Christmas Anyway...

Christmas Anyway...

Sitting here this morning thinking about Christmas. How it was the mid-year lifeline for me when I was a kid. My year was neatly broken into two pieces, like a saltine cracker.

Summer and my little league family... and Christmas. In between was school, which was wonderful (I was very blessed with great teachers at every stop along the way) but at home it was suffocating. I always say "I didn't have a home...I had an address."

But for whatever reason, Christmas was a two week break from the overwhelming nature of the house I grew up in. It was like someone called a truce in a war. I think it was because we had people coming to visit over the holidays and my mother and her husband wanted to put on a game face and look like they were actually happy 52 weeks a year.

Whatever... it have me a break from the real them for a couple weeks and I'd take it any way I could.

Plus...I really really love the holidays. I love every holiday that hits from Halloween to Orthodox Christmas (Epiphany)

Thanksgiving is really just the opening act.

I loved neighbors and friends visiting. I loved singing in the school Christmas concert (when you could still call it that) I loved learning about Hanukkah in school and celebrating with my Jewish friends. I loved watching every single Christmas special on TV. The cartoon ones and clay-mation ones for kids and the adult ones, like Bing Crosby, or Bob Hope during the war. Most of the time they bored me but I watched dutifully because it was Christmas and that's what you did. (It's amazing how much of those old classics I absorbed and how much I love them now)

I loved being a paper boy at Christmas and my customers giving me a card and a tip. Sure, I appreciated the money but what I really loved was the recognition..."Thanks for doing such a good job." I didn't hear that at my address.

I loved giving gifts to my teachers. I loved flipping through the Sears wish book and circling the things I dreamed of.

I loved singing carols and hearing Christmas music on the radio. I loved the way a tree smelled. I loved thinking that maybe this would be the year that this two week reprieve would somehow extend itself 50 more weeks and things could be better at the address. I soaked it up and threw myself into it as much as I could. Like I was charging a battery that had to get me through the next four months.

Christmas got me through to spring. Spring got me out of the house more. That's how I endured.

I think I took a little piece of each Christmas and stored it in my heart when I was a kid. A few memories each year that I filed away to use as a template for the Christmases I would one day have as an adult.

As a dad.

Even before I got married and before I had Daisy, when I was single and had my first apartment the first thing I did was have a Christmas party.

I'm sure it's why I always decorated so much. And got so into the season... especially after Daisy was born. It was to make sure that she had happy memories of Christmas. And it was to remind myself, I suppose, that Christmas was still as special as it always has been.

I have a photographic memory. I'm very visual. Of all those "photos" I hold onto in my heart, so many of them have twinkling lights and tinsel and smell like pine. And I wanted my daughter to have the same snapshots.

But you get older... and within those photos in your memory are a few that you created. The ones you'd always hoped would develop and take shape. The ones that were more plans for the future than memories of the past.

You wait for them but the picture never develops. Or it's blurry and out of focus.

Or you missed the moment and the picture just isn't there.

When you put your heart and soul into Christmas every year, these pictures are hard to take. "It wasn't supposed to look like this. It wasn't supposed to be like this..."

Even that is a lesson from Christmas past. Sometimes you didn't get the thing you most wanted. So you lived with it and opened the things you did get, and it was Christmas anyway.

I have to admit that this year its been harder to get into the season as I usually do. I wrestled with just putting up the tree this year. I didn't want to watch Christmas shows or listen to my Christmas playlist.

It took a few extra days but I did it. A few movies and a handful of songs and Christmas showed up, as usual.

Christmas doesn't look like I dreamed it would when I was a kid and thinking about "someday." But it's Christmas. It's probably the only legacy I actually have from my childhood that's worth hanging on to... and making better.

So...I did it anyway. So far Christmas is 60-0 against the Grinch and old Ebenezer. It still doesn't look like the one I hold in my heart... maybe it never will.

But it's Christmas anyway.

And that's enough.

Merry Christmas y'all 

I Miss Church

 I Miss Church     

5:30 on Monday morning. Sitting here in my living room before heading off to my morning walk.

Thinking about church, and how long it's been since I've attended and how much I miss it, and how much I am getting used to not going.

     All of these things are not good. I shouldn't ever "miss" church. I shouldn't have gotten to the point where I gave up years ago on ever finding a church I can become a part of ever again. I shouldn't have gotten to the point where I think about going this week, and the sad feeling of disappointment falls over me instantly. The feeling of "Why bother?" The feeling that the same old thing will happen...I will go, I will be excited and wistful and hopeful. And then the same horrible, formulaic service will unfold before me. 

     The same worthless music...intended to do nothing more than illicit emotions from the listeners. The "Big Show." The lights will be dimmed. The smoke will be blowing across the stage. The "Worship Band" will do every nauseating star-turn that you'd see at a pop concert. The "Worship Pastor" will come out, trying his best to be Bono from U2, only with a voice that at best sounds like a woman. Or a man trying to sound like a woman while trying to sing and not wake a baby. 
     The lights will be low...like a concert, not a church. There will be video walls and rotating colored lights and in some churches "praise dancers." It's a heck of a production!

     The songs will be the same vapid, pointless songs they have been for about 20 years now. How God is an ocean, or a hurricane, or a blue sky. or some other analogy that doesn't even come CLOSE to representing who He really is or what He is actually like. The songs about Jesus will be nothing more than songs about some high schooler's dreamy boyfriend. They'll breathily tell me how they love the way He loves them. If Jesus is ever actually mentioned by name, it will be only in passing. He is typically reduced to the great ethereal "whatever, bro!" The hip dude from the Big Lebowski who simply abides. 

     Any mention of difficulty or burden is done in code. "Stormy waters" or "The Desert" or "Darkness."  Nobody will ever talk about any real, tangible pain or trouble. They can't. They aren't allowed. It's against the code of "worship" music. 

     Then, of course, the worship pastor...skinny jeans and beard and goofy glasses (I swear Warby Parker must have an actual frame they call "Worship Pastor" because they all have them) will tell me how he can't hear me. He'll ask me how I'm doing, he'll tell me they are about to "usher us into the presence of God." And he'll quote selected portions of verses making it sound like the only way to spiritual victory is through singing these horrible songs louder. It's not about him! (He reminds us) It's about showing God how much we love Him! I guess singing louder fools Him into believing something our hearts betray most of the time.

     I will endure this for forty-five minutes. The entire time my soul will be thrashing inside me, wanting to scream out "This is NOT who God is!" But I can't, so I sit there. Or I got to the lobby and try to distract myself until the music...the performance, stops. 

     And that's what it is, really. A performance. A show. How do I know? Ask someone about their church. Listen closely to the order of importance of the things they love about it. The music will be right there at the top. Not the sermons. Not the impact on their lives. Not the changes wrought under the conviction of the Holy Spirit. The music. The atmosphere. "I feel so loved there..." Loved by who? 
The people? Is that why you go there...because the people love you? Or do you sense the presence of GOD there and HIS love? There is a difference. 
     Nobody ever tells you how the church CHANGED them. Words like "conviction" or "sin" aren't even used. In fact..they're banished in a lot of these churches. "Oh you can't talk about sin...people will stop coming!' Or they'll CHANGE! Have you considered that? Have you considered that your effort to make church a "Hospital for sinners" (which I agree with whole heartedly) requires SURGERY sometimes? Or Chemo? Or rehabilitation? Have you considered that a Hospital often causes pain during the healing process? No? Then you aren't really a "Hospital for sinners." You're a methadone clinic. "Here...take this drug to help you get off that other drug."

     All of which has left me entirely uninterested in going back. It's not church anymore. Not really. It's something else. Something less. At least for me. It's wimpy men who have no idea what to do with that Y chromosome except apologize for it. It's pastors so consumed with being liked and being perceived as "loving people as they are" that they never bring them to a place where they consider they shouldn't be as they are anymore.
     It's forty-five minutes of torture to start things off. So much so that by the time the pastor starts his sermon, I am already gone. I tuned out. The concert sucked and I stopped listening. This God you sing these songs about...I can't find Him anywhere in scripture and apparently all He does is love me, so things like "circumspect living" and "wrestling in prayer" and "enduring faith" have no value to Him. 
     If I'm okay as I am...why do I need to be here? That's the question I can no longer answer. 
So I miss church. I miss it badly. I miss belonging. I miss being seen and known by people who aren't strangers to me. But I fear that church is gone.  Reduced to a chapter in a "History of Christianity" text book that my grandchildren will read in college one day, and make the comment to the professor; "My grandad told me about this era of The Church."  I hope I'm wrong, But I'm not.

