I wasn’t aware of it until yesterday but, apparently, all that ethical stuff in the bible, especially the parts about not lying about people and the need to accuse people of wrongdoing in private, well, those little rules don’t apply to bloggers. Did you know that? Me neither. But, apparently.
Yesterday, you see, I began my day by reading a blog post in which a Christian accused another Christian (not me, but someone close to me) of something terrible without any proof. And then - and this was quite amazing to read - his readers believed him. With no proof, just words.
But, here’s the thing. Wrong as I think this guy was, I’m not linking to him. I’m not telling you who he is. I’m keeping him safe from your criticism. And I sent him my phone number and asked him to use it. I truly hope he does. I’m optimistic that we can have a nice little adult chat about this whole thing. Perhaps I’ll even offer him a ticket to one of our upcoming Christmas concerts just for hearing me out. I think I’ll do that. Because I think that’s what Jesus would do. Even if He had a blog.
There was a marketing meeting about my face years ago. From it, a guy with an actual degree in marketing emerged and informed me that I was “unapproachable looking.”
“We know you’re approachable but you don’t look like it,” he explained. The solution was to dye my hair, shave my beard, use only pictures of me smiling a toothy smile and use Photoshop to blur my cheeks in order to create the illusion that I was much heavier than I actually was (am). Because, as any marketing major will tell you, skinny people are just plain scary to the general buying population. That’s covered in the second semester.
Today, I’m not called “unapproachable.” I don’t have friends with such robust vocabularies. Nope, today I’m mistaken as “serious” and even “angry.” “Are you angry?” someone will say. “You look angry.”
“Yes, I’m angry,” I say. “Very angry at this banana. And at this napkin. Napkins and bananas really tick me off. Quite angry.” Which is my subtle way of saying “Go away now.” And that, I guess, sort of makes me “unapproachable.”
Since so many experience such difficulty deciphering what it is I’m expressing with my face, I’m posting some visual aids that will assist you - the world - in identifying my mood at any given moment.
Here is my angry face:
Here are my other faces:
I hope that helps.
The timing of our trip to the Dominican Republic was unfortunate. Not because it coincided with an election you maybe have heard about. That’s no big deal. No, it was too dang close to Halloween, which meant my Halloween pictures couldn’t be shared here on my blog until now.
You see, a lot of first-time Shlog readers came around while I was in the Dominican Republic. I mean a lot. Like a few thousand people who’ve never come to these parts before. And, you see, the thing is, if those folks came here last week to read about our trip to the Dominican Republic and saw that just a few days before I was trick-or-treating with a bunch of guys in drag? Well, they might not have understood. But now?
Well, now, of course, they know me first as a guy who took a trip to the third world. It’s fine if they see the guys in drag now. Totally fine. It won’t be an issue I’m sure. It’s all about first impressions being lasting ones and blah blah blah…
So, anyway, here are some guys in drag.
Mind you, this wasn’t a coordinated effort on their part. Nobody called anybody else and said, “Hey, I think I’d like to dress up like a chick for Halloween, you wanna?” No, the frightening truth is these guys made the decision to don women’s clothing completely independent of one another. Completely. Frightening.
On the right there is Mr Wizard, hands down the smartest man I’ve ever known. You ask this guy what a brain freeze is and you’ll get a physics based answer, a biology based answer, and the entymology of the words “brain” and “freeze” and you’ll laugh a lot while you’re getting all that. The man is wicked smart. Yet he works for an American car manufacturer. He makes sure they’re obeying all OSHA laws or something, I’m not sure. But I know he’s got nothing to do with their inferior craftsmanship and diving stock prices. Also, because of him I do understand what the Hadron Collider is all about and I know how to make crystal meth. I haven’t, but I now know how. And that’s something.
The guy to the left of me (I’m the one not in drag) is Redneck Neighbor. He repairs fiber optic cables. He drives a truck filled with tools. He owns lots of camouflaged and brown clothing. He served in our nation’s armed forces. He practices archery in his front yard. He is almost always carrying a sidearm. He has a vehicle named “The Beast.” And he’s quite fetching in blue.
The guy on the far left? Well, that’s my brother-in-law Brian. His hand was uncontrollably drawn to Redneck Neighbor’s, er, water balloon. It should be noted at this point that Brian’s hand was not the only one that found it’s way to the water balloons but that his was the only grab caught on camera. Also, Brian’s actions do not in any way represent those of his employer, his friends, family or his nation...for the most part. I’ll let him explain why he wore an orange wig and a Geisha outfit. If he can.
I was a Native American man. Let me say that again. I, a musician and graduate of Baylor University (that was for you, Melanie) was a man for Halloween. And most other days as well.
And that cowgirl was hands down the most attractive woman I had my picture taken with all night.
Ladies, help me understand something, please.
