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It’s Not You, It’s Me: On Attending the Funeral of a Friend and Saying Good-Bye to Social Media

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Last Sunday afternoon I drove under gray skies, through rain that was soon to be sleet, to the funeral of a young man I went to high school with. His name is Peter. The calendar said spring was less than three weeks away, but there was another snow storm on the way. Canadian geese circled the fields, uncertain as to whether they should be heading north or south, which was kind of how I felt, driving to a funeral being held for a 35-year-old father of three. I felt disoriented, unsure which way to fly. These things aren’t supposed to happen. 35-year-olds shouldn’t die of cancer, leaving their wife and children and parents behind.

The Lutheran church was packed and just as I walked in they set up an extra row of chairs at the very front, which is where I sat. Then the family came in. Peter’s father was my music teacher in middle school. Peter’s uncle was my first baseball coach. We called him Mr. P. He taught me how to keep my elbow up, how to pitch with my fingers along the seams, how to turn my glove so the ball wouldn’t skip off my palm and hit me in the face.

Peter’s cousin, Johnny, was one of my closest friends, someone I’ve known since I was six years old. We grew up playing baseball together. He was the catcher and I was the pitcher and we created a series of signals – one for a fastball, two for a curveball, and three for an off-speed (even though every pitch I ever threw pretty much did the same thing). I remember how the seams felt against my fingers, rough and spinning out of control. I remember how I accidentally hit my fourth grade girlfriend in the hand while she was batting for the opposing team. I remember how she came to school with a splint on her finger. I gave her a jar of root beer barrels for Christmas later that year.

While I was never extremely close to Peter, his family always formed a backdrop to my existence, like the mountains do for those who live in California – always off in the distance, always there. Peter’s older brothers were the cool upperclassmen. His father introduced me to John Denver. His uncle taught me the great American past time.

I saw them all walk in, single file, and sit in a pew across the way from me. All of them with their families and their children. Then Peter’s wife came in and sat down, her two little girls dressed in beautiful dresses, one of them looking exactly like Peter. They didn’t cry. They were too young to understand the weight of such a moment. They giggled at something, then sang with all their hearts when the hymns were sung. At some point in the service they got down on their knees and colored on papers, the pew serving as their desk.

She’s a wonderful mother who lets her children smile and draw pictures at their father’s funeral. There was so much I learned in that moment about life and death and creativity. So much.

* * * * *

One of my favorite scenes from The Lord of the Rings movie is when Frodo offers the Ring of Power to Lady Galadriel. He is already tired of carrying it, and the mission feels impossible to him.

Have you felt that before, the weight of life, the heaviness of being? Perhaps you feel it right now, this very moment. The downward pull of discouragement or sadness or death. Pain. Hopelessness.

Galadriel seems intrigued by Frodo’s offer, and as she imagines what it would be like to wield the Ring of Power and be in complete control of everything, she grows large and ominous.

“You offer it to me freely?” she asks. “I do not deny that my heart has greatly desired this…In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth! All shall love me and despair!”

It is so easy to convince ourselves that great power would not tarnish us as it has so many others. I am different, somehow. My resolve would hold. I would be fair and wonderful.

Just as she is about to take the ring, something inside of Galadriel changes, and she seems relieved as she turns down Frodo’s offer.

“I have passed the test,” she says. “I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.”

* * * * *

At one point during Peter’s funeral the Lutheran clergy led us through communion. It was a beautiful moment, watching so many of my old high school friends and teachers and absolute strangers walk to the front.

“The body of Christ, given for you.”

A small piece of bread.

“Amen.”

“The blood of Christ shed for you.”

A sip of wine from a single cup.

There was something disarming there, walking slowly in a long line, taking part with so many others. There was a healthy diminishing, a coming back into line with who I truly am, not who I’m so often striving to be. There was, for the briefest moment, an understanding that I am not the center of everything.

I sighed, and I looked over at Peter’s family. They watched the crowd receive communion. There was wonder on the children’s faces, as if all of these people were doing this for their father. And in many ways they were right.

* * * * *

Every so often, I read through Brennan Manning’s book, Ruthless Trust. Maybe once a year. This time one particular quote pierced me to the marrow.

“The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future…The reality of naked trust is the life of a pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it his presence and his promise.”

I realize that there are areas of my life where I do not trust God. One of them is my writing. I am determined to follow any predetermined, clearly delineated plan that I can find. I listen to all the gurus who say this is how you build a platform, this is how you gain an audience, this is how you get a book deal. I resist obscurity. I want future guarantees.

But I’m tired. I’m tired of promoting myself. I’m tired of relying on my own ability. I’m tired of trying to convince people to read what I write.

So, for a time, I’m walking away from the clearly defined path. I’m going to take a break from social media, the main driver of traffic to my blog, and I’m going to simply write. No sharing. No endless Facebook promoting. No mind-numbing Tweets.

