Tonight I drove home feeling sorry for everybody in the world who isn't me.
South on Clairmont Road, right on North Decatur, past Emory University, left onto Lullwater, through Little Five Points and Inman Park before going toward downtown, south onto I-75 toward Clayton County. I started home shortly before 9:00.
Decatur is beautiful after dark. Those cozy old-Atlanta neighborhoods are so pretty in the daytime; but after dark, when you can't see the outsides so well, and all you can see is hints of the insides, somehow they are more intimate, as if they all were asking me in, a little.
I love Little Five Points all the time. It's like most college communities: you can see all kinds of people, all the time.
But at night, people walking the streets, crowded parking lots, restaurants, theaters, clubs full, people enjoying each other, laughing, forgetting their problems, embracing good times and good company. The magic must be a hundred-fold
I felt so happy it seemed impossible that it wasn't spilling out all over everyone I passed. I could have hugged everyone I saw.
Finally came the time to turn off Euclid Avenue onto Edgewood. There, ahead of me, the majestic spectacle of the jeweled towers of Atlanta, something that never ceases to amaze me, especially at night; but this time somehow it seemed as if I were leaving a magic kingdom for something still lovely, but somehow ordinary, mundane.
What made this night more magical than any other?
I had just spent about five hours with my daughter, that's what!
I picked her up at school at about 4:00, took her to the grocery store, back to her dorm; then dinner, where we sat and talked and talked and talked. When I finally took her home, neither of us wanted to go. We took a walk around her dorm area, just procrastinating, putting off the time I had to drive home.
My Emily has a mind full of magic and wonder. Talking with her can be like visiting a wonderful country; and tonight I had the best visit I had had in a long time.
You can have the most enjoyable conversations with her! She is almost violently opinionated! Keenly intelligent, delightfully articulate, so learned while still so young, yet she has a child's sense of wonder.
Her favorite thing in life is a good story. I'm the same way. But she composes worlds in her mind and tries to write them down to share with the world. When she starts being published, you can find out what I have known for the past several years--what a marvelous, marvelous place Emily's mind is!
So I drove home feeling like the happiest, most blessed man in the history of the world. No man ever deserved such a daughter! And I'm the only one who gets to be her daddy!
When she was a little girl, we would tell her how sorry we felt for other parents, because they didn't have the most wonderful daughter in history. She would protest, "But they think their children are wonderful too!" We would say, "That's what's so sad! They're all WRONG!"
She'll be 21 next month, and I'm still fully convinced my daughter is the most wonderful daughter ever born to the human race.
Prejudiced? Sure, I am!
But that doesn't mean I'm wrong!
Friday, November 4, 2011
Thursday, November 3, 2011
The Self-Confidence Formula: First...
"First, I know that I have the ability to achieve the object of my definite purpose in life; therefore I demand of myself persistent, continuous action toward its attainment; and I here and now promise to render such action." Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, 1937, p. 54.
That's Mr. Hill's original wording. If you read my blog two past, you see how I reworded it. I added "In the name of Jesus" at the start, I replaced "I have the ability" with "You have given me everything I need (ability, attitude, and opportunity)". The rest is the same.
The notion has been growing in me for about four years that God doesn't make mistakes. Not even when he made me. Now, that's a pretty mind-blowing thought: that God did a good job when he made me! But the alternative is to call God a bungler. I think I'd rather give God the benefit of that doubt, and accept the distinct possibility that I might have been wrong in thinking myself worthless all these years.
It turns out God did mighty good work in making each of us, that he made each of us unique, and filled each of us with gifts and graces the world needs. Believe it or not, YOU ARE God's gift to the world!
Why accept this? Because if you don't, then you are undervaluing something God values pretty highly; and can you ever win when you disagree with God? If you don't, you're insulting God.
If you don't, the gifts God placed in you for the benefit of the world Jesus died for, the world will never receive! Because you think it's worthless, you don't offer it to people. And you cheat the world of something indescribably precious.
A low self-image is a mighty convenient excuse. If I'm a worthless, useless, sin-ridden jerk, then nobody can expect anything of me! But if I'm a Child of God, created by Him and filled by Him with things the world needs, I have a pretty hefty obligation! I owe the world the best I have!
