Battle of the Band

I stumbled upon an old song the other day as I was skimming through the CD collection at my local library. As I held that old, scratched-up case in my hands, it got me thinking on the topic of dreams. Not the kind we have as we sleep, but those associated with where we hope our lives will end up. Have you ever dreamed of achieving something big, only to see that dream realized but then turn into something else? Something draining or negative or confining?

The CD that got me started on all of this was from a group that achieved their dream of writing songs, performing their music to sold out arenas, and being adored by a world-wide fan base. They even won a Grammy for best new group back in the early 1970s. Within just a few years, the trio of members who were all in their early 20s, when from a garage band to superstardom. They rode this wave for about 5 years and then their popularity began to noticeably wane. Within 10 years they no longer even had a recording contract.

They have been trapped in this mode ever since. Now some 30 years later they survive by touring as an oldies act. Gone are the private planes and limosines. Gone are the groupies and cultural relevance. 100 shows a year at small local venues and state fairs. Promoters requiring them to play the same set of a dozen songs night after night after night. Sure they put on a smile as they play to those small crowds, but I wonder if they feel like they are living out a real-life adaptation of Groundhog Day. I wonder if they are sick of the rut they must live in to pay their bills and whether they consider their careers blessed or cursed. I wonder if on any given night they ever feel that they can still do magic?

Father Fiction

Over the last several months I have been tearing through each of the books author Donald Miller has written. It all started when a couple of friends told me that I might enjoy his well-known book Blue Like Jazz. What I found was an author whose style and approach and humor and viewpoint resonated with me. His conversational style has a way that makes me feel that he and I are sharing life over a cup of coffee. Thus I was looking forward to continuing our "relationship" when I picked up a copy of his book Father Fiction (originally published as To Own a Dragon).

Father Fiction is a work centering on how Miller's father left him and his mother when Miller was a young child. Growing up, this absence had a noticeable affect on him. It impacted how he did in school, how he viewed himself, and how he interacted with adults. However, it took him a very long time to truly come to grips with all of this. He was nearly 30 before he gained some perspective and understanding of the impact of growing up without a father. Of course, many use the notion of a "broken" family to cast blame for their bad or misguided choices on anyone and everyone except themselves. It turns out that accepting responsibility, growing up with focus and joy, can be achieved with the right mentors in our lives. When we finally come to a healthy equilibrium in time, we then have the responsibility to give back to others what has been given to us (contrasting so-called wounded healers with arrogant victims).

Although I grew up in a two-parent home, I too have some father issues that have impacted who I have become and how I look at myself. With this backdrop, I very much appreciated reading through Miller's thoughts on this subject. Even though they were very personal, he frames his discussion more generally to give encouragement and some ideas to anyone with father issues. Also, in terms of the writing itself in comparison to Miller's other books that I have read (Blue Like Jazz, Searching for God Knows What, Through Painted Deserts), this book was not as crisply tailored or as deep and interconnected, but I still very much enjoyed my time with it.

Missing You

Recently there was some sort of major "cyber event" that happened where I work. This cyptic language used by the IT folks simply alludes to the fact that some person hacked our computers, did a bunch of bad stuff, and messed up our system. The event also caused them to turn off our internet for nearly two full weeks while the experts scrambled to figure out what happened. Of course this begs the question of the whole computer/network security system where I have to log into 75 different machines with different access protocols and change my password every 5 minutes. After all, its all about security. Clearly the hassle is worth it! (If you did not sense my tone here, I have used the literary techique known as "sarcasm" to express my frustration.) Anyway, as I point out above, and will say again here for emphasis, I did not have access to the internet for nearly two weeks. No ESPN, no CNN, no facebook, no blog, oh, and mostly importantly (in case the computer police from work are eavesdropping), no access to stuff I needed to do my job in an efficient and professional manner.

O.K., so I somehow managed to survive this lengthy outage. But I did learn something along the way. Sometimes we get so comfortable in our daily living, our unintentional drift from season to season in life, that we take what we have for granted. What used to excite us, arouse our passions, or pique our interests and full attention, can lose its vibrant intensity. Sometimes things diminish to the point that they can slip away as a ghost in a fog. Only then do we come to appreciate with full cognizance how much we relied on them, how much they were a part of us. Only in their absense do we fully understand the depth of our loss. Missing you.

Personal Insight

I remember playing a game in my church small group a few years ago. Everyone was given a handful of candy, each containing the same number of pieces. Each person in turn said something about themselves that they hoped was not true of anyone else in the room. For example, I could say "I have never worn pink, lace-trimmed panties." Anyone who had worn pink, lace-trimmed panties had to hand one piece of their candy over to me. Those who had not, got to keep their candy. The game continued around the circle until one person had all the candy and was declared the winner. This got me to thinking about some things that I could use if I am ever involved in such a game again. Things like:

• I have not worn a pair of sneakers/tennis shoes in more than 5 years.
  