I don’t say this to criticize what others are doing. There are some excellent bloggers out there making an amazing difference in the world, and receiving their status updates and reminders has always been a pleasure. I think that by being on Facebook and Twitter they’re making the world a better place. But for me, the time has come to walk a different path, even if it doesn’t make sense or appear to head in the direction I’ve always wanted to go.

I’ll still be posting here every Wednesday, so I hope you’ll join me. I’ll still occasionally send out emails to those of you on my list, updating you on my latest projects or letting you know what some of my writer friends have been up to. I’d love to get emails from you, anytime: shawnsmucker(at)yahoo.com. But after today I won’t be on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, at least not for a little while.

It’s actually a huge relief, the diminishing. The trusting.

What unorthodox path are you being called to follow?

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What I Found in Los Angeles

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Anything could happen here, I think to myself as I drive into Los Angeles, down from those rugged hills. The sun sinks into the Pacific behind the motionless outlines of palm trees and the solid, flat black of square houses filled with people who are remembering and forgetting. They try to keep out the wildness, hiding behind gates and shrubs, lining perimeters with chain-link, pulling down heavy gates over storefronts facing out on to uneven sidewalks.

But the wildness cannot be contained.

Anything could happen here.

As I speed south on Route 5 and see signs for Fullerton, Anaheim, and Santa Ana, I experience the magnetism of Los Angeles, this sense that by morning I could either be starring in a film, searching for something important hidden in a storage unit, or overdosing on Skid Row. I look up under the long shadows cast by the lights that line the highway, I look up under the overpass, deep into that netherworld, and I see a disintegrating backpack, a few plastic trash bags, and I realize someone is living there. People are making homes even under the very roads we drive on.

Anything could happen here.

I could find my fortune, hidden among the rubble of the lost and withering things, or I could find my destruction. For some reason the latter feels much more likely.

There’s something about Los Angeles that makes me feel alive, that reminds me of the myriad directions this life could go. I think again about the people I saw through the windows of the houses sprawling all over the mountain. I think again about the person I didn’t see, hidden under the overpass. I think about all of these people, how they are forgetting and remembering, and while I’m thinking all of these things, the palm trees melt into the sky, now dark.

* * * * *

I sit in a shoebox-sized motel room and I can’t sleep for whatever reasons (they are legion), and it feels the same at 2am as it does at 5am. The walls are thin and I can hear others coming and going, doors slamming, latches clicking into place. Then the air conditioning unit roars to life and there is nothing else, just a humming, a rattling that reaches deep inside my mind and puts me to sleep.

I dream about the stories I heard earlier that night when I sat with women from Iran, the stories of so many lives, so much searching. The stories of finding and losing, of running and coming home, of wanting to live and being desperate to die. The stories that leaked from the eyes of those women were like tears, or liquid joy.

For just a moment, clarity. All of my own desires for fame, for being known, for money and talent and all the other things that will make me feel good…all those desires bow and move to the side. They part like a resistant body of water. I see clearly (for the first time?) that this thing I do, this telling of stories, is all that I have.

I have nothing but stories.

The knowledge of this is both a relief and a burden.

* * * * *

We are ruled by the narratives we chase. We see the narrative of the famous and the wealthy and we see happiness there, and fulfillment, and we wish that could be our story. We see the narrative of the powerful and we want that story, too, because we’ve felt so insignificant, so weak and used up, and we want to be the person at the other end of the abuse. Do we want to be the abuser? I don’t know but, dear God, anything but the abused, anything but that again.

We want to live the story of the family that hasn’t had to battle cancer, the story of the family with healthy children, the story of the single person who finds someone and lives happily-ever-after. We want the smooth story, the easy path. We reach out and grasp at so many other narratives, anything but our own, and we hold them close and they leach into our skin like ink, like a burn.

But then, in the midst of all that longing and striving and ceaseless desire to be “other,” that man with the voice I cannot forget says, Pick up your cross and follow me.

I stare long and hard at my cross. It seems rather rough and unpleasant. Not like all those other crosses that other people are asked to carry.

He says, Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains a single seed.

And the death I’m asked to die seems so much more deadly than the death my friends are dying.

He says, No greater love has any man than this, that he lay down his life for a friend.

* * * * *

In the morning I take a shower and then I get dressed and brush my teeth while reading things online about Philip Seymour Hoffman. I decide the room feels too small in which to spend another entire day, so I walk down the street to a bagel shop, planning on working there for a little while.

I sit down and get out the laptop and stare at the screen and everyone in there is very friendly. The shop is busy. The employees smile and work quickly. I wonder where all of these people will go after ordering their Western Omelette on a Bagel and their Hummus on a Bagel. I wonder what narrative they will pursue out into the traffic-filled streets of southern California, the streets that run long and straight under tall palm trees, the streets the hit the mountains and then turn in on themselves. I wonder what stories these people are chasing.

