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What I Saw When I Didn’t Have a Phone in My Hand

This post is brought to you by my friend and fellow writer, Lisa Bartelt. We’ve been sharing some ideas about what it means to live off line – I think today’s post will give you a few things to think about.

I woke up in Kenya to a stunning view of lush plant life and a dormant volcano. I showered and dressed and went downstairs to breakfast where Kenyan coffee and homemade English muffins greeted me. I chose a mug bearing the image of a cape buffalo and poured the coffee. I slathered peanut butter on the muffin and sat at the dining room table. I had the same view of the plants and the volcano as was in my room, and I was so giddy about my usual breakfast in such unusual circumstances that I reached for my phone to Instagram the moment.

Except my phone was upstairs in the room, on airplane mode, unavailable.

Before we left on this trip, our team of 15 agreed to keep our phone and technology use to a minimum. I fought the policy at first because my kids were still in the States with their grandparents, but for the good of the team, and possibly my soul, I agreed to limit myself.

If Day 1 was any indication, though, it wasn’t going to be easy.

As I ate that first breakfast, I looked at the window and asked myself why I wanted to Instagram this moment. Did I want to humble-brag, hashtag “blessed”? Or keep a record of every single second of the trip? Would sharing a picture on social media have increased my enjoyment of the moment?

We’ve been back from Kenya for more than a month, and I can still remember what I felt that morning. I can taste the English muffin. I never took a picture of it, yet the memory lives in my mind.

Later that day, we were to tour the boarding school campus where we were staying. Phil (my husband) and I decided we wouldn’t even take a camera with us so we could really listen and enjoy.

I didn’t take a single picture in Africa until we’d been there three or four days, not even when we saw seven monkeys in a tree outside our dorm, and I don’t regret it. Seeing a new place with the two eyes God gave me is a rare thing these days. Anytime we’re out exploring as a family, I’m snapping pictures with my phone, preserving memories, or looking up information. (Google, what kind of tree is this?)

Being present is a gift, and I’ve traded it in for a cheap substitute.

Without a phone or camera in my hands that first day, I had to use all of my senses. I looked around, but I also heard. Kenya in the morning is a noisy place. Birds and monkeys and other creatures I couldn’t identify. I felt the equatorial sun on my pale skin, and closed my eyes as the breeze swept across the mountain and circled me.

I noticed people. I looked them in the eye and said the Swahili equivalent of “hello” as we shook hands or waved. I breathed deep of the thin air.

This first day would set the tone for much of our time in Kenya, even when I did take pictures or sent a quick e-mail home.

When we returned to the States, the land of 4G and plentiful WiFi, I struggled to find a new normal. I scanned Facebook notifications and realized I hadn’t missed a whole lot while we were gone. When I might have used my phone as a distraction or because I was bored, I read a book. When I wanted to write a Facebook status about how I was feeling, I journaled instead.

Journaling is how the writer in me survived 10 days in Africa. I wrote and wrote and wrote about what I was feeling and experiencing and some days, I couldn’t get it all down on paper before I had to sleep at the end of the day.

Sharing sounds nice. I try to teach my kids to share with others. But I wonder if what I’m doing on social media is really sharing at all.

When I delayed my urge to post something online, I found that my thoughts turned out richer than if I had instantly shared them. In the same way that instant coffee is a poor stand-in for small-batch roasted pour-over coffee, I’m trying to trade in my instant thoughts for ones that take more time to develop.

I’m not giving up social media altogether, but the more time that passes since my time in Kenya, the harder it is to remember what it was like to limit my technology use. I have easily slipped back into the old habits. So maybe it’s time to enforce a self-imposed technology policy.

I know it doesn’t have to be drastic to make a difference. It can be as simple as putting down my phone. I was recently encouraged by these words from Shauna Niequist in her devotional, Savor:

“But as time went on, I realized that the really major things were happening all around me. I had been missing them because my phone had become an extension of my hand, and what it said to people is that just being with them isn’t enough. … Our phones and blogs and social media connect us in so many ways. Have you noticed any times in your life when they cut you off from what’s going on around you? Today, make a point to put down your phone to see what you’ve been missing.”

