It was the window seat I snagged that day, to the left of a sixty-something year old man who smelled vaguely of urine and cigarettes.

“If you stay on this road long enough”, my odiferous neighbor tells me, “you hit the Atlantic Ocean.” He then laughs, as if he has revealed previously hidden wisdom. As his laughter descends into his chest, creating a raspy cough, we pass to the right of the Pyramid, its shiny metal siding reflecting light into my eyes as the driver heads toward the ocean.

I won’t be going quite that far.

# # #

For 13 years, I lived in Memphis. Growing up, a dirt-poor kid in Marshall County Mississippi, I dreamed of moving to Memphis – of living in a gated community, of owning a red sports car, of the hot wife, the career spent in books and letters. Check, check, check and check.

But, as John the prophet said, life is what happened while we were making other plans. I spent the first decade of my adulthood climbing the ladder of success. I climbed, and I climbed and I climbed. One day, I stopped, and looked around. It was then I noticed that while I had done a good job of climbing – I am, in fact, a hell of a climber – my ladder was leaning against the wrong wall.

What if you plan a life and nobody comes?

When I was 30, I had been married to a beautiful woman for six years, I was a successful (in a middling sort of way) financial advisor, I had a great apartment on a good street and a closet full of Ralph Lauren suits.

And I was throwing up blood about once a week from the stress. And I was drinking way too much. I hated my life.

So, I quit. Not just the job – I quit the whole life.

If at first you don’t succeed, to hell with it.

# # #

That was five years before the day I sat next to khaki-clad smelly man on an east bound bus, with what was left of my possessions in a duffle bag stuffed under the seat. Here I sat, two years older than Jesus ever got to be, with a head full of Transcendentalist poetry, a gut full of bad coffee from the bus station and tears running down my face, washing away the memory of the dreams of all my yesterdays.

I was headed to Raleigh, NC. I needed a fresh start – a new place where I had never sold books or insurance, where I had never broken anyone’s heart, lost anyone’s fortune, where I had never fallen in love with someone who wanted the me I used to be, where I had never broken a promise or a wedding vow.

It was time to be born again.

# # #

So, that day, I sat on that bus, my entire net worth boiled down to $800 cash, a few books and two pair of jeans. And I was starting a new life – I had spent the first 35 years or so of my life focusing on me. On that long bus trip, I made a list of all the things I did not like about me.

It was a long list.

But chief on it, right at the top, was that I was a people user. I was all about me, and what people could do for me.

I hated that.

It was not the “me” I liked to think I was. I thought of myself as loving. Generous. Caring. Jesus-like, even.

But, I wasn’t. Truth is, I was just a user.

So, I decided it was time to change. Time to be the person I wished I was, the person I dreamed of being, the person I would be proud to be. The person my wife, or my girlfriend or my grandkids would be proud I was.

I decided to change.

Change is hard. I have heard it said that we only change when it becomes harder to remain the same than it does to change. Maybe that’s true. All I know is, on that bus, with broken dreams and shattered relationships behind me, I decided to change.

So I did.

I started a ministry based entirely on relationships – relationships with people who often cannot return the favor, and who can’t advance my career or puff my ego. I learned from them, and then I began to speak to churches about what I learned. Then I took resources from those churches and used them to help my new friends.

It was not easy. It was not the simple path, or the easy path – but it was the right path. It was my authentic path – the path I was born to follow. It was the path I was fighting all those years I was climbing furiously a ladder leaning against the wrong wall.

For the last four and a half years, I have lived the life I wanted to live – an authentic life: A life where I am not a user, but a contributor. I am married to my best friend. I have a wide variety of friends around my dinner table all the time. My work makes a difference. People’s lives are changed because I live mine. I get to do stimulating work and exercise my creativity.

Life is good.

# # #

So, why am I telling you all of this?

Because it is January. This means a lot of you are thinking about change. You are looking around and you see your life staring back at you and you do not like what you see. You see the broken promises and scattered dreams in your history and you find you do not like the story of your life. You are not living out your authentic story.

And you want to change.

But you are scared.

Scared you will fail. Scared you will be laughed at. Scared you will lose friends. Scared you will struggle.

You should be scared. Deciding to live your authentic life is scary. Deciding to be the person you want to believe you are is scary.

But you know what is scarier?

Waking up one day and finding out you spent your life living someone else’s dreams, building someone else’s vision, creating someone else’s legacy – and being too scared to change.

You can change. You can wake up and live the life you were born to live. You can build great things, dream big dreams, watch them unfurl and drink in the victory of living a life well played.

You can be born again.

But first, you have to decide to change.

Too Many Victims

January 8 is the one-year anniversary of the Tucson Massacre, which claimed the lives of six Americans and wounded 13 others. On this somber day, we will remember all of those who have been hurt by and lost to gun violence.

In cities across the country, we will gather. In Raleigh we will light a candle for those we’ve lost and pledge to build peaceful communities. Every light could let one more child see another birthday, a graduation, a wedding and the birth of new children in turn. Every light could be a life.