   I want to go back. Make no mistake...I love God deeply. I have not "wandered off" or become "backslidden" or cold hearted. My faith is battle tested and worn on the edges and too ingrained in my life to ever betray. But I hate being treated like a child. 

     I want to offer what I have. I want to teach a Sunday school class, and serve a role in the church. I'm not looking to just go and be entertained. But I can't find any place that wants to do any more than entertain me. So I stay home. 

And nobody notices.

NOTE: There are good churches out there. I know of some. But they are few and far between. So no...I am not dismissing "The Church" just the church industry.

        

Charleston, and Barack Obama’s America

I’m weary this morning. Weary and angry and sad.

It’s been three days since those horrifying events in Charleston. I still can’t comprehend someone walking into a church, spending an hour with the members, and then killing them. I’m grieving because these people were my fellow Americans, and they were my brothers and sisters in Christ.

But I can’t even grieve properly anymore. I can’t focus and reflect and pray and feel the sorrow that comes with something like this. I can’t, because I was immediately put on the defensive. Our President, the man tasked with leading all of us and guiding all of us, attacked most of us.

In the very first words he spoke after this tragedy, he drew blood from the majority. He attacked us…the very people he claims to lead. He attacked our core and our standing in the world. He attacked my grieving.

I couldn’t even deal with the sorrow and hurt I was feeling, because this man –and his minions who took up the rally cry immediately thereafter- prevented me from doing so. They had me instantly on the defensive.

Before I could deal with how Charleston affected me, I had to defend myself. I had to defend my First and Second Amendment rights. I had to defend my Faith. I had to defend my conservative political views. I had to defend my character against charges that I am a racist and a bigot and full of hate. I had to do this because I didn’t immediately call for the removal of the second amendment and the confiscation of guns from the citizenry. I had to do this because I feel that if someone had been present with the capability to shoot back, Dylann Roof likely would not have killed those nine people in that beautiful Charleston Church. Doubtless he would have killed the first one. Maybe he would kill another in the gun battle. Maybe some of those who were killed would have instead been wounded. But they would have been alive. Alive is always better. That’s how I feel. That’s what the evidence supports. In every circumstance, cities and states with open carry laws, and with reasonable concealed carry laws, have far lower incidences of gun violence. One point is plain and indisputable: Dylan Roof committed this atrocity in a church because he knew there would be no one there who could shoot back. South Carolina law prohibits the possession of a gun inside a church. In more practical terms, South Carolina law identifies churches as targets for crazed killers. This is why he didn’t open fire in a police station. To debate this point is myopic.

I had to defend myself against charges of being a racist, because I maintained that, while Dylann Roof is clearly a racist and verbalized that as the reason for his actions, this murder is not indicative of the state of race relations in this country.  This man does not represent how white America feels about Black America. Period. But there are people who want to make that the narrative…who need to make that the narrative because it keeps us divided. One of those people happens to be the president.

So Thursday morning, while I was driving from Virginia to Delaware to visit family for a few days, the president made his statement. Within 30 seconds he was warning that he blames guns. He attacked the Second amendment as the real killer. For good measure, he threw the entire country under the bus on the world stage. He made the statement that “These things don’t happen with the same frequency in other civilized countries…” The unmistakable implication is that America is a savage nation overrun with gun-toting nutcases and the rest of the world gets it right where we get it wrong…again.

I’m not surprised by this from Obama anymore. But I’ll never get used to it. I’ll never get used to hearing our president attacking the country and the people that he claims to lead. I’ll never get used to him consistently berating our nation openly. I’ll never get used to the outright disdain he holds for this country. He never even waited for the nation to grieve. He never tried to comfort or console. He went straight for the guns again. And he did it by stating that we are less of a nation because we have incidents like this and other countries don’t. He backed his play with a lie. The facts are that we don’t have more incidents like this than other “civilized” countries. On average, when scaled to the size of America’s population, gun violence is about the same in other nations, even when gun controls are tighter.

I could write about that, but I don’t want to. Not today. The gun control battle will wage regardless of this event.

I want to talk about the division.

We have never been more divided as a nation than we have been since this man took office in 2009. We’ve never been more closeted and segmented and prone to stay in clusters of only those we know and trust and who hold similar ideals. We’ve never been wearier of fighting with each other over things that never caused such battles before.

We’ve never been less of a community.

Since Barack Obama came to office, we have been divided along racial lines, religious lines, political lines, lifestyle lines, income lines, gender lines, geographic lines, parenting-skill lines, and patriotism lines. Those who disagree with him are labeled haters, bigots, ignorant, racist, crazy, unwilling to compromise, unwilling to listen. When you spend half your time defending against lies…you get tired.

By early Thursday morning, before I had even begun to digest what had happened the night before, this man and his followers had already attacked my right to own a gun. Then they attacked my defense of that right. Then they attacked me for defending that right, saying that my defending that right only shows that I am a hate filled nut job who thinks we should all be shooting at each other. Then they attacked my faith, because I said that if someone in the church had a gun, maybe this thing is far less than it became. They attacked me because they said “Nobody should have to carry a gun to church out of fear.” Which is a good point, except it denies reality. A gun in church lessens the fear. At least the part where you find yourself helpless when the madman pulls out a gun and starts shooting. They questioned what kind of Christian I am who thinks that way.

They attacked me for disagreeing with this president. I’m just a racist, they claimed. If George Bush had said what he said, I’d agree with him. First of all, no I wouldn’t. I hold fast to my Second amendment rights, regardless of who is in office. Secondly…George Bush wouldn’t have said it. Bush, Reagan. Clinton, all the Presidents who have come before, showed the dignity of the office by never politicizing a tragedy during those early days of grief. They knew that the role of President sometimes requires decorum enough to hold their tongue and lead the nation in calm mourning, knowing the time would come to deal with the political side of the event. But not this president.

This man sees every event as a chance to advance his cause. Those lives, those precious beautiful, faith-filled, godly lives taken in that church in Charleston last Wednesday, only mattered to him insomuch as they gave him another opportunity to advance his cause, and to belittle this country on the world stage.

The attackers moved from the guns to the flag. There is a Confederate flag flying at the state capitol in South Carolina. It’s been the center of many a debate. For many, it’s a rock of offense. Personally I have never understood the reverence paid to that flag. But I defend the right of people to fly it. The attempt to connect the flag to the shooting is an outrage. Two inanimate objects a flag and a gun, got together and colluded to kill nine people in a church. That, ultimately, is the theory they have put forth. And if I don’t buy it, if I hold to the belief that Dylann Roof is simply a very evil man with a dark heart and who is obviously not sane…I am a hater, a bigot, a right-wing nut-job, an ultra-conservative who wants gunfights in the streets, and especially…a racist.

I’m none of those things. I’m a conservative but not far right. I’m a patriot who values this country far more than anyone’s ideology. I’m a dad who wants his daughter to be safe when she goes to church or school or the mall. I’m a realist who knows…who knows, that evil exists in this world and that rather than trust evil, insane people to obey gun laws and drug laws and driving laws, (because they never do) I need to proactively protect myself and my family.

I’m a patriot. I love this country like it was my own family. A piece of my American family is broken and hurting in Charleston, South Carolina right now and I have only just begun to be able to process my grief. Because my president wouldn’t let me for the first few days. I was too busy defending myself, between my own tears, against claims that somehow I wanted this tragedy.

That’s really what they are saying. That any of us who don’t agree with the solution, endorses the problem.

Shame on you Barack Obama. Shame on you for dividing us once again in the face of such a tragedy. Shame on you for fostering such an attitude in this country that people like me can’t even share in the grief of our fellow Americans and brothers and sisters in Christ, because you seized the event for your own purposes and your minions ran with the ball from there.

Grief and anger lie side-by-side to begin with. A president should not be taking advantage of that to divide a nation further, and move his agenda forward.

Charleston, South Carolina…the tears of millions are falling all around this country for the horror you suffered. We’re not bigots, not racist, not gun-crazies, not haters, not ultra anything. We’re Americans.  You are our family. The only thing that should matter right now is the grief we feel and the coming together this should engender.

