MLK Day: Blessed Are the Peacemakers

We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools. - MLK

In honor of MLK Day, I want to share a few resources that may be helpful to you in making peace in both your personal and public life.

The Peacemaker (Ken Sande): I read this book for a grad school class and absolutely loved it. It was transformative. The Peacemaker is a biblically based guide to resolving personal conflict. It has practical, Biblical advice on checking yourself (prior to wrecking yourself), deciding if a conflict is appropriate for confrontation, how to discuss conflict with others, and forgiveness. If you are married, have friends, or would like to interact with other human beings, please read this book! I think it was great for taming my Latin temper. In other words, it made me less of a jackass.

The Art of Forgiving (Lewis B. Smedes): I am lucky in that I’ve never really had anyone do anything horrible to me. If you have, I think that this book may be helpful for you in thinking through what forgiveness means, what it does and doesn’t include, and how it will free you. I’m basing that on in-depth group discussions that I’ve had with others who have read the book. One of the most interesting points in the book to me is that forgiveness requires a wrong, so it requires naming an evil. I think that is very powerful both for the victim and the offender. You can’t truly move on unless you have an event from which to move.

Difficult Conversations (Stone, Patton, Heen): My main takeaway from this book is that “when we fail to share what’s most important to us, we detach ourselves from others and damage our relationships.” In other words, a failure to have a difficult conversations is a failure to value yourself and your friend. You’ve decided that the relationship isn’t worth the effort.

This book also has great practical advice about how to fight. For example, if your main point is, “I want to spend more time with you,” don’t start with or make subtextual arguments like, “Why do you have to go out with your friends all the time?”

I hope these are helpful for you. If you have questions about these or other resources, let me know!

Johnnyswim: La Vie En Rose

Ah, Paris. Ah, acoustic guitars. Ah…young love.

Ho Hey by the Lumineers (Live)

Philosophy of Chris Cornell: Can’t Change Me / No Such Thing

In this series, I’m examining the philosophy found in the songs of Chris Cornell.   

In 1999, Chris released his first solo studio album, Euphoria Morning. One of my favorite tracks of the album is Can’t Change Me.

A younger version of me got this song. I spent many a year brooding over lost angels and comfortable devils in my ear.  You’ve got the tortured, troubled artist with low self-esteem and the angel trying to save him.   The songwriter knows a better version of his life is out there, he sees there’s someone special to share it with, but he can’t get out the door.  He can’t get better.  ”She’s going to change the world, but she can’t change me…Suddenly I see everything that’s wrong with me.  But what can I do? I’m the only thing I really have at all.”   Goodbye, angel.  You can do better.  It’s not necessarily about a girl.  It’s a dream, a friend, a chance.

Eight years later, Chris released Carry On, his second solo album.  It’s first track, No Such Thing, feels like a sequel to Can’t Change Me. The songwriter has realized he can’t just be cool and brooding and wave goodbye.

The song chronicles the songwriter’s existential crisis.  ”I saw the world, it was beautiful, but the rain got in and ruined it all.”  He knows things are not how they should be, and he tries to cope: “I tried to be invisible, it was impossible, even for me.  I laughed at love, it was a big mistake.  In the absence of I was filled with hate.”

Again, I get it.  What do you do with a broken world?  You can try to be numb, but you can’t stay that way.  You can try to avoid real relationships, but that doesn’t make you numb.  It makes you bitter, and it impacts the people around you.

“There’s no such thing as nothing. There’s no such thing as nothing at all.”

That’s one of the more mature and fascinating lyrics I’ve found in rock.  Whether you like it or not, you can’t be invisible or numb in this world.  You can’t be neutral.  You are helping or hurting.  You pick a side.

“I had the brains not the think at all, but the rain got in and I thought too hard on the world. And as usual I slumped into the void.  I tried to make everything meaningless but the rain got in and it made a mess.  ’Cause there’s no such thing as nothing.”

The first half of this song is basically a summary of the book of Ecclesiastes.  If you’re someone who has struggled with depression, you get it.  What do you do with the world?

