So many of you have come out to shows and church services and college chapels, volunteered at the Compassion table, promoted these events, booked me or told friends or pastors or chaplains to do so.  There’s no way I’d be in 100 cities every year without you guys and there’s no way anyone would come out to see me if you weren’t getting the word out and vouching for me.  Thank you for all you’ve done to release 1700 kids from poverty in Jesus’ name over the last year!

My big mouth and yours make a pretty good team.  Thanks.

It’s been eight years since Becky and I became “Mom and Dad.” Eight years of toys on the floor, Dora on the television, VeggieTales in the CD player, and goldfish crackers and nugget shrapnel smashed in to the van’s carpeting.  Eight years of being woken up with “I have a growing pain” or “I’m thirsty” or “There’s something in my closet.” Eight years of “You’re interrupting - What do you need to say?” Eight years of hurried eating, dashing to get done before the wiggles kick in. Eight year of early rising. Eight years of planning my sentences and life around three little people’s needs.

We were looking forward to the break.  Not from the kids themselves.  We love our kids.  We even like them.  We were - I was - looking forward to doing whatever I want, whenever I want, however I want it done.  How great will it be, I thought, to eat what I want, as leisurely as I want, without asking anyone to eat two more bites.  How great will it be, I thought, to never be interrupted, to always finish a thought.  And how great will it be, I thought, to use the bathroom without anyone knocking on the door and asking me important questions on the whereabouts of a sandal, permission to eat a popsicle or whether I’m going number one or number two.

How great.

How boring, it turns out.

Don’t get me wrong - I thoroughly enjoyed eating at a restaurant last night that my kids would hate.  I’ve loved listening to my playlist in the van, never being interrupted, and going number one or number two without telling anyone else which it was.  It’s been everything I dreamed it would it.

But it’s also been quiet. Too quiet.  And maybe, in time, if I knew my kids weren’t coming back, I’d get used to the lack of sounds, the clean floors, the freedom.  But right now, only two days in, I’m a little uncomfortable with it all - like I’ve been dropped into someone else’s life: My mom and dad’s maybe.

I think Becky’s feeling the same way.  But she doesn’t write about the uneasy moments of life.  She paints stuff.

Yesterday, we painted a room.  Today, we’ll paint another.  She’s cleaning out the garage right now.  Painting trim and replacing light plates later.  There’s furniture to be rearranged.  Stuff to be put together.  Lots to clean.  We all cope in our own way.  I prefer bacon or Ben and Jerry’s or words.

For those of you with grown kids who’ve now moved out, how long did it take to get a new routine?  Do you ever get used to the quiet?  What’d you do to make that transition?  I’ll be sure to come back and read your comments when my kids are grown and gone for good - sometime in my late fifties.

At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, during the Age of Enlightenment, Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations.  It’s earned him the title “father of economics” and it greatly influenced the founders of America with its argument that free market capitalism was the best economic system available for a society prone to selfishness.

Adam Smith wasn’t just an economist.  In fact, at the time, economics wasn’t its own field yet.  The best I can figure it was a branch of philosophy mixed with sociology and even a little religion.  Adam Smith, for instance, was a professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow - not some mathematician or finance guru working as a prof in a business school. That doesn’t discredit him, of course, but it’s something to keep in mind when reading his thoughts: They’re as much a prescription for morality or theology as they are for business practices.

Adam Smith believed, for instance, that in order for a free market society to prosper, individuals must look out for their own self interests foremost.  “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”

The butcher, for instance, wants to stay in business so he can feed his own family, so he works hard, deals fairly, charges a competitive price so that his business and his family will prosper.  Doing business this way is best for the customer also, Smith argued, and for the whole of society.  It produces the best product at the best price.

Those to the right in American politics sometimes argue for a unregulated less-regulated free-er free market system than the one we currently have, making arguments that have grown out of Adam Smith’s philosophy.  But Adam Smith’s examples come from an imaginary world in which butchers have hearts uncorrupted by the Fall.  Real people - real butchers - have a dual nature: one half wanting to behave as Christ and the other wanting to have the power, wealth and position of Christ and to do whatever is necessary to obtain it.