Instead, we’re being divided by the very people who claim to be uniters. Underneath the rhetoric being tossed around like grenades…there beats a broken heart in this country.

God bless us. God help us. God save us.

NEWS

Hey gang. I am condensing my blogs to my personal website.
My web page is
Craig's Page

You can also find it at www.craigdaliessio.com and www.playmymusicloud.com

I will leave this up and occasionally post blog articles here, but the majority of my writing will be on the main page from now on.

Thanks gang!

Great new blog I highly recommend...

So I've been here in Virginia for nine months now. A while back I met this guy...and he is hysterical. Hysterical in that he is from my neck of the woods, and he reminds me of my own Italian family. He has a crazy story going on right now with his nosy neighbor across the street. Give Joe a read. It's great stuff.

http://joeytrucks.blogspot.com/

JoePa's 409

Last week, the news broke that the NCAA would lift most of the sanctions on Penn State, brought about by the Sandusky issue.
I have long been a Joe Paterno fan. I quoted him a few times in my first book, ("Harry Kalas Saved My Life") and remain an unabashed PSU fan because of his legacy.
My heart ached when the story broke. I defended Joe to the hilt, often receiving terrible ridicule because of my vocal support -for what it was worth- of Coach Paterno. Then the Freeh report was released and I took the bait like so many folks did. Through doctored emails, misquotes, and disinformation, I was swayed to the "Joe did wrong" side. I didn't think he'd done much wrong, mind you, but I thought he had done something. Most of what I saw as Joe's wrongdoing was based on one little comment. In the report, it was mentioned that Joe did, in fact, follow up and ask about the Sandusky matter soon after the initial incident in 1999. (As it turns out, this was misrepresented) Contrasting that to his testimony 12 years later, before the Grand Jury, where he said he did not ask about it again, caused me to believe Joe lied. Two words I could never imagine connecting in one sentence.
It broke my heart to admit to what I believed to be fact at the time. I even understood the vacating of the wins. A friend made the case that covering up the crimes gave Joe a recruiting advantage. To be honest, after months of ferociously defending JoePa to folks on social media and call-in sports shows in Nashville, where I was living at the time, I was just tired of it and heartbroken that my hero had done wrong.
I didn't want to believe he had done wrong, and I admitted it through clenched teeth. But honestly, somewhere in the depths of my heart, I was hoping that facts would emerge one day that exonerated Joe. Because I always believed him to be a good and decent man. I don't bestow the term "Hero" on many people and Joe had been a Hero of mine for most of my life.
During the three years since his death and the subsequent release of the Freeh report, his family defended Joe's honor, quietly, carefully and with great dignity. They did not whine. They did not make light of the victim's plight in the least. They kept alive Joe's great legacy of charitable works on PSU's campus and they gently fought back against what turns out to be a vile, despicable, purposeful misrepresentation of facts, and even a manufacture of false evidence out of whole cloth.
They didn't rant and rage, even thought, in hindsight, they could have. They had the faith and the foresight to simply stand on Joe's character and legacy and believe that right would triumph in the end.
It did.
Joe's restoration was evidence of the over reach and malicious hypocrisy of the NCAA, the horrible scapegoating by the BOT of Penn State, and the seeming glee within the media to indict Joe, simply because all of his life he has been a good man. This may sound outrageous but I watched as very quickly the story moved from the monstrous evil of Jerry Sandusky, to the portrayal of Joe Paterno as the real culprit. It was a travesty. The handringing of those who have waited half a lifetime just to sink their teeth into the flesh of a man they disliked solely because he was a good man.
It's not a stretch. Look at our society these days. Good is seen as evil and evil is celebrated. Character is seen as a weakness, and the man who claws his way to the top by treachery and deceit is held up as a model while a man of integrity and faith and goodness is smiled at as a naive fool. People wanted the accusations against Joe Paterno to be true, simply because they didn't want a good man around to remind them of how high the bar was.
As Joe's family slowly, methodically, carefully fought back, I felt a sense of relief. I saw that goodness still had some value. I saw that the depth of the man's integrity stood up to the battering of those with an agenda at odds with that goodness and, though dented and scraped, the goodness prevailed.
I don't think "Now Joe can rest in peace." I think that because of the life he led, he was in peace from the moment he breathed his last. The truth is...now we can have some peace. Being good, and doing good still matters. And if you do good and be good long enough, false accusations won't stick.
I am so happy that Joe's wins were restored. Not because of the wins themselves...they are football games, and we are talking about much more. But I'm glad because I am raising a 16 year old daughter in a world devoid of real, good, decent people. A world sadly lacking in heroes. One of mine was given his dignity back and I, for one, am happy about it.
God's speed Coach. Thank you for the example you left us. Thank you for being good.

Thoughts on Andrae Crouch

Andrae Crouch Died Yesterday…

     Lost amidst the insanity of the world in which we live, was the homegoing of this dear Saint. Andrae Crouch’s music was intertwined in my young life as a believer. I became a Christian at age 9. I had already developed a deep love for music of all kinds and music had to be very good in order for me to listen to it. In the early years of my Faith, since I was just a kid, I listened to whatever they listened to at my church, or whatever my mother or grandmother listened to. Mainly, The Bill Gaither Trio and an ensemble group from the church I attended that had a lot of talent but never sang beyond the four walls of our sanctuary.

     When I hit my teenage years I rediscovered –as most teenagers do- music as my own language. Of course, we were what was known as “Fundamental Baptist” which means (among many other things) that you can’t do anything the way “The World” did it. We didn’t go to movies, we didn’t dance, the only acceptable alcohol was rubbing alcohol, and our music had better not sound like their music.

     Movies were hard enough to give up. Disney was “Real Disney” then and they weren’t making softcore kiddie porn like they are now. I had fallen in love with talk radio at an early age so I didn’t care about not listening to Top 40. But my records…man I had to have my records. We had vinyl then. Vinyl or 8 tracks. Cassettes came around in the mid to late 70’s and we had those too, but mostly the medium of choice was vinyl. I only owned Christian music, due to the strict adherence to the strict rules of my church. But it was a great time to be a young person who loved music and wanted to hear it sung about Jesus.

     We had The Imperials, Larry Norman, Dallas Holm, and a few lesser lights. I loved those performers. I saw the Imperials a handful of times when they came to town. But for me, in my teenage years, there were two artists who didn’t just write and perform…they sang mini sermons that changed your entire outlook in 3 minutes.

Keith Green and Andrae Crouch.

     We lost Keith Green in 1982 in a plane crash. We lost Andrae Crouch yesterday.

Andrae was brilliant. He wrote with passion for souls. He wrote with the altar in mind. He wrote to the lost. He wrote 3 minute sermons that literally could encapsulate the entire gospel up to and including an invitation to accept it, and then he set them to the most beautiful music on earth. Andrae had the ear of his generation and mine, and he did everything he could to make sure we listened when he sang about Jesus. He said it simply, but beautifully. Listen to the passion and irresistible music of this classic:  Jesus is the Answer

     This was as plain and plaintive a presentation of your need for Jesus and His unquestioned ability to satisfy that need as anyone has ever written, ever. You can’t miss Who or what he is talking about here. My despise for modern CCM is well known on this blog and listening to this song again as I write, it’s no wonder. We have some talented folks out there today who simply refuse to be this direct, this blunt, this passionate about the GOSPEL and not about creating an atmosphere. People went to an Andrae Crouch concert and they heard the Gospel, and they got SAVED. They didn’t have a “relationship” or an “encounter.” They met Jesus face to face, head the longing of their hearts, set to music, and met their SAVIOR.

     These days you are hard pressed to hear Jesus’ name even mentioned in a concert from one of these “praise and worship” bands.

     He wrote to the Church and called her to repentance. Like this one Take Me Back .

As believers we have all been here. Yet these days a song written about repenting and returning would be rejected.

     Andrae bridged cultural divides at a time when they loomed large. In the pasty white world of Fundamental Baptist culture, he was a black man who gave them absolutely nothing to point their finger at and say “Ah- HA!” I worked at a “Gino’s” restaurant in High School and one of my co –workers was a black girl, the same age as me, named Anita Shazier. She was a huge Andrae fan and had a wonderful voice. After closing at night, she would get on the microphone at the cashiers counter and sing his songs over the intercom. She found out I was a Christian and a big fan of Crouch and we became good friends.