I can’t imagine missing our Africa experience because my phone was glued to my hand. The same needs to be true of my life here. What have I been missing? I can’t wait to find out.

Now, head on over to Lisa’s blog and check out some of her other great words.

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Too Early to Think About Christmas?

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Today’s guest post is brought to you by my friend, Erika Morrison. She is an artist, a fellow ragamuffin, and the author of one of my favorite new books, Bandersnatch. If you love creative non-fiction and need “an invitation to explore your unconventional soul,” then please, please, please support an amazing author and preorder her book here. Now, enjoy this incredible post.

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One day in Gubbio, a woman with severely deformed hands ran up to St. Francis. “Just touch them!” she pleaded as she raised her misshapen hands to him. Francis clasped her hands in his, gently moved his fingers over hers, and she was healed. What do you think she did next? What any Italian woman would do. She used her restored hands to cook. She went off and baked a cheesecake for Francis. He ate some of it and sent the rest back to her family.” —From Mystics and Miracles by Bert Ghezzi

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I called my mama’s cell phone on Christmas morning to wish her and my papa love and merry and sweet memories for their celebrations of the Baby’s birthday. She happened to be at the corner store picking up a few grocery items she’d forgotten to purchase for the banquet they were preparing for all their misfit friends, i.e. homeless and mentally ill.

On a day when most people gather with family and other familiars to drink eggnog with good cheer and eat star-shaped sugar cookies next to a warm fire and twinkle lights, my mom and dad had plans and a guest list that left something to be desired…

Or did they? And does it?

The table was set for seven:

Ralph is small in stature, 50-something years old, has hands that incessantly tremor and only one eye due to an accident involving a fork and his brother. Nowhere on earth is his real home, but when the sun goes down he sleeps in an abandoned house where he slides an old refrigerator over the door to bar himself in. A week before Christmas he was severely pistol-whipped for the 20 bucks he’d made panhandling that day and when my mama finds him in the hospital she speaks her sorrow over his aches and agonies. Contrary to how most people would respond in a similar situation, Ralph tells my mom: “I feel so blessed because Jesus made something good out if it!” To him, it was a miracle to spend seven days at St. Josephs Hospital where he could take a shower anytime he wanted (cleanliness matters to him very much; he doesn’t like to smell) and receive three meals a day (no one enjoys being hungry).

He was released just in time to arrive at the Yuletide feast. The next day he left a voice message saying how grateful he was to my parents for the food and t-shirts and socks they bought him and he wanted them to know how often he prayed to Jesus on their behalf.

Stanley has nervous gestures, salt and pepper afro-like hair and a jutting jaw with big buck teeth that add a childlike look to his elderly face. He’s somewhere between the age of 60 and 70…he admits to losing his mind and isn’t specifically sure of his exact birthday. Sometimes he says he’s a 24 year old college student, but his wrinkles tell a different tale. He’s the anxious kind, the sleep-on-a-concrete-slab kind, the eat-and-run kind and he held his head down while muttering to my mom: “Why are you having me over, again?” And my mom responded with a smile that can’t quit and four of the most precious words ever announced in the known universe: “Because you’re my friend.”

Crystal and Josh are in their late 20’s, an unlikely pair just trying to hold onto a shred of dignity in the midst of their mental health battles, in the midst of their extreme lack, in the midst of living on a planet that feels to them like a sucker punch in the face. Crystal is an open book, talked about her depression and pockets full of pills and how she wants to lose weight and quit smoking. Josh is fearful of everything and everyone and barely speaks at all, takes the prescriptions to numb the pain.

Tony is an old guy who got a young Rita pregnant and they didn’t end up making it to dinner.

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My mama isn’t a regular person, she’s a stranger in an increasingly strange land. She doesn’t want what most people want and is uncomfortable with mainstream pursuits and passions. She is the only one I know in my whole sphere of relationship who actually goes to the gutter to invite people into her home for the holidays and proceeds to make a Martha Stewart experience for the dead broke and back busted, like they are the real royalty. You should see her hands and the way they serve, how her arm muscles move when she kneads dough for the hungry.