If a butcher were to actually look out for his own self interests first, he could do that by paying an unjust wage to his workers, lying about the quality and origins of his products, making promises for immediate gain with no intention to keep them, etc.  There is no free market because no one participating in the market is spiritually free.

Adam Smith, like I said earlier, came up with his ideas during the Age of Enlightenment - a period characterized in part by radical optimism about the human spirit, denying that all men are born spiritually powerless and corrupt.  Ronald Reagan sounded a lot like a modern day Adam Smith sometimes.  He was very inspiring but very wrong when speaking about the inherent goodness and strength of mankind: “A people free to choose will always choose peace” or “I know in my heart that man is good” or “There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect. ”

No, sir.  A people free to choose will be torn between peace and selfish ambition at all costs.  The heart of man is not good but impoverished, wicked, arrogant, untrustworthy.  His heart is a barrier to justice and equality.

Rush Limbaugh, in a very Reaganesque way, often contrasts “liberals” with “conservatives” by saying that liberals believe the worst about people and conservatives believe the best. If that were true, neither side would be thinking very biblically.  Truth is, every Christian is a mixture of the best of God and the worst of himself.

Adam Smith was wrong.  Free market capitalism might just be the best economic system the world has ever seen.  I assume so, but what do I know about economics?  I’m a musician. But it doesn’t produce the rosy results Smith argued it would either.  A society full of Smith’s imaginary butchers will not benefit the whole of society because the butcher is not inherently good and self-regulating.  He does not naturally pay a living wage to his workers.  He does not naturally keep his promises.  He does not naturally tell the truth at all times.  He’s just like me. And just like you.  If we serve ourselves with no outside restraints placed upon us, we’ll cheat to get more and horde what what we get while the distance between us and the have nots widens.

Folks on the left might think they can use this reality as an argument for increased government regulation.  But the regulator is human as well, just as corruptible.  He also has a history of cheating to get more (power, money, fame, influence) and hoarding what he gets or using it to do more harm.

Or maybe those on the left could use the sinful nature of the butcher to argue for more government spending and services for the have-nots allegedly left in his wake.  But those who are served by government programs have the same heart as the butcher and are just as likely to squander and abuse help as the butcher is his wealth.  And then there are those who aren’t in need of help who will cheat and lie a corruptible system to get it anyway. How may of us have known someone able to work who has taken advantage of the social services system, decided not to work and lived off of programs funded by the butcher’s taxes.

If Smith, Reagan and Limbaugh are all wrong, then so are Roosevelt, Obama, and Wallis.  This error bites all sides of the isle.  Doesn’t it?

Adam Smith’s error may come from his understanding of God.  Adam Smith is believed to have been a deist - someone who thinks “The Great Architect” built the universe but then walked away from it, never to return, never getting mixed up in human affairs, never entering the human heart, never putting on skin and becoming a man for man’s sake, never sending Spirit to guide and teach, never to lead his People to be creators of equality and justice and, well, regulation.

But we’re not deists.  Are we?

And nice shorts.

Then one day I sat down at a piano and picked out the main riff from “Push It” by Salt and Pepa on the piano.  Then “Peter Gunn”.  Eventually, “You’re Not Alone” by Chicago.  Girls liked that one.  I got serious about the piano.

“You’re such a good sax player,” my mom said. “I wish you wouldn’t change to piano.”

In high school I stuck with the saxophone but saved up my money to buy a keyboard.  I started writing music.  Then words.  Then, just after graduation, my sister-in-law Kathy got a guitar.  I picked it up one day, fiddled with it a little and soon I bought my own. “You’re such a good piano player,” mom said. “I wish you wouldn’t change to guitar.”

I studied music composition in college, making treks to Nashville between semesters to learn about the music business and find a job - any job - in it.  And I did.  After graduation I started an internship with a music publishing company, which led to an actual paying job, which led - in a roundabout way - to a record deal.  For the last nine years I’ve been a piano and guitar playing singer-songwriter.