And if God is the Master Artist I believe God to be, my best could be pretty impressisve.
So is yours!
Oh, and now that you've heard this, you're responsible for it. It will be on the Final!
That's Mr. Hill's original wording. If you read my blog two past, you see how I reworded it. I added "In the name of Jesus" at the start, I replaced "I have the ability" with "You have given me everything I need (ability, attitude, and opportunity)". The rest is the same.
The notion has been growing in me for about four years that God doesn't make mistakes. Not even when he made me. Now, that's a pretty mind-blowing thought: that God did a good job when he made me! But the alternative is to call God a bungler. I think I'd rather give God the benefit of that doubt, and accept the distinct possibility that I might have been wrong in thinking myself worthless all these years.
It turns out God did mighty good work in making each of us, that he made each of us unique, and filled each of us with gifts and graces the world needs. Believe it or not, YOU ARE God's gift to the world!
Why accept this? Because if you don't, then you are undervaluing something God values pretty highly; and can you ever win when you disagree with God? If you don't, you're insulting God.
If you don't, the gifts God placed in you for the benefit of the world Jesus died for, the world will never receive! Because you think it's worthless, you don't offer it to people. And you cheat the world of something indescribably precious.
A low self-image is a mighty convenient excuse. If I'm a worthless, useless, sin-ridden jerk, then nobody can expect anything of me! But if I'm a Child of God, created by Him and filled by Him with things the world needs, I have a pretty hefty obligation! I owe the world the best I have!
And if God is the Master Artist I believe God to be, my best could be pretty impressisve.
So is yours!
Oh, and now that you've heard this, you're responsible for it. It will be on the Final!
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Children Playing with Adult Toys
Kim Kardashian's getting a divorce. Married 72 days. And calling it quits.
At least she gave it a chance.
More and more a phrase careens through my brain, knocking holes in things, letting in some painful light. "Children playing with adult toys."
A couple of Sundays ago, I watched "West Side Story" again. Once in a while the story makes me angry. "Romeo and Juliet" does it to me too (Why not? Same story!).
Here's two street gangs, full of hormones and ego, serious stupidity, a bottomless pit of ignorance, almost un-self-aware. As the famous radio comedian Fred Allen characterized one of his less brilliant acquaintances, "He was born ignorant, and he's been losing ground ever since!"
They know what death is, but they don't know what death is. They have not yet grokked that "death" will sooner or later include people their age, people they know, and, eventually, them. So they swagger their way through life, totally self-absorbed, reacting to trivial things, over-reacting, until one day one boy from each gang ends up dead. And they are so amazed! Able to deal death, but not yet really aware of what "death" really is.
Children playing with adult toys. Unable to comprehend adult consequences, unwilling to shoulder adult responsibilities, brain-dead about anything adult, only totally insane over adult pleasures.
It turns out you can be 31, Kim, and still be a child.
It turns out you can have fully functionaly adult reproductive organs, and still be a child. You can have a child and be a child.
Sex. Drugs. Alcohol. Tobacco. Cars. Guns.
Life and death in decisions twelve-year-olds make.
Children playing with adult toys.
"Don't do the crime if you can't do the time," they say.
Don't dance if you aren't willing to pay the piper.
Don't play with adult toys until you're an adult, Kim.
At least she gave it a chance.
More and more a phrase careens through my brain, knocking holes in things, letting in some painful light. "Children playing with adult toys."
A couple of Sundays ago, I watched "West Side Story" again. Once in a while the story makes me angry. "Romeo and Juliet" does it to me too (Why not? Same story!).
Here's two street gangs, full of hormones and ego, serious stupidity, a bottomless pit of ignorance, almost un-self-aware. As the famous radio comedian Fred Allen characterized one of his less brilliant acquaintances, "He was born ignorant, and he's been losing ground ever since!"
They know what death is, but they don't know what death is. They have not yet grokked that "death" will sooner or later include people their age, people they know, and, eventually, them. So they swagger their way through life, totally self-absorbed, reacting to trivial things, over-reacting, until one day one boy from each gang ends up dead. And they are so amazed! Able to deal death, but not yet really aware of what "death" really is.
Children playing with adult toys. Unable to comprehend adult consequences, unwilling to shoulder adult responsibilities, brain-dead about anything adult, only totally insane over adult pleasures.