And I realize the stories I’m trying to write are too shy to come out in a place like that. They want to drip slowly out of my veins, to well up slowly, ruby-red, but in all of that speed, all of that commotion, they withdraw, fish darting into the shadows. I finish the breakfast I bought, and I realize I’ve lost the art of sitting. I go to cafes and I get out my laptop or stare at my phone, but I never just sit anymore. I never just look around.

When I do simply look around, I feel embarrassed, as if others might think I’m looking at them. As if the other people in the café will look at me and wonder what kind of a strange creature that is, just sitting, just looking, just thinking.

I walk back out into the cool morning, passing under palm trees, their shadows fading as the sun moves back behind the low-hanging clouds.

I go back into my room, the small room that is starting to stretch with me, the room where the stories are. And again I pick up my cross. And again I fall to the ground. And again I lay down my life. The words emerge and begin to drip like sap on the first warm day.

This is my story.

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How Our First Book Signing Went on Saturday

photo-20You never really know how a book signing will go, especially when you’re a writer hovering somewhere around my level of fame and fortune. In other words, no fame and very little fortune. I’ve had book signings or talks at local libraries where a nice crowd showed up, and I’ve had book signings where in the span of an hour one solitary person meanders up to the table and you soon find out that they’re not even interested in your book. They’re simply looking for the restroom.

So it was with some trepidation that I loaded up Maile and the kids into the minivan and drove from one end of the county to the other on Saturday. Our destination? The official launch of our new book, Refuse To Drown, to be held at our local independent bookstore, Aaron’s Books.

It takes a fair bit of time to get four children to put on their shoes and coats and get out to the van and get their seat belts on and please stop punching your brother, Sam, and please stop playing in the snow in those shoes, Abra, because now look at your tights, they’re soaking wet. And no I didn’t bring the charger for your iPod. Then we made the hour-ish drive north, through the country, through Lancaster City, and then back into the country again. The roads were lined with old snow, stained from a week of traffic. The sun was bright.

I had a good feeling from the moment we walked up to the store because there was a woman standing outside explaining the book to some folks who were passing by. I pretended not to know anything about it and walked quietly past her. Inside, I met the owner’s of the bookstore, Todd and Sam, and they were so kind and gave us access to the backroom to put our mound of coats and then we set my kids loose in the children’s section.

My co-writer, Tim Kreider, was there, along with his wife, Lynn. We’ve become good friends after so many long hours together, so many stories, so many words. I was anxious for him, that his story would be well-received, that people would pick up on his generous heart and sincere desire to help others.

I shouldn’t have worried. By the time I finished saying hello to Tim and Lynn and putting our coats in the back room and getting the kids (and Maile) settled, there were already six or seven people waiting for a book. So Tim and I sat down at a small table and Todd from Aaron’s Books introduced us and then we started signing. And we didn’t stop signing, not for two hours. The people just kept coming, some with sincere looks of admiration on their faces for what Tim was trying to do, some with tears in their eyes, hoping to gain any small piece of wisdom about how to approach life with their own troubled child.

One couple in particular still sticks in my mind, the way they clutched the book like a talisman. They shook our hands and held on a little longer than is usual, and the wife cried a little while she explained the situation with their daughter, and the husband cleared his throat and looked away, and I thought to myself that all they want is a normal life. All they want is a happy child. But we don’t always get what we want, and sometimes life sucks, and then what?

There were group hugs when Tim welcomed old friends, and there were sincere handshakes, emotional thank yous, promises to stay in touch. Mostly I was honored to be there, to mark this occasion with Tim, this official release of his story. I’m always amazed at the power of these stories we tell. I’m always amazed at the healing they can bring, if we’ll let them.

Over 100 people came through the line in a few short hours.

Later that night we went back to Tim and Lynn’s and were soon joined by 40 or 50 of their friends, eating food and laughing and mostly just celebrating how far Tim has come, celebrating the launch of this book, celebrating life and this often untapped power to overcome even the most dire of circumstances. A few people bought more books, some purchasing their third or fourth copies in order to give them away to friends they think might benefit from them.

I learned a few things on Saturday while coasting along on this high that resulted from a wonderful book signing. The first is that it is so important to celebrate things, to come together with friends and to hold each other up and to say, “Look at what we’ve been able to do together. This is important. I appreciate you.”

The other thing I learned is how wonderful it is when someone takes time out of their life to join you in these kinds of celebrations. I will never forget the friends who came from far and wide to visit us at the book signing, to buy a book, and to say, “Well done. Congratulations. We’re proud of you.” So to those of you who came, to those familiar faces who stood at the end of a long line, thank you.

