Lately in America, business owners (including those of big businesses) have gotten a bum rap. They are almost always the villains of class warfare (a favorite tactic of politicians, especially Democrats). And while some business owners are villains, most of them are not. And, more importantly, what they do is essential to our livelihood and the greatness of the Free World. How quickly we forget this when we need a “bad guy” to blame for our troubles (or to win an election).

Government and politicians do not create jobs. They do not power the economy. They do not feed your family. They don’t make available all of the essentials and luxuries you enjoy every day. They don’t improve your quality of life. And they risk none of their own capital (“stuff”) to do it, either.

Who does? Entrepreneurs do. Business owners willing to risk their time, talent and treasure to create an even better world. And not just for themselves, but for all of us.

There’s a myth that the distribution of wealth is a zero-sum game. That if somebody else gets more wealth that it means they had to take it from somebody else. This is simply not true. And nobody knows this better than an entrepreneur, for they create something where there is nothing every day. It’s one of the beautiful ways we as humans get to co-create with our Creator.

And this creation is one of the solutions (as it has been since the beginning of Man) to so many of the injustices in the world. That’s why it’s so backward and frustrating when we try to solve so many problems with government — and at the expense of the real problem solvers in the world: Entrepreneurs.

There’s a new short film called “The Call of the Entrepreneur” that I think everyone should watch. Here’s a short synopsis with both the trailer and full video below:

“Three men. One call. A merchant banker. A failing dairy farmer. A refugee from Communist China. One risked his savings. One risked his farm. One risked his life.

Why do their stories matter? Because how we view entrepreneurs – as greedy or altruistic, as victorious or vicious – shapes the destinies of individuals and nations.”

Check out the trailer real quick:

And you can watch the whole thing below. It’s worth 55 mins of your time. And it’s even more worth picking up a copy for your family/group and sharing with others for a good discussion on an important topic:

No, not your Idol – although it may be that, too. But what’s your idle? Each day naturally gives us idle moments. How do you spend them? What activities do you thoughtlessly gravitate toward doing when an idle moment hits? What’s your idle?

Just like driving in stop-n-go traffic, we can easily spend a very significant portion of our day idling. How we spend those moments not only has a huge impact on the person we become, but they also have a way of impacting how productive the rest of our day is.

And instead of carefully embracing my idle moments with purpose, I too often unwittingly surrender these precious, potentially pivotal moments of my day to the whim of careless habit. Quiet addictions disguised as words like “multi-tasking,” “decompression,” “connectivity” and “efficiency”…slowly sucking away my life.

For instance, when I’m at work, my idle is checking email. My day idles around my email inbox. It’s the first thing I check when I start work. It’s the last thing I check before I shut down. It’s what gets a quick (and often longer) glance while slow internet pages are loading or during a slow part of a meeting. I check it in between every task. I’m constantly reacting to it. My pace and schedule is often dictated by it. My email is my idle. I’m constantly present in my inbox, just not necessarily with the person or task in front of me.

At home, it’s the TV. Anytime I’m at home and hit an idle moment my brain feels this urge to grab the remote control and see what’s on. At the end of the work day when I’m all sputtered out, TV is my idle. While waiting for dinner to finish cooking, relaxing for a moment, eating a snack or simply deciding what we want to do tonight – the TV comes on (and usually stays on). And when I hit a commercial break (one where I can’t fast forward through it), I even flip to the channel guide and find something else to watch to fill that idle moment. TV is my idle.

Everywhere else, my smartphone is my idle. If I’m standing in line at the grocery store, waiting in the doctor’s office, waiting at a traffic light, walking to a meeting or even waiting for a commercial break to finish – basically, anytime I have an idle moment – I reach for my front right pocket. I don’t know how many times each day I find myself in the middle of opening my phone and not really knowing why. I flip through endless pages of interesting apps, fun games, social networks and email…just because. My cell phone is my idle, too.

Are these idle habits really helping me decompress, accomplish more tasks or be more efficient? Actually, I’m beginning to realize that they do the opposite. They also do a great job of making me feel much busier than I actually am.