But, as mom knows by now, things change.

I signed a book deal last year - or was it the year before that? - and just never wrote the book. Why is a long boring pathetic and very personal story. But the publisher still wants me to write and I feel more and more compelled and encouraged to do so.  Also, Compassion international hired me last year to start a new blogging venture with them and from time to time there’s talk of me being more involved with their ministry in some way.  Also, for a while now I’ve thought about going to school. And I get more and more opportunities to speak, which is great since there’s no luggage or cables, background singers, dancers, pyrotechnics or leather pants involved with that sort of thing.

Last week I told my mom and dad all this, that there’s a possibility, at least, that I won’t be a singer guy forever. And mom said, “I wish you wouldn’t change...”

A few days before that conversation I had an important one with Gresham.  I was putting something away in the attic when I spotted a souvenir from one of my past lives.  I pulled down the case, unsnapped it and pulled out my saxophone, the smell of abandoned brass taking me back to the pawn shop where I first played it and to the band hall where I learned to play it well.  I ran my fingers over the pearl keys and clacked them up and down, inspecting the old girl for symptoms of neglect.

“Is that a trumpet?” Gresham asked.

The neck piece slid into the body.  The mouthpiece slid onto the neck.  And I played.

I played “Blessed Assurance” while Gresham plugged his ears with thumbs.  A few jazz licks sleeping the years away in my fingers somewhere came out with surprising ease. Chromatic scale. Pentatonic scale. Major. Minor. Our old high school fight song. A sonata from college.

The whole thing reminded me of a line I heard once: We don’t change.  We just become more clearly ourselves.

“I like the guitar better,” Gresham said as I snapped the case up and slid it back between the Christmas tree and a card table and closed the attic door.

Me too.

I thought I was just a wuss.  An overheated out-of-shape wuss.  Until a couple weeks ago I hadn’t exercised in a couple months.

No doubt being a wuss was a factor in last night’s hurling, but this morning I woke up feeling awful-er.  Maybe I’m pregnant, Becky says.  Wait a second…

Oddly, feeling this bad is making me feel better about my physical fitness level.  Perhaps I’m not as wussified as I thought.  (Shut up.) Perhaps there’s an actual virus going on here.  Please, God, let me have a virus.

So, all that to say, today is Becky’s day off.  She’ll be sippin’ sweet tea somewhere by herself.  I have the kids and a day filling up with stuff to do with them.  And my stomach is angry with me.  So today I won’t be blogging anything of substance as previously promised.  And if you sent me e-mail or called over the weekend, I won’t be getting back to you on that either.  I’ll be (slowly) playing with my kids and lying down a lot.  (How do you get an eight year-old to take a nap?)

How you doin’?

Maybe it was the larger than usual crowd - at least 800 people.  Maybe it was having something so momentous to celebrate.  Or maybe Compassion hires a lot of Pentecostals.  I don’t know what it was, but these people were very loud and very fun.

So loud that I couldn’t hear my monitors over their singing.

So fun that I was far more sarcastic than usual. And before noon even!

It’s no secret I’m a bit of a fan of Compassion’s president, Wess Stafford.  I got to travel with him to Ethiopia a couple years ago and to know him better.  He’s an engaging storyteller - animated, witty, moved or amused as if he’s never told his tales before.  He’s an inspiring guy - very smart and with quite the resume but never self-promoting or behaving the least bit entitled or even aware of his own stature.  Best of all, he doesn’t take himself too seriously - or me either.

I can’t stand being introduced at a concert or other gig with a list of my so-called accomplishments, or by someone reading from a record company-generated bio that greatly exaggerates my abilities and worth.  It’s painfully embarrassing. Incredibly awkward.  It feels - and I don’t know why - wrong.