It turns out you can be 31, Kim, and still be a child.
It turns out you can have fully functionaly adult reproductive organs, and still be a child. You can have a child and be a child.
Sex. Drugs. Alcohol. Tobacco. Cars. Guns.
Life and death in decisions twelve-year-olds make.
Children playing with adult toys.
"Don't do the crime if you can't do the time," they say.
Don't dance if you aren't willing to pay the piper.
Don't play with adult toys until you're an adult, Kim.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Napoleon Hill's "Self Confidence Formula"
One of the things that is making all the difference in the world to me these days is Napoleon Hill's "Self Confidence Formula", from the marvelous book with what, to many, is an offensive title, Think and Grow Rich. I wish my Sunday School class would let me teach it, because it's not just about monetary wealth. It is (thought I doubt Mr. Hill would say it this way) about being all God created you to be, doing all God created you to do, and not letting this world keep you from it.
The formula is in five parts, and I intend to devote my next five posts, one for each of the five parts. The fifth is pretty long and may be a multi-parter.
First, the formula, as I recite it. Part of the process is memorizing the formula and reciting it daily. In reciting it over and over, I have changed it a bit to fit my particular point of view.
Here it goes:
In the Name of Jesus:
First: I know that you have given me everything I need (ability, attitude, and opportunity) to achieve the object of my definite purpose in life; therefore I demand of myself persistent, continuous action toward its attainment; and I here and now promise to render such action.
Second: I realize the dominating thoughts of my mind will eventually reproduce themselves in outward and physical action, and gradually transform themselves into physical reality; therefore I will concentrate my thoughts for thirty minutes daily upon the task of thinking of the person I intend to become, thereby creating in my mind a clear mental picture.
Third: I know, through the principle of autosuggestion, any desire I persistently hold in my mind will eventually seek expression through some practical means of attaining the object back of it; therefore I will devote ten minutes daily to demanding of myself the development of self-confidence.
Fourth: I have clearly written down a description of my definite chief aim in life, and I will never stop trying until I shall have developed sufficient self-confidence for its attainment.
Fifth: I fully realize that no wealth or position can long endure, unless built upon truth and justice; therefore, I will engage in no transaction which does not benefit all it affects. I will succeed by attracting to myself the forces I wish to use, and the cooperation of other people. I will induce others to serve me because of my willingness to serve others. I will eliminate hatred, envy, jealousy, selfishness, and cynicism, by developing love for all humanity; because I know that a negative attitude toward others can never bring me success. I will cause others to believe in me, because I will believe in them, and in myself. I will sign my name to this formula, I will commit it to memory, and I will recite it aloud once a day with full faith that gradually it will affect my thoughts and actions, so that I will become a self-reliant and successful person.--Napoleaon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, 1937, p. 54f, with some rewording by me here and there.
The formula reminds me that God created me for a purpose, it encourages me when I haven't done my best toward that purpose, it encourages me to get up tomorrow and seek to do my best for that purpose tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
More later.
The formula is in five parts, and I intend to devote my next five posts, one for each of the five parts. The fifth is pretty long and may be a multi-parter.
First, the formula, as I recite it. Part of the process is memorizing the formula and reciting it daily. In reciting it over and over, I have changed it a bit to fit my particular point of view.
Here it goes:
In the Name of Jesus:
First: I know that you have given me everything I need (ability, attitude, and opportunity) to achieve the object of my definite purpose in life; therefore I demand of myself persistent, continuous action toward its attainment; and I here and now promise to render such action.
Second: I realize the dominating thoughts of my mind will eventually reproduce themselves in outward and physical action, and gradually transform themselves into physical reality; therefore I will concentrate my thoughts for thirty minutes daily upon the task of thinking of the person I intend to become, thereby creating in my mind a clear mental picture.
Third: I know, through the principle of autosuggestion, any desire I persistently hold in my mind will eventually seek expression through some practical means of attaining the object back of it; therefore I will devote ten minutes daily to demanding of myself the development of self-confidence.
Fourth: I have clearly written down a description of my definite chief aim in life, and I will never stop trying until I shall have developed sufficient self-confidence for its attainment.