Do I need these idle habits for entertainment? A much needed distraction from the grind of the day?

No. Actually, what I really need is rest – not distraction. I need silence – not entertainment. I need a moment to take a deep breathe and contemplate my existence — what I’m doing and where I’m going. But such fragile moments are easy prey for ravenously bad, idle habits.

Do you ever get the feeling that instead of  you living your life, it feels more like life is just happening to you? I’ll let you in on a little secret: It’s not because you have too much on your plate or not enough vacation days. It’s because of bad, idle habits.

These brief, idle moments – more often than we realize – turn into divergent distractions. They keep our head firmly in a million places at once. They steal our focus from the task at hand – not just from being productive at it, but from truly enjoying it. I am endlessly reacting or getting unexpectedly pulled into something via email, TV or smart phone that isn’t nearly as important as what I had hoped to accomplish today.  5 minutes here. 10 minutes there. Instead of using the natural idle moments in life to rest for a moment, find inspiration and reorient myself to the goals of the day, I pack them with unimportant to-dos and spontaneous distractions.

I’ve decided to change my idles — and change my life.

I’ll write more soon on how I’m doing that.

TV shows consume our day. If the TV is not on, we’re talking about it (or telling someone to SHUSH cuz we DVR’d something and haven’t watched it yet).

The average American watches 35 hours of TV each week – a second full time job. That’s 5 hours per day! Incredible! And that’s just an average. So for every one of us who watch less than that, there is somebody else who watches that much more. Where do we find the time?

Anyway, it’s not that all TV is bad. A lot of it is very good. A lot of it is educational and beautiful. Other parts are healthy, entertaining and fun. The problem is how it sucks you in. Even the good stuff sucks you in. And it makes you forget that there are other things in life that are much better that you’re missing out on. And when TV starts causing us to miss out on that stuff, it’s a very bad thing.

So in my efforts to try and be a real man, I (along with my wife) recently decided it was time to cancel cable. It cost about $75 per month (not counting internet, etc.), so it would save us some money and encourage us to spend our time more effectively.

What’s great is that you can watch TV now in lots of ways. And when it comes down to it, our family really only watches about 4-6 channels. A couple news channels, a kids channel, the Food Network and a couple of sports channels.

I can’t wait for the day when you can only order the few channels you want. But I’m not sure we’ll ever get there because the media companies aren’t interested in our personal virtue and discipline. They just want more eyeballs on TVs (which = more money for them).

So here’s how we decided to make it without cable.

I can get my news online for free. We picked up Netflix for $8 / month to watch a movie every once in awhile and to have some good shows on demand for the kids and some foodie shows for the wife.

Survivor I can watch online for free, too. American Idol would be tougher. And the hardest part would be trying to watch the Texas Aggies and the Cowboys. But I figured if I really wanted to watch a game that badly, I’d go to somebody else’s house or to a sports bar. Sports is another thing I often end up watching way too much of and of teams I really have no real interest in (thanks Fantasy Football).

So, for Netflix, we needed an AppleTV to run it on our TV. We also liked the AppleTV cuz it made it easy for us to share pics and videos from our computers/phones/iPad with everyone else in the room – which was nice. So I picked up an AppleTV and got it set up with Netflix.

Now we were all set to take the plunge. No more cable. I was really gonna do it. For real. So I called up the cable company to cancel. I told them I just couldn’t justify spending $75 every month for something we really didn’t need that much.

They sent me to their cancelation (read: customer retention) desk. Here’s how it went:

Guy: “Sir, what if we could get your bill down a bit for you?”

Me: “I appreciate that, but I just don’t need it.” [intent on following through]

Guy: “Well what if I could do $50 per month or so for you?”

Me: “Sorry, still not worth it for me.”

Guy: “Well what price would make it worth it for you?”

Me: “Honestly, it would have to be something like $20-something dollars a month. I mean, basically what we’d pay to rent/buy a movie and a few shows online each month.” [that's probably what we'd legitimately otherwise spend without cable and I knew it was a low enough number to end the conversation here.]