Wess knows this about me.  Or maybe he feels the same way sometimes. I was so relieved when, after introducing me with a few kind words, he unleashed his full wit with a solid sarcastic jab.  He told the story of how he spoke at Northwestern University a few months back - for a few days - and not a single child was sponsored.  Then I came the day after he left the school and over a hundred kids were sponsored.  He did all the work, he said, but I got all the credit.  He threw his hands up in feigned disgust with me and stormed off the stage.  It was much funnier in person than in text, I swear.

Of course, I retaliated, not sure how the folks at Compassion would like me taking a shot at their revered leader. But thankfully they laughed. They laughed hard. As hard as they sang.

I might be reading too much into all this but I wonder if it says something profound about the folks who gathered for chapel Friday morning.  Wess, even though he’s their president, was not the focus of celebration.  He said very little.  There was no standing ovation or tribute to him of any kind.  There was no credit given to him for one million children being sponsored.  Instead, everyone within Compassion celebrated one another and their God who is greater than poverty.  Obedient sponsors were cheered.  Marketers, spokespeople, donors, board members, project workers, every employee - these folks shared equally in recognition.  It was a truly egalitarian affair - no one and no one’s efforts more appreciated than another’s.

Oh, I know there are folks who revere Wess and other leaders at Compassion.  I know.  I know. But these leaders don’t seem to revere themselves.  And that’s astounding.  If ever there was a group of leaders who have accomplished something extraordinary, who would be given a pass for patting themselves on the back just this once, it would be these guys.

Instead, we laughed. At each other. With each other.

And we sang.  To the only one worthy of praise.

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By the way, here’s the best Compassion-related video ever created...in my opinion - shown for the first time at the chapel service.

More from me on Wednesday.

On Sunday, my friend Andy said something else that’s stayed with me: Throughout most of human history people have spent most of their time putting food on the table, clothes on their back and a roof over their head.

While I was at the American Museum of Natural History last week, I saw a film about space.  It was projected above us on a dome ceiling.  The film began by talking about the earth and how the moon was created from a collision. Then the “camera” zoomed out slowly to show the vast sea of darkness our marble of a planet is floating in.  It zoomed out farther and farther until the dots above us were no longer stars but entire galaxies the size of our own.  Robert Redford’s voice told us how far our galaxy is from its nearest neighbor.

Small isn’t the word for how I felt.  I felt insignificant. At the same time I felt afraid of God, of his magnitude, the scope of his knowledge, the size of his hands.

I imagined myself stepping out of a tent three thousand years ago to spend my day meeting three basic needs.  My to-do list would have been succinct: Get food, find shelter, make clothes. I wonder if spending every day standing between my family and death would have made me stand a little taller - though still humbly - under the sky each night, knowing that I’d played an important part in the day’s creation.

Then there’s me.

At no other time in history have so few been responsible for feeding so many.  Someone else made the tools that someone else used to plant the seeds that someone else harvested and someone else took to market and someone else purchased and processed and someone else packaged and someone else put on the shelf for me to simply choose and pay for. I feed my entire family by driving to a store. And I only do this once a week. I prepare that food for them by pushing a handful of buttons on a stove or microwave and waiting a few minutes.

Buying clothes is even easier.  Again, someone did all the work: harvested the materials, processed them into textiles and thread, sewed them together and put them on a rounder at the mall.  Or, in a warehouse somewhere that I “shop” by clicking a mouse.  I could clothe my entire family without leaving my laptop. And, if I wanted to, I could do this only once a year or even more seldom.

And shelter?  More expensive than food and clothing, sure, but just as easy to “make.” I can put a roof over my family, and walls around them too, in a few minutes to a few days.  Motels, hotels, RVs, mobile homes, apartments, condos, houses - there’s no shortage of shelter readymade for us to choose from.

Amazingly, I woke up this morning with every one of these basic needs totally met: food, clothing, roof.  Before the day even began I was already unnecessary to its completion. No wonder the sky scares me. It’s a reminder of how pointless we really are these days.