Fifth: I fully realize that no wealth or position can long endure, unless built upon truth and justice; therefore, I will engage in no transaction which does not benefit all it affects. I will succeed by attracting to myself the forces I wish to use, and the cooperation of other people. I will induce others to serve me because of my willingness to serve others. I will eliminate hatred, envy, jealousy, selfishness, and cynicism, by developing love for all humanity; because I know that a negative attitude toward others can never bring me success. I will cause others to believe in me, because I will believe in them, and in myself. I will sign my name to this formula, I will commit it to memory, and I will recite it aloud once a day with full faith that gradually it will affect my thoughts and actions, so that I will become a self-reliant and successful person.--Napoleaon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, 1937, p. 54f, with some rewording by me here and there.
The formula reminds me that God created me for a purpose, it encourages me when I haven't done my best toward that purpose, it encourages me to get up tomorrow and seek to do my best for that purpose tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
More later.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Dream a Godly Dream
Do you remember Kermit the Frog singing "Rainbow Connection" at the beginning of "The Muppet Movie"? Honestly, I think that song should be included in the hymnal.
It turns out, when God created you, he left fingerprints. He left his will for your life imprinted in you (the computer tech in me says "hardwired" in you). Where? you ask.
Get quiet, very, very quiet, listen to the silence, until you find the deepest, most fundamental desire in your heart, your innermost dream. That is God's will for you. If you and I are anything alike, it may take a long time. Maybe years.
We are told dreams are for infants. We are told to face "reality" (Why is "reality" always unpleasant? Why are the things of joy and pleasure considered "just feelings"? If we really believe in heaven, isn't "All good things must come to an end" ultimate blasphemy? Doesn't our doctrine of Eternal Life mean Only good things NEVER come to an end? Anyway...)
Bruce Wilkinson has written a marvelous book, The Dream Giver. Bruce says God has implanted a dream in each of us; I am not the creator or the owner of my dream, I am merely the custodian. It is God's will that I launch out and do everything I can to realize that dream. It is God's will for me, and it is God's will for everyone around me.
God gave me a dream, and he gave me talents, gifts, and graces. But he didn't give them to me for me! He gave them to me to share with others. I am supposed to build something that will help others, serve others, save others, heal others, empower others, inform others, enable others. And as I carry out that ministry, I build the Kingdom of God, my part of it.
On the other hand, if I bury my dream; if I consider my talents and gifts to be worthless; don't I now only deny them to others? Don't I also slap the face of the One who created me?
How many children didn't need to starve to death or suffer life-crippling abuse, how many young people didn't need to go down to drug addiction, how many people could have been saved from divorce, from abortion, from murder, from suicide, if more of us had marshalled the courage to launch out of our comfort zones to pursue our God-given dreams!
Are you 55 years old, wondering where your youth went, when all the dreams died, when the fire went out, while you were marshalling the courage to keep getting up in the morning for that dead-end job you only barely tolerate? Is it getting harder and harder to fend off bitterness and futility? Are you watching the last sparks of hope sputter down to die?
Get back in touch with your dream. It's God's will. It's his way out.
And it's his way in.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Freedom
“Not everyone is willing to embrace liberty; liberty requires not just effort, but risk. Some people choose to delude themselves and see their chains as protective armor.” ― Terry Goodkind, Chainfire
I have devoted my life to freedom.
I have to free myself. And I have to show others how to free themselves. I can't free them. They have to free themselves.
And a shocking number of people really don't want to be free. "Who doesn't want to be free?" you ask.
When I called my mother to tell her about where the bishop was sending me, what turned out to be my last appointment, I told her the church members said they wanted to grow.
"That's good," she responded, supportively.
"It doesn't mean a thing," I said.
"How can it not mean a thing?"
"Mom! I keep saying I want to be skinny. I just don't want to diet and exercise."
Freedom, as the saying goes, isn't free. And it's not something you just buy and keep. It requires maintenance. It's like your health: if you don't work to maintain it, you lose it. Ask a 55-year-old man who's about forty pounds overweight; who has the horrible letters "MI" in his medical history; who is on medication for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and coronary artery spasms; who has arthritis-induced cervical spondylosis--in other words, if I don't do my neck stretches daily, I have horrible pains up the back of my head. I'm not a teenager anymore, and I would swear I was a teenager just a couple of years ago.