You know those magazines in the check-out line at Kroger? They almost always have a famous woman on the cover, and then some sensational headline out beside it? These magazines tell us important life-changing stuff about celebrities, like how bad they look in a swimsuit, how unhappy their marriage is, what their addictions are, how much their purse costs, who their husband is sleeping with, etc. I mean, the kind of information you just can’t live without.
And then there are the blogs dedicated to this same kind of tripe too: Tearing down successful female celebrities, and even successful female bloggers. There’s now an entire genre of printed and on-line materials, an entire industry, built around bringing down high-profile females.
And here’s the kicker. Who’s the audience for this stuff? Who’s shelling out billions annually to read bad things about women? Is it their Male Oppressors? Nope. It’s women. Women - some very much against the objectification of and discrimination against their kind - lap this stuff up. Lap. It. Up.
Help me - a man - understand this stupidity.
Those without Perez Hilton in their feed reader and People Magazine beside the toilet may cast the first stone.
Bush has seen poverty. So has Brant. Sophie, Shannon, Anne, Melanie, Mary, David, and Brian too. And they can’t stop talking about it. Because the sights and sounds and smells of it are stuck to our insides like the parasites we brought back with us. But there’s no Cipro to flush the experience of poverty out of us.
Seeing poverty up close is very uncomfortable because it does two things to me every time: It makes me feel things I and my culture try hard to avoid feeling: sadness, guilt, anger, despair, small. And it also makes me need to change. It leaves me wondering about my finances, my priorities, my church, kids, career, theology, politics, neighborhood, diet, time. I always get the nagging feeling, legitimate or not, that perhaps my life needs a little tweaking.
The way I see it we have only four choices when we eturn home to our middle-class (or better) lives with the third world still stuck in our gut.
IGNORE IT:
We can tell ourselves life hasn’t changed. We can tell ourselves we made it home unaffected. We can tell ourselves - and for some broken people this is actually true - that we feel nothing and no response is necessary. There are entire theologies that evolve from this belief that the life of others does not need to bleed over into our own - it’s individualism gone wild. But I believe Martin Luther King, Jr was right when he said injustice anywhere undermines justice everywhere. What I experienced of it “there” is forever part of me “here,” whether I can acknowledge it, feel it, think about it, and deal with it or not. Oddly, folks who choose to ignore what they’ve experienced in the third world, in my experience, think they’re being tough. Ironically, it’s their weakness, their inability to deal with what just happened to them that’s in play.
FLOAT:
You know people like this I’m sure. In a Christian subculture that demands a sermon start with a good joke, that peddles “Your Best Life Now” and shuns topics that aren’t upbeat and positive more often than not, we’re not a people practiced at going deep for very long. Make us walk through poverty for five days and we’re grabbing every joke, movie, sale, buffet we can find to get us back to the surface as quickly as possible. And we’re apologizing profusely for having ever inconvenienced others by talking about those poor kids like we did. My last day in the Dominican Republic, for example, I was tired of being submerged and serious so I posted a stupid cartoon. It wasn’t even funny but I had to try to get some air. I had to.
DWELL:
A few years ago, after traveling to El Salvador, I came home angry and sad and I stayed that way for months. I didn’t want to feel better. I wanted to punish myself for living such a sheltered life before my trip. I wanted to pay off some debt I felt I had to all those children going to bed hungry, all those people I never cared about or knew about before. I felt guilty for even the smallest amounts of pleasure. Laughing at a joke left me feeling insensitive. Making one was even worse. I felt like I was having fun at a funeral, like I had no business enjoying my life while others were losing theirs. I became repellant and when I spoke about the problems in the third world and asked other people to care too, to do something about it, I was not compelling. If caring meant becoming like me, why would anyone want to do that?
INTEGRATE:
Ignoring keeps us and those in the third world from being made better by our experience. Floating keeps our hardest experiences from growing roots and producing fruit in us for a long time to come. Dwelling makes for some great angsty music and cerebral blog posts but leaves us immobilized. Somehow we need to integrate our experiences in the developing world into our world at home.
I’m slowly getting the hang of this. Five trips to the developing world, and I no longer get angry at my children when they don’t like the gift I brought home or say they’re “starving.” And I actually bought some new shoes the day after I returned this time - with no only a little guilt. Baby steps, right?
I want to be a person who can fearlessly experience poverty and pain, who can be affected by it and still be effective in changing it, see death and live a better and wiser life because of it, see needs and still be grateful for having mine met. I don’t want deny the power of what I experience. I don’t want to stay on the surface away from the dark depths of this world. I don’t want to go all emo, get myself a black wardrobe and never smile again. I want to integrate what I’ve seen into my life forever and be better for it.
You can help me do this by simply praying for me and all the bloggers Compassion has taken to Uganda and the Dominican Republic.