Don’t feel that way? I dare you to face Robert Redford and his little film while holding your to do list.  Stare up at the cosmos and shout out the goals of your day with all the enthusiasm you think they deserve: Pick up dry cleaning! Buy cat food and bread! Call mom! Turn in TPS report! Softball practice!… and feel the stars’ laughter.

At no other time in history have other people been so capable of meeting my needs for me. Strangers are doing all my life-alteringly significant chores and leaving me with nothing to do but wake up every day and simply ask “What do I want to do?”

You and I have more time than anyone has ever had.  More education.  More money too.  So now what?  What will today be about?  And how will it make us feel when we stand under the stars?

Nowadays a tall building and a Hampton Inn aren’t all that thrilling. Neither is herding three kids through an airport at five in the morning.  But to my kids?  According to Gresham (age 6) today is “the best day ever.” And we’re not even in New York yet.

We’re heading to the big big city for a couple days to see the Statue of Liberty, eat dirty water dogs from a street vendor, check out the American Museum of Natural History and, yes, spend the night in a hotel.  Fancy.

I won’t be blogging. I’ll be technology-free the whole time...except for the Magic Fingers. (And possibly some Twittering.)

If you’re new here, here’s the arrangement:  Brian is my brother-in-law.  Our wives are sisters.  I live in a cul-de-sac and Brian lives in the neighboring cul-de-sac, a short walk from us.  This is the stage for our community, sometimes referred to here as the cult-de-sac.

Lots of people come and go from our front yards. Redneck Neighbor moved his family to the country where they can raise cows and chickens and be, well, more redneck without home owner association interference.  Mr. Wizard started his PhD and then took a job with NASA and just doesn’t have the time anymore for sitting in a lawn chair with us. Brody started his own successful business and that’s taken him away from us too. J, an eight year-old who’s an important part of the basketball games in my driveway every afternoon, is moving soon.

A couple in my cul-de-sac who’ve been good neighbors for a while now are becoming good friends.  A family from South Africa just moved in across the street. Their sons have given my girls the giggles and me a reason to buy a shotgun. And there are houses up for sale all around us that new neighbors will soon fill and hopefully, in time, they’ll bring their chairs over to our shade and let their kids run wild with ours.

At the risk of sounding cynical though, these new friends won’t be around forever. Our society has us all in constant transition. Jobs, mortgage companies, marriages, the McRib - almost everything is here today and gone within a couple years at the most. Almost everything.

Yesterday, me, Becky and the kids took bikes, basketballs and banana pudding over to Uncle Brian’s and Aunt Amy’s front yard to play with the six cousins.  We sat and talked in lawn chairs like we’ve done for years.  Brian taught my six year-old son the arts of basketball and smacktalk simultaneously - ”You need a break? Thirsty? Want a bottle?” Our little girls fought over scooters and eventually settled into drawing princesses on the driveway with chalk.  Our older girls played school and tried to catch a rabbit.

This is the way it is almost every day.  As I type here at the kitchen table I can here Nathaniel - one of the cousins - and my son Gresham bouncing basketballs and plotting what they’ll ask me to make for lunch.  My girls are at Brian’s house playing dress-up or something.

I’m gonna be a little sappy here.  It’s extremely comforting for me to know that no matter what changes or who comes in and out of our life, the people on Brian’s lawn last night, my family, are always there. Always. I know I can’t run them off. I could make them mad, or disappoint, sure - and I have - but I couldn’t make them go away entirely. I haven’t been able to yet.

They’re not “friends” accepted with the click of a mouse.  They’re not the kind of “community” that follows me on Twitter or reads my blog. Our connection isn’t work, meetings, softball or something else transient. Our connection is each other. This is unchanging face-to-face community in an age where almost nothing else is.

I’m an idealist I know, but I really think, God willing, we could be sitting around in our eighties gumming banana pudding and watching (great) grandkids run around us in the front yard. Brian and I will have matching hairdos by then and I’m sure most of the conversation will be about what hurts and what needs replacing, but I can see it happening: Brian and Amy, Becky and me, still getting together under shade trees to laugh and remember everyone who came in and out of our lives over the years.