Hugh's Views

The last time I was in the bookstore, she was blocking my path as she looked at the fantasy books on display.

She had an adult haircut, wore adult clothing and had an adult figure-but her face was that of a 16 year old wishing she were 18. In the high school I attended, she would have been a cheerleader, or the prom queen or on the homecomming court. More than likely, all of that.

Her midriff was bare and her shorts were too short, showing juvenile flesh no one should be privy to for at least a few more years. A flock of boys hovered around her. She relished their attention, but acted aloof. This only encouraged them.

“Excuse me”, I said.

She turns and looks at me, something of a smirk crosses her face and she turns and walks away. The boys look at me as if I have disturbed them, then they too turn and follow her.

I wanted to tell her that this was not the way. For I have been 16 and know what those boys are thinking. I know the thoughts they think, the late nights lying in bed, the solitary explosions while thinking of her, or rather their objectification of her. To them, she is a life support system for their fantasies.

“Don’t smirk at me, kiddo”, I want to tell her.

I remember what it means to be 16 – to have all your life in front of you, to believe whether you get asked to the homecoming dance will have eternal implications and to not yet know what heartbreak truly means. It is an age where you are yet to watch the things you have given your life to be destroyed by false friends, bringing on long cleansing cries in the shower.

Yes, to you I look like some random middle aged guy with a bad haircut and no sense of fashion, but I know things you do not, little girl. I know things you will not know for many years, and some things I know, I pray you need never learn.

Or maybe I know nothing. Hell, if I were you, I would probably smirk too.

In my 20′s, I sold for a living. Did you know that the sales industry is the largest purchaser of motivational literature and training¹? I learned how to have a ‘positive mental attitude’, how to ‘win friends and influence people’ and how to ‘fake it till you make it’. I spoke affirmations into the mirror, carried written goals in my wallet (which I would review at low points) and wore red ties with blue suits because that combination was supposed to inspire trust.

Low points are not encouraged in the motivational field. Probably has something to do with the corporations that pay the trainer’s paychecks. After all, if you are feeling down, depressed or miserable, you are not out ther closing deals, making connections, moving product. And have no doubt – that is the goal. Gotta do more, gotta be more.

Feeling blue? Well, act as if you weren’t. Don’t know what to do? Well, if you did know, what would you do then? Depressed? Depression is an avoidance activity, an excuse used by people who cannot hack it in the real world. Not able to close this deal? There is a name for people who cannot sell: We call them employees. I was told once that there were no problems I would have in my life that selling more product would not solve. And I bought into it, and the paycheck was good.

Until I was not selling product any more. And I decided that if what I was doing was so repulsive to me that the only way I could face the day was to stand in front of a mirror and chant over and over again that I was a winner, maybe I would be happier doing something else. Or pretty much anything else.  And so I did. And I am so very happy with my life, and my career and my friends.

Except when I am not.

When faced with a crisis, there are, I think, two kinds of people.²

There are those who process it outwardly, writing about it on their blog, talking about it with their friends, sharing it with their therapist and thus, through their friends and community, find their way out and back to wholeness.

I am the other sort of person.

When I feel things are out of sorts, I retreat inward. I hunker down and pull in the shutters. I go inside and pick things apart, look for patterns, seek to find the problem and work on it. By myself.

Which, if you know me, is weird, because I process almost everything by discussion. I have often said I don’t know what I think about something until I can talk about it. But, if I can process it as failure in any way, I shut up, and you will never hear about it.

I just do not have the tools to publicly deal with negativity. With things not going right. Because be damned if I am going to stand in front of a mirror and tell myself to fake it till I make it.

So I withdraw. Go inside. Batten down the hatches.

I realize this is not healthy. But there it is.

So, you may have noticed that there is exactly one blog post in the last month here on this blog, and on my other one, there have been exactly three, all written on the same day in a burst of activity.

I have been slightly more active on Twitter, but not much. I submit that when 140 characters takes too much energy, maybe something is wrong.

Several of you have asked, and I am ok. By some measures, I am doing great. My marriage is fine, I love my job and the people I get to minister to. I have some of the best friends in the world.

But by other measures, I am not so hot. I feel lethargic. Listless. Depression is not the right word – but it is close. Very, very close. I feel overwhelmed. Out of control. Like I am sinking, and just dont have the energy to swim.

Not all the time, mind you. But sometimes. And somedays, the whole damn day.

Just because I work on it internally does not mean I am not working on it. I am. I have a few trusted friends I have begun to share it with. I have two interns over the summer that are helping with a lot of the office work that was overwhelming me. I have tightened some of my boundaries. I am back at the gym, working out my salvation with fear and trembling.

And in August, I am going on a week-long retreat at Mepkin Abbey in South Carolina. A week of silence and reflection: no cell phones, no email… sounds a lot like heaven to me.

I am not writing this as a way of asking for pity, or sympathy or even solutions². I am just trying to move beyond what is comfortable for me and share my pain. Trying to throw open the shutters and come out into the light. I desire to be as honest with my failures as I am with my successes.

