ramblings of the mc

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

It has become increasingly obvious to me that people are stupid. I wish that I could say to you that this is not the case. I especially wish that I could say that this is not the case within the church. However, perhaps more than anywhere else, stupidity reigns supreme in the church. And most of the stupidity resides in the minds and hearts of adults; not kids, as most people ignorantly assert.

Today, I got a call from a good friend of mine, a youth minister, expressing his dissatisfaction with a particular group of church leaders that I am all too familiar with. Apparently, these men confronted him in his office and blamed him for the world’s problems, casting down their disdain and holding up their persona of perfection. He was taken to task for the behavior of other people. Now, maybe I’m weird, but I am the only person who controls my actions. My youth minister had no control over my decision making. Could he help me make good decisions? Yes. Did he? Yes. But when I made dumb decisions it wasn’t his fault. He did what he could to teach me not to be an idiot. I chose to be an idiot anyway. Nothing my youth minister could do about it. He wasn’t there holding my hand while I did the stupid things I did.

This particular buddy of mine got chewed out for some of the content on his blogs. Apparently some well-intentioned parent (or perhaps someone with malicious intents) brought some printed out pages to the elders containing some less than youth-group friendly material on it. Someone had clicked on his friends list and come to some questionable material that those people had posted. What can he do about the content of people on his friends list? Nothing. And to make matters even more laughable, the questionable content was 6 CLICKS FROM HIS PAGE. 6 clicks. That means that the content was not linked directly to him at all. Someone clicked on his friends list, followed a link from their site, followed a link from that site, followed a link from that site, followed a link from that site, and then followed a link from that site. It was at this point down the line that the people found some questionable content. You ever played 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon? Same thing here; you can get anywhere on the internet that you want to go in that many links, including the Kevin Bacon homepage. It is interesting to note that these same men concerned with the content of the webpage of a friend of a friend of a friend, etc… of the youth minister are the same men who pay Charter Cable $60 every month to pump sin directly into their homes via cable. I bet that won’t make the agenda in the next elder’s meeting, though…

My advice for these church leaders: stop wasting your time and your youth minister’s time on garbage like this and be shepherds. Care for the flock. That’s what God called you to do and that’s the job you signed up for. Do it.

If you are reading this blog and would like more info on these leaders, I wrote a whole album full of songs about them specifically. You can listen at www.boochieshepherd.com.

i have been sick for the last 3 days.
this is good. and this is bad.

good because i haven’t been to the office in 3 days, which in and of itself is a reason to make me want to feel better. but i know that if i start feeling better, i have to go to work, and that appeals to me none whatsoever. also good because whenever i am sick i end up reading a lot. (this time it has been “the green mile” by stephen king. i love the way he writes. he says things in a way that makes you uncomfortable because he hits a little too close to the way you really feel.) and reading a lot always makes me end up writing. last night it was 3am when i spilled my self onto paper. my intentions are to actually keep up a blog from this point forward, but you know how that goes.

here is a question i have about being sick: is it real? i know that’s a weird question, but think about it. you always hear about the terminally ill giving up their will to live or perhaps being too strong to die. if you can have that kind of power over something as serious as cancer, what is it that makes the flu so crippling?  maybe it’s exactly what i was alluding to earlier: we feel the need to be sick as a resort from the daily grind of life. and so, because things have gotten too normal, we allow a wrench to be thrown in our proverbial clockwork to upset the whole flow of things. and it works to perfection every time. we arise from a newly shaken illness feeling fresh and alive and good, even if only for a moment. i don’t think we do this consciously, really. and maybe a small illness is inevitable. but maybe, just maybe, we allow that cold to take us over in hopes that we can find a glimmer of light at the end of our diseased tunnel.

you know, i’m feeling better…

I sit at the kitchen table. I don’t do that often. Maybe only when I know that something is different than it was the last time I did it…

As I laid down next to my wife tonight, I touched her hand while she slept. She didn’t know, but I touched it for a long time. And in her gentle hand I came face to face with the single, greatest regret of my life: I have never written about my family. In fact, I haven’t written anything for 5 years. My heart for that period of time will forever be forgotten…

Keller is 8 months old, almost 9. He’s bigger everyday. Some days I am able to actually see him learning. He smiles more than any baby you’ve ever seen. It’s in those smiles and those expressions on his face where I really see him growing. Sure, his feet get bigger; my mom bought him some new shoes today. But it’s through his eyes that I see his heart grow. He learns to trust me and Lindsey. And he will learn from us how to trust others. And, eventually, he will learn from us how to trust God. He stands. He holds on to the love seat and he stands. It breaks something deep inside of me to think of the day when he no longer needs me to hold his hands as he clumsily moves his legs in an attempt to walk. This boy is loved. I hesitate to say that no other child has ever been more loved; I’m sure that most every parent feels this way about their children. But I can’t help but feel that Keller is receiving far more than just our hearts. You should see the way his mother holds him. He knows. Even now, before he can speak, he knows.

All this writing and reading (lately it’s been Stephen King’s “The Green Mile”) awakens a part of me that I miss. Or maybe it doesn’t so much awaken a part of me as it awakens me. I can’t turn loose of the dread that my best days are behind me. I’m 25 years old. I should be alive and vibrant and running. It seems that all my days, right up to the close of this one, are very far from this moment. I regret that I have never written that before now. It’s exactly the feeling that describes the man that I have become: obsessed with what I’ve been and alarmingly removed from what I will be tomorrow. I would like to tell you that tomorrow will see the birth of a new man, a new spirit, but I fear that to be quite presumptuous. I can assure you, however, that if you so choose, you will read all about my affairs and my misplaced heart, as I plan to drain this pen and many more with my scattered and transparent thoughts. I hope my thoughts are just that: see-through. While it horrifies me completely to think that someone may one day read this, it also frees me to know that my most secret heart refuses to be bound up within itself.

I will kiss my young, beautiful wife. I will hold my son so close that we will feel our souls touch, and in that moment realize that something bigger than us and greater than us has been awakened. I intend to be tomorrow what I have always intended to be: brandon. What such being involves, I’m not totally sure. I’ll keep you posted on my discoveries. I guess I’m about 13 days late in making resolutions, but then again self is not renewed just because the calendar is.

I’m going to lay down now. And I’m going to touch Lindsey. She’s asleep. She won’t know. But the touch of her skin will inevitably set off a million lines of poetry and a million good intentions and a million things that I should have written just now but was too self absorbed to think about.

See you tomorrow.