It's an adult thing, freedom. You don't give it to children. They can't handle it. They'd use it to hurt themselves and others.
Would I do well if I were free?
A clinical psychologist I saw after my divorce told me he had a dream that someone had given me several million dollars, and in the dream he was afraid for me. It made me think: if I didn't have to get up and go to work 40 hours a week, what would I do? If I could afford to buy whatever I want, what would I get? There's a lot of alcoholism in my family. Would I die the death John Belushi died? The death Robert Downey Jr. has avoided, and I predicted he wouldn't?
But "For freedom, Christ has set us free" (Galatians 5:1). It's what God wants.
I have promised God I will live the rest of my life for freedom.
Care to come along?
I have devoted my life to freedom.
I have to free myself. And I have to show others how to free themselves. I can't free them. They have to free themselves.
And a shocking number of people really don't want to be free. "Who doesn't want to be free?" you ask.
When I called my mother to tell her about where the bishop was sending me, what turned out to be my last appointment, I told her the church members said they wanted to grow.
"That's good," she responded, supportively.
"It doesn't mean a thing," I said.
"How can it not mean a thing?"
"Mom! I keep saying I want to be skinny. I just don't want to diet and exercise."
Freedom, as the saying goes, isn't free. And it's not something you just buy and keep. It requires maintenance. It's like your health: if you don't work to maintain it, you lose it. Ask a 55-year-old man who's about forty pounds overweight; who has the horrible letters "MI" in his medical history; who is on medication for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and coronary artery spasms; who has arthritis-induced cervical spondylosis--in other words, if I don't do my neck stretches daily, I have horrible pains up the back of my head. I'm not a teenager anymore, and I would swear I was a teenager just a couple of years ago.
It's an adult thing, freedom. You don't give it to children. They can't handle it. They'd use it to hurt themselves and others.
Would I do well if I were free?
A clinical psychologist I saw after my divorce told me he had a dream that someone had given me several million dollars, and in the dream he was afraid for me. It made me think: if I didn't have to get up and go to work 40 hours a week, what would I do? If I could afford to buy whatever I want, what would I get? There's a lot of alcoholism in my family. Would I die the death John Belushi died? The death Robert Downey Jr. has avoided, and I predicted he wouldn't?
But "For freedom, Christ has set us free" (Galatians 5:1). It's what God wants.
I have promised God I will live the rest of my life for freedom.
Care to come along?
Saturday, September 10, 2011
My Daddy, Bill Thomas--September 11, 1924-May 21, 2002
Tomorrow, September 11, 2011, is the tenth anniversary of my father's last birthday. Ten years ago tomorrow, in the evening, I called him and wished him "a moderately happy birthday." He chuckled and told me how much it felt like a day 60 years before, Pearl Harbor day. He was 17. He joined the Army the next day and ended up a radio operator and machine gunner in bombers for the Army Air Corps. Shot down over Yugoslavia on Armistice Day, 1944, he spent 55 days with the Underground, and returned to active duty New Years' Day, 1945.
My grandmother, who died at the age of 97 in 1985, told me the war changed Daddy. How? I asked. She thought quietly for a long moment.
"He didn't smile as much after," she said quietly.
His oldest sister, my Aunt Ginny, who died in her early 90's a few months ago, told me Bill (my daddy) was "a pretty boy" and sickly, and his mother and his sisters all mothered him. Daddy said, growing up in The Great Depression, he never remembered going without anything. Aunt Ginny said he was petted and spoiled. Maybe so.
Aunt Ginny also said, when he first enlisted, Daddy would trade his beer rations for cigarettes. After the war, and intermittently until he died, Daddy was an alcoholic.
Children of alcoholics grow up with interesting personality traits, some of them less than desireable. But one thing we can learn, if we're observant, is to appreciate people for who they are.
Daddy was a genius. He was a hard-working man. We never owned more than one car, and often both my parents worked, often on separate shifts. When I was licensed to drive, I frequently had to deliver Daddy to his job, then pick Mom up at hers. I'd get Daddy at the end of his shift. Daddy was always early for work. Parked at the mill, with a clear view of the door the employees would take, I could see them lining up at the time clock ten minutes in advance to get a running start when the bell rang. If Daddy left five minutes late, that wis early for him. I would almost consider him psychotically honest.