Thank you for listening and journeying with me.

{finis}

¹ The second largest purchaser of motivational training is the US Military. Apparently, we need more motivating to sell insurance than we do to invade foreign cultures and kill them.

² There is an old joke that says there are two kinds of people in this world -Those who think there are two kinds of people, and those who don’t…

³ For the love of Christ, please don’t tell me to go see your therapist. My having to explain to you that, despite my being 38 years old, I can afford neither the therapist or the medication would do nothing at all to improve my self-concept right now.

I have not been blogging as much as I wish I could – but hopefully that is about to change. I have started waking up two hours earlier every day so I can write. But not all of that will make it to this blog. Some of it is for work, and some of it is on the book-length project I am sketching out and some of it is on a fiction idea I am playing with. But still and all, it feels good to be writing regularly again.

Also: a few weeks ago I got a new cell phone. With a camera. Just like it was 2005 or something. Anyway, I have decided to try to capture at least one photo a day and post it over on my moblog (mobile blog). If that is your thing, you ought to check it out. Especially this pic of my cat Felix, playing dead.

Every month, well, almost every month, for the last 2 and a half years, I have written a letter to my friends and the people who support the work we do at Love Wins. It is not your typical newsletter – some months I cry for help, other months I celebrate joy as I talk about one of our victories. It is one of the things I most enjoy doing.

For people who are interested in what I do, who are interested in the peculiar type of ministry I work in and who want to know more about the philosophy that under-girds our work, there is no better source for that than to sign up for my little newsletter.

If you do sign up, no one will spam you, no one will harass you for money and no one will ever share your info with anyone else. I promise.

Last weekend, Renee and I went to Washington DC for the Transform East Coast Gathering. Many folks have asked me exactly what it was – their website described the event like this:

We are gathering missional practitioners on the East Coast to learn from each other and to mobilize others for forming new missional communities.

Whether you’re a pastor, prospective “church planter,” or simply interested in finding out more about transformational missional communities of practice, this gathering is designed to inspire and equip you to go and do likewise!

Anyway, Renee and I rode the train (Love the Amtrak) and to keep the cost as low as possible, stayed with our friends the Merritts in Arlington, just over the river. They were incredible hosts and went out of their way to make us feel at home. Thanks so much, guys!

On Saturday, I spoke on a panel, along with my friends Reverend Vince Anderson, Angela Harms and Kathy Escobar, on being “Missional at the Margins”. In short, we talked about reaching out to the people who often get looked over in church planting plans.  I thought it was going to be recorded, but, I was wrong. (I really need to get a digital recorder like this one so I can always have a copy of my talks.)

My friend Kathy had the keynote address at Transform, and she was just incredible. She held the audiences attention and at least six times during her talk, I wanted to shout “Amen!” If you are at all interested in the “Missional Church”, this is a must watch.

Her overall point? That being faithful to the Gospel is a path of “Downward Mobility”. And that this Jesus thing is really, really hard.

NB: Due to the craziness that is Ustream, I tried and tied to highlight only the clip of her talking. Alas, I failed. Or maybe Ustream did. In any event, her part of the video starts at 32:10.

So much happened at Transform I would love to talk about, but honestly, I just do not have the time right now. However, it will probably inform several blog posts in the days to come.

In the last 48 hours I have:

• Negotiated with a landlord on behalf of someone else.
• Held a crying mother of two who was facing the fact the kid’s dad had left her.
• Advised a man how to avoid being arrested for something he was surely guilty of.¹
• Visited a lawyer with someone to determine the status of a lawsuit.
• Had a meeting with three other pastors to work on ways faith communities can help with the coming post-traumatic stress disorder crisis that is going to hit when all the soldiers come home ²
• Tried³ to track down someone who was arrested while I was out of town.
• Spent several hours counseling a couple that just moved into their new apartment after a year of homelessness.
• Visited a friend’s new restaurant.⁴
• Spent two hours with my fellow theological misfits at the Raleigh Emergent cohort meeting.
• Booked two upcoming speaking gigs.
• Prepared the first of four lessons I am teaching at a local Baptist church over the next month on poverty and the Civil Rights movement.
• Sketched out the beginning schedule for an ongoing podcast for our ministry
• Adopted a 2 week old kitten.
• Narrowly averted the power company from shutting our lights off at the house.
• Researched options for arthroscopic knee surgery for someone who has no health insurance ⁵
• Walked a total of 5 miles as part of my new exercise regime.

No wonder I am tired.

¹ This is the sort of ethical struggles my particular form of ministry requires. If you must know, it is a victimless crime that he will be better able to resolve in a few months. Right now, however, he has a wife and kids who utterly depend on his income.

² PTSD will affect 20% of them – roughly 400,000 people who are five times more likely to seek help from their minister than all other sources of help combined.