Life wasn’t mean to be lived alone. Who are you encouraging?

 If you’re interested in purchasing a copy of Refuse To Drown, you can check it out HERE.

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Tomorrow is the Day That’s Been Three Years in the Making

Refuse to Drown front onlyThree years ago, I walked out of Tim Kreider’s house with a 300-page, typed manuscript and a large box of letters he had received from people in the community who had wanted him to know he was not alone. We whittled the 80,000-word manuscript down to about 45,000 words, then added scenes, rewrote large sections, revised, added some more, and finally ended up at around 60,000 words, or 200 pages.

There were drafts that lay dormant for months, when Tim needed a break from the story of his own life. There were chapters too difficult to focus on, so we put them to the side until later. There were long nights spent across a tape recorder, nights when a bottle of wine slowly emptied, nights when we sat in silence as the reality of his life hung around us like a cloud.

There are images from the story I will never forget: the brutal crime scene; the day Tim found out his son had been committed to a psychiatric facility; the confession. There are things Tim has said that will never leave me, none more powerful than the questions he asks about making the long walk through the prison to see Alec, and what it will be like to make that walk when he is an old man. Questions like, “Who will visit Alec in prison after I’m gone?”

There were joyful nights, too. Finishing the manuscript. Choosing a cover photo. Holding the proof copies in our hands and hoping, hoping, hoping that somehow the painful retelling of this story would make a difference, change the trajectory of a life, prevent the unthinkable from happening again. There were the early reviews, the first hints of people who were being changed by Tim’s story.

There was the realization that Maile and I had become life-long friends with this couple, Tim and Lynn, simply through the shared mission of trying to retell a story.

Three years ago we started on this road. And it all comes to fruition tomorrow, when we unpack boxes of books and sit behind a table at Aaron’s Books, an independent book seller in Lititz, PA. It’s been a long time coming. It’s been a long journey. So here we are.

Many of you have asked, “How can we help?” If you’d like, you can buy the book. The different options for doing that are HERE. I also wrote a blog post not that long ago entitled, “20 Free Ways to Help Your Writer-Friend Survive the Writing Life.” So if you’d like to help but don’t want to spend any money, you can check that out HERE. You can invite Tim to speak at your church, library, business, or other organization. You can buy 500 copies and give one to each of your Facebook friends. There are all kinds of ways to help.

Finally, Tim and I would love to see you at Aaron’s Books tomorrow anytime from 12 to 2pm. Thanks so much for all your help on this incredible journey. I hope you read the book, and I hope it gives you a different perspective on life, gives you a glance into what Tim has been through, and, most importantly, gives you hope that no matter what you’re currently going through, you don’t have to drown in the circumstances. You can find hope.

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Creativity 102: The Inescapable Pain of Vulnerability

6150677141Your journey into creativity will go a certain distance. You will feel happy and fulfilled for a time, simply creating, running along a smooth path, plucking the easy-to-reach fruit. But then you will bump up against an invisible barrier, and there’s only one way through it.

Become vulnerable.

Vulnerability requires walking the twisted paths, the ones that leave you bent over, gasping for breath, legs aching. Vulnerability requires digging into the dirt, tearing your fingernails against unforeseen rocks. Vulnerability requires climbing to the top of the tallest trees, the bark rough against your new skin. Oh, and you will fall. Yes, you will plummet, grasping at branches, scraping and thudding.

But vulnerability is not only the rough path – it is also the rock to rest on. It is not only the digging, but the coolness found only in the depths. It is not only the falling – it is also the aloe that soothes the skin.

I started thinking about vulnerability after looking through these photos that a husband took of his wife as she battled breast cancer.

Feeling stuck creatively? Become vulnerable.

 

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Creativity 101: How I Am Like Robert Downey Jr.

6773980776Working hard in a creative field can sometime feel like…well…work. In my own experience, there is no substitute for consistency, hard work, 1000 words a day. These things accumulate and become more than the sum of their parts. The words take on substance. I start to see not just the words but also the spaces between.

But even devotion has its dangers. Sometimes, these long continuous periods of creativity dig deep inside of us, and ruts begin to form, unnoticed at first but eventually effective. Work starts to feel less and less like spreading seeds over fertile ground and more and more like taking a day’s worth of seeds, digging a small hole, and piling them all in one spot. And covering them up.

Something I’ve recently discovered about creativity is that it thrives in variety. I’ve discovered this by commandeering my daughter’s paint set she got for Christmas (as well as one of her canvases), and painting my first acrylic painting. It’s terrible, but that’s not the point. The point is that when I engage in other creative efforts, things shift inside of my brain. Old ruts are filled in with inexperience and innocence and the scattering only a novice can initiate.

So try something different. Paint. Write a poem. Carve a piece of wood.

Or sing with Sting: