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That Time I Got Caught Without My Phone

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I was walking down Queen Street with my four oldest kids a few weeks ago on our way to a wonderful little Italian bakery here in the city of Lancaster. We piled into the small store and I was all “Stop touching the glass Abra” and “Stop climbing up the stools Sam.” We stood there in a line at one point, all five of us, our eyes glistening in the light reflected from a case of deliciousness.

And I thought to myself, this will make a great blog post. I reached for my phone to take the perfect Instagram, a shot of the back of my four kids staring into the eyes of their next sugar rush, but I had left my phone at home, intentionally. For just that reason. Because I knew I’d be reaching for it, and, let’s be honest, sometimes we all need to take a break from those little plastic dictators.

But I was disappointed I didn’t have my phone and I was thinking of the different angles for the blog post and you know what? It just didn’t feel right. I’m finding it increasingly harder to enjoy the moment I’m in because I’m thinking of my audience ALL. THE. TIME.

That’s right. It’s your fault.

Well, not really.

* * * * *

My friend Nish Weiseth (who wrote an excellent book recently titled Speak) shared an article recently written by Michael David Friberg. One of the parts that jumped out at me was this:

I think because the space between creating and promoting has been so drastically shrunken by the instantaneous way we are able to share work we’ve made, we (people in my generation, myself included) have confused the two. The two are not the same. Making stuff is why we got into this in the first place but making stuff can take second place next to the small endorphin rush of a like or reblog.

Yes.

And this isn’t just about the creation and promotion of books or music. This is the creation and promotion of our lives. We confuse the creation of a life and the promotion of a life. They’re not the same thing, you know.

He goes on to write

Being able to share work and consume work is amazing but the delivery system is not without costs. It is a system that rewards single, crowd pleasing images. It rewards pandering. It can make you aware of an audience before you ever even push the button. That is not a place I want to admit being and I doubt you do either but if you haven’t ever seen something amazing in real life and subconsciously thought, “this is going to blow up on instagram” while reaching for your phone, you are a better person than I am.

So what? you might ask. Who cares if we’re mixing promotion and creation? Who cares if we’re getting an endorphin rush from the likes and retweets of small things?

I have to care, because the fact is, I want to write novels. I want to write long stories. And the rush I get from being retweeted or Instagrammed can divert me from the work I want to do. The pursuit of likes is a timely one, and I’m becoming less and less sure that it’s worth the effort.

Our lizard brains are getting trained by the feelings we get from having success on these platforms. Since we are artists or photographers, we are all broken people subconsciously seeking validation and social media is the perfect delivery system for a false sense of importance.

This can happen to all of us, whether or not your a writer, an artist, a musician, or working 9-5. We’re all seeking validation, and there’s nothing wrong with Facebook or Pinterest (I’m not planning on going anywhere anytime soon). But is our desire to be “liked” interrupting what might be a really important moment in life because we can’t let it slip by without posting it on Facebook?

Is our pursuit of being liked or followed or pinned diverting us from the really important work we would rather be focusing on?

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The Countdown Begins – Seven Days Until…

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The hardback version of “The Day the Angels Fell” arrived last night, so I spent most of the evening signing books. Yay!

In seven days, on Thursday, December 18th, the paperback and digital versions of “The Day the Angels Fell” will be available, hopefully just in time for Christmas. My birthday is two days after that, so even if you hate books, consider buying one as a birthday gift to me. You can give it away! Everyone wins!

The Kickstarter campaign for the novel raised nearly $12,000, so we’ll also be creating an audiobook and then hitting the road for a book tour in the spring. You can find out more about where we plan on stopping HERE.

Anyway, I hope next Thursday you’ll purchase a copy for you, all the children you know, and your ten closest friends. I’ll post the links and locations where you can find it next Thursday.

(PS – If you’re willing to help me spread the word on launch day, either on your blog or Facebook, shoot me a message here or on FB and I’ll give you a few extra details.)

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Finding Peace in the Dark (And It Really Is A Wonderful Life)

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Some days you just feel pulled in seven different directions in a world that won’t let go, don’t you? A great breakfast with a friend and then walk six blocks home and some of the kids are sick so I had to take the girls to the dentist and before I knew it, it was four o’clock and things are still piling up. Work for an hour. Clean the house. Eat dinner. Do the dishes. Bed time snack for the kids.

Then I hear Leo crying so I leave Maile with the oldest four and go up to the dark bedroom and pick him up and rock him back and forth. His eyelids get heavy and he sucks on his index finger these days and you know what? There’s nothing like singing hymns to a sick baby in a dark room if you’re looking for peace.

What a friend we have in Jesus
All our sins and griefs to bear
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer

Later we watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” and I finish off the ice cream because there’s not really enough left for the older four to split (“Nice of you to take one for the team,” Maile says). Maile cries in the beginning of the movie, when Mr. Gower accidentally puts poison in the capsules and then young George Bailey confronts him about it. We both cry at the end when George’s brother gives the toast: “To my big brother George…the richest man in town.”