Guy: “Hmm, well what if we took off your DVR? And I could get it down to like $30-something dollars a month for you?”

Me: “…” [that's a pretty good deal. Uhg.]

Guy: “And we’re running a deal right now where you get Cinemax free for a year.”

Me: “…Sorry, it just isn’t worth it. I gotta say no. And I would definitely need the DVR cuz the alternative, of buying/renting online, is on-demand.” [WIN!]

Guy: “Let me talk with my manager, just a minute.”

…

Guy: “Okay, $28 per month, same setup you have now, with DVR, plus Cinemax free for a year?”

Me: [uhg] “…Gimme a minute.”

[I sat there in silence wondering what the heck just happened. I REALLY wanted to cancel cable, but this was a really good deal. How could I pass up this kind of value? And it really would be easier to just have the full cable package with everything that comes with it...and we were still gonna save a bunch of money each month. uhg.]

Me: “Okay. Let’s do it.”

EPIC. FAIL.

So now, instead of limiting my family’s access to television…we still have hundreds of channels and shows on-demand via cable (with a DVR). In addition to watching it all on our TV, I can now also watch and control all of it from my iPad. We now have an AppleTV with access to every movie and tv show you’d ever want to order and watch via iTunes. We have all the free AppleTV channels, youtube and other free apps on our TV. Now we have Netflix, where we get endless free movies and tv shows on demand (to watch from our computer, phone, iPad or TV from anywhere at any time). Oh, and a free year of Cinemax, too.

I suck at canceling cable. :-(

Being a father is a radical responsibility. One that’s been neutered of its uniqueness and weight and turned into just another equal participant in the human economy. Well, we may have produced an economy of hard working men (and women), but we’ve also enabled a generation of slacker dads. Even the “good dads” are slackers. And I’m intent on not being one of them.

If my family is not praying enough or doesn’t know how to pray together, it’s my fault.

If my family lacks direction and inspiration and vision, it’s my fault.

If my children don’t know what generosity and selflessness look like, it’s my fault.

If my children do not know God, it’s my fault.

If my children don’t know what a hard working, faithful, loving, disciplined, kind, holy, gentle, patient, strong man looks like, it’s my fault.

If my children don’t feel secure about who they are, it’s my fault.

If my son doesn’t know how to be a real man, it’s my fault.

If my daughter doesn’t know how she’s supposed to be treated, it’s my fault.

If my children don’t know what it feels like to be loved and what real, sacrificial love looks like, it’s my fault.

If my children don’t know what forgiveness and mercy look like, it’s my fault.

If my children don’t know how to respect authority, it’s my fault.

If my children don’t know that the hard stuff in life is the stuff most worth doing, it’s my fault.

If my children don’t know to pursue truth over comfort and faithfulness over success, it’s my fault.

If my children don’t know what humility and honesty look like, it’s my fault.

If my house does not serve the Lord, it’s my fault.

If I, as their father, don’t do these things, who will? Who will? If it’s not my responsibility, whose is it? My wife has unique responsibilities of her own and many of these others we fulfill together. But ultimately, in a family, the buck stops with somebody – and that’s me. If these things don’t happen, it’s my fault.

If you need a good reminder of this or wanna catch a good flick for families, check out the movie Courageous. It pumped me up and will remind you of the seriousness, bigness, joy and fulfillment of being a good father. Here’s a preview clip:

Look. I know it’s taboo to talk poop. It’s even more taboo to talk about what you do while you poop. But let’s be honest…you know you do it. Yes, everybody poops…but now most of you are doing it with your smartphone. (If you don’t like talking about poop, try this other post I wrote instead.)

I do miss the old days, though. Back when toilet time was just a waiting game. Time to relax and think. Many of mankind’s greatest ideas were birthed on the porcelain throne. It’s an astonishing fact that Smartphones have set back innovation and progress decades, perhaps centuries.

