Brant's Blog of Awesomeness

The Impossible Quiz: I Hate this Thing

Okay, this thing is driving me crazy.  I'm up to, like, 30 or something.

Try and beat me, punk.*

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* -- That's right,  I called you "punk", pretty much to your face.  Yep.

Will it Blend? iPhone Edition!

Q: Is this awesome?

A: Why, yes, this IS awesome.

A Thank You to Morning Show Listeners

Here's a big thanks to everyone who listens to the morning show and "gets it".  (By the way, hi Kylie!  And you look great on this here blog!)

What we do is a little different.  It's a LOT different, frankly, from other morning shows.  (Every song we play is about the Kingdom of God, for starters...)  But, to be honest, we're not just different from mainstream radio morning shows.  We're different from the Christian radio I grew up with.

So, personally, I thank you for understanding, when it's not what you may have grown up with, either.  I'm thrilled I can be honest about my struggles (with my self-esteem, with my "prayer life", with my tendency toward legalism) and people can understand.  Some particularly encouraging folks will even say, "I'm glad to hear you say that, so I know I'm not alone, and this is a part of my journey with God."

Again, to be honest, I couldn't do that many places.  The Christian media that I grew up with didn't allow the people "out front" to have self-doubt, to express frustrations, to be spiritually vulnerable at all.  They were just supposed to act like they had it all goin' on.  That left many of us wondering, either, What planet are these people from? or, perhaps worse, What's wrong with me?

Thanks, too, for understanding the nature of the humor on the show.  Like a lot of people my age, I have an ironic sense of humor, and love subtlety.  While some of what passes for "humor" here is quite unintended, some of the odd-ness is quite deliberate, for our own amusement.  We don't tend to lay things out in a hyper-literal or obvious way, and "explain the joke", when this is what, frankly, was normal for the Christian radio I grew up with, back in the day.  What was also normal was for many to feel their intelligence being insulted. 

I always thought:  "You know, it'd be cool if someone could do a 'clean' show, from a Christian worldview, that was also on an adult level." 

And thanks for understanding that I also don't feel a need to "drive home the point" when talking about something obviously spiritual in nature.  I sometimes trust people to connect the dots, themselves.  I learned this from the greatest teacher ever.

Of course, lastly, thank you for listening, and reading this, and for making this a great place to be.

Here's to Nothing

Nothing is counter-cultural. 

We figured this out not long after moving to trendy Palm Beach County, where we took up residence in a condo development that forms a ring around a pond.  Thing was, everyone could pretty much see everyone else.  Everyone's sliding-glass back doors face everyone else's.  We started getting comments from neighbors. 

One evening, standing by the pond, a tipsy Finnish guy (he and his wife were drinking while moving out, tired of the inhospitable hood) told me -- I swear I'm not making this up:  "When I look at your family, I think about God."

I'd never talked to him before. 

"I watch you outside, and your wife, and your boy, and when you walk with your girl, and I see how your wife makes people feel -- very welcome," he said.  "It makes me think about God.  I know that's strange."

Once, a single man, a Jewish guy named Steve, stopped by with his dog as Carolyn and I sat on our little back patio.  Carolyn had talked with him some.  Me, not so much.  I have a long history of being shy...and selfish.  I'm getting better.

"You guys ought to be in a museum!"

Uh...what?

"Seriously.  You got the mom, the dad, the kids, hanging out.  When it gets dark, I can see you inside, eating dinner around the table and stuff.  You ought to be in a museum somewhere!  I love it!"

In our society's terms, what we do is a lot of "nothing".  For one, we don't send our kids to school.  (Forgive us, culture, for we have sinned.)  Carolyn's a brilliant teacher, and home-schooling fits nicely into the rhythm of our home.  I've heard the objections.  One of the more awkward, I think, is this:  "What about being 'salt and light'?  What about sending your kids into the dark places to redeem them?  What about the schools?"

Yes.  What about them?  And -- while we're at it -- what about our neighborhoods?  What about not just getting mail there, but actually living where you live?  Kids leave schools and change classes.  People change churches and never see each other again.  But where you live?  Now, there's a bit more there there.

A famous study of Chicago neighborhoods in the 50s and 60s concluded there is one thing, more than any other, that made for the "glue" of a neighborhood:  Women.  At home.  This isn't a blanket condemnation of women, or men, who work.  It's simply a fact that time begets community.

Turns out, when you have time to do what, culturally-speaking, is "nothing" (like walking the baby around, chatting with neighbors, letting the kids play together) neighbors get to know each other.  It doesn't happen when everyone's at breakneck speed and, when home, exhausted.

Nothing is quite something -- a very attractive something.  People long for it;  even admire it.  (One lawyer friend told me over coffee, "I hear what you're saying, about not working like crazy to buy stuff, and I want to live like that.  But -- forgive me -- you're the only one I know who actually does that.")

In this culture, "nothing" sticks out like crazy, like a...light...on a hill, or...something.  It wasn't just those two guys.  Our neighborhood knew we were odd.  The dad's home a lot, walking around with his daughter, catching lizards?  The mom is home a lot, too, talking outdoors with us about the ducks?  They waste time together.  They waste time with us.  Something's odd, here...

So:  Nothing made a man think about God.  In the U.S., right now, maybe that's not hard to explain.  We did nothing, and nothing is shockingly out of place.  Nothing means not everything, not running around infernally, not getting our kids this-lesson-and-that, not trying to sustain a lifestyle we "want" -- but not deep down. 