      I would lie awake long into the night many, many times in my teen years, listening to his records over and over, and letting his words become part of my personal theology, and the guardrails on the road I was walking. Andrae Crouch fueled my passion for the lost with songs like this one: Tell Them

My heart’s desire was ministry back then, and listening to Andrae Crouch singing songs like this…you simply could not wander from that goal. Andrae impacted me. He impacted me the way a comet impacts a planet when they collide. He smashed into my soul and left a huge mark.

     Several years ago, when his dad died, he laid down his public music ministry and took over the pastorate along with his sister Sandra. He hadn’t offered much new music in a long while but by then, his songs had become such beloved staples that they found their way into the hymnals of even that stoic Fundamental Baptist Church I grew up in. So we never really lost Andrae.

     I hope his death rekindles interest in his work. I hope the current generation of “Christian artists” listen to him and realize how very wrong they have it. We don’t need to make the message more “relevant.” The message is always relevant. Sing the truth! Sing about JESUS the SAVIOR, not Jesus your surfing buddy. Call saints back to repentance. Write your songs as if the message you are about to sing is the only thing standing between the listener and hell. You aren’t in this to be popular. This is ministry. Most times that isn’t popular. But if you’re talented, and you do it God’s way…you’ll be famous where it matters most.

     God’s speed Andrae. There is great comfort in knowing that we will meet again…Soon and Very Soon. It won’t be Long. It Won't Be Long

Bell Ringers, Salvation Army Kettles, and Reminders of Christmas

I went to Walmart tonight to pick up some trivial trinket or other. On the way in, there were three people braving the cold drizzle to ring the bell at a Salvation Army Kettle. I instantly recalled the line in Rich Mullin's "Hold Me Jesus" "...and the Salvation Army band is playing this hymn. And your grace rings out so deep, it makes my resistance seem so thin..."
That first Ragamuffins Album is smattered with snippets of Americana. I know the Salvation Army is an international ministry organization, but something about a bell ringer and a kettle feels purely American.
I got teary eyed...as I often do when I recall Rich and especially that record, and especially that song. I've been locked in a real wrestling match for months now and the line "Your Grace rings out so deep...it makes my resistance seem so thin" grabbed hold of me. I've been at this crossroads for a while, and no clarity seems to be in sight. But I know I can count on His Grace...even though my humanity resists it, for lack of grasping it. There was comfort in the bell ringer at the kettle. Comfort in knowing that 2014 years have come and gone since that scandalous, wild, illogical, mystical night in Bethlehem and -try as it might- this world simply cannot remove the impact of that night on humanity. It can try to remove it from the vernacular, but it can never remove it from our hearts. As Brennan Manning said "Behind every Christmas ornament and every sprig of mistletoe. Behind every twinkling light and every antiseptic "Happy Holidays, there is the truth of this Baby." Christmas seems to annually take my heart on an excursion back to a place I long for and can never return to. The only thing that remains unchanged throughout the years...the star still leads us to the Baby. And deny it as some voices may...the whole world knows this to be true. The star still leads to the Baby. Come as you are...
...I guess I heard all that in those simple bells this evening.

Borrowing Christmas: Thoughts about not going home this year.

A couple of last minute plan changes and it turns out I’m not going home for Christmas.

I can’t begin to express the heartbreak. I can’t even begin to touch on the depth of sadness I feel about not being there, in the Philadelphia area, this year.

It’s compounded by the fact that my daughter is at her mom’s in Tennessee and this is the first time in probably seven or eight years that I won’t be celebrating with her.

It’s barely Christmas without her as it is, but to not be going home makes it insufferable.

I was driving last night, working my second job, and the heaviness of all this weighed me down terribly. I miss my daughter. She’s been in Tennessee since the weekend before Thanksgiving and won’t be back here until New Years. I was thinking about our dozens and dozens of trips back to Philadelphia / Wilmington DE where we typically spend our Holidays and where we most often refer to as home.

I was thinking last night, and again this morning, about my life and how very different it turned out from what I’d hoped for. Christmas, especially, is a very emotional, introspective time for me. I realized some things about my own Christmases that caused a lot of tears this morning. My heart is still heavy and its hard writing these words but they desperately need to come out and this blog has become a refuge and my one and only venue.

It occurred to me this morning that I have never had my own Christmas.

Christmas was always made infinitely better by the presence of others. Now, most people would say this is universally true, but not in the way I mean it.

Christmas, growing up, was the one and only time when there was any peace in our house. It was the only time when there felt like anything that resembled love was expressed from one person to another. We never went on vacations, never did “family” things. Family “Game Nights” typically became tense and uneasy because we honestly didn’t like each other. The healthy competitiveness that can come from simple game playing, was only a microcosm of the competition we all had with each other just to find some air to breathe and a ray of sunlight in that house. We clawed and scratched at each other to find our way to the top of the pile and hopefully catch just a scrap of the affection that every kid wants. It transferred itself into those game nights in the form of hurt feelings, increasingly acerbic comments, and the overbearing, overwhelming domination of the “head of the household” who deigned to give us 30 minutes once in a while, stifled our childish expressions, and then ran out on the game so he could return to his place of isolation in front of the TV, purposefully watching something that none of us had any interest in, so we would leave him the hell alone.

But Christmas was that one, two-week- period when the façade was erected, and it was so beautiful and such a breath of fresh air, and it was so close to what my heart always hoped for from family and Christmas that we never minded the falsehoods. We ate our sawdust hot dogs and wore our plastic jewelry and played the roles. Even fraudulent happiness is better than the other fifty weeks of brood and darkness.

But it really wasn’t the façade that made it Christmas…it was the others.

Christmas was the only time we consistently saw friends and family. Outside of the occasional cookout we were not entertainers. But Christmas was different. Christmas Eve there was, for the last 10 years or so that I lived at home, an open house. I couldn’t wait for the first guests to arrive because they brought with them the greatest gift of all…life.

Our house seemed to burst with life when my Aunt Donna and Uncle Jack arrived with my cousin Stephanie. Then my Aunt Ruth and Uncle Ed and their girls. Then the neighbors and their families. As I got older and my friends had licenses and cars, they would stop too. People we didn’t see all year, (and nobody ever wondered why) would come around for Christmas Eve and stay, and talk, and the house felt like a Currier and Ive’s picture.

I also made a point to visit the open house of another family whose son was one of my best friends. I spent an hour or two with the Winward’s before returning home to finish the night with our guests.

Christmas day was more family, either them coming to us or us going to them. The week between Christmas and New Years was spent outside with my friends or in my room reading or doing whatever. Another week and it was back to school and back to the normal way of life we knew. Five people (briefly six when my youngest brother was born, just a few years before I moved out) who coexisted under one roof but who neither knew, loved, or even liked each other.

It was this fertile soil that made me dream –from an early age- of creating my own home one day and having the Christmases I wanted. Where we weren’t faking it but we were actually just expressing the love and joy and fondness for each other that had been building all year. I took that image into marriage, and sadly only had two Christmases with which to try to create that picture. Then came the divorce. Then came the next fifteen years. Fifteen years. Fifteen Christmases come and gone, and all of them with me trying desperately to give something to my daughter that I never had, and failing at it. The years when I was successful and we had a home of our own, Morgan and I decorated and celebrated. But oddly enough…when she was with me for Christmas we never stayed in Nashville. We went home.

Because, once again, we needed someone else’s Christmas.

We had a wonderful set of traditions, my daughter and I. but instinctively we knew something was missing and we couldn’t recreate it alone. Our Christmas at home needed the other half of our family and she was never going to be there. You want to know another reason God hates divorce? It’s this. Christmas can never, ever be what it would be if you remain together.

And so Morgan and I took a journey almost every year, back to where I grew up, and other people’s Christmas became our Christmas. Just like when I was a kid.

I think this is what was breaking my heart last night, and again this morning.

I seem to need Christmas more each year and this year especially. And now I won’t be going home. The last seven years I have spent Christmas Eve with my Cousin Toni and her husband and his family and Toni’s dad, my Uncle Franny. They taught me about the family I missed being a part of, and about the traditions I needed to learn. They taught me about “Feast of Seven Fishes” and what it means to have someone love you, simply because you are family.

Something I longed for my whole life.

I can’t share my family’s Christmas this year.