* * * * *

I think back to what Bryan and I talked about at breakfast, how we have no idea what 2015 might hold. That’s both encouraging and terrifying. I think back to the beginning of 2009, back to when we had no idea the ride we were about to embark on: $50,000 in debt, my parents’ basement, trying to scratch and claw my way into a writing life. I think back to the fall of 2012, when I had no idea how good the next two years would be – Sri Lanka, Istanbul, and so many great writing projects. A move to a cabin on 40 acres of woods. Then a move into the city.

Who knows what’s next.

And that song comes to mind again, that old hymn I sang to sick little Leo, the one my Grandma Smucker used to sing:

Blessed Savior, Thou hast promised
Thou wilt all our burdens bear;
May we ever, Lord, be bringing
All to Thee in earnest prayer.
Soon in glory bright, unclouded,
There will be no need for prayer—
Rapture, praise, and endless worship
Will be our sweet portion there.

 

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Taking Communion With Over the Rhine Beneath the Streets of Philadelphia

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Maile and I stood on the Philadelphia sidewalk in the rain, waiting for the doors to open. We crept a little closer to the couple in front of us, the couple holding the massive, multicolored umbrella. It was December, and a cold, city wind swept down the boulevards, peeked into the alleys, raced the drizzle around corners.

At 8pm the doors opened and we followed the slow trail of people up a steep set of steps flanked by two burly, neckless men checking photo IDs. Then the line of people went inside and down steps that led into an industrial basement. Bare pipes and cement walls were covered in old concert posters and artistic graffiti. The tickets had said no smoking, but decades of cigarette smoke escaped the walls and wandered the dark stairwell.

The crowd, all these slowly walking people, descended together, and they felt like family to me because we all loved Over the Rhine, and most of us had been following them, their story, their music, for many years. Decades even. We were in this adventure together, even if it led into the bowels of Philadelphia. Some people, like Over the Rhine, create things of such beauty that you would follow them anywhere, and if you’ve never seen a movie or read a book or heard music that made you feel that way, then you need to open your eyes, my friend, and look around.

Maile and I waited at the bottom of the steps as people showed their tickets, had their wrists stamped, and vanished into the next room. That’s when “our people” arrived.

* * * * *

Another Christmas is drifting in softly
like the ghost of my innocence lost
and the tree in the corner burns brightly
I turned all the other lights off

I look back on my life in its stillness
I consider the days of my youth
and the moments I find myself willing
to surrender and just tell the truth

Cause I’ve committed every sin
and each one leaves a different scar
it’s just the world I’m living in
I could use a guiding star

I hope that I can still believe
the Christ child holds a gift for me
Am I able to receive
peace on Earth this Christmas?

– Over the Rhine, “Another Christmas”

* * * * *

For the last five years we’ve had dinner with this group just about every month. I barely knew most of them before we started sharing food together. There are five of us couples (six including the couple who moved to Florida a year ago and can’t join us very often anymore). When you spend five years with people, you break through the surfacey shit. When you walk with people through miscarriages and stillbirths and children born healthy (we have over 20 children between the six couples), business failures and successes, family stuff, and moving from state to state, well, it’s like a small grove of trees planted so close that their trunks literally start to grow together, their rings shared, their roots and branches entangled.

We haven’t officially taken communion together, but there’s something Eucharistic about those dinners, something holy. Which sounds funny because we’ve had plenty of conversations that push the boundaries of “holy,” but I think that when you start to give your life to other people, it’s the bread and the cup, the Body and the Blood.

* * * * *

Seeing their eight faces come through that dark door brightened that entire venue, and we laughed and hugged and went inside, found our seats.

I’ve been listening to Over the Rhine ever since 1996, when one of my roommates had an unhealthy obsession with them. But from the moment I heard their song “Poughkeepsie,” I got it. I fell in love with the way Karen Bergquist and Linford Detweiler’s voices swirled together and took me away.

And that’s what happened in that industrial basement on Saturday evening, way later than this 37 year old is used to staying up. I felt transported to another dimension, a place where nothing existed except that moment, that chord, that harmony. That mandolin solo. That aching lyric. That moment of silence in between notes.

Cause rain and leaves and snow and stars
and that’s not all my friend
they all fall with confidence and grace
so let it fall
let it fall

– Over the Rhine, “Let it Fall”

* * * * *

The next morning, my friend Janelle wrote a letter to Over the Rhine, and they featured it on their Tour Diary. Here’s a small part of what she wrote:

We drove down there together, just a bunch of regular salt-of-the-earth folks. The ten of us, (“The Dinner Club”) have been meeting once a month for several years. We’re all in our mid 30’s, early 40’s and some of us have been listening to you for 20 years. What a DIVINE time we had. Thank you for being so inclusive in your performing. We could feel the trials and pain, the joys raining down from that stage last night, balm to our weary souls. We truly felt that in that dark, dingy basement in the middle of that bustling city, we met with God. I loved the imperfections, (and perhaps tacky) nature of the venue, it was an outward display of our inner workings….kinda hidden, a little messy, but lovely nonetheless.

* * * * *

A little messy, but lovely nonetheless.