My mom has a lot of rubber on her road because she doesn’t just talk about good works and good ideas, she goes to the razor edge of her comfort zone and takes a risky headlong dive into the unknown. Kingdom come is her anthem, a full-bodied chorus ringing between her rib bones; making heaven come to earth is the only way for her not to feel like such an exile.

(She has an instantaneous and uncanny capability of looking into a person’s features and detecting an actual image of the Divine.)

A lot of people have hypothesized about the first Christmas, but I’ve never read a single commentary saying that the Bethlehem Baby was born in a clean and sweet smelling barn and it gets me to wondering: Maybe He came dirty and messy and self-humiliating as an invitation for us to follow Him by doing likewise with our own Christmases?

I mean, aren’t those His own words?

“Follow me.”

Not “Follow me when you feel like it or if you feel like it or as your schedule allows”.

It was and is simply “Follow Me” and here I’m preaching to yours truly; trying not to bore myself with the un-truth; fighting the lies and fears that keep me under the low ceiling of comfort and safety…fighting the lies and fears that keep me sane when I should be going off mad like grace or gunpowder.

(If the world is sane, then make me psycho.)

The world is wide open, a yawning chasm waiting to be filled with love like the hands and feet and warm blood of Jesus–that would be us. Losing yourself makes you grow.

What better way to celebrate the Baby than by reproducing the mess into which He was born?

Maybe instead of having the perfect Christmas plans, we go instead to the stable and give birth to a festive occasion that welcomes chaos and unpredictability, odor and dirt and discomfort.The presence of holiness appears to favor inauspicious events.

In the economy of an upside down Kingdom the gutters are the real palaces and the toothless vagabonds are the real princes, while the rich go begging for Bread.

Look up to the “poor”.

Let them touch you instead, maybe we are the ones in need of healing.

And have yourself an imperfect little [next] Christmas.

Kingdom Come.

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Beautiful, right? Now head on over and preorder Erika’s book. I’ve read it. It’s amazing. You won’t be disappointed.

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Something My Family’s Been Doing For 60 Years

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My dad showing my son how to put together tables built by my grandfather at a fair my family has been going to for the last 60 years or so.

If you have known me or my family for any period of time, you know where I am right now. It was set in motion almost 60 years ago when my grandfather, my grandmother, and two friends of theirs set up a small sandwich stand at the Frederick Fair in Maryland. They were so busy that first year that they sold out, had to go around to the local grocery stores to buy more product. Then they bought out all the grocery stores’ ham and cheese and rolls. Ever since then we’ve been coming here.

Of course, my annual treks to the fair didn’t start until thirty years ago, when I was eight or nine years old, but I quickly fell in love. I have deeply engraved memories of my grandfather discreetly handing me $5 bills (I couldn’t comprehend that amount, not in those days), telling me to go buy whatever I wanted. I remember going on the rides and walking through the animal barns. I remember my mom making me a bed under one of the counters while she and my dad worked late into the night. I feel asleep to the smell of fair food, the sound of footsteps scuffling just past my head on the other side of the counter, and I dreamed of the view of the fair from the top of the Ferris wheel.

* * * * *

These days, it’s a little different. My dad and I show up before the fair begins and work for two days, setting up refrigerators and tables and meat slicers and entire systems for plumbing and electricity. Last year, my son Cade joined us for the first time, three generations together. He’s the fourth generation to work here. Our 40×40 foot tent is a quite a bit larger than the one my grandparents started with sixty years ago. The fair isn’t all fun and games anymore.

Even though it’s different, there are reminders everywhere of all those years past. We still use tables built by my grandfather. We’ll stumble on old photos that never seem to get tossed, photos of me and my sisters and cousins when we were little or old co-workers being silly. We use a trailer that, for all intents and purposes, should have been retired 20 years ago.

But this crazy fair is part of me, as much as Christmas or Thanksgiving or New Year’s. Every September, when the first cold day slips into the end of summer, the same thought sneaks into my mind: It’s almost time for the fair.

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Something else – it amazes me what an incredible impact this has had on our lives, this seemingly random thing my grandparents decided to start doing 60 years ago. It makes me open my eyes a little more. It makes me want to do extraordinary things, the kind of things that will start traditions and positively impact the lives of my children and grandchildren and great grandchildren.