I can’t stop in on the Winward’s this year –something I’ve been doing for over thirty years. Being so far away these last 17 years, this was the only time all year I would see everyone under one roof.  

I can’t share the Winward’s Christmas this year.

I wanted to spend the week reuniting with friends I haven’t seen in a while. Even going on one long overdue (about 30 years) date. I can’t merge my frail dreams of Christmas with those of people I love and feel something of their joy.

And share their Christmas.

This morning it tore me apart. I am Fifty-one. It’s not that I will be alone at Christmas… It’s that I have always been alone at Christmas. But before this year I was always able to immerse myself in the company of friends and families (even if they weren’t the one I lived with) and it felt like Christmas anyway.

I didn’t stay single these last fifteen years on purpose. It just sort of happened. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should have given it another shot. Maybe this Christmas, and a few prior, would have been better. I can’t say. And I can’t go back now.

But I do know that if I could just get home, at least this Christmas would feel right.

But that isn’t going to happen and it isn’t going to feel like Christmas at all.

There has never been a question about how much I love my real family and friends. The enormous pain I’m feeling about not seeing them this year is all the proof I need.

Christmas Letter to my Daughter...

Your first Christmas, you were only six months old.

Being a dad for the first time was the only present I needed.

You had no idea what was going on, but your mom and I did.

Every smile. Every laugh. Every single second was a Christmas present from God to me.

By your second Christmas, we weren’t a family anymore. You were still too young to realize what was going on in your world, but I knew. I knew you’d never have a Christmas again the way it was on your first one. Never again with both your mom and me together with you. I swore I’d never introduce the word “divorce” into your world. I can’t remember being more sad at Christmas than I was that year.

But I had you… and that made it Christmas.

The years flew by. On the Christmases you were with me it was joyous. We went home every year. Remember the first time I took you to Wannamaker’s in Philly and showed you the lights? The very same lights I went to see when I was just a little boy. We have always been great connoisseurs of Christmas lights, you and I, and with technology being what it is; you weren’t as impressed with the Wannamaker light display as I was as a child. But you smiled and we took pictures and made a day of it. I wished the monorail was still there. And the big toy department.  You were always so happy. Always so caught up in Christmas, like I was when I was that age. To be honest, you helped me survive those Christmases.

All I ever wanted for my whole life was to create the family I didn’t have. The home I never knew. I wanted you to wake up every single day of your life, knowing…almost taking for granted…that your daddy loved you, that your parents loved each other and that home was a safe haven. Not the place you wished you could get away from. I couldn’t give you that. That wasn’t my choice but I had to live with it just like you did.

You made it possible. You and Christmas.

You got older. Finding the perfect gifts got a little harder each year. You weren’t satisfied with just “Dollies and Dishes.” You loved music. Loved it. I don’t remember a time when you weren’t singing. Making up little songs in a voice that had no business coming from a four-year old. You were born with that gift. It showed up almost as soon as you could talk. Christmas gifts always included something musical. You still believed in Santa, and I still climbed up on the roof on Christmas Eve and shook sleigh bells and stomped around and “Ho Ho Ho’d” and called out to invisible reindeer as you shut your eyes tight and listened as Santa delivered his packages. I lived for those Christmas Eve, rooftop adventures. I loved being your daddy.

Just as you were turning ten, my world collapsed again. I was just getting back to normal. Just feeling like a whole man again after years of heartbreak from being divorced and missing you so much when we weren’t together. Then my world spun the wrong direction again and everything was gone. No job. No success. And not long after…no home. Our beautiful little ranch house in the country was gone. And with it, our garden, our dogs and our cat and your beloved pony “Silly Willy.” Gone. You were ten. I’d spent ten years very carefully trying to never fail you or let you down. But I couldn’t stop it this time. It was out of my control, and when you’re a dad, you are supposed to be able to fix everything. I always could. I used to make little repairs around the house and you would be so amazed at what your daddy could do with his hands and some tools. But this time, I had no answers. This time I was helpless.

That was the Christmas that you stopped believing in Santa. Your cousins had told you about him, and you told me late that fall. We stopped doing the Advent Calendars too. And there was no longer any need for the sleigh bells, or the ladder to the roof.

But it was still Christmas. We still had Uncle Franny and Cousin Toni and Sissy and Nick and Feast of Seven Fishes. And I still had you.

This year will be the first Christmas in about five years that we won’t spend together. You’re with your mom…and I understand that. I love having you living with me now, and life is beginning to rebuild. But I miss Christmas.

I miss you being little, and I miss being your hero and your favorite person. I miss making you laugh with my Winnie the Pooh impersonations. We won’t be watching Christmas movies this year. Or listening to our traditional Christmas music. Or decorating our house.

Our house.

I miss our house. I miss Christmas. I miss my little girl.

Next Christmas will be the last one before you go off to college. It will be like all the others you have ever known, except that first one. It will once again be spent away from one of your parents. I’m still sorry about that. It still hurts. I would have endured for your sake. I would have chosen to give you your family, if the choice had been mine.

I don’t know what future Christmases will look like, or where you’ll be. One day, some young man will come and win your heart. And you’ll begin your own Christmas traditions. I hope you’ll have better success at it than I did. I think I’ve been a pretty good dad. I think I did Christmas pretty well, given the circumstances. I wish I could have a few more of them with you. Like when you were little. Like the time we drove to the beach on Christmas Eve day and saw deer feeding by the side of the woods, and you turned to me and said; “Look Daddy! It’s Santa’s reindeer getting ready for tonight!” And you were pretty sure you saw Rudolph’s nose blinking. And for a minute I felt like the best dad in the world.

I miss you at Christmas. I love you more than ever, even as you’ve become a wonderful, beautiful young woman. But I remember that first Christmas. And how much promise it held. You are still the greatest gift I ever got. And you always will be.

Merry Christmas, Morgan. My beautiful Daisy. You have always meant Christmas to me.

I love you.

Daddy 

An Average White Guy Talks Honestly About Race...

