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There’s seems to be something inherent in us that wants to give things up. We decide to quit smoking, or stop eating sweets, or eschew television for a time. We try to diet or exercise regularly or read more or spend less time on the internet, and in some fashion it often equates to denying some part of ourselves.

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When Maile and I decided to not watch television for a year (at which we’ve mostly succeeded, save a few World Cup, NFL and MLB playoff slip ups on my part), we were trying to regain control of our evenings, which seemed to have gone totally astray. The little box had more to say about how we spent those hours from 9 – 11 than we did, so we kicked him out. But even after purging our house of cable, other things quickly converged, trying to wrest control of our time.

Sometimes when we give things up, we exchange them for other things we want to give up. It turns into this rotating spit of dropped habits.

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What is it about our internal make up that puts such an emphasis on giving things up? Is it that we actually crave living a more disciplined life? Is it that we desire freedom from these habits? Is it that some part of us enjoys this self-denial?

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Many different religions talk about a deliberate giving up – they call it fasting. While fasting is usually about giving up food and/or water for a set period, it can involve any denial of self, any deliberate choice to abstain from something for a given time.

Sometimes I wonder if all of us give up things because, deep down, we believe we will get things in return. Perhaps all of us, and not just the religious among us, have a sense of karma when it comes to giving things up, or fasting. Is there something in all of us that believes if we give up a particular activity, the universe will somehow reward us for that? Is that what’s at the bottom of all this self-denial?

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There’s this intriguing passage in the Bible that talks about fasting. The people of Israel want to know why, even though they fast, God doesn’t seem to be on their side.

“We have fasted before you!’ they say. ‘Why aren’t you impressed? We have done much penance, and you don’t even notice it!”

God’s response through the prophet Isaiah got my attention:

“I will tell you why! It’s because you are living for yourselves even while you are fasting. You keep right on oppressing your workers. What good is fasting when you keep on fighting and quarreling? This kind of fasting will never get you anywhere with me. You humble yourselves by going through the motions of penance, bowing your heads like a blade of grass in the wind. You dress in sackcloth and cover yourselves with ashes. Is this what you call fasting? Do you really think this will please the LORD? No, the kind of fasting I want calls you to free those who are wrongly imprisoned and to stop oppressing those who work for you. Treat them fairly and give them what they earn. I want you to share your food with the hungry and to welcome poor wanderers into your homes. Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help.”

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What if this desire of self-denial that we all seem to have in common is more about appeasing subconscious guilt arising from the fact that we have and others don’t have? What if the real reason we fast, or give things up, is to help ourselves feel better about life?

If that’s really the case, then you can see why God would shout down, “Hey, you! Yeah, you, Shawn! Get your head unstuck from your own ass and go serve someone! Stop giving meaningless stuff up! I don’t care about that! I care about that guy on the corner who hasn’t eaten today and that lady who needs someone to drive her to find help and that cousin of yours who needs to talk!”

I don’t normally envision God as speaking with only exclamation points, or using entry-level profanity, but perhaps in this case it’s fitting.

When I was young and we lived in Laredo, Texas, my dad, just out of Bible School and taking on his first job as the pastor of a small church on the Mexican border, found us a trailer to live in. I was only four at the time, so I remember only a few things about it: it was blue (or green); it was very grimy; we shared the space with the local inhabitants (ie roaches and lizards).

I also remember sitting in one of those plastic blue kiddie pools on the cement slab outside the front door with my then-2-year-old sister. She pooped in the pool.

Surprisingly enough, when I first spotted the double-wide trailer that my family of 6 currently lives in, I didn’t have any flashbacks – this place is cozy, clean and in a beautiful location. Here’s 10 reasons we love living in our double-wide:

1) We went from a 4500 square foot townhouse to a 3000 square foot townhouse to a +/- 1500 square foot trailer, and with each move the cleaning became easier and everyone seemed happier.

2) No need for one of those fancy intercom systems – just shout, and the kids can hear you from anywhere in the house.

3) It’s cozy – I actually like having our four kids relatively close by. In our other places they slept way down the hall and it just felt kind of far off.

4) This particular double-wide is on two secluded, wooded acres bordered by a horse pasture and a small stream. If we start to feel suffocated, the outside space adds thousands of square feet.

5) It takes about 15 seconds to lock all the doors at night, or turn off the lights before we go somewhere.

6) Everything here is on one floor. In one of our townhouses we had close to 40 steps from basement to top level.

7) Did I mention it takes about 28 seconds to clean the entire house?

8) The kids share a bedroom. At their current ages (Cade, 7, shares a room with Sam, 1; Lucy 5, shares a room with Abra, 2) this has caused them to really bond and have to learn to share space. I don’t think this is a bad thing.

9) It feels kind of like being in a cabin, and I love the mountains.

10) I can tell people, in my best Chris Farley voice, that “I live in a trailer down by the river!” (even though a van still sounds better, and our river is more of a brook, or a small stream)

What do you love about where you live?