Maybe Jesus's offer of "rest" is not an "after your dead, rest in peace"-type rest.  Maybe it's a lifestyle, now, that invites other people out of the maelstrom.  Out of a lifetime of purposeless acquisitiveness, out from in front of an imaginary audience, out of slavery to works-oriented righteousness.

Here's to nothing.  I don't want to sound cocky about it, but I can do nothing pretty well.

The Music Boat Soon Will Be Making Another Run

You know how sometimes, you're all like, "You know, this has been a hard day.  I need to get on a boat with Hawk Nelson RIGHT NOW."

Well, here you go.

This is going to be very, very, very fun.  My wife and I would love to hang out with you, too, if you're not too creeped out by that, on The Music Boat.

Yes, I got sick my first time at sea.  But this is a bigger boat, and I seriously probably might not throw up this time.*  Not only THAT, but great concerts, too!  Click here to find out all about it with rates and stuff.  It'll give you something to look forward to until May!

* -- Probably.

God Loves Dunbar Village

Bill Hobbs of Urban Youth Impact says it's something that's got to happen.

Believers need to come together at Dunbar Village, and pray for the whole neighborhood.   

"Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless;  maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.  Rescue the weak and needy;  deliver them from the hands of the wicked."

If you've paid attention to the news, you know that's exactly what we need to do.

Below are the details.  If you want to bring a group with you, please have some contact Jessica at 561.832.9220 to let them know you can make it to the meeting on the 4th. 

Unified Prayer Walk

Saturday, August 18th, 9 -11 a.m.

(There's a church "prayer coordinators" meeting on August 4th, at 10 a.m., at the UYI Dream Center at 2823 North Australian in WPB.)

I Can't Believe What I'm Seeing

This is your classic story.  Man, wife, little cottage, pet hippo in the house, etc.

Laughing Babies and Bob Dylan

Nikki found this.  I just watched it, and for some reason, thought about heaven, of all things.

Columnist Joel Stein once bemoaned the idea of heaven.  "Harps and clouds" and all that.  Pretty boring, he says. 

I'd have to agree.  Then again, the harps-and-clouds idea of the Kingdom of God, in its fullness, isn't in the Bible.  What is in the Bible is a picture of restoration, of things set right, of the lame leaping like deer, the blind opening their eyes, and the deaf hearing and singing. 

No more pain.  No more evil.  Just pure joy. 

Bob Dylan once famously described heaven as "echoes of laughter."  I like that. 

The Krusty Sage: Your Kids Don't Need Your Stupid Success Track

(Once again, a warning about the Krusty Sage:  He's krusty.  That means he's pretty opinionated.  He plans no offense to anyone in particular, and has no one in particular in mind.  If you're offended, please feel free to let me -- brant@wayfm.com -- know, and I'll pass it along. He's usually easy for me to find.)

Your kids don't need your stupid success track. 

Quit signing them up for a bunch of garbage and racing them around everywhere, and then griping about how you "just don't have any time anymore to eat dinner together", blah blah blah.

You had time.  You gave it away, because you're afraid. 

Don't send them to schools that brag about their academic "rigor" (ie, "We'll load them down with homework so you'll think we're rigorous"), let them sign up for multiple sports and extra-curriculars and then complain about how hard it is to be a kid these days. 

It's possible -- just possible -- that's it's not so hard to be "a" kid these days as it is your kid.

Gasp!  But what if they don't get into a good college?  What if we don't sign them up for myriad art lessons and soccer-specific-weight-training programs in the offseason and dance classes and computer camps and calculus tutorials and the traveling baseball team?  How will we develop their skill areas?

You're not here to develop skill areas, pops.  You're here to develop character.

You can't develop character if you're crazy-busy developing stupid skill areas. 

But how will the kids' survive in the global marketplace?  And --

Right.  You honestly think they're not going to "make it" somehow if you don't hustle them around like the world's going to blow up in ten minutes?  You honestly think it's your job to impart career-training at all costs?  Where -- honestly, where -- did you get this idea?

You think your kid will starve to death if you don't send him to a high-tech school with state-of-the-art laptops?  (Ooh, laptops!  Quality education!)  Like it's really hard to learn to double-click?  How did I figure it out? 

You're not here to develop skills.  You are here to develop character.  That means spending lots and lots of time with you kid.  You.  Not some hired expert.  You.

But my kid WANTS to do all this stuff, she loves her lessons and band and her sports and the homework and her job and --

Yeah, and when she was a baby, you let her diet consist entirely of Smarties, because she liked them, right?  Kids -- even teenagers -- are not often rich in wisdom.  Maybe you noticed.  Maybe this is why you are still rightly called the "parent".  They just might need you to draw an actual line, and model a life unmotivated by fear of fitting into corporate America, uncluttered by do-it-all-ism, and all about people.

But you don't understand.  It's today's society, and all kids just have these demands and there's no way around it, and it's just our culture these days, and --

And if our culture jumped off the Empire State Building...

You know, you COULD be counter-cultural.  You could help them avoid a crippling performance-perfectionism when they get older.  They might even choose lifestyles that eschew materialism for relationships.  Maybe they could value people over achievements.

Who knows?  Maybe you still could, too.

The Definition of Insanity

(From Ireland, HT: this sharp blogger via Alan)