Come to think of it, he had only one great character flaw: when pressure led him to feel forced to drink a beer, he'd keep drinking them until we had to hospitalize him for dehydration and malnutrition. He was only violent once, and then he only shoved my mother and me; he didn't hurt us. He was almost never angry when he drank. He'd be friendlier, more outgoing, sometimes weepy and self-pitying.
A couple of months after that last birthday, he started drinking again. We put him in the hospital relatively quickly in the process. And that's when they found the lung cancer. He was so weak from the drinking bout, they couldn't do chemotherapy. When they started radiation, they figured out it was doing damage to his good lung. So they couldn't torture him to death the way they do so many cancer victims. They sent him home to die. He was diagnosed just before Thanksgiving. He died May 21, 2002. It was a Tuesday.
Daddy lived his last years in the town where he met my mother, where I was born, Post, Texas. I have spent my adult life where I grew up--Georgia. So we flew out to see him after his diagnosis, just after Christmas, 2001. We spent a few days there. The night before we were to leave, just before we left for the motel, Daddy stood up and hugged me. He clutched my arms, stepped back, and looked into my eyes.
"Son, you're a good man," he said, his final benediction to me.
I thought a moment and said the last words I would say to him face-to-face before he would die. And I knew it would be my final words to him, my final benediction:
"YOU'RE a good man."
He was. I loved him, I miss him. I'm 55 now, and every day I hope to grow up to be as much like him as I can be.
My grandmother, who died at the age of 97 in 1985, told me the war changed Daddy. How? I asked. She thought quietly for a long moment.
"He didn't smile as much after," she said quietly.
His oldest sister, my Aunt Ginny, who died in her early 90's a few months ago, told me Bill (my daddy) was "a pretty boy" and sickly, and his mother and his sisters all mothered him. Daddy said, growing up in The Great Depression, he never remembered going without anything. Aunt Ginny said he was petted and spoiled. Maybe so.
Aunt Ginny also said, when he first enlisted, Daddy would trade his beer rations for cigarettes. After the war, and intermittently until he died, Daddy was an alcoholic.
Children of alcoholics grow up with interesting personality traits, some of them less than desireable. But one thing we can learn, if we're observant, is to appreciate people for who they are.
Daddy was a genius. He was a hard-working man. We never owned more than one car, and often both my parents worked, often on separate shifts. When I was licensed to drive, I frequently had to deliver Daddy to his job, then pick Mom up at hers. I'd get Daddy at the end of his shift. Daddy was always early for work. Parked at the mill, with a clear view of the door the employees would take, I could see them lining up at the time clock ten minutes in advance to get a running start when the bell rang. If Daddy left five minutes late, that wis early for him. I would almost consider him psychotically honest.
Come to think of it, he had only one great character flaw: when pressure led him to feel forced to drink a beer, he'd keep drinking them until we had to hospitalize him for dehydration and malnutrition. He was only violent once, and then he only shoved my mother and me; he didn't hurt us. He was almost never angry when he drank. He'd be friendlier, more outgoing, sometimes weepy and self-pitying.
A couple of months after that last birthday, he started drinking again. We put him in the hospital relatively quickly in the process. And that's when they found the lung cancer. He was so weak from the drinking bout, they couldn't do chemotherapy. When they started radiation, they figured out it was doing damage to his good lung. So they couldn't torture him to death the way they do so many cancer victims. They sent him home to die. He was diagnosed just before Thanksgiving. He died May 21, 2002. It was a Tuesday.
Daddy lived his last years in the town where he met my mother, where I was born, Post, Texas. I have spent my adult life where I grew up--Georgia. So we flew out to see him after his diagnosis, just after Christmas, 2001. We spent a few days there. The night before we were to leave, just before we left for the motel, Daddy stood up and hugged me. He clutched my arms, stepped back, and looked into my eyes.
"Son, you're a good man," he said, his final benediction to me.
I thought a moment and said the last words I would say to him face-to-face before he would die. And I knew it would be my final words to him, my final benediction:
"YOU'RE a good man."
He was. I loved him, I miss him. I'm 55 now, and every day I hope to grow up to be as much like him as I can be.
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