                                          Honesty about Race: One Man's perspective

For all I know, this could be the last post on this blog. I might lose friends. I might be ostracized. I might be shunned or I might be lauded for being a hero and saying what everyone feels. But I do know that I’m going to speak my mind. I want to talk about race.
I am a dad. I have a 16 year old daughter that I am trying to raise in a world that is growing exponentially more insane with each passing day. I am 51 years old and I’ve seen a lot in my lifetime. But these last two weeks I have seen things that are making me furious and I’m sick of some of the garbage being shoveled out from BOTH sides. So I’m going to speak my mind here and let the chips fall, because if we don’t start saying what we think, we can’t ever find out if our thinking is wrong, we won’t ever find common ground, and we’ll just go on being further and further apart from each other.
First, let’s talk about the term “racism” itself. Here’s a simple truth…do you want me to listen to your complaint? Do you want me to hear your problem and help you solve it? Then STOP calling me a racist! STOP saying that every time we disagree, or I don’t see thing your way, it’s because I don’t like you because you are black. That has NOTHING to do with it. Here’s a scoop for you” I disagree with you because I simply don’t agree with you. Nothing more. If I disagreed with you because your skin is black, then I wouldn’t agree with Dr. Ben Carson, or Herman Cain, or Allen West, or JC Watts, or the late E.V. Hill, or Martin Luther King. See my point? We ALL tend to agree with people who agree with us…PERIOD. You do it too. Don’t tell me you don’t. And you know what? That’s okay! That’s life. Stop calling it “hate” “bigotry” or “racism.” It’s none of those things. Its two ideologies that don’t agree and that’s all.
It’s not racist if I don’t like your music. Is it racist if you don’t like mine? I don’t care for Bluegrass very much either. Or Classical. Or Polka. But I don’t HATE Polish people. I don’t like Hip Hop or Rap. In fact I hate it. But I don’t hate you. I DO hate it when you insist on blasting it at the gas station when your car is off and your windows are down. I hate it because it’s obvious you are trying to make me listen to it. Don’t deny it. I used to do the same thing with my Clash CD’s in my Jeep…then I grew up. Here’s another truth for you…I hate it when WHITE kids blast their music too. I don’t drive around with Rush Limbaugh screaming from my overdriven sound system making my trunk lid rumble. How about we agree not to do that to each other? Turn your crap down. I’ll keep MY crap turned down and the world will be a better place.
Now to get a little more serious…
I hate it that you can use a word that I can’t. I don’t want to use it, but if it’s so bad, it’s bad for everybody. It’s not “black” bad or “white” bad…it’s just bad. Do you want me to never use the “N” word? Then stop using it yourself. Otherwise don’t ask me to clean up MY lexicon if you won’t do the same for yours. Stop with the "We're reclaiming it" Bullcrap too. Because that's what it is. The word is bad...stop using it.
I hate it when you say I have no idea what your life is like because I am not around black people. Then when I tell you I have black friends…you call me a racist and tell me that’s a racist thing to say. I can’t freakin win with you people and it’s because of stupid rules like this. Listen…if you tell me I don’t know any black people or have meaningful relationships with them, and I give you evidence otherwise, don’t dismiss that as racism. That hurts. That’s me trying to let you know that I DO have black friends and I AM trying to reach out and when you bite my hand I want to STOP reaching out…you got that?
Now I want to tell you about my history with racism.
I am 51 years old. I was 5 when MLK was killed. I barely remember any of it. I am the generation where the changes were going to begin. My daughter would be where there were no differences anymore. That was the plan, and it started off well, but it’s crashing and burning.
I remember being 7 years old and reading a biography of Jackie Robinson and crying in my bedroom over the way they treated him. I remember being so thrilled to watch Hank Aaron break Babe Ruth’s record and it never dawned on me that he was overtaking a white man. Never. I had black friends in my neighborhood and they were just folks from the neighborhood. At first they were black…then they were just from New Castle like the rest of us. Nobody pushed us into friendships, nobody accused us of being friends for wrong motives, and nobody attacked those friends for being our friends.
Now let me tell you how that has changed. I have three men who I consider my best friends in the world and one of them is black. His name is Rich. Richie and I have been friends for 30 years. When I tell you I love this man, it’s the way I love a brother. Rich and I have been through hard times with our families, our jobs, our Faith. We’ve talked about everything you can talk about with your best friends. I sincerely say that Rich is a better man than I am and I wish I could be half the example of godliness, integrity, Faith, and family that he is. His family has been loving to me since the first day we met and they still are. He is a husband, a father, a loving son and a faithful man of God.
In 2008 when Barack Obama was running for office, I had a race discussion with a black guy in Nashville. He accused me of not having any black friends and not knowing about the black community. I explained about my friend Rich. This man instantly attacked my friend…whom he’d never met in his life…and called him vile names and racial epithets. Listen…if someone is my friend I love them dearly…don’t you DARE attack them and dismiss them simply because they don’t line up with you politically. Calling my black friends “uncle Toms” or “House Niggers” because they have conservative political leanings is FAR worse than anything I could ever call you. And worse…it’s a guarantee that I will not listen to a word you say ever again.
Every time I watch a town burning in racial unrest, I think of my friend Rich, or my friends Tunde, Or Artis, or Carter, or Greg, and my heart breaks. Because I know that in the midst of the rage and anger I'm witnessing, might be some other guys I would come to love and be friends with if they would permit it.
I don’t have to go to your church, your concerts, or your movies to be your friend. I might do some, or all of that at some point, but I don’t HAVE to in order to be your friend and if I don't, it doesn’t make me a racist. None of those things are measuring rods for friendships.
Stop making everything I do racism. Allow me to NOT be the same as you, NOT agree with you 100% of the time, and NOT want to always make sure I hang with an equal number of black folks and white folks. I can’t play basketball. You probably suck at hockey. Let’s meet up for dinner after our games and figure out what we DO have in common. We don’t need to see eye to eye on everything. That would be boring.
I don’t dislike Obama because he’s black. I dislike him because I disagree with pretty much everything he stands for and all his policies…but not because he’s black. I’m not afraid of having a black man in power. I simply think he is a terrible president and he hides behind racism charges to get away with being a bad president. That makes me even MORE angry because it removes my right to honestly disagree. That brings me to my final point…
STOP FINDING RACISM EVERYWHERE! I know racism is real. I know it exists. I HATE it. I want it to stop. But when you keep claiming that everything that doesn’t go your way is because of racism…it makes me simply stop caring about ALL racism and it makes me want to tell you to “suck it up buttercup…fight your own battles!” And believe me…I really DON’T feel that way.
I get angry. I am mad. Life has been hard. But in my heart I LOVE people. I love ALL people. I want there to be peace. I hate it when you are hurting because you are an AMERICAN just like me. JUST an American. You're no more an "African American" than I am an "Italian American." I was born here. My father was born here. That makes me an AMERICAN of Italian heritage. Same with you and Africa. We need to stop this stupid hyphenating. We used to be a nation of neighbors and communities. Now we’re just screaming at each other…or worse…one side is screaming and the other has simply chosen to ignore it.
I want to KNOW you and celebrate your heritage like I celebrate my own. But I celebrate this NATION more. If you're really serious about common ground and ending racism...I GUARANTEE you so are we. But we need to see the same urgency and effort from you, that you want from us. Nothing else is going to work.

Final push for The Ragamuffin's Christmas"

Hey kids, this is it.
This will be the last Christmas I try marketing this book. First of all, thank you to all you guys who have supported it over the three years I've had it for sale. Thanks for buying it, telling people about it, writing me notes about it. I've never had ONE person...not one...tell me "Yeah it was okay." Every comment has been emphatic and positive. people gush over it. I don't say that to brag, I say that because it's an honor. Some people are very good writers and when they work their craft the results are amazing. Others tap a vein once in their life. The guy who wrote "The Shack" is one such example. He's really not a good writer. In fact he had two ghost writers who really made "The Shack" readable. His subsequent efforts have essentially been horrible, but hey...he's worth millions so who cares? But he had that one moment where he was inspired and something special happened. (regardless of how you feel about the theology of "The Shack" it was a phenomenon)
Chaim Potok, on the other hand is a craftsman. He was born with the gift. He never wrote an average book in his life. It was all varying degrees of greatness. Timeless authors are like that. Some people are both. Hugo was both. Brennan Manning was both. In the songwriting world, my friend Rick Elias is both. He could sit down and make a conscious effort to write a good, pop-catchy song and nobody could be better at it. He has also written some of the most inspired-in-the-moment songs I have ever heard.
Me...I think I am a tiny bit of each. The natural ability is there, I recognize that, albeit halfway through my life before I did anything with it. But the Christmas book was really, truly, inspired. I know many of my FB friends remember all the way back to that winter in 2010 when I wrote it. It actually began as just a series of blog posts during Advent season that year. The first story was Santa Claus kneeling at the manger and it was written in maybe 5 minutes. The words and the vision just poured out. The next day, if I remember correctly, it was Joseph. That one too, just wrote itself. After about a week, some of you were emailing me and telling me how you were looking forward to the next day's story and how much they were affecting you.
(I treasured that, by the way) So somewhere along the way...about the second week of Advent...I decided to make this an online Advent Calender for grownups. The stories sometimes shocked me as I wrote them. The story of Andre Deputy was one of my favorites because of the way it all came about. I was homeless then and I used to walk about five miles each morning at the walking trails at Williamson County rec center. I used this time to pray and meditate and recharge my weary batteries. I remember thinking..."I don't have a story for today" and I prayed. I asked God for a story that morning. That was the first story I specifically asked God for. The ones prior had come about from the well in my soul. I walked a few steps further and suddenly the name "Andre Deputy" echoed in my heart. It was so strange to me that I literally stopped in my tracks. I never knew the man, I only knew his story because he made the news while he fought his eventual execution. I had come to know Bill Killen, the former Attorney general who became a liaison for criminals who sought pardons and commutation later in life. Bill was a devout believer and a wonderful man, and he worked with Andre in the futile attempt to stay his execution and give him a shot at living the Faith he had come to embrace.
But that morning, I suddenly said the name out loud..."Andre Deputy" the name I had never had a reason to say out loud before. Within seconds the entire story started taking shape in my mind. A murderer, his victims, the baby Jesus, forgiveness...
I was bent over with my hands on my knees sobbing uncontrollably. Another walker came over to me and asked me if I was okay. I was too moved to be embarrassed. I finished my walk, took a shower, went to Panera and did some online research. Sure enough...the victims of Andre's crime were believers. There HAD been a reconciliation and restoration in heaven when he was executed. There was forgiveness.
The story poured out like a river and I was doing my best to hide my tears while I typed furiously in Panera. I remember when I posted that one...the comments were amazing. That one story touched so many people.
After that it was easy. I prayed every morning after that for the story of the day. So many times I found myself literally overwhelmed by the emotion of the visual images the stories evoked before I even wrote a word. The Roman soldier whose hands had been blood-stained for years but who finds them white as snow after holding Jesus. The innkeeper. Maybe my other favorite story was Mother Teresa. For whatever reason the thought occurred to me to find out her birthname and use it throughout the story and only reveal her identity with the final words. That made it more emotional than anything I had written outside of the Andre Deputy story.
I guess I needed to remind myself this. I am struggling with this book. If I hadn't written it, I would have wished I had. I think it's very special and it has something that everyone seeks at Christmas. It's one of the most unique Christmas stories I've ever read. And yet I can't GIVE this book away.
You guys have been wonderful and bought copies and told people about it. But I have not figured out how to market this to the masses and get them interested. I'm tired of trying. You are probably sick of seeing my hoot-suite automatic posts every hour during Christmas too. So this will be the final attempt. After this Christmas it just sits there on Amazon and if people buy it, they buy it.
I really NEED this book to succeed. Not simply for the dollars. I'm a good enough writer that if I wanted to simply write for a buck, I'd trot out some vampire-eats-zombies storyline with sex and gore and issue it under an assumed name and make a few dollars. But I don't want that. I don't think all my books are special. I think they're all good, but Ragamuffin is special. The stories are special. The setting is special. I need this book to do well to show me somehow that six years of living like an animal actually bore some fruit. I need something to be a little proud of.
Thanks for listening to my rant. Bear with me for one final Christmas push. And please pray for success on this. Thanks kids