If you cannot attend or to find a vigil in your community vist: www.toomanyvictims.org

WHEN

January 08, 2012 at 6:00 PM

WHERE

Community United Church of Christ (Raleigh)
814 Dixie Trail
Raleigh, NC 27607

Google map and directions

CONTACT

Roxane Kolar NCGV@NCGV.org · 919-403-7665

Suddenly, I feel thirsty. “No”, I tell myself. “You cannot get up to get a drink of water. You are just procrastinating.”

As long as I am distracted, I might as well check Facebook, just one last time.

I look at the clock and notice it is now 8:42AM.

Damn Facebook all to hell. I got caught up reading about the “Top 11 Pop Culture events of 2011“.

(Is it just me, or is it cold in here?)

The problem is the internet, obviously. It’s then I remember, earlier this year, Seth Godin had written about a program you could install on your computer that shut down the internet for a predetermined period of time, thus eliminating the distraction of the internet.

It has gotten critical. I must have this program, if any writing at all is to get done.

The next 10 minutes is spent searching Google for things like “Seth Godin Internet Distraction” and “Kill Internet”. Eventually, I find it: Freedom.

The premise is, it kills the networking aspect of your computer for a predetermined period of time, thus keeping your undisciplined ass off the internet. So, I decide to drop $10 of Christmas money on it. Money well spent, if it will get me back to writing.

Download. Pay. Register.

8:55AM.

I fire up trusty Microsoft Word 2007, get that drink of water I wanted 30 minutes ago, shuffle back to my spot in the hallway and put my fingers to the keys.

Dammit, it is cold in here.

I cannot write if I’m cold. I get the space heater and put it beside my desk, plug it in and bask in the warmth exuding from it.

9:10AM.

I have found when I write, it helps to set a timer for 20 minutes, so I can focus on that one thing. I generally use Egg Timer. I already have it bookmarked in my browser and everything. I open up my browser and…

Dammit, I have no internet. Oh yes, the program I just paid $10 for is keeping me off the internet for the next 45 minutes.

Maybe there is a countdown timer for my phone? I pick up my phone, hit the Market icon… NO! I must get to writing.

It was then, at 9:25AM, that the lights go out.

First thought: Did I pay the light bill? Then I hear the gurgle from the fish tank and notice the Christmas tree lights are still on, so I know that isn’t it.

Must be the circuit breaker.

In the six months we have lived in this apartment, I have had no need to go to the breaker box. I have no idea where it is. The next 10 minutes are spent finding out it is not in the pantry, any of the closets, the basement or in any of the kitchen cabinets. I find it in the entryway to the back porch – I have walked past it three to four times a day for the last six months and never noticed it was there.

Having flipped the circuit breaker, I come back in the house, sit back at my desk, now bathed once again in artificial light courtesy of the Sylvania Light Bulb Company and Progress Energy.

I write less than 20 words when the breaker flips off again.

Ahhh. It is the heater. I guess I will just have to write in the cold.

At 9:50AM, the heater is put away, the circuit breaker flipped back on, bathrobe put on for warmth.

I think briefly about the things I am supposed to do today. Writing today isn’t going well, so maybe I should stop trying to write and start in on them now? Then I look at the clock and see I only have 10 more minutes of writing left to do and decide to gut it out. After all, I can do anything for ten minutes, right?

Right?

Just a note to let you know I will be largely offline (and 100% out of the blogging world) for the balance of 2011. A lot of incredible things (and a few that sucked) have hapened in 2011, and I want to be able to give them the introspection they deserve.

I hope you and your family have an incredible holiday season, and I wish for you every good thing in the coming year.

See you in 2012. 

Grace and Peace, 

Hugh

PS: If you need me, twitter or email are going to be the best way. But then again, they are always the best way. 

That’s right – it is time for the annual Evangelical event called “Fighting the War on Christmas”.

Someone somewhere will call for a boycott of some store because they use the phrase Happy Holidays in their advertising instead of Merry Christmas.

This is, quite frankly, a bit embarrassing.

I myself tend to be a Happy Holidays person, especially if I do not know you.

After all, how do I know if you celebrate Christmas or not?

Maybe you celebrate Chanukah instead. Or Kwanza. Or Festivus. Or Winter Solstice.

Who am I to impose my holiday on you?

On June the 5th, I will celebrate my birthday. Statistically speaking, the odds are about 1 in 365 that it’s your birthday on June the 5th, too. But I don’t wish you a happy birthday on that day, on the chance that your birthday is also the 5th of June.

Because, it is my birthday and I feel no need to make you celebrate my birthday.

But the Evangelical Christian seems to feel that this is somehow tantamount to public sacrifices to the Earth Goddess if we are hospitable to our unbelieving neighbors.

Sigh. Only six more days.

I can make it.

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…

I was imprisoned and you crept off quietly to your chapel and prayed for my release.

I was naked and in your mind you debated the morality of my appearance.

I was sick and you knelt and thanked God for your health.

I was homeless and you preached to me the spiritual love of God.