And so after all of that, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I hope you have a good Christmas season, even amidst the dreariness of so many things lost, the seemingly impossible waiting, the sense that this world will never quite be enough. I hope you find a star to follow, and I hope it leads you to what you’re looking for.

* * * * *

Over the Rhine recently released a beautiful Christmas album, “Blood Oranges in the Snow.” Check it out HERE.

If you’d like to hear the story of how Over the Rhine gave me permission to use the lyrics from “Poughkeepsie” as front matter for my upcoming novel, check that out HERE.

The venue where we saw Over the Rhine was Underground Arts.

 

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Why There is a Tooth On My Desk (or, For When the World is Taking Pieces of You)

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There is a tiny tooth in a plastic sandwich bag on my desk. It’s strange what you will accept as normal, once you are a parent. Saving a bloody tooth? In a sandwich bag? Beside my books and on top of a binder? It’s the size of a small pea, the color of a not-quite-white seashell. It’s shaped like a broad, flat shovel. I guess it’s about six years old.

It is the remains of Abra’s toothy, childhood grin. This was the one that stuck out, the one we affectionately referred to as “the fang.” It’s been replaced by a gaping black hole, the kind that sucks in time and matter and space and leaves you wondering where a childhood has gone, where it’s going. Black holes are ruthless. None of us can escape them.

Her grandmother convinced her to pull it out. At first Abra wanted to do it herself, so she vanished into the bathroom with Sam as support, and I heard them talking, conspiring, strategizing. Sam got bored and came out. Abra emerged a few minutes later, nearly crying, blood on her chin, the tooth pointing out at an awkward angle, like a broken bone.

She sat on her grandmother’s lap and her grandma said, “Tell me if it hurts,” and before she knew what was happening, she was sitting there with a tiny pearl in the palm of her hand and an empty space in her mouth, six years of her life pulled right out.

This world just keeps taking pieces of us, doesn’t it? There’s no way around it. It just keeps yanking and tugging and leaving us bloody and hurting with gaping holes. Things don’t work out the way we had hoped they would, and our writing gets rejected yet again, and we have to find another job, and relationships crumble. People we love get really, really sick. Sometimes they die before we do, which seems a terrible injustice because while none of us want to die, even fewer of us want to be the last one standing.

Little pieces of us, big pieces of us. Gone. Chunks of years. Vanished.

The only thing we can really hope for is that someone will be there when it happens, that someone can help us take the piece out when it gets stuck, that they can clean the blood off our chin and lay the piece in our palm so that we can study it before moving on.

If we’re lucky, we have people who will help us bury these pieces under, way under the pillow so that it doesn’t hurt us anymore. So we can sleep easy again. But if we’re really, really lucky one day we’ll wake up and realize that thing that was taken somehow transformed into something beautiful.

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How Friends Who Are Told They Are Dying Will Ruin Everything For You

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The worst possible thing you can do when you’re down in the dumps, tweaking, vaporous with victimized self-righteousness, or bored, is to take a walk with dying friends. They will ruin everything for you.

First of all, friends like this may not even think of themselves as dying, although they clearly are, according to recent scans and gentle doctors’ reports. But no, they see themselves as fully alive. They are living and doing as much as they can, as well as they can, for as long as they can.

– Anne Lamott, Small Victories

I have very little to add to that except to say how challenged and encouraged I am by the people in my life who refuse to let a bad diagnosis confine them. You know who you are. Whether or not you realize it, we, your friends, are watching and continue to be in awe at the way you LIVE.

A few weeks ago my aunt Linda wrote this:

Good morning, friends. October 28 I put the top down on my T-bird and headed to Penn to meet Dr. Fox. I wanted a new opinion. After sharing the past several years of medical [history] with his kindhearted assistant, Dr. Fox came in the room. He greeted me and began repeating my medical information and made reference to my wish for a clinical trial or some type of new radical treatment.

Then he said, ‘Help me to understand. You were in a wheelchair for most of the spring, you had many surgeries and were told you may always need that chair. The first chemo you were on, failed. The current one is working beautifully. You have almost zero side effects from treatment, you traveled last week, you work hard every day and do what you need to do, for the most part. Now you’re here to ask me to make you really sick and take away your quality of life.’

I laughed out loud! I told him I no longer thought that was a great idea! Everyone laughed with me. Dr. Fox informed me that in his world, the oncology cancer world, I am a success story. I’m what they rarely see. He gave me much hope for a long term treatment plan and complimented my dear friend and oncologist, Dr. Sivendran. The two of them will work together to plan my life.

I went to Penn for a second opinion, but I drove home with a new one of my own. I must be so very thankful every single day and I must embrace the notion that cancer and I share space…until we don’t. Unless I get hit by a bus, I’m here to stay [for] a while. I get to live life to its fullest-with or without hair! Perhaps I have already received my miracle!

We may not all be sharing space with cancer, but we are all sharing space with death, aren’t we? Some of us are marked more profoundly by this sharing than others. Some of us have diagnoses that remind us more specifically of our mortality. But, as John Irving wrote, “we are all terminal cases.”

What will we do with life in the mean time?