’s red and has thorns.”
Do you mean a rose?”
“Yes, that’s the one,” replied the man. He then turned towards the kitchen and yelled, “Rose, what’s the name of that restaurant we went to last night?”
I can relate to the poor old guy.
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.
The comments on the previous two installments of this wrestling with doubt have helped me. There’s a natural ebb and flow to life and I’m not exempt. Thanks for asking good questions and for drawing me out without offering fixes. That is what I asked for. My friend who comments as “ded” asks…
“Do you doubt God as an entity (your story of being invited on His lap would say you don’t), His goodness (ditto) or what man has determined is the way you must be before Him?”
Ded, the answers depend on when you ask. I am thankful for a strong faith in God. I was raised in the Southern Baptist church where I received a mix of godly teaching and a lot of other stuff that “shouldn’t” be in the mix… but there they are… I have seen God at work in my life and the lives of so many others, and I just cannot walk away from that. God is faithful. At the same time, I have questions and doubts that are very real.
To my fellow Christians who are very bothered and disturbed by this whole line of discussion, I ask you to be patient and stick with me. I have not abandoned the faith. I am trying to be real. If it is too hard for you to read or to follow, don’t try. Everyone is not at the questioning place that I am at, nor should they be. This is my story. Although I have been asking these questions for a long time on the inside, I’m just beginning to feel free enough to ask them on the outside. My desire is not to cause anyone else to stumble.
My questions and my doubts are RAW because that’s how I am feeling them. Sometimes I have no doubts at all. Other times, I doubt the very existence of God. That usually doesn’t last too long because of the experience I have. God has been faithful to me. He has guided me through so many difficult times.
Another whole class of struggles that I feel are due to the polarization caused by the conservative political front in the US. These people seem to equate conservatism with Christianity and that angers me. God is not a Republican. I think that one reason that I feel such strong emotion about the politicization of Christianity is that I used to do it. I used to be so “in your face” about my beliefs. After all, I had all the answers. Now I find that the older I get and the more I learn, the less I know. The Jesus that I read about in the Bible got upset with the religious leaders for politicizing their faith and weighing down the people with burdens they could not bear. However, He was compassionate, full of grace and forgiveness to the “sinners”. What I see in the conservative Christian movement is just the opposite. I see power struggles and condemnation of “sinners”. I have a question to throw back at them. What would Jesus do? Really?
Being this raw, real and honest is not fun… but I believe it is good. I heard N. T. Wright tell an interesting story about this particular species of ant. These ants follow one another unquestioningly and if they are not careful, they have been known to eventually form a huge circle. Now imagine all of these ants following the one in front of them because that one knows where it is going. Eventually they starve to death because of their behavior. I don’t want to follow unquestioningly. I think that God is big enough for my puny little questions. If not, he’s pretty small.
Yesterday, I wrote about my feelings of doubt in the moment. My friend, Anthony, reminds me in his reflection that it is in the dark where we find the light… well, he didn’t remind me personally, but his message was timely. I don’t want to doubt, but I want to be ok with my doubt. Does that make sense? Over and over this God whom I worship makes Himself real to me. I doubt and he comes through. I question and He takes me to deeper depths to reveal Himself to me.
I know I am taking it somewhat out of context, but in John 8, Jesus said that that truth would make us free. I value truth and I believe that it very much does set us free. When we live behind masks, we create illusions that we have it all together. Then others see us as having it all together, so they put on their masks so that we won’t know that they are a mess. So, one by one, the masks go up and we hide behind them. All the while we are dying inside. We want friends we can confide in. We really want to have true confession. We want to live lives of truth, but it is uncomfortable. Scary even. Jesus said that the truth would make us free, but he didn’t say it would be easy or comfortable.
I am not the one to argue what truth is or to come up with scenarios to test the boundaries of truth. When is it ok to tell a white lie sorts of exercises. But I know what I mean by truth. I know when I am hiding behind the mask. The truth is, I am a mess. If you don’t see that, you haven’t really been reading my blog. Do a search for the word, “mess” and see what you see.
Do you have doubts? Are you ok with that? Do you see others as having it all together? I haven’t read this book, but I love its title, The Only Normal People Are the Ones You Don’t Know That Well. I say, “Let’ s take off our masks and be real.”
In what I am about to write, I do not want to be fixed. I want to be heard. I welcome responses with questions that will help draw me out. I welcome affirmation of me and my heart’s cry. But save your fixes and your answers for another time. I just don’t desire that right now.
Yesterday, I heard a story about a young artist whose father is a pastor and his sister is a missionary, but he does not follow Christ. He says that he can see how God is real to his father and his sister, but he cannot see that for himself. I had to raise my hand and say out loud, “Me too.” I told the two men I was with that it is easy for me to see Christ in them. It is easy for me to see what great men of faith they are. It is easy to believe for them. In me it is hard. I doubt. I question. And when I doubt and question… I do it hard. I am so full of questions. I won’t list any of them here because I asked to be heard, not fixed.
I used to know all of the answers. I used to be able to quote chapter and verse quite literally to answer all of the questions I find myself asking. Those answers ring hollow to me. I am living a depth of real life that I never imagined 30 years ago. The easy answers don’t work at this depth. There’s a part of me that wants to answer all the questions and move on. But there’s another part of me that recognizes that the questions are essential. I ask them because something inside of me compels me to ask them. I ask because I want to know (but not right now:) )
Right in the middle of my doubting thoughts tonight, I saw the Lord move in a mysterious “coincidence”. I took Jeanie down to see Area 15 in Charlotte. (I’ll explain Area 15 later… hopefully tomorrow). It is in a pretty bad part of town, but Jeanie and I rode down so I could show it to her. We drove past and were heading out through the neighborhood. A few blocks away, there were two cars blocking the road and I was uncomfortable with the way things looked. I didn’t know if this was a drug deal or what, but I backed up into the intersection I had just ridden through. As I backed, I saw another car wanting to enter from my right. Thankfully, they stopped and waited for me to back up and turn. As we passed them, Jeanie said, “That is Greg and June.” I could hardly believe it. I turned around and followed them. They stopped at Area 15 and we pulled in behind them. Here we are in one of the worst sections of Charlotte, visiting with old friends and they also have two of my good friends whom I went to France with in 2004, Frankie and Alex.
I didn’t realize it but Charlotte 24-7 (part of Area 15) was open for prayer, so we went inside. The atmosphere was welcoming and peaceful. It was as if the God that I doubt so much was inviting me to sit on his lap and tell him what was on my mind. That moved me. Charlotte 24-7 moved me. The circumstances moved me. Being with my friends moved me. Being in an atmosphere of prayer and worship moved me.
What an enigma I am. I worship the very God that I doubt.
For the last several months I have been focused on two events. My daughter, Erin’s wedding and the 10K bridge run. Now that these are past, I find myself asking again, “What’s next?” My “to do” list has grown and my “to be” list beckons. What’s a “to be” list? It’s a constant question nagging at me to know more of who I am. What makes me tick? Does my life matter? For many years since reading and re-reading the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I have struggled with my Personal Mission Statement. Answering the question, “What am I here for?”
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