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So finally this Sunday it begins.

Eight Weeks in the Red. Or, as we’ve started affectionately referring to it, “The Red.”

I’ve been looking forward to this for about six months.

* * * * *

Earlier this year my good friend and old college roommate Jason got in touch with me. We’d always connected, perhaps because we both played soccer or are deep thinkers or were born on the same day, same year. He was going through a time of spiritual exploration. I was too. And even though we were on slightly different trajectories, we had a lot of ideas to throw around.

He is not committed to a Christian world view, and I am, but there was this thing: I was learning all kinds of spiritual truths from him, things that lined up with scripture and some of the more traditional aspects of Christianity, stuff I had never been taught in my evangelical upbringing. Some of the conversations we had blew my mind. Some made me feel very, very lost. Some brought a lot of my doubts to the surface. But for the most part, our discussions made me dig even deeper into the Bible, made me analyze what Jesus really said (and not just what I was taught that he said), made me ask difficult questions about my faith.

Then this thought hit me: the Christian church needs people like Jason in their seats. And not just sitting there, but asking difficult questions, dialoguing, spurring them on. But for the most part, we don’t like it. People like J make us uncomfortable because they don’t agree with our faith statements or our denominational emphasis or our “blind faith.”

But why? Why does the church work so hard to create congregations of people who, like robots, all believe the exact same thing?

Why is the church so uncomfortable with having people of different faiths come along for the ride?

Why is the church tailor-made for only Christians to enjoy?

If someone is genuinely seeking spiritual truth, does it matter if they are a Buddhist or a Muslim or a Christian? I’m not saying the church has to change its teaching or that it has to stray from Biblical truth, but can’t we create an environment that is open to questioning and dialogue and spiritual introspection?

Then came The Red.

* * * * *

For eight weeks, beginning this Sunday morning at 10am, we are going to try to create an environment that digs into Biblical truths in a way that is open to dialogue and questions. We hope you don’t have to be a Christian to enjoy it. Our main goal? Furthering the conversation on faith and spirituality.

We’re not so sure that people want the one-hour services that are so popular these days in “seeker” churches, so we are starting at 10am for anyone who wants coffee and doughnuts. The main experience is at 11am – we’ll have a time of silent meditation, a time to interact artistically, a time to talk about some aspect of Jesus’ teaching (this week we’re discussing Theological Humility), and an optional time of prayer. If you’re not comfortable praying, go get a jump on the line for lunch.

The (in)famous potluck lunch.

We did a trial run this past week with the volunteer-leaders, and from coffee time to the end of lunch, all in all we spent about four hours together. It was kind of refreshing, not rushing in and rushing out, actually getting to speak with people for more than five seconds on your way to the car.

* * * * *

We’re also going to try to incorporate as much social media as possible, so anyone who comes is encouraged to bring their computers or smart phones, get on the web while we’re in the middle of it. We’ll be updating our Facebook page and Twitter account (@8weeksintheRed) through the whole thing, so feel free to jump in and ask a question if you’d like. Or join us for the time of silent meditation. It would be nice to know that other folks out there, all over the place, are coming along for the ride.

* * * * *

8 Weeks in the Red. I can’t believe it starts this Sunday. Stay tuned. And, if you don’t mind, help us spread the word by sharing this blog or our Facebook page with your friends.

Click HERE for details on location, time, etc.

“There is a point at which everything becomes simple and there is no longer any question of choice, because all you have staked will be lost if you look back.”  Dag Hammarskjold

* * * * *

We all want to create something. We all want to be the lords of our own little worlds, to create caverns of new realities that others can enter and look around with awe-filled eyes.

We want to start a business.

We want to have a child.

We want to write a story.

* * * * *

But then the problem: we want to create, but we are so rarely willing to give up ourselves completely. We want to grab the fresh new thing without letting go of the old self. We want to cross the stream but hesitate when it comes to leaving the bank we are on. But these streams are too wide to straddle.

We are frightened of giving ourselves up, of ratting ourselves out. We are frightened of telling the truth. The many masks we have taken on are not easily removed.

* * * * *

In the journal John Steinbeck kept while writing East of Eden, he wrote about how the story took over his mind. He told about how, night after night, he would go without sleep while contemplating the tale’s twists and turns, the character’s intricacies, the setting’s subtleties.

I did not sleep last night and I look forward to those nights of discovery…And after everyone is asleep there is such quiet and peace, and it is during this time that I can explore every land and trail of thinking.

