Blog

The guide in the boat warned us about making too much noise, so one by one we crept quietly into the Pacific Ocean, just off the coast of Oahu. We weren’t supposed to swim or talk – just relax in our life jackets. Just float.

Then the guide gave us the signal, and I rolled over on to my stomach and peered down into the water through my goggles. The view shocked me – the water was so clear that even though we were in twenty or thirty feet of water, I could see the bottom in detail. I felt like I was floating twenty or thirty feet above the ground. I thought I would fall.

Then, the reason for our silence – a school of dolphins shot underneath us, their tails pumping. Above the surface, with the sun glaring off of the water, we never would have seen them. But peering into the depths gave us an entirely different viewpoint.

* * * * *

There are things I want to do, things I want to accomplish. There are words I want to write, concepts I want to sink into. Books I want to read. Friends I want to interact with.

Yet I am drawn to distractions, things that divert my attention. They bring temporary relief because when I’m distracted, I forget about how far I am from where I want to be. The mountaintop, so far off in the distance, disappears behind the fog. Distractions help me to ignore the hard work required to get there, and when I waste time watching too much television or being consumed by social media, my drive is anesthetized.

* * * * *

I used to think the main problem with distraction was that it cut down on my productivity. I should be reading more. I should be writing more. I shouldn’t have any down time.

But now I’m starting to realize that less productivity isn’t the main issue. In fact, sometimes less productivity is a good thing.

The worst part about distraction is that it keeps me at the surface. It’s like swimming in an incredible lagoon but never diving down into the depths. Distraction tethers me to the petty crust of life.

I do not stop enough. I am not still enough.

I want to spend more time looking down into the deep.

What do you do in order to stay focused? What kinds of activities help you to explore the deeper things of life?

The questioner usually dances around the topic.

“So what did you and your wife do, you know, to find time alone during your four months on the bus? You know, like, time together?”

Why is sex such a hard word to say?

Turns out it’s a hard thing to write about, too, so I tried to pick a more appropriate environment in which to broach the topic. And where better than the blog of Tamara Outloud? Head on over there today to read my post about “S-E-X on the Big Blue Bus” (it goes live at 7:30 am Eastern time). Don’t worry – it’s rated G…unlike much of the rest of her refreshingly honest blog.

* * * * *

If this is your first time here, welcome! Have a look around. Check out some of my more popular blog posts:

Like when our bus brakes went out at the top of the Teton Pass, or

You Will Want to Give Up (Don’t), or

perhaps the one about Surviving the Worst Case (and Finding a Stranger in Your Kitchen at 4am)

Finally, I’ve also written an E-book about hitting rock bottom and trying to make a living as a writer. It’s called Building a Life Out of Words and is available in all kinds of different digital formats. Best part of the book? Contributors include Andi Cumbo, Bryan Allain, Ed Cyzewski, Jason Boyett, Jeff Goins, Jennifer Luitwieler, Ken Mueller, Kristin Tennant, and Stacy Barton.

Tune in tomorrow for the follow up on what happened when my friend went to the hearing of the guy who broke into his house at four in the morning. Trust me – you don’t want to miss it.

A man and a woman walked past my mom’s candy store where I worked on Saturday. The woman’s gaze swept longingly over all of the chocolate. The man laughed and in a boisterous voice shouted out to her:

“You just lookin’ at pounds, girl. That’s all you lookin’ at.”

“Oh hush,” she said. “I’m just lookin’.”

“Like pastor said on Sunday,” he kept on, “Your eyes are connected to your brain. Where you look, you gonna go.”

He was right. Five minutes later, much to her own chagrin, she left the shop with a pound of fudge.

* * * * *

This picture of Sam is currently the wallpaper photo on my cell phone. It came at the end of the most stressful day of our four-month trip. At the point I took this picture we were getting close to Yellowstone, came around a corner, and this view of the Grant Teton mountain range took away my power to blink.