The bathroom used to be Man’s last sanctuary in the home. The one place the noise of the media and the worries of life could not penetrate. The place of great ideas.

No more. The Smartphone has ruined it. Well, mostly. If you have kids, it’s still the last place to at least find a few minutes of quiet. So forgive me if I’m not overly eager to fiber binge so as to minimize my time in the dunny. Besides, let’s be honest, sometimes you need a big move…on Words with Friends and it takes a little while.

In an age obsessed with hyper-productivity and multi-tasking, it’s not surprising we don’t wanna waste these precious moments we’re destined to spend on the can. But here are a few tips to help you navigate the murky waters:

1. Take your phone out of your pocket (or purse) before you get to the toilet. You can also wait til after you sit. But DO NOT reach for it while standing over the toilet. 19% of people drop their cell phones down the toilet.
2. No more smartphoning once you start wiping. That’s one thing that was never supposed to be multi-tasked. Let’s try to keep it sanitary, folks. 16% of cellphones have poop on them. But that’s still cleaner than your remote control or your keyboard (which is dirtier than your toilet seat). We can do better.
3. Don’t Skype. Nobody likes to get Dookie-Rolled.
4. If you must talk on the phone, wrap up the call before you wipe. It’ll help you avoid the awkward toilet flush in the background.
5. No need to “check-in.” Seriously.
6. In general, nobody needs to be privy (online or on-phone) that you’re in the privy. Unless you just wanna test the intimacy levels within your social network.
7. If you really have a need to get chatty on the potty, check out the iPoo social network app. I haven’t tried it. But the link gave me a good laugh.
8. If you’re the anal retentive type, try a data dump into your own PooLog (app).
9. Don’t play games that have endless levels. 30 minutes will go by, your legs will end up asleep and you won’t have wiped yet.
10. Don’t forget that others may be waiting to use the john, too.
11. Don’t let the non-smartphoning poopers get you down. They just aren’t comfortable coming out of the water closet yet.
12. Don’t forget to still find some time each day for some prayer and reflection. Noise and information have permeated every corner of our lives and every idle moment of our day. We are supposed to consume information, not the other way around. Don’t forget that.

My wife and I play a game with our two year old son. It involves catching a fish. You never know if it’s gonna be a little, tiny fish – or a great, big whale of a fish. You can play this game on the bed, on the floor, pretty much anywhere.

To begin, you have to look very carefully all around you to try and find a fish just under the surface of the water. Once you spot one, you try to snatch it out of the water with your bare hands! But you have to be quick – because fish are very quick.

Once you’ve caught a fish, it’s a bit of a juggling act. The fish is usually squirming and flopping around – as a fish out of water does. So it’s usually quite a struggle and a workout to keep the fish from getting away, especially if it’s a big one! The fish is very hard to hold on to – as fish are very slippery. Once you start getting tired of trying to hold on to this jumping, squirming fish, you pass him off to another person so they can wrestle with it for awhile. Eventually, the fish gets away and you start over again. It’s hilarious, just ask my son!

Now, is the existence of the fish in this goofy game a part of an elaborate lie? Of course not. We were just using our imagination and teaching our son to do the same. We also showed him how using our imagination lets us have a lot of fun with very little. More importantly, we used our imagination to learn about something that is very, very real. Just because we imagine something doesn’t mean it’s not real. We imagine real things all the time.

Does my two year old fully understand the difference between our fishing game and real fishing yet? Not quite. But one day he will. And in the process he’s learning a lot of real things about real fish…even if we exaggerate and have some fun with it in the process.

So what about Santa Claus?

We live in a culture that has taken Christ out of Christmas. Our appetite for material goods is insatiable. Our religion, a cult of consumerism. Our dogma, the marketing maxims of slick sales execs that have redefined for us what it means to be “prepared” for Christmas. Rather than prayer, fasting and repentance, we prepare by just buying lots of stuff. And they’ve made Santa Claus the spokesperson.

So it’s no surprise that, as a reaction to all that, some have been tempted to throw Santa Claus right out and get back to the “reason for the season.” And besides, why do we tell such lies to our kids about some imaginary man in a sleigh anyway?