Yet I shy away from writing too late – not enough sleep, and my eyes dry out. I don’t feel like feeling tired the next day.

I am scared of writing plot lines which echo my own life, or are the complete opposite of it, keeping me stuck in this muddy middle ground of mediocrity.

* * * * *

This year, don’t look back.

Lose yourself in a new creation.

Take yourself to the point at which choice no longer is an option.

* * * * *

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.  ~Francis Bacon

Maile and I have been in the child-raising stage of life for roughly 7 1/2 years now. We’ve had at least one child in diapers for all but a few months of that time period (and usually two in diapers).

If there’s one thing we’ve had our share of, it’s crying children. According to thechildrenshospital.org, the average baby has 1-2 hours of unexplained crying every day. That means, up to this point, we may have made it through 2920 hours of unexplained crying.

Sheesh.

Just the other night the six of us went to the mall so that Maile and I could spend some of our hard-earned Christmas gift cards. Maile waited dutifully with the kids at the play area while I did some shopping, and then we switched. After watching all those strange kids at the play area, I’m pretty surprised none of ours got The Plague, or at least dysentery.

Maile came back, and I thought the night was about to ease into a painless finale, but when she saw the clothes I had picked out for myself, it was back to the store to return the clothes and find something “that worked.”

By this time it was around 8:00pm. There was tiredness involved, there was crankiness, there were even a few tears…and that was just me. But by the time Maile had helped me find something “that worked,” 18 month old Sam had had enough. He lapsed into one of those “I’m-so-tired-that-you-have-no-right-to-discipline-me-it’s-your-fault-we-ve-reached-this-point-let’s-just-get-the-heck-out-of-here-so-that-I-can-fall-asleep-in-the-van” sort of moments.

So we ran from the mall.

It got me thinking – we’ve come across some creative ways to get our kids to stop crying (none of which worked that night). And we don’t have all of these ideas because we are experts at getting them to stop; it’s just that when you’re not an expert at getting them to stop, you have to try SO MANY different things.

Best Ways to Quiet a Crying Child

1 – Bribery. I recommend skipping all other methods and going straight to this one. But if you’re a first-time parent, and still have a conscience, try out some of the others. Just for kicks.

2 – Threats. Not recommended. Eventually the kids get so jaded to threats that you have to increase the level of threat to something akin to Homeland Security’s Threat Level: Red, just to get them to brush their teeth.

3 – Ignore. This one is surprisingly effective. But you look like a complete idiot of a parent. People walk by frowning and whispering to one another, “That poor child!” or “What a lousy parent!” or “Is that guy deaf?”

4 – Young children can be placed in their car seat on top of the dryer. The cycling, bumping sound puts them to sleep. This is not recommended. Or even legal. And we never, ever, ever did this.

5 – Take them for a drive. This sometimes works, unless your child is in the stage where they hate sitting in their car seat even more than they hate sitting in a pile of manure. Which does not put them to sleep. No matter how warm.

6 – Read Leviticus to them. This comes with a guarantee: someone will fall asleep.

7 – Give them a pacifier. I can hear some of you without children exclaiming, “But they look stupid!” or “But what about the thousands of dollars of orthodontic bills down the road?” To which I reply, “Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I would pay thousands of dollars for a full night’s sleep. A pacifier seemed a small price to pay in the moment.”

8 – If the child’s not yours, just walk away. Get far enough away, and the crying stops. This one works every time.

9 – Hug them. Saved the best for last. This one works both ways (ie ways to quiet a crying parent)

So anyone out there have better ideas? I need one more to complete the list…

Ever feel so thirsty that when you finally got a drink you thought you might drown yourself?

Ever want something so bad you felt physically thirsty for it, even though what you wanted wasn’t a drink but a thing, or a person, or an experience?

* * * * *

I’m not sure why it always goes downhill
Why broken cisterns never could stay filled
I’ve spent ten years singing gravity away
But the water keeps on falling from the sky

And here tonight while the stars are blacking out
With every hope and dream I’ve ever had in doubt
I’ve spent ten years trying to sing these doubts away
But the water keeps on falling from my eyes

(from Jon Foreman’s song, “A Cure for the Pain”)

* * * * *

Whenever my son Sammy (18 months old) wakes up in the morning, there are two things he wants: the first is his mom. So we take a quick trip into the bedroom for him to get a few cuddles. But pretty soon he realizes he hasn’t had his second thing.