• I have never eaten a "non-standard" meat (only cow, pig, chicken/turkey).
  
• I once got a perm.
  
• For a period of nearly 5 years, I drank more Mt. Dew than milk.
  
• I have never gone to the doctor because of a broken bone.
  
• I have never met Gavin McLeod (Cap'n Stubing on the Love Boat) in person.
  
• I have twice been officially interviewed on the evening news.
  
• I have never seen the movies E.T., Titanic, Lord of the Rings, or Pirates of the Carribbean.
  

O.K., there are some things about me that might get me your candy. What do you have to offer up to get a piece of mine?

Hiding in the Shadows

Not too many folks read my blog regularly and even fewer actually leave a comment on anything that I write. However, I have 3 or 4 who make their presence known. However, I notice that, even with limited statistics to judge the trends, whenever I post on a topic that is either intensely personal (e.g. cancer, loneliness, depression, personal demons) or the least bit socially awkward or controversial (e.g. religion, sex, politics), my comment leavers tend to noticeably shy away. This got me to thinking about why. Why would folks hide in the shadows on some important or interesting topics? Perhaps,

• They don't really care to get involved with me on a personal or human level. Sometimes relationships have a threshold, above which they get too close for our comfort.
  
• They don't want their name associated with controversial issues. They feel the need to protect their reputation, and as such feel the need to very closely guard their tongues.
  
• They just don't know what to say to help. Sometimes when someone is in the soup and suffering, a few sentences on a blog seem so, well, impersonal and distant.
  
• They don't want to think about complex personal issues. Aren't blogs supposed to be light and humorous? I suspect that most blog visits are made out of a sense of duty or loyalty. I visit their blogs so they feel the need to visit mine. Hey, I don't want to think about anything that requires more than 30 seconds dude.
  
• They forgot how to post a reply.
  
• They don't want to offend me or make things worse.
  

Actually there may be other reasons, or the truth involves a combination of reasons. That's O.K. you know. Even just a comment of "hey" can bring a smile.

Kiss

A young lady was driving home on a rain-slicked road late one evening. In the car with her was her beloved brother. It seems that she somehow lost control of her car and as she swerved to miss an oncoming vehicle, she drove off the side of a bridge into a river. When she awoke from a month-long coma she learned two startling facts. One was that her memory for the past six months was completely erased. The other was that her brother, although he survived the accident, had suffered severe brain damage. A tragedy to be sure, but there is more to this story. Shauna is the daughter of a powerful senator who is leading in the presidental polls with only weeks to go before the election. Senator Landon McAllister, president of McAllister MediVista, a top pharmaceuticals development company.

Upon emerging from her coma, there stands her loving boyfriend Wayne, but Shauna has no memory of him. He is at once supportive and patient, and at the same moment, always a bit too watchful. As Shauna recovers at the home of her estranged father and her nasty stepmother, Shauna is warned by her housekeeper to be wary of Wayne, who happens to be a top executive at her father's company. Slowly as Shauna starts to do a bit of digging to put her mind and her life back together, she begins to uncover some information that seems to indicate something sinister was afoot in her accident. That, along with the fact that the coma might have been medically induced by MMV doctors. In fact, Shauna believes that whatever drugs she was given were responsible for her memory loss. But why? What did she used to know? What is even stranger and less explainable is that Shauna now seems to have the ability to read people's minds.

Kiss, co-authored by Ted Dekker and Erin Healy, follows the story of Shauna and her pursuit of the truth. The more she learns along the way, the deeper and deeper her troubles become. Money laundering, illegal campaign contributions, human trafficking, frame ups, and murder. Ultimately she finds what she really was after all along, relationship with her father. A feeling of acceptance and trust and love that she had not felt since she was a little girl, since the moment her mother died so many years ago.

Tapestry

The scene was pure and simple. A father and his young daughter were playing basketball together on the community playground. I was parked in my car about a hundred yards away and I just sat back and watched them. Her giggles, his exaggerated pantomime, their smiles. All of it was sewing together a lovely tapestry of relationship for their future. Today was just a day of being outdoors and having some fun. But this bonding and trust were developing for a point miles down the road when she will need to talk to someone about her first boyfriend, when she will get into a situation where the walls seem to be closing in, when her life will provide choices but the answers are not obvious. In that moment of weakness or trouble or doubt, she could rely on her own undeveloped instincts, or maybe because of today's game of basketball, it might just cause her to turn to him and say, "Daddy, can I ask you something?"