The other kids were in the back of the bus, but as usual Sam had been paying close attention to the landscape. When Maile and I walked outside to take some photos, he was right behind us, his stockinged feet walking lightly over the gravel. He marched up to the edge of the pull-off area, crossed his arms, and stared at the mountains.

When I look at the picture now, I realize the truth behind the man’s words at the candy store today. There’s no way I could have spent many days staring at those mountains without deciding to go there. Eventually I would have had to rent a kayak, cross the water, and start climbing.

Where you look, you gonna go.

* * * * *

What are you stealing glances at?

What are you dwelling on?

What are you reading?

What are you watching?

Where you look, you gonna go.

* * * * *

““It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.” Oscar Wilde

Recently a friend of mine woke up at 4am after hearing a loud noise in the downstairs of his farmhouse. He drifted out of bed in a fog – it was a hot summer night – and mumbled middle-of-the-night admonishments at his dog who he figured must have busted through the mudroom screen.

He wandered the dark ground floor of the expansive farmhouse wearing only his boxers. He went into the mudroom: no dog. He peeked in each of the pitch black rooms: no dog. He sleepily walked into the kitchen, his bare feet scuffing on the linoleum.

His wife had woken up at the sound of the bang. She thought of their baby, only a few days old. She thought of their four other children sleeping in various rooms of the house. She heard her husband’s footsteps creaking over the old floorboards. Then she heard him say something she couldn’t quite believe, something that indicated her worst fear was taking place that night.

“What are you doing in our house?” he asked.

The firmness of his voice crashed through the night.

* * * * *

What are your worst case scenarios? Do you have nagging fears that reside somewhere in the back of your mind, the kind that when given an ounce of nourishment come roaring into your frontal lobe?

I had a lot of worst case scenarios dashing around in my mind when we left on our four-month trip:

As soon as I began driving the 40-foot bus, I worried about getting it stuck somewhere.

As soon as I started driving through the mountains and saw the emergency truck ramps, I worried about losing our brakes.

As soon as we got about halfway through the trip, I wondered what would happen if I didn’t land another big project before we got back.

Yeah, you probably already know this, but all those things happened. It was almost like God shook his head sadly and said, You know, if you’re going to be so captivated by the fear of these things that might happen, I might as well walk you through them. That way, you’ll see that you can survive it. And then you can get on with life. This is my gift to you.

I don’t know if that’s how it works or not. I don’t know if that’s how God thinks. But there is a peace that comes in the midst of worst-case scenarios that I’ve never experienced anywhere else. There’s an incredibly tangible sense of presence. The soap bubble bursts, and while I realize that yes, this worst-case scenario stuff sucks, I’ve had another, even more startling realization.

I can get through it.

* * * * *

My friend found a man covered in blood in his kitchen. He talked to the man in a calm, firm voice.

“What are you doing in my house?”

“Can I call to get you some help?” The man didn’t want help.

“You need to get out of my house.”

After a few minutes, the man (his system saturated with drugs) walked out of the house and down the lane. He was later apprehended by the police – they had been looking for him.

Meanwhile, in the upstairs bedroom, my friend’s wife felt something strange in the midst of her worst-case scenario: peace. When her husband came back up to bed, their first thoughts weren’t about fortifying their house or moving somewhere else – their first thoughts were prayers for the man who was so lost that he would wander barefoot through the woods and on to their middle-of-nowhere property. So lost.

And this, I think, is the beautiful thing about trusting: it prepares a path of peace inside of us, a path that we are often unaware of until the worst-case scenario comes ripping through the undergrowth, tearing at the branches, stripping off the bark.

Then, there it is.

A new path.

What is the point of silence?

I sit beside my grandmother and I have to lean in close just to hear her speak. A small, weak voice musters strength somewhere inside of her and comes out in a whisper, slow and through water. I am so close that her wiry gray hair tickles my nose and I can smell her vanilla hand cream.