A drink.

So I take him out to the kitchen and give him some milk in a little cup. He drinks and drinks and drinks until he absolutely has to stop to take a breath. He gasps for air, his cheeks red, his eyes watering from the coldness. Then he takes another long draught of milk. And another.

This is what it is to be thirsty.

* * * * *

I think I live my life being thirsty for stuff. And when I get it I drink it, and it tastes so good going down. There’s that initial gulping, that insatiable swallowing that wants to consume the world. But then the thirst is gone, and I’m left holding the bottle. Or the credit card bill. Or the emptiness.

Drinking stuff always leads to this amazing satisfaction, followed by a subtle emptiness.

* * * * *

“Everyone who drinks this [physical] water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

See you next year. In the mean time, enjoy the best and worst (mostly worst) of 2010:

“I am on the toilet thinking about writing a third book.” – former baseball player, Jose Canseco

”It is not a sweatshop. You go in this place and it’s a factory but, my gosh, they’ve got restaurants and movie theaters and hospitals and swimming pools. For a factory, it’s pretty nice.” – Steve Jobs

“Its a official dat i am leavin skool and enterin draft. … i aint doin anotha yr.” – Oklahoma point guard Tommy Mason-Griffin declaring his career choice via Facebook (via ESPN)

“The internet’s completely over. … The internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.” – Prince

“I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don’t care, but that is not the case with BP. We care about the small people.” – BP Chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg

“Few children of famous people succeed. Most of them are little shits.” — Jamie Oliver, TV chef

“A lot of people say, ‘I would rather have a heart attack at the height of sexual passion’. I think I would prefer to be killed by a bookcase.” — Tom Stoppard

“I thought it was gum.” — Paris Hilton, denying responsibility for packet of cocaine Las Vegas police found in her bag.

“I didn’t have the balls. This is not my thing.” — Christian Hernandez, 22-year-old Mexican matador arrested for breach of contract when he dropped his cape and fled from a bull midfight.

“Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model.” — Robert Hintze, founder of dating site BeautifulPeople.com, which dropped 5,000 members who appeared in photos to have gained weight over the holidays.

“I need a vacation spot for my lice…Beards: Uggs for your face.” – Bryan Allain

I learned that it takes precisely 6.5 weeks to be able to laugh about a bombed performance in front of 13,000 people. – Tyler Stanton

So what great 2010 quotes by celebrities, athletes, bloggers or your best friends did I miss?

Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second. ~William James

I know that a lot of you out there have had a rough year.

Some might even say an overwhelmingly, unbelievably, inconceivably shitty year. I have friends who lost a spouse this year, or a parent. Some of my friends have spent the holidays in a hospital, or a hospice, trying to “celebrate” while some of the people they love the most in the whole world fight for their lives, or slowly begin drifting away. Others of you continue dealing with chronic pain or some sort of disease or watch someone close to you go through it.

I know that, for some of you, 2010 was the worst year you could ever imagine. And nothing that any two-bit blogger like myself can write will change that. But if I can offer one message of encouragement, I would say this:

Hang in there.

Why?

Because a lot can change in a year.

* * * * *

One year ago we left some of the closest friends we had ever made, and a church we loved, to move into my parent’s basement with our four kids. It felt like we had hit rock bottom financially and, many days, emotionally. I felt like the previous 15 years had been totally wasted. I felt like a 34 year old graduating from college, except I had five mouths to feed and two minivans.

If rock bottom doesn’t involve owning two minivans, then I don’t know rock bottom.

On a more serious note, I didn’t think I had much to offer the world.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying these problems are on par with watching someone you love pass away, or some of the other tragedies you folks faced in 2010, or waking up every morning in physical pain. But it was pretty depressing, hopeless, and felt like a big fat dead end.

One year later my life does not even closely resemble the one I was living a year ago. We have our own place, a beautiful little place in the country. I’ve been blessed with four intriguing book projects and seven months of writing income lined up (last December I had about two, and as recent as a month ago we had $13.75 to our name). In the marathon of my life I’m only on step 11 or 12, but I finally feel like I’m moving in the right direction.

Whatever 2010 has held for you, don’t give up. Believe me – you have no idea how much better things will be in twelve months time.

To change one’s life:  Start immediately.  Do it flamboyantly.  No exceptions. ~William James