Video Trailer for "The Ragamuffin's Christmas"

Video Trailer for The Ragamuffin's Christmas

Thoughts on hope, from a formerly homeless man. (Spoiler...Obama didn't give me my hope)

      “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12

Today marks the 73^rd day I’ve been employed here at Liberty University. For six years I struggled to find work while living as a homeless man. I’m intelligent, very hard working, willing, and able. I took anything offered while looking for the “perfect” job. I’ve built chicken coops and pressure washed driveways and even cleaned windows for a hundred bucks.

When I first lost my job in 2008, I refused to collect unemployment. I’m old school and I wanted to work my way out of it. A friend reminded me that state unemployment is insurance. It’s a policy you have been paying into since the day you started working on a W2 basis. For me that was since age 15 when I worked at the local Gino’s restaurant. He told me this was my money; I had been paying into the fund and paying for others when they were having a hard time and so I should take what I’d earned. So I did. That lasted about six months. After that I was told to enroll for the federal unemployment program. This I refused. Federal unemployment is taxpayer funded and it wasn’t money I had worked for. That’s how I saw it, at least and so I refused. I refused food stamps and Section 8 housing too.

I am entirely convinced that this stubborn refusal to accept a handout was the reason I kept trying to solve the problems instead of simply giving up and becoming a shame-filled, broken, humiliated dad, who lost any shred of hope and was enslaved by the system. I didn’t do that. It doesn’t make me a hero. But it makes me different from a lot of folks these days.

Sadly, the long, drawn out battle also stripped me of something besides my dignity and pride. It dimmed my hope. I’ve always been an optimist. So much so that my friends would frequently have to reel me back in from taking leaps of faith because I always saw everything as an opportunity, every person as basically good, every day as a new chance. Six years of homelessness, broken dreams and mostly deferred hope, changed that.

Most of my life I was the funniest guy in the room. I was always singing a song, if not out loud, at least in my heart. I was quick with a smile, just as quick to laugh, and quicker to forgive. I had a long fuse and a thick skin. I had the same passions and the same bedrock values, but I didn’t defend them with the edge and the anger that, sadly, became more and more prevalent as the last six years progressed.

But as the years dragged on, my heart grew sicker and sicker. This verse is one of the most perfect observations of humanity in the entire Bible. I think that I will ask Solomon one day; “What were you observing when you recorded this bit of wisdom? Whose life had been so badly shattered, who was it in your administration, or your family, who had been beaten and defeated for such a long time that you literally saw his heart getting sick?” That’s something to ponder for a lifetime.

I’ve lived this for the last six years. I saw my own heart grow colder and harder and sicker as time wore on. Each day, the scar tissue got thicker and the flame grew more dim and the warmth turned tepid. The laughter was gone. The jokes weren’t funny anymore, the smile faded. In their place were tears, anger, a short temper, words that hurt more than encouraged, and almost no optimism. I became an almost entirely different person than I had been for the forty-five years prior.

I started my job on August 18^th. The first month or so I had some difficulty adjusting. I was very wary of people. I had not been in a daily social setting since 2008 and it is sad how you can get out of practice when you live in such an isolated way as I had been. I told a coworker today that I understand why homeless people talk to themselves so much. It’s because nobody else talks to them. We aren’t made to be so isolated, and it eventually renders every other person an intruder. I think that’s the real danger of so many mobile devices. We walk around texting, reading email, Facebooking or checking sports scores with our heads down looking at a six-square-inch screen and we are quickly becoming a world full of individuals without recognition of anyone else. We don’t see people as people anymore…we see them as Twitter handles, Facebook “friends” or “Selfie-Stars” (That is officially MY term. Don’t you rascals steal it)

I was living like Will Smith in “I am Legend” walking alone through my own personal post-apocalyptic world and talking with mannequins to fight the sheer loneliness of my life. The hope had been deferred for so long that my heartsickness was almost terminal.

It took a month for me to begin to feel like my old self again. It took another two weeks after that to really feel comfortable around my coworkers and begin to crack jokes or say hello in the hallway or smile. But it has happened. It’s wonderful that, while six years of damage was done, it only took two months to restore so much life to my soul. I have a lot of hope again. But I will never forget what hopelessness feels like.

When I began this journey six years ago, our nation had just elected a man who promised “Hope.” He was wrong. We have less hope now than ever before. We are more changed and less hopeful and, sadly, more broken as a society and less united as a country than ever in our history. Obama failed. But as much as I dislike this president and his politics and his personal beliefs, I’m not blaming him entirely. We should have known better. No president…NO president, can simply imbue hope in the hearts of people by passing laws or passing out money. You can’t give hope. Only God can do that. What we can do for each other is cultivate hope; we can fertilize it and protect it for each other. But we can’t grant it. Reagan never tried to give us hope…he pointed us within ourselves and told us how to find the hope we had already.

People don’t need free money, free cell phones or free health care. They need a job. They need a purpose. They need a dream that pushes them and they need a reason to believe that they can –with hard work- achieve that dream. They need opportunity. I finally got an opportunity and it made all the difference.

I feel my heart healing at light speed and it makes me happy, but it also makes me sad. I hurt people while my heart was so hardened and my hope was so deferred. I have asked forgiveness from those I needed to ask and I’ve received it for the most part but it still makes me sad. It makes me sad for a lot of others out there who are also feeling their heart shutting down day by day, and because of this, they are running people off when they really need their company. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. A sick heart shuts off the light of the soul. I have hope again but I wonder about those who do not.

Remember this when you interact with someone who has been losing hope for a long time. Remember this when they bark at you or snipe at you or simply walk past you without a smile or a nod. They aren’t trying to be monsters…they’re simply heartsick. They need hope. Not a government program, or a free check or a cell phone or a handout. They need a reason. They need a purpose. They need to feel like real productive people again. They need to come home to a house they are paying for, sit at a table they bought, eat groceries they didn’t buy with a “SNAP” card, and sink into their own bed, feeling worn out but thankful for work and for the promise that tomorrow brings.

That…is hope. Without it, there is only sickness.

My Review of Dave Ramsey's "The Legacy Journey"

Life is funny.

You don’t have to live very many years to understand this, but the older you get, the truer it is every day. Life is funny.

If you know me at all and know my story these last six years or so, you know how almost surreal it is that I am sitting at my kitchen table, in Lynchburg Virginia, writing a review of Dave Ramsey’s latest book.

Just that sentence alone is chock full of miracles. I’m sitting in my kitchen. At my table. In Lynchburg Virginia. Writing a review of Dave Ramsey’s latest book. For the uninitiated let’s review why this is so many answers to prayer all in one line of type.

