The Academy Awards aren’t complete without at least one token high-caliber British nominee on the Best Picture shortlist. Leave it to director Stephen Frears (whose past nominees include The Queen and Dangerous Liaisons) to fit the bill this year with a transatlantic odd-couple quest for reconnection or closure, for truth or justice, and for fury or forgiveness.
As much as I post about the entertainment options around me, I can’t immerse myself in them 24/7. Sometimes they disappoint or frustrate me. Sometimes they demand more of my time and attention than I care to give. Sometimes the idols among them remind me how their previous versions guided me through childhood. While I grew up and improved in a way or two, too many of those idols lost their luster, descended into mediocrity, or had their Reset buttons punched to turn them into different creatures with the same names. Ultimately they’re undependable as worldview building materials.
Hence my weekly one-man retreat. Every Sunday morning after church I isolate myself from my loved ones and collections, hole up in a local chain eatery that has plenty of loitering space (it’s not too hard to identify if you know the place), clear my mind, and spend an hour-plus with caffeine, snack, Bible, spiral-bound notebook, and a copy of the late Oswald Chambers’ devotional collection My Utmost for His Highest.
For those newer readers who’ve been wondering to themselves for months: I assure you the “faith” mentioned in the site subtitle isn’t a typo.
First things first, above all else: Happy, glorious, wondrous Easter to one and all!
My laundry list of thank-yous and expressions of gratitude relevant to this celebratory occasion would go on for pages and surprise no one who knows me. Even something as simple as an ordinary day in my life is cause for joy, though I’m just as likely to take too much of each one for granted.
Behold the city of Indianapolis, where my ordinary average day begins. It’s above-average in size, but still treated as one of the runts in the major-American-city clique, though the positive reviews of our Super Bowl LXVI hosting experience went a long way toward convincing other cities to stop calling us names. Many of the fruits produced in my life wouldn’t have been possible if Indy were the nonstop battleground that local news would sometimes have us think it is.
This 2008 file photo taken at Historic Jamestowne, Virginia, captures a very rare moment of the author in a pulpit.
Confession time: when I launched MCC eleven months ago, I didn’t expect that aspect of my life to receive such short shrift here compared to the other parts of my life. Truth is, writing about my faith is challenging because the majority of examples set before me from other writers, family, and friends (in writing or in simple conversation) are either memorized Bible verses, Christian song lyrics, or common quotes that sound so much like real verses that everyone assumes they are and keeps passing them around. For the purpose of self-expression, I have a hard time settling for that.
Years before my life took a conscious turn toward a new spiritual direction, I was once an English major who had one critical writing lesson drummed repeatedly into my head : “Put it in your own words.” While the Bible contains a wealth of advice more useful to me than Bartlett’s Quotations or Twitter, I’m not sure what I’m accomplishing — either for the Kingdom or for myself — if all my writing and speaking consists of recycling the exact phrases and paragraphs of everyone who came before me. Becoming a living, walking re-blogger holds no appeal to me. I’m hardly the most original guy in the world, but I’d at least like to try to form my own sentences into useful structures. Problem is, all the best wisdom and aphorisms are taken, leaving me to cobble together what I can from my own odd experiences and pale talents in hopes that it doesn’t reek of copy/paste plagiarism. More often than not, my frustrated approach is if I can’t say something different, I don’t say anything at all.
I don’t recommend that mindset to anyone else. I’ll concede that’s me being stubborn. Arguably, I’ve set the bar too high for myself. We’ll see how my thoughts on the subject progress as I age and hopefully keep growing. Until then, here I am, doing the best I can with what I have. That usually means I end up focusing on my other specializations here, those that predate my faith, originated in my childhood, and are sometimes at odds with it. Thus is the conflict that fuels some of the fight scenes in the Midlife Crisis Crossover.
Of all the possible ways to spend the week leading up to the three-day commemoration of the death and resurrection of Christ Our Savior, I’m pretty sure that one of the most counterproductive, least evangelistic options at our disposal is engaging in messy, protracted fight scenes (whether amongst ourselves or with others) for the purpose of defending the position that believers who follow the Lord’s tenets to the letter should be rewarded with government-approved perks for this accomplishment, and that those who don’t, shouldn’t.
I could be wrong. Maybe there are worse ways to count down to Easter. I’d prefer to eschew those, too.
Saturday the 10th was my first day spent with a wheelchair. I tried to imagine the day beforehand, to anticipate the drawbacks and plan for every single troubleshooting scenario. I’m surprised I nailed most of them, but it was still a learning experience full of ups and downs. The day could have been much more painful and full of recriminations, had I not been blessed with a very patient, very grateful passenger.
One of the highlights each year for my wife’s grandmother is when the three of us spend a November Saturday together at the Indianapolis Christmas Gift and Hobby Show, a cavalcade of Christmas arts, Christmas crafts, Christmas edibles, and non-Christmas small businesses and hucksters held at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in one of their cavernous pavilions. It usually takes us a few hours to traverse the length of the pavilion several times to see all the booths, marvel at the decorations, overspend on a few choice items, and — always number one on Mamaw’s to-do list — have her watch batteries replaced at a specific jeweler’s booth. No one in all Creation is allowed to change her watch batteries except that one jeweler. Everyone else ever born will do it wrong.
Last summer, this once-hyperkinetic eightysomething dynamo took a nasty spill that left her wounded for a good while and reset her normal energy levels at a much lower bar. She’s having much more trouble getting around than she used to, and takes a little longer to perform her chores the way she wants them. Though she weighs under one hundred pounds, she still doesn’t have quite the endurance for supporting that frame around extensive distances. Excessive walking now leaves her winded and ready to call it a day. As her beloved Christmas Gift and Hobby Show drew near, she seriously doubted she could manage the day-long stroll that would entail, and had resigned herself to skipping the show, despite how many she’s attended, despite how much she looks forward to it every year. She feared attempting such a feat now would be the death of her.
Enter: the wheelchair.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 