I really don’t know what the second half of the song is about.  It sort of seems like a Hamlet-esque conversation about suicide or murder, but who knows.  (“My finger’s on the trigger, and I’ll turn off the world.”)

If you identify with the song and struggle with depression, addiction, etc, one line is certainly worth some meditation:

“Maybe to lose or save your soul is a choice of how you fill the hole.”

In the beginning

NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow.  For the initiated folks, that’s short for National Novel Writing Month.  The goal of the event/group/movement is to write a novel of at lest 50,000 words in the month of November.  You aren’t allowed to pre-write anything, although you’re free to outline, work out characters, etc.

I completed NaNoWriMo in 2009 and failed miserably in 2010.  I’m making a concerted effort to finish and finish well this year.  I’m using a schedule that should let me finish without thrashing out the last few thousand words at the 11th hour.

If I remember correctly, the hardest part is the middle ten days.  At the beginning you’re excited, at the end you’re looking forward to finishing.  The middle drags.  You’re wondering what the heck you’re doing, and why you’re doing it for free.  Your initial ideas are already burned off, and you’re stuck in the middle act.  That middle act is about 10 days away from now, so I’m still plenty excited.

If you’re wondering why I’m doing this, here’s my best answer: I want to!  My 2009 product is far from perfect, but two years later I finally figured out what to do with it and I’m looking forward to editing it this winter.  Plus, it feels great to honestly say that I wrote a real-life novel.

If you’ve ever wanted to actually write a novel, maybe now’s the time to do it!  Here are my veteran’s tips on how to make it through the month:

• Write at least fifteen minutes every day.
• Expect it to be hard.  YOU ARE WRITING A NOVEL.
• Have fun.  YOU ARE WRITING A NOVEL!

And now, for a reminder that even when things are hard, life can be pretty great:

Ernest Hemingway Knew What Was Up

In high school, I read The Sun Also Rises.  That book absolutely blew my mind.  Ever since then, I’ve been a Hemingway guy.  I even visited his house in Key West a few years ago.

I’ve been trying to pump myself up for NaNoWriMo this year, and I’ve been trolling through some Hemingway quotes for some clues as to what the hell I’m supposed to do with an empty piece of paper.  Here are some of my favorites:

• Write drunk; edit sober.
• There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
• The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without.
• There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.
• A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.
• Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

My other favorite writer was F. Scott Fitzgerald, mostly for This Side of Paradise.  Here are a few Fitzgerald quotes I like:

• A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.
• First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.
• His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours.
• I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it, on the inside.
• Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.
• To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.

I like those guys.

 

Round Rock, Texas

We live in Round Rock, Texas.  It’s located right outside of Austin, but I don’t think it’s fair to call Round Rock a suburb, since it’s been around since the 1850s.  We love it here.  The people are friendly and diverse, the food is good, and there’s fireworks every Friday.  If you ever come and visit, I’ll probably drag you to a few of my favorite places:

The Blue Oak Grill: This is a local, family-owned restaurant.  It’s very Southern.  Chicken fried steaks, table-sized nacho plates, etc.  Blue Oak is probably most famous for their cornbread made with Round Rock honey.  Our sphere of friends frequent it, so we’re here at least a couple of times a month.  Some of our friends are here a few times a week, and one of our friends lives here.  Not really, but kind of.  Another nice thing about Blue Oak is that they stock Texas beers.

Star Co. Coffee: I’m not usually a big coffee drinker, but I love this place.  Star Co. is located on Main Street in historic downtown Round Rock, which automatically makes it fantastic.  Plus, they only have fair trade coffees, they have live music twice a week, and they don’t mind hosting our bi-weekly men’s Bible study.

Junior’s: Junior’s is a bar and grill also on Main Street.  They’ve got live music every night of the week and plenty of beer.  The back patio/biergarten area is a great evening hangout.

Round Rock Public Library: I spend pretty much every Saturday morning here.  Guess where it is?  Main Street!  It’s a basic library, but the location is great and I love being a part of the local bookworm scene.  (Yes, there’s a scene.)