For the last six years I have been homeless. I slept in my 1996 Yukon, parked on a friend’s property in Franklin TN. Before that, I slept in my 1995 Volvo 850, until it died at the 250,000 mile mark. That was the car I had when I lost my entire career, my home, and for the six years that ensued…my hope. When I first became homeless I would hide it behind the Oak Hill Assembly of God on Franklin Road in Nashville TN, where I lived the past seventeen years.

So my having a kitchen -with a table- is nothing short of a miracle to me. My kitchen is in my little townhouse in Lynchburg, Virginia. I’m here because I work for my alma mater, Liberty University. So I have a job, a home, a kitchen with a table, a new (to me) car, and best of all…I have hope.

I also have this friend in Nashville. Maybe you’ve heard of the guy. His name is Dave Ramsey.

Now, that line right there made some of you chuckle. Or it made you “LOL” as we say these days. If it made you laugh, then you know why. If it didn’t, here is a link to the recent history with Dave and myself. This explains most of it.

http://shinnyandshavings.blogspot.com/2014/05/my-dinner-with-dave-and-sharon.html

There is a lot more to this, of course but this isn’t a story about me and Dave. It’s about his new book. However, in the spirit of full disclosure I wanted to get these things on the table because I know…let me emphasize…I know, that I am going to get slammed for writing this review. I got slammed for merely having dinner with the guy, so I expect a few torpedoes here. But honestly...I don’t care.

So here is my review of Dave Ramsey’s newest book: “The Legacy Journey”

And for the record, Dave did not approach me at all about reviewing this book. He doesn’t even know I am doing this.

The Legacy Journey

Dave Ramsey

Copyright 2014 Lampo Licensing LLC

Published by Ramsey Press, The Lampo Group, Inc.

Brentwood TN

236 Pages

      First of all, let me say I simply love books. I love all kinds of books. I love the way they look and the way they smell and the way they feel in your hands. I will probably never own a Kindle version of anything, because a book is simply something you hold in your hands and feel the pages between your fingers. So the first thing I would say is, as a product, The Legacy Journey is beautiful. It looks like a journal. And in many ways it is. Half a lifetime has gone into the development of this particular chapter of Dave Ramsey’s life.

     But a book review is not about the outside. It’s about the content.
Right up front, you need to know that if you think this book is simply "Okay, I've followed the steps of Financial Peace, I'm rich...now what?" You are in for a surprise. This book isn't just about what to do once you've accumulated those "piles of cash," Ramsey frequently references. It's about something far more important.

This book taught me a lot. It taught me a lot about Dave Ramsey that I simply did not know before. Living in Nashville for seventeen years, where everyone claims Christianity, it’s easy to simply assume that everyone there was born a Believer and has had a faith-walk all their lives. This book explains that Dave came to Faith in Christ as an adult. When you put this in perspective, you begin to understand that he was maturing as a Christian at the same time God was taking him down a path he had not planned on. A path that challenged him at every turn but also blessed him beyond what he had imagined.

It’s hard to mature as a believer when you are having success. That’s just human nature. The more you have, the more doors seem to open for you and the easier it is to be caught up in your own hype and read too many of your own newspaper clippings. Dave Ramsey had to intentionally cultivate his spiritual growth even while his financial and professional life was exploding exponentially. That takes discipline. We’ve seen the other side of this with the rock stars and celebrities who come to Christ and are thrust in the evangelical limelight before they have a chance to put down roots. Ramsey had to make it a point to avoid this sort of pitfall. That’s simply not easy.

But it explained a lot as I read it, knowing that the Dave Ramsey I heard on the airwaves in Nashville when I first got to town in 1997, was in many ways not the same radio host I heard on my last day there this past May. Ramsey has grown as a believer. That’s obvious, and much like those members of the Sanhedrin in Acts 4 who saw the dramatic change in Peter and John and could only attribute it to their having spent much time in the presence of Jesus. Jesus will work off your rough edges if you let him and it is evident through this book that Dave is at his most reflective, and the imprint of his years with Jesus are showing more boldly than ever.

      There was one troubling section of this book that I need to address. It’s chapter two.

The chapter is called “The War on Success” and to be honest…I hate it. I hate that it had to be written. I hate that in this country, the day has come when successful people –particularly successful people of faith- have to literally hide their success for fear they will be run-through by the acid tongued both outside the church and, sadly, within.

It’s funny…when I was a homeless man, the people who attacked the wealthy could not believe that I didn’t hate them, rage against them for being wealthy, and twist scriptures to condemn them. But I couldn’t. I am a full-on, hard core capitalist. I have no problem with people being wealthy. Heck I want to be wealthy. I know as many mean-spirited, unkind, unfriendly “poor” folks as I do rich ones. Money only amplifies what you are. If you’re a jerk at your core…you’re just going to be a jerk with cooler toys. Why people have become so animus toward people who work hard and have success is something I’ll never understand. Dave addresses this in his book and he does it with patience and kindness, explaining it in a way that assumes that perhaps those folks simply never did the numbers. He treats their contempt as an oversight, and a result of their lack of information. The chapter is a perfect rebuttal to those who hold to a mantra that money is somehow akin to evil.

The chapters that follow are some of the best writing I’ve read on the value of being a better, deeper, more whole person. This isn’t a book about money…not really. This is a book about really being rich. Rich in wisdom, rich in integrity, rich in character. Rich in the things that your kids grow teary-eyed when they reminisce about them to your grandchildren one day. When you’re seven years old, you might brag about how much money your dad has, but when you are a little older, you want to be able to brag about the man your dad is.

That is really what this book is about.

Dave Ramsey takes his readers on a journey to a mountain top. Mountains give us the advantage of looking both backward in victory, and forward in expectation. On this particular mountain, Ramsey reflects not only on who he was way down in that valley you can barely see anymore, but who he became along the way, and who he sees himself becoming as he takes on the next leg of the journey.

His regular listeners and readers have made this journey with him, and while their mountain might look a little different, the view is likely just as rewarding. Reading this book you begin to understand that all his talk about stewardship, and being intentional, and setting goals and having plans, is not just for the financial areas of life. In fact that’s the easiest place to learn those traits, because the results are instantly visible, and palpable. No, reading this book you come to understand that the character you develop here with your money, becomes character everywhere else. Tithing is just a dollar figure, but a giving heart is cultivated. Carefully managing your checkbook becomes carefully managing your daily planner. A good steward of his paycheck becomes a good steward of his workday and honors his boss. A person with financial integrity, reflects a person with spiritual integrity. Money problems are really just symptoms. This book is about those who saw the symptoms, diagnosed the problem, took the medicine, got well, and then became stronger than ever. That is the Legacy Journey as Dave Ramsey describes it here.

His chapter on “Safeguarding Your Legacy” moved me deeply. I finished reading this book in the lobby of my church, waiting for my daughter to finish her small groups. On the way home we discussed my legacy, frankly and openly. It was a good conversation and I explained to her why I had asked. This chapter made me renew my vow to God to live my life before her in a manner honoring our Lord. It has been a hard road these last six years and she suffered much along with me. It was good to read Dave’s thoughts on what a legacy really is and how you measure it and how you guard against ruining it. These are great tips I am implementing before I even go to bed tonight.

Dave writes at great length about the value of family, history, integrity and faith in this book. But one story touched me deeply and I’ll close this review with this.

He writes a wonderful story about a man named Clyde Eckles West. To relate the entire story would be to spoil one of the wonderful, sweet moments in this volume. But suffice it to say that I blinked back a few tears as the story unfolded and the legacy of this man came into focus. Legacy really is everything.

In closing, I have to say this is a really great book. Great in its necessity. There is a lot more to this work than “Just another Dave Ramsey book about money.” Far more. A few years ago I read a wonderful book by a fellow Liberty University grad, Mark DeMoss. The book was “The Little Red Book of Wisdom.” It’s one of my favorite books about just plain being a better person. Dave Ramsey’s new book is a similar work. Sure, there is the expected money advice. That’s what he is known for.

But over the years, this is also a man who has been broken, rebuilt, and reshaped many times as God continued to “complete the work he has begun in you.”

The Legacy Journey is about taking a longer than usual pause to reflect, give thanks, reset the compass, and prepare for the rest of the voyage, while carefully leaving the road you travel a little better for the next sojourner.

It’s a wonderful read and I give it five stars.