We moved to the farmhouse in Kinzers, Pennsylvania when I was five years old.The few memories I have of the years leading up to that are of the scorching heat in Texas: first in Laredo, where I saw a real, live road runner; then in Mesquite, where we shared a home with my uncle, aunt and two cousins.

We arrived in Pennsylvania in the winter, as I remember it. I had no idea that air could get that cold, or that farmhouses could smell so bad, or that a strange place could feel so much like home. For the first time, there were actual visits with grandma, and not just her voice on a recorded cassette tape sent through the postal service. My twenty-or-so cousins were like guaranteed friends. I watched my parents interact with people we knew in every store we visited, seemingly on every street.

The farmhouse we lived in had two separate living quarters, and with my family occupying one side. An Amish family lived in the other side. I didn’t know what to think of the Amish at first – I guess I watched my parents. But they were at ease with them, spoke Pennsylvania Dutch to them, so I relaxed.

One of the first days we lived in that farmhouse, the neighbors came over to say hello and retrieve some things from our side of the attic. The father’s name was Amos – he looked very serious, with a wiry frame and a black beard. His son came with him. We looked curiously at each other from opposite sides of our fathers’ legs.

They walked out with two pairs of ice skates. I had seen ice skating on “It’s Christmas, Charlie Brown,” but never thought it was something people actually did. Later in the day the little Amish boy came back and asked me if I wanted to go sledding. I looked quickly at my mom.

He and I, only six years old, struggled through the snow, across the fields to a small hill. The fact that we were allowed to wander the countryside at that age reminds me of what a different time it was, and how comfortable my parents must have felt to be returning to the place they knew.

The boy went first, his plastic sled swishing down the snowy hillside, his voice shouting and laughing all the way down. The cold ate at my nose, made my eyes sparkle, while, inside my warm clothes, I was wet with sweat. The sky glared off the white. This place was so different from Texas – I could have been on the moon.

I sat down on my sled, pushed  with my hands (lost in borrowed, oversized gloves), and off I went.

Do you practice self-promotion or others-promotion?

I now realize that I am pretty focused on promoting myself – I overshare my blog on Facebook and Twitter. I email all kinds of people if I have a book coming out. I try to generate an audience, all in the name of me, me and me.

But how much time do I make for promoting others?

Today I am going to direct you to someone who is focused on that very thing – Ken Mueller and Inkling Media. Once a week they have Others First Friday, a blog post designed to promote some of the non-profits or other inspiring people doing good things in our world.

Click on the link HERE and you can check out the organization being promoted – it’s an example of a very sad story turning into something that could potentially help a lot of people.

Of course, today I’m the one writing the guest post which means this is just another example of me promoting myself.

It’s a sickness.

Honest question – I don’t want to steal Ken’s idea, so how could I use my own blog to promote other folks or provide some kind of service?

A few days ago I stumbled across someone in the blogosphere who is very angry at me.

I don’t mean just plain mad – I mean red-eye raging, forehead-vein throbbing, spittle-forming-in-the-corner-of-your mouth mad. I think if I turned a corner and she recognized me for what I am, she would have offered a wide-eyed smiled just before stabbing me in the eye socket with a verbal knife.

Let me clarify – this was guilt by association only. This person doesn’t know me; she probably doesn’t even realize that I, as an individual, exist. But she is angry at a group of people because of what has been done by some of the individuals in that group, and she went out of her way to make sure her audience understood that there was no chance in hell that I was any different from the whole stinking lot.

Someone I don’t even know is angry at me.

For some reason this affected me.

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The blog post was very, very long, but I made myself read it all the way through.  I sighed.  Many of the reasons that she is angry with me are the same reasons I am angry and frustrated and sad with the world.  I wanted to comment and tell her that I was different. I wanted to ask her if she was willing to get to know me. But she was very clear in her blog post – if you are this one thing, then there’s no getting around it.

I hadn’t felt this way for a long time, so I dug into the emotion. What was I feeling? Why was my heart racing? What about this interaction made me want to give up hope that human beings can ever truly reconcile with each other? Why did I suddenly want to disengage with everyone who even slightly disagreed with me? Then I remembered it.

I felt stereotyped.

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When Maile and I moved to England in 2001, 9/11 was scarcely a month behind us. England had moments of silence in which entire cities would literally stop – cars, people, trains – all in remembrance of those who had died. For those first few months of our time in England, if anyone heard our American accents they would stop us and ask how we were doing, ask if we had relatives who had died in the attacks.

But then, as America began pulling England into a war in Iraq, the sentiment changed. Our friends still treated us well, but occasionally a stranger would hear us speak and ask, with a slightly repulsed look on their face:

“Are you American?”

Or people at parties who assumed we were Canadian (I guess due to our accents beginning to meld with Brit-speak) would go on rants about “dumb Americans.”

Who would ever think that a caucasian, male, American could ever feel like a minority. But I did. And I tried hard to fit in: to look British, sound British. Maile and I talked quietly, so as not to perpetrate the loud American stereotype. Yet we almost always felt out of place.