What can we do to plant seeds for these future generations?

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When My Son Sammy Played Football in the Shadow of a Prison

Image Credit: WGAL.com
Image Credit: WGAL.com

I parked the truck on Orange Street and the seven of us got out. We walked across the grass of Reservoir Park. To our left was a child’s play area, a few basketball courts, and walking path. To our right, to the west, rose the Lancaster County Prison, stone walls like the turrets of a castle. It cast long shadows on that late summer afternoon fading into evening.

Sam walked with a bounce in his step. He couldn’t wait for flag football, and he had worn his cleats and these long jogging shorts he inherited from Cade and couldn’t wait to wear – certainly not until they actually fit him. We walked into the crowd and tried to find his coach.

“Coach X?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Are you Sam’s dad?”

“Here he is,” I said.

Sam paused, held back a moment. He’s normally full-speed ahead, climbing anything, trying anything, but he was suddenly quiet, unsure, staring at a group of kids where he didn’t know a single one. Coach X took care of that.

“C’mon, man,” he said, welcoming him into the circle of the team. “Boy, you got some serious swag. I like that.”

Sammy grinned, and the bounce was back in his step.

* * * * *

You hear a lot about the shootings here in Lancaster. I have some Facebook friends who’ve talked about how dangerous the city seems to be, how they would never move to the city, how they can’t imagine why anyone else would live there.

You know why I love the city? Because, a lot of the time, it makes me uncomfortable. There’s a disabled vet who sits on our street corner a lot, and I don’t always know what to do besides give him a bottle of water or $5 or sometimes just say hello. Every once in a while we can hear our neighbors across the street screaming at each other. At night cars pull up to the stop light blaring profanity-laced rap music. My bike and bag were stolen and someone hit-and-ran our truck, all in our first year. When we walk to church, we pass a line of homeless people lined up for breakfast.

But, wait, I’m not finished. Because it’s in the midst of this discomfort when people go out of their way to make us feel at home. Coach X welcoming Sam. His other coach giving licorice to the kids after practice. The folks at practice smiling at us when they walk by, saying hello, making us feel welcome. The kind guys (and Jenny) at the barber shop, treating my boys like they are little princes (even though they’re pretty nervous about getting their hair cut).

We came into this city feeling very much like the outsiders, but we’ve been welcomed by so many people, sometimes the very people others look down on. It’s been humbling and beautiful.

So before you talk about how dangerous the city is, before you make snide remarks about the people who live here, please, pay us a visit. Stay with us for a few days. I think you’ll be surprised.

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Sam played flag football that night with some kids who I hope will become his new friends. His coaches modeled for him what it means to be a gentleman, an encourager, and a good human being. Craziest thing of all was that we learned this at Sammy’s practice, in the shadow of the Lancaster County Prison.

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Can I Be Honest About a Struggle I Have With This Writing Life?

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Can I be honest about a struggle I have with this writing life? Because recently I went from typing happily to realizing my forehead was flat on the desk.

It went like this. My agent asked me to write up a book proposal for an idea I’ve been toying around with for a long time. She sent me a template to use, and this template was a book proposal recently written by a very popular author for a book the author proposed to write. I’ve been working on my proposal for the last week or so, off and on, going back and forth from this author’s template to my own proposal. I wrote the summary, the bio, and the chapter-by-chapter synopsis.

At one point during the chapter synopsis, I started to get really excited about the book. The chapters felt compelling, the narrative smooth and intriguing and fun. This could be good, I thought. This might just work.

That is the typing happily part.

Then I got to the part in the proposal about platform – you know, how many Facebook fans, how many people read my blog on a daily basis, how many Twitter followers. That kind of thing. But the problem was that I was using this other writer’s book proposal as a template, so I got to see her platform. Her numbers. Her following.

It was probably twenty times bigger than mine. This is the part when my forehead hit the desk.

You know the flubbery, spitting sound a balloon makes when you blow it up but release it before tying it off? That’s basically what happened to me when I saw those towering platform numbers. How can I ever compare to that? What publisher would ever want to publish my book when that author’s numbers are so much higher than mine?

I love writing. I’m a decent writer. I’m so far behind where I should be. I suck.

That was the basic progression.