³ I was unsuccessful at this

⁴ It is the new Market Restaurant on N Blount St. The food is incredible. He also hired the man in the couple mentioned above, which made them getting the apartment possible. We really need to support Chad and his new restaurant if we at all can.

⁵ The short answer is, there seem to be none. Medicaid is only an option in NC if you are disabled or have dependent children.

I have gotten several emails from folks who have noticed I am not blogging or twittering or whatever all that much lately, and were wondering if something was wrong.

No, not really. I am just in a phase in my life right now where something had to give, and right now it has to be my online community.

I got married at the end of October, but all of October was a blur, what with family in from out of town, planning for the wedding, moving into the new place and so on.  Then we went out of town, thanks to the generosity of some friends, and spent a week at the beach. Then I came back and entered what was my busiest two months in recent memory- speaking and traveling and writing and so on. And then came Christmas and Thanksgiving. The last week of the year found Renee in the hospital, having surgery to try to fix one of the major symptoms of her heart disease.

In short, if I want to look for the last “normal” week I had, it was somewhere back in September.

Until last week, which was the first week after her surgery that Renee felt completely normal and we could resume (or rather begin) our normal, day to day life. So we are fine – just living. We are trying to establish a rhythm of life – both of us work best with routine and schedules – to gain a sense of what “normal” looks like for us.

So bear with us, would you?

I hope to return to blogging regularly (for fun) soon. Until then, it will be sporadic and crazy – but you are never far from my thoughts.

The images and stories coming out of Haiti are heart breaking. Many of us want to do something, anything, and yet we have no idea what to do, or how to do it. And several people have asked me what I thought, and if I had any insight on how to help.

There are many legitimate organizations down there, doing good work. And yet, I heard yesterday how the FBI had shut down an organization that was fraudulent and was scamming people who were taking advantage of peoples emaotions and good intentions. Who do you trust?

Here are the organizations I know and trust – I am not saying these are the only ones, or even the best ones. But I am saying I know the people who run these. I have eaten with them, laughed with them, had real conversations with them and feel their love and passion for the people of Haiti. In short, I trust them, and you can too.

Hearts and Hands for Haiti is ran by Stan Weibe, who lives here in Raleigh with his wife Patty. They are good, decent people who have been working in Haiti a long time. Stan was in Port-au-Prince when the earthquake struck and is currently on site. (Donate here)

Haiti Partners is ran by two friends of mine, John Engle and Kent Annan.  They are doing good work in Haiti and have for years. I met them through Tony Campolo, who is a huge supporter and advocate for their work and for Haiti Partners.  John was in Port-au-Prince when the earthquake struck and Kent is in South Florida, rounding up stuff to take to Haiti ASAP. (Donate here)

So there you go – the two organizations I know and trust in Haiti. I trust these organizations with my money, and you can too.

Whether you send money or not, please keep Stan, Patty, John and Kent  – along with the millions of Haitians – in your thoughts and prayers.

Back in January of 2009, I got an email from Karen Spears Zacharias – a writer who was working up a book for Zondervan on the relationship between money and Christianity. She asked me if I had anything to say.

Boy, did I.

She came down on very cold day in February and watched us eat biscuits and coffee with some of our friends who live outside. We then went to Starbucks (she was buying – what can I say) and she picked my brain for the next 4 hours or so.

We talked about how a white-bread middle-class guy ended up working directly with the very poor and homeless. We talked about how money screws up our perceptions and how we have turned God into a kindly Santa Clause who loves us more than he does “them” – whoever “them” happens to be right now.

In any event, she went home and worked her writerly magic on my no-doubt rambling thoughts and turned it into a chapter of her newest book – Will Jesus Buy Me a Double wide (‘Cause I Need More Room for my Plasma TV).

Here is the copy from the back of the book:

What does it really mean to be blessed by God? With Southern charm and razor-sharp wit in Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide?, author Karen Spears Zacharias shows how the prosperity gospel has led us astray from true Christianity and helped create people and churches focused on greed. Zacharias unpacks story after story of families and individuals using the name of God as a means to living their own good life. You’ll hear shocking tales of those who exploit the gospel for their own gain, and mega-evangelists who live in million-dollar mansions with children groomed from the cradle to sell the message of Christ while their parents rake in the cash. Discover churches that have modeled themselves on Wall Street and unbridled materialism, and see what is happening to them now. Is this the good life? You’ll also meet some unlikely folks who live with genuine biblical integrity. People who know that God is more than some cosmic genie who gives them an easy life, a fat bank account, and a second home in an exotic location. Come discover stories about authentic Christianity and the true good life in Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide?

I have read it, and I have to tell you, she makes me sound great! Seriously, the book is hitting the shelves the beginning of March – but you can preorder your copy now. In fact, preordering is good for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that all the books that are preorderd count as sales (for bestseller lists, etc.) on the first day. And pretty much, the first week’s sales are what determine if a book is successful or not.

We are going to try to get her to come back to North Carolina to promote this thing. If and when she does, we will promote the heck out of that puppy.