It’s not fun, being the stereotype.

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I had a few different reactions to the woman who is angry with me. I wanted to apologize for being part of something that made her so mad. I wanted to ask her, indignantly, how she could paint such a broad stroke. I wanted to write something that would prove to her that I wasn’t that person. I wanted to get angry back.

But I didn’t. I just clicked the little X at the top right hand corner of the page and left without comment.

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There is nothing wrong with anger. For a great reflection on that emotion, check out Jason McCarty’s recent blog on it. Anger can spur us to action, it can shed light on injustice, it can save our lives. And like I said, 99% of the things she is angry about are things that a lot of people are angry about.

But I think that if there’s ever a chance for people to meet and form relationships and increase their understanding and eventually bring about change, somehow the anger, while it’s force continues to be aimed at bringing down the injustice, must still leave room for like-minded people with different backgrounds to connect. And that’s what I felt was missing. Basically, I came away with the feeling that she was saying:

“I’m angry at you, Shawn, because you are the human form of all that I am angry with, and there’s nothing you can do or say to prove to me that we could ever be on the same page or fight for the same cause.”

In essence, this is bipartisan politics at its worst.

It’s the root of what drives every ethnic conflict on earth.

Anger directed at causes and movements and injustice makes sense to me. Anger that leaves no room for dialogue is an anger that makes reconciliation impossible.

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I sit here and wonder. Who am I angry at? Are there people, perhaps part of movements or belief systems that I find distasteful, that I could connect with, influence, and in the end make the world a better place?

My mind has never been changed by someone directing their anger at me.

But recently I have found my mind changing regarding things I had once felt so sure about. Not because the issue has changed or the people I once disagreed with have changed their minds.  Not because they’ve gotten less angry. But because we have both deliberately set our anger to the side so that we can exchange emails, share a meal, get to know one another a little better.

By all means, let your anger motivate you to change the world. But don’t let your anger alienate you from a potential ally.

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For similar posts, check out:

Stop Long Enough to Hear the Story

Where Have All the Candles Gone?

Democracy: An American Christian’s Prop?

Yesterday I offered up a confession: when communicating with my kids, I am now using some of the phrases my parents used. It’s true. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I don’t seem to have any control over it.

So I threw the question out there to the readers – what lines do you remember your parents using?  And the response was overwhelming. These are just a few that came in:

1. “Don’t make me turn this car around!” (Brenda Boitson via yesterday’s comments)

2. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” This is actually used more by my kids. I am not, and have never been, a big breakfast fan. Usually I get by on nothing. Or maybe a glass of milk. But my older two are always happy to remind me, when I come back in the house for an early lunch (at around 10:00am) that if I had eaten breakfast, the most important meal of the day, I’d last until the real lunch time.

3. “Don’t make me come up there!” Or back there. Or down there. This one can be adapted to just about any location on the planet. Or in the afterlife.

4. “I’m not so-and-so’s parents” – (in response to, “but so-and-so’s parents let him do such and such) (Ken Mueller via yesterday’s comments)

5. “What do you say?” This ambiguous questions is usually greeted by an equally ambiguous stare.

Someone gives one of my younger children something nice.

“What do you say?” I ask, eyebrows raised.

Blank stare.

“What do you say?” I ask again, nudging them, nodding my head.

Silence.

“Say thank you,” I hiss.

“Thank you,” they say, relieved.

6. “Look at me when I’m talking to you.” Usually accompanied with an I’m-looking-at-you-out-of-the-corner-of-my-eye stare and the equally threatening eyebrow raise.

7. “This too shall pass.” (Sara Eiser via Twitter) This one sounds like it may have been used for the last several hundred years (due of course to the presence of the word “shall”), but I can vouch that it is alive and well in the postmodern parenting generation.

8. “‘Can I just have 2 minutes of peace and quiet, please?’ – the answer is never yes.” (Bryan Allain via yesterday’s comments)

9. “You better hope I don’t get to 10! 1…2…3…” (Susan Zeamer via yesterday’s comments)

10. “When I was your age . . .” (Kevin via yesterday’s comments)

Honorable Mentions:

“This is the world’s smallest violin playing just for you” – said while parent rubs thumb and forefinger together (Chris Hall via Twitter)

“Go ask your mother” – (Mrs. Mickle via Twitter)

“To thine own self be true” (Sara Eiser via Twitter) – hmmm, another one with an old-fashioned word in it…Sara’s really sweatin’ to the oldies.

“If you keep slingin’ mud at the wall, something will eventually stick.” (Melody Kittles via Twitter)

Just about all of these folks left multiple suggestions, all just as funny as these, so head back to yesterday’s post and check out the comments.

Phew. I’ve never used so many “via”s in my entire life. It’s tiring.

For more Top 10 fun, check out these posts:

Top 10 Reasons Costco Gets Away With Charging Me To Shop There

Top 10 Stalling Tactics My Children Use At Bedtime

Top 10 Quotes on Writing EVER