* * * * *

I’ve learned something, though. At this point in my life, when I start to feel that frantic, chaotic voice invading my head space, I know what to do.

Sit in silence.

Go down deeper.

Listen.

You know what I heard in that silence? The first thing was that comparing myself to any other writer is silliness, a fruitless exercise. I am who I am. I write what I write. I have the audience I have. And, today, that’s good enough. What a relief.

Then, a second thought – when I bemoan my own platform, I’m saying that you guys, my readers, aren’t important enough. When I give into this thinking that my audience isn’t big enough, it’s like I’m wishing you all away for a different crowd. And I wouldn’t do that. I love the crowd I write for. I’m honored that you folks show up and read these words. Sometimes I can’t believe how many there are of you.

Thank you so much for doing that.

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All of this to say one thing: the work that each of us is doing is enough. Keep going, friend! Do what’s in front of you to do. No comparisons allowed. One more step. Then another. We’ll get to the top of the mountain soon enough.

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My Latest Encounter With the Lady Who Asked Me To Walk Her Pit Bulls

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On Saturday I saw Barbara again. Remember her? She’s the lady who came up to my porch and asked me to walk her pit bulls, the one who said, “I’m pretty sure the older dog won’t do anything as long as you walk into the room behind me.” She’s pretty sure I won’t get bit as long as I hide behind her. Yeah, that gave me a lot of confidence at the time.

Anyway, I saw her the other day, and suddenly James Street felt like my street, like my little part of the world. After a year here, I’m seeing people I know: Eric from across the street; Don, who helped me dig out half the cars on the block when we all got snowed in last winter; the young woman with the little girl who’s always drawing with sidewalk chalk.

I asked Barbara how she was doing. She said, “Pretty good.” She hobbled over to the tree just past my truck and we talked a little bit about the city, about how her life is going.

“Now how do I know you again?” she asked me.

“Remember, I walked your dogs a few weeks ago,” I said.

“Oh, that’s right,” she said, smiling big. “You live just down the street here, right?”

I nodded.

“I love it when people know me because of my dogs,” she said, sort of chuckling, proud of her connection with people. “I had someone just a few days ago say hello and start talking to me, and I asked them who they were, and they said they walked my dogs once.”

“What are you up to?” I asked.

“I just brought some bread out here for the birds,” she said. “I hung a bird feeder over there in that little tree, and I like to put bread around it.”

Hanging in the tiniest tree on the street was a little, ramshackle bird feeder. She limped over to the small, square patch of earth, crumbled up a few slices of dry bread, and scattered them in the dirt. The crumbs looked like dust, or pollen. I grabbed what I needed and walked back to the house.

* * * * *

A few days later I went down to the corner store for a gallon of milk – in our house, a gallon of milk lasts approximately 37 seconds. The corner store is where I go as often as possible, mostly because I like to support the neighborhood (even if they do sell boxes of cereal for like $6). I walked into the small store. A bell clanged against the glass door. There she was again. Barbara.

“Hey, long time no see. How are you?” I asked, happy to see her. I really was. It was like seeing an aunt, or the mother of a close friend.

“I’m good, I’m good.”

“You’re all dressed up,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, beaming because I noticed. “The church right over there, they had a picnic for the community. Anyone could go. They had hot dogs and salad. Everything was free.” And when she said that last part, her eyes opened up in astonishment, as if heaven had fallen from the sky. As if she were a bird who had just spotted a pile of bread crumbs under a tiny tree.

Who would believe her, when she made such a claim? Free hot dogs and salad? Who could imagine such riches?

“That’s pretty cool,” I said. We chatted for a few more minutes, and she got a quizzical look on her face.

“Now tell me again how I know you,” she said.

“Remember? I walked your dogs a few weeks ago.”

“Oh, that’s right,” she said. “That’s right.”

There’s something about Barbara that warms my heart, knowing there’s someone out there who overcomes incredible pain and inconvenience in order to simply walk down the street and give a few crumbs to the birds. It makes me happy that the Lutheran street on the corner provides her with such miracles. And there’s something about the fact that she never remembers me that I actually like. I love that I get to meet her for the first time, answer her questions again.

“Now tell me again how I know you?”