Dell Diamond: Home of the Friday night fireworks, and the Round Rock Express, the Texas Rangers’ minor league team.  It’s a gorgeous ballpark, and even if you don’t like baseball, you’ll have a good time people watching and enjoying the Texas sunset.  Caveat – it’s miserable if you’re sitting by first base and it’s 109 degrees.

Basically, Round Rock is awesome, and I’m happy to show you around.  So come visit.

Two Good Books

Since we moved to our new little city, I’ve been spending a lot of time at our public library.  Here are the last couple of books that I read.  You might want to check them out.  Get it?  “Check them out.”

Shane by Jack Schaefer: For some reason, I’ve been into the idea of westerns lately.  Sadly, I’d only ever read two before this one – All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy and Lonesome Dove by Larry McCurty. (Do you need to be a Mc____ to write a great western?)  I picked up Shane because I saw it on a book list, and I read the whole thing in about two days.  Granted, it’s a short book, but I couldn’t put it down.  It’s a typical stranger-in-town story, but it’s also got these bizarre Arthurian twists that I didn’t expect at all.  It has some interesting ideas about what a man should look like, and what real love looks like.

Doing Time by Rob Thomas: Yes, that Rob Thomas.  No, not that one.  The Veronica Mars one. I think most of the people who read this blog are familiar with Veronica Mars, but they might not be familiar with the fact that before he did the tv show, VM creator Rob Thomas wrote Young Adult fiction.  Doing Time is a series of vignettes based around some public service taks that students from a Texas high school had to complete.  Like Veronica Mars, it’s witty, honest, a little dark, and in some moments it will cut you to the bone.  My favorite chapters were Shacks from Mansions, Extension Four, Half a Mind, The Laser, and Turtles.  For the record, I think an early version of Veronica Mars is a side character in Extension Four.  There are a lot of gut punch moments in the book, and there are also a few hi-five moments as well.

Country: Behind the Music

After a couple of weeks of listening to country music from various decades, some patterns have emerged.  Here are some things that country music singers love:

• Drankin’
• Whiskey
• Beer
• Girls in tank tops
• Girls in skirts
• Girls in boots
• Cheatin’ men
• Bad men
• Bodies of water that are not an ocean (ex. a river, a stream)
• Family
• USA
• Dancin’
• Memories

Here are some things that country singers dislike:

• Memories
• Cheatin’ men
• Cheatin’ women
• Anti-American sentiment
• Past relationships
• Current relationships
• Clean tires

Current (Texas!) country song that I can’t stop listening to:

Sad, beautiful song.

Country Music

About two weeks ago, an internal switch flipped.  I decided that I like country music.  I thought this was a first for me, but it turns out that I’ve been absorbing country songs for a long time, now.  Here are my current top five country songs that I’ve heard on the radio lately.

• Take This Job and Shove It by Johnny Paycheck.   Every job that I have ever had has been amazing.  But.  I can imagine that if I was ever frustrated with my work situation, this song would be pretty funny.  My favorite part is the flat top reference.  And the way that Johnny says “shove it”.  I feel you, JP.  Hypothetically.
•  Something Like That by Tim McGraw.  Samantha has choreographed this entire song, which is noteworthy.  Anyway, I think the story is fun, and the song reminds me of the glory days of high school.
• Mud on the Tires by Brad Paisley – The guy can tear up a Telecaster, so I’m already a general fan, but I just like this song.  For the record, I don’t actually like mud on my tires, fishing, or shooting ducks.  I do like sleeping bags, camp fires, and getting stuck.
• Ballad of a Southern Man by Whiskey Myers.  Reminds me of Tuesday’s Gone and Jackson Brown.
• Some Girls Do by Sawyer Brown.  Great chorus.  The dancing and lip syncing in this video simply cannot be adequately described.  Lots of stomping and air drums.

I like some newer ones, too, but I don’t know song/band names yet.  I’ll keep you posted.  Keep me posted.