We exchange simple communication, yes or no questions that require only nods or shakes of the head. I force out a deep, heavy voice, very much unlike me. She calls me Kyle, my cousin, and I smile because I know how much she loves him, and I am happy to be lumped into that drawer of memory.

Then we sit surrounded by the heaviness of silence. For perhaps the first time I understand how silence is not a lack of sound, but the presence of stillness, peace, and a tangible sort of waiting.

Her eyelids grow heavy. Beside her, numerous plates of uneaten food. The second hand ticks along, oblivious to all of us.

* * * * *

“I’ve begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.” Chaim Potok

* * * * *

I wonder about the nature of silence, of stillness. I wonder about finding it in a world that places such high value on shouting and noise and being heard.

There are, after all, things that I lose when I enter into silence: the ability to defend or explain myself. To petition verbally on behalf of myself or others. To control the amount and timing of attention that I receive.

But is that all that silence has to offer? Loss? Disadvantage? A lack of control?

* * * * *

“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.” George Eliot

* * * * *

Maybe if we only value the temporal, the material, then silence is worthless. Maybe if we only find truth in the things that we can see and touch and hear, then silence is a waste of time, a lost opportunity.

But because there is more than what I can see or hear, deliberate silence opens me up to new ways of thinking.

During one windy morning in Tulsa, I walked outside of the bus and sat in the grass waiting for the fresh water tank to fill. I have as clear a memory of that silence as I do of anything else on the trip, because in that stillness I found encouragement and hope and peace.

* * * * *

“In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence.”  Mother Teresa

* * * * *

What is it about silence?

Due to intense pressure by one Jennifer Luitwieler, here are my top ten favorite novels. This list is always subject to change, depending on the day or the mood I’m in (all except the top three, which are always the first three books I mention as my favorites no matter the day or mood):

10) Gilead Marilynne Robinson

“I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.”

9) David Copperfield Charles Dickens

“My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest.”

8) All the Pretty Horses Cormac McCarthy

“She looked up at him and her face was pale and austere in the uplight and her eyes lost in their darkly shadowed hollows save only for the glint of them and he could see her throat move in the light and he saw in her face and in her figure something he’d not seen before and the name of that thing was sorrow.”

7) Catcher in the Rye J D Salinger

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.”

6) Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkien

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

5) Blindness Jose Saramago

“I consider books to be good for our health, and also our spirits, and they help us to become poets or scientists, to understand the stars or else to discover them deep within the aspirations of certain characters, those who sometimes, on certain evenings, escape from the pages and walk among us humans, perhaps the most human of us all.”

4) Angle of Repose Wallace Stegner

“I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely submitted to? It is not quite true that you can’t go home again. I have done it, coming back here. But it gets less likely. We have had too many divorces, we have consumed too much transportation, we have lived too shallowly in too many places.”

3) The Brothers K David James Duncan

“–I truly and deeply wanted to kill him. And I believe I could have done it, with nothing but my hands. But all of a sudden, out of nowhere, Peter had an arm around me. “Let it go, Kade,” he was whispering very gently, though his arm was nearly crushing me. “Open your fists,” he said, “and let go of the coals.”

2) East of Eden John Steinbeck

“There is more beauty in truth, even if it is a dreadful beauty. The storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar.”

1) A Prayer For Owen Meany John Irving

“When someone you love dies, and you’re not expecting it, you don’t lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time — the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes — when there’s a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she’s gone, forever — there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.”

* * * * *

I’m still trying to decide what to make of the scarcity of women author’s on my list. Am I a male chauvinist? Is it that, relatively speaking, many fewer women than men were published during the years when most of my favorite books were written (due to lack of privilege, not lack of talent)? As a man am I drawn more to the way men tell stories? I encountered most of these books in high school or college – was I simply presented with an overwhelming number of books written by men? I don’t know. It has me thinking.

Have you read any of these? What’s your favorite novel of all time? Your top three? Top ten?