I was lonely and you left me alone to pray for me.

You seem so holy, so close to God,

But I am still very hungry –and lonely –and cold.” ~ John Stott

With that in mind, I have decided to start mentioning some of the things I read here on my blog. This is nowhere near book reviews. I mean, I have nothing against book reviews, and have done many of them, but I get paid money for those.

Instead, these will be short stand alone posts, just 1-5 sentence mentions of books that I have read and enjoyed, and think you may find enjoyable too.

This won’t be every book I read, or even close to that. But I probably have 50 books a year that really stand out. And I want to mention them to you, with the hope that you may enjoy them too.

It was the summer between my Junior and Senior year of high school. I was on my way to get my senior pictures taken, driving my 1972 Ford Torino, with the souped up engine and the amp driving the bass in the speaker box in the trunk. I was doing something like 45 or 50 miles an hour, which is not a bad thing, except the curve was rated at 15mph.

So, I crashed into the ditch, totaling the car.

Along the way, I totaled a guy’s culvert. Dad thought it would be an excellent idea for me to dig the guy’s culvert out and replace it with one I had bought and paid for, as penance for trashing it in the first place. In a fit of pity, Dad agreed to help me do it.

My location as I dug this culvert out is marked on the map by the red dot. That right angle? That was the curve that did me in.

In any event, I was in a ditch, digging a culvert out that I had destroyed with my car by going too fast. Meanwhile, many people were in cars, hurtling at my head, turning at the last possible moment. If any of them were driving the way I had been driving, I would have been dead.

It was then that it occurred to me for the first time how interconnected we all are. How much of our lives depend on our agreeing to do certain things a certain way. I can drive down the street because we have agreed that you will stop at a stop sign. I can walk on the sidewalk because you have agreed to drive on the pavement. I need not fence my front yard, because you have agreed to stay off of it.

Last Friday, I was driving around the block, testing our car after making a small repair to it, when a guy in a large SUV shot out of a side street directly in front of me, in reverse(!) and I hit him.

To clarify: I am driving along, a guy shoots out of a side street in reverse directly in front of me and I plow into him. It turns out, he had crested a hill, seen a police check point and threw it in reverse and hit the gas.  He then went backwards for a while, refusing to stop at the appropriate stop sign and jumped out in front of me, when I hit him.

As you might expect, his erratic behavior drew the attention of the police, who were on the scene almost immediately. They arrested him, of course, and called a tow truck for me. And 23 years later, I am struck once again by how much my life is dependent upon everyone else keeping up their end of the agreement.

So, I got to thinking. If I had to give someone a list of books that, when they had read them, they would understand where I am coming from when I talk about Christianity as a means of personal and global transformation; that confronts the Powers of this world rather than partners with them; that can change the world for the better – what would such a list look like?

This list is not definitive, nor is it all inclusive. It contains only one woman and no people of color and, as far as I know, it is entirely composed of cisgendered people. It is a bit more ecumenical – three Roman Catholics, a Methodist, two Baptists and a Mennonite. There are no Reformed writers on the list – this is probably unintentionally intentional. It contains three biographies, one book of sermons and no commentaries – that probably says something about me and my love of narrative.

This is not every book I would recommend someone read – but it is a starting point for someone like me, who was raised in a hetero-normative evangelical world that thought Jesus wanted to keep me from going to hell when I died, and that was what the essence of Christianity was all about. With one exception, these are all popular level books – you don’t need Greek or Latin to get through any of them, and all the authors have written other things, if you are interested in the line of thought.

Also, just because you read these books does not mean you will end up where I did.

Example: There are no books dealing with Gay issues here. But, I did read Brother to a Dragonfly, which is on the list, and he did something with 2 Corinthians chapter 5 that showed me I could no longer regard anyone as less than another. And maybe you can read Body Politics and not be persuaded by Yoder, or you can read Dorothy Day and still feel no understanding of the role of the poor in our transformation. Whatever.

So anyway – here you go. 10 books to get you started. Obviously, I do not agree with every word of every book, nor do I endorse any other book by the same author. You are a grownup – you are responsible for your own experience.

Also, if you click through and purchase one of these books through Amazon, my ministry will get a few cents thrown their way. Thanks for that.

Question: What books have made an impact on you and your faith journey?

So who helped me pay for the education that broke that cycle? Not the church – I could afford to go to no denominational affiliated schools – of any denomination. If there was one, somewhere, they surely were not recruiting me.

Instead, the reason I have career choices that do not involve being bent over a car all day or driving a garbage truck is thanks to the Unites States Marine Corps.

Do not mishear me – I am a pacifist (now), but when it came to getting an education, the church was silent, and the only option I had was the offer from the Marines: Let us teach you how to kill people, and we will pay for the schooling that allows you more choices in life – if you live, that is.

Which, when you think about it, is a pretty screwed up deal.  But, they kept up their end of the bargain, and I was faithful. And thankful.

I did not know many middle class or higher kids when I was in the service. We were victims of the economic draft – just poor boys, conscripted to fight a rich man’s war.