Well, I’ll tell you.

First, the story of Santa Claus is a Christian story. Hello! When told properly, it points to and emphasizes Jesus Christ. So, it’s actually one of the (fun) ways to “get back to the reason for the season.” And kids like fun.

Second, therefore, Santa Claus is not the problem. The commercialization of Christmas has victimized him as much as any of us. In fact, I’m pretty sure the real Santa Claus isn’t taking all of this too lightly, either.

Which brings me to my next point, Santa Claus is a real person. So it’s not a lie to say that Santa Claus is real. He has died, yes. But he’s not really dead. He’s alive in heaven, which means he’s more fully alive than any of us.

Santa Claus = Sinter Klaas = Sint Nikolaas = Saint Nicholas. Make it a lesson in linguistics for your kids. Santa means Saint. A Saint is someone who has lived a life of heroic virtue. A life worth mimicking. A life worth observing. A life worth learning from. A life that points to Christ.

Saint Nicholas was a 4th century bishop in the Church. And his spirit of giving and serving the poor is worth remembering by re-enacting (and imagining) his life and then learning from it. More importantly, the reason he served the poor and gave of himself so much is because he served Christ at the center of his life. And he did so with heroic enough virtue that we remember it thousands of years later. We are all called to live lives like that. That’s the radical call of being a Christian (not necessarily to dramatically cast out all the fun in our lives!).

The point is that Santa can’t just be somebody we get stuff from. He’s a kind of model for our life – just like every “Saint.” He’s somebody we can teach our kids to look at and say, “do you see how generous and giving he is? That’s what God calls us to be every day, and especially during this important religious season when we celebrate the greatest gift mankind has ever received, Jesus.”

The giving must be emphasized, not the receiving. But you can’t have one without the other! So the question for our family is, simply, which are we focused on? and therefore, what are our kids learning is most important? The giving…or the receiving?

And it’s okay if your 4 year old gets more excited about Santa than she does about baby Jesus. That probably means you have a healthy 4 year old who can’t grasp the magnitude and deep theological significance of redemption, eternal salvation and God becoming a man. Even most adults struggle with it. Let’s not strip the fun out of our kids’ lives because they realize a jolly fat man in a red suit who flies around in a sleigh with magical reindeer giving gifts is more exciting than a baby in a manger. Any religion that wants to last longer than a single generation must acknowledge this simple childhood truth.

We just have to make sure that as kids get older they continue to learn the depth of the Santa story as they are able. And how that jolly fat man who gives presents is not there to give us presents, but to show us how to give. And he’s not doing so because you’ve been good, he’s doing so because giving is what life is all about. And the most radical way that old Saint Nick lived this out was not with the gift of presents, but with the giving of his entire life to Jesus Christ and the way he lived it in service to Him.

Personally, I think we should tell the Santa story to our children the same way we should tell them about many other stories that have grown into myths and legends. Let them grow into them – not out of them. Don’t outright lie to them, but don’t spoil it all up front either. Let them pretend along with you. Let them learn in time what is true about the story and what isn’t. What is important about the story and what isn’t. And more importantly, help them learn the deeper (and very real) truths contained within it. And in time, use it to help them understand the infinitely more significant and completely true story of Jesus.

It’s a good thing that this Christian Saint is plastered all over everything this time of year. What an opportunity for Christians and for our families. We just have to view it in the right light and, in many ways, reclaim the proper narrative. And we must always, always, always point it back to the real reason for the celebration.

The imagination is a powerful way to learn about real things. True things. Santa is alive and well. Now, please excuse me, I’ve got some fish to catch.

“Follow a man as he affects multiple peoples’ lives with just one dollar, proving that it doesn’t take much to be the change in someone’s life.”

Watch this provocative video:

It’s easy to be tricked into thinking that whatever little ability or power we may personally have could ever make a big difference to anyone else. But that’s one of the great illusions of the human experience. We forget what power, and therefore responsibility, we’ve been entrusted with.

