FREE THE INMATES

In his book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Scott Adams describes a medical issue he had in the early 2000's. It caused him to lose his voice entirely. 

Eventually he was diagnosed with a rare condition called spasmodic dysphonia. 

For two years he was silent. He was told there was no cure. 

These days he spends nearly an hour speaking solo on his podcast each day. Literally 7 days a week. 

His attitude about what he was going to do with his healing is what caught my eye:

"I decided that after I cured myself, somehow, some way, I would spread the word to others. I wouldn't be satisfied simply escaping from my prison of silence; I was planning to escape, free the other inmates, shoot the warden, and burn down the prison." (p.83)

Now as believers we don't "cure ourselves", but imagine if each individual set free from the curse of sin and death would take the same attitude! 

Free the other inmates! Burn down the prison!

1,000

My first post on this blog was written on November 7th, 2010.

It was a few weeks after I returned from my first trip to Haiti. Melissa and I were feeling the call to move our family there. I wasn't sure what to do next, but I knew I needed to lighten the load. I had to get rid of some stuff.

So I decided that each day I was going to find something around the house to either give away, throw away, or sell. And I would document it on a daily basis. 

It made for an interesting ongoing experience (for me, anyway) and resulted in the daily documentation of all sorts of weird possessions that I was ready (usually) to part with. 

Anyway, that's where I started. It's been a wild 11.5 years. 

Today, Blogspot tells me that this is my thousandth post.

I am celebrating by drinking 30 milliliters of Nyquil and going to bed. 

And tomorrow I will write #1,001.  

SPRING BREAK

Not much to say tonight. Just grateful to have Caleb and Hannah and Samuel all home for spring break the same week. 

Unfortunately, while the three college students have their break this coming week, Sarah's high school doesn't start its break until the following week. 

It would have been nice to travel somewhere together as a family, stay in a big hotel and eat at restaurants all week.

BUT, I wouldn't give up our crowded little house, burgers on the grill, and sitting around the fire pit on the back deck with some extra friends.

And that was today.

And today was so good.

Thank you, Lord! I have all that I need to be content.

SOAP

Maybe even better than re-living all my favorite novelty songs from my childhood on Spotify was discovering some songs I had never heard before by some of my favorite artists - many long dead and gone.

Allan Sherman died young - 48, I think. You might not recognize the name but maybe you remember his most famous song - the one about an unhappy boy at summer camp: Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah. (If you haven't heard of it, where have you been? It's got its own Wikipedia page!) It made it to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 List in 1963 - only kept from the #1 spot by Stevie Wonder. 

Anyway, on Spotify I came across one of Sherman's songs I had never heard before. It was set to the tune of Chim Chim Chiree and it reminded me of something else I always appreciated about novelty music as a genre...

Novelty music has always been a great place for social commentary. I appreciate humorists who can get me laughing while also getting across an important truth.

Sherman's Chim Chim Chiree is about advertising and how easily we fall for what the world is selling us. The last stanza was my favorite*:

I've lived all my life

In this weird wonderland -

I keep buying things

That I don't understand,

Cause they promise me miracles,

Magic and hope,

But somehow it always 

Turns out to be soap.

More relevant today than ever! 

___________________________

* It's even better if you conjure up the melody as you read the lyrics - especially the way the tune puts an emphasis on the word "soap". Brilliant!

NOVELTY SONGS

Since I am primarily working from home now, I recently went looking for something to break up the silence of the house. 

(I mean besides Sugar and Ginger's incessant barking at anything that moves outside the living room window.) 

I was excited to see there was a free version of Spotify, as I had always assumed it was a paid app. 

There was one outcome of checking out Spotify that should not have surprised me: I went down a music rabbit hole. 

When I was a kid - I have no recollection how it started - my musical genre of choice was not oldies, rock, country, gospel, or classical.

It was novelty songs.

Songs like Purple People Eater. The Monster Mash. Disco Duck. Ahab the Arab. The Witch Doctor.

Artists like Ray Stevens, Allan Sherman, Tom Lehrer, Spike Jones, Roger Miller, and Julie Brown. And later, absolutely anything by Weird Al Yankovic.

I guess I appreciated how these artists poked fun at a music industry that was too often incredibly self-serious. (As our culture entered the era of Boy George and Madonna.) 

And maybe also how they took their musical abilities, their lyrical talents, and their moments in the spotlight and used them to make people laugh rather than make themselves rich. (Although a few did both.)

There's something really admirable about that. 

ASH WEDNESDAY

Come Ash Wednesday, Melissa and I find ourselves wishing we were part of a church that was a bit more ... liturgical.

Did the modern American church have to jettison ALL tradition in order to be cool and contemporary?

And out of all the seasons on the Christian calendar, why did we preserve Advent alone? (And am I being overly critical or does it often feel like Advent is just the churchy equivalent to "only 4 more shopping weeks until Christmas"?)

Anyway, it would be nice to see an Ash Wednesday service on our church calendar, but there isn't one. I don't suppose there are too many left out there. 

But I suppose that Lent was always a tough sell, being the season of "repentance" and all. 

As a modern American Christian, I am not too keen on the idea that I have any repenting to do. 

How about you?

Maybe that's why we need Lent back on our calendar...

A WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT

I have spent the last month fretting over a research paper for one of my classes. The prof is a tough grader and it has been a long time since I wrote a 10 to 12 page paper. In recent days, I have made massive changes to the structure of the whole thing - I go round and round on the order of the sections.

I had made a commitment to myself that I would go back and look at the professor's comments on my previous papers to get an idea of what to improve for this one.

But that made me nervous. (Even though I got an A on the last two - insecurities run deep.) 

So I procrastinated on looking at the comments.

Now the paper is due at midnight tonight, it is 8:00 am, and I finally decided it was now or never for looking at comments. 

I scrolled all the way through the pages and saw no comments ... except at the bottom of the last page.

"Well done. A!"

And all of a sudden I have renewed energy for finishing this paper off and getting it submitted...