Short on money this year for all those Christmas presents you need to buy? Good news: You don’t need it and you can still give the best Christmas gift ever.

We spend over $450 Billion on Christmas gifts each year. Buying people gifts has become a matter of formality with less and less meaning. This year, try spending less money and more time. More time on making something thoughtful. Time on relationships. Time preparing for Christmas (i.e. embracing Advent). Time in real thanksgiving and worship.

Here’s a great video to inspire you:

Advent Conspiracy

Imagine what we could do if we didn’t spend so much on ourselves and on buying things we really don’t need?

Here’s a great new video ad by CatholicVote (embedded below) highlighting one of the most important (but not talked about much by the media) issues for this current election cycle. The Obama administration has relentlessly and quietly continued to undermine religious liberty in our country in every way that it serves their agenda – often hidden behind the mantle of “health care” and “education.” Stay alert, oh tired democracy.

“You’ll lose your looks having kids. But you’ll lose your looks anyway. So you may as well do it having children and then they can remind you of how good looking you once were.” – Janet Smith

Life is way too short to spend it worrying about your looks so much anyway. Gee whiz. And of course, don’t forget the often overlooked benefits of having children anyway.

There have been some changes to the Mass. Here’s why…(with a lot of great resources below).

First, the essence of the Mass is not changing, there have just been some improvements to how we celebrate the Mass in English. The text of the Mass is contained in what’s called the “Roman Missal,” and this latest version is the “Third edition.” One of the key reasons for this third edition is that “after forty years of celebrating Mass in English, the Church has come to see certain areas where the English Text could be improved. Some have noted that, when the Latin text was paraphrased, a number of rich spiritual metaphors and images were lost. Important theological concepts were not always clear, and several biblical allusions did not shine out as noticeably as they could,” says Edward Sri.

Here’s a simple three-minute video explanation for you (from Life Teen’s helpful website on the subject):

If you’re into mobile apps, here’s an app for the new Mass (iPhone and Android) that’s actually really simple and helpful at guiding you through the changes. For each part of the Mass, it shows the old text, the new text and then a very short reason why they may be different. It’s a quick way to get a very brief download of why some of the changes were made.

If you’d like to learn even more, here are a few great books you should check out:

Praying the Mass, by Jeffrey Pinyan (A Guide to the New English Translation of the Mass)
This book is much more than just the reasons behind the latest updates to the English translation, but a full walk-through of how to pray the Mass. It goes through each part of the entire Mass and explains why and how we do it, while giving scripture references and also exploring the latest tweaks to the missal. It’s about 150 pages long and very accessible.

Mass Revision: How the Mass is changing and what it means for you, by Jimmy Akin
This is an amazing resource. Coming in at over 400 pages, it deals with far more than just the changes and meaning of the Mass. It digs deep into liturgical law as well, and identifies many of the forces and interests at play within the Church when it comes to liturgy. It’s an update to Akin’s 1998 book, Mass Confusion, and continues on the theme of identifying liturgical abuses and clarifying precisely how the Church indicates the Mass should be celebrated.

Here’s Jimmy Akin giving a little preview of his book:

A Guide to the New Translation of the Mass, by Edward Sri
This is a very short, 20 page pamphlet that answers your basic questions about the new translation. It answers questions like “Why do we need a new translation?” and “How significant will those changes be?” It also gives a page or two explanation for many of the changes. A quick read to get you caught up.

A Biblical Walk Through the Mass, by Edward Sri
This is another great walk-through of the Mass, with an emphasis on its biblical roots (which is natural for any study of the Mass anyway, of course!). It includes a deeper study of how the latest translation of the Mass exposes us to even more of the rich, profound connections between Scripture and the things we say at Mass.

Hope that helps! Oh, and here’s one more slightly longer video, similar to the one above, but that also goes into the process of how a new translation like this comes about. It’s an interesting process and amazing to know how much care and thought that goes into such important and significant changes to the Church’s highest prayer – the Mass.