cerebral discharge

We’re getting ready to take the dogs for a walk.

If you don’t already know, Amy and I have two dogs: Sam (3 year old male, mix Jack Russell and Italian Greyhound) and Donut (4 year old female Beagle).

If you don’t have dogs, you should wish you did. They are like our kids. They have so much personality. I always figured that dogs are just dogs, you know? But they aren’t just another animal. They have tremendous personality.

We bought Sam at a pet store in Zanesville, Ohio. It was a random purchase. We were traveling home from my brother Jason’s wedding in August, 2004, when we found Sam. Amy and I were halfway through a twelve our drive from Maryland back to Indiana where we live. We stopped a a Steak and Shake to get lunch in Zanesville.

Amy and I always look for bookstores whenever we travel. We both love reading (me a little more than she) and we are into all sorts of bookstores. We visited what had to be the worlds biggest bookstore in Columbus, Ohio: a place called “The Book Loft” in Germantown. We usually stop at more than one bookstore on the drive home from Maryland.

We asked our server where a good bookstore was in town, and she directed us to a local mall.  After searching for the mall for at least a half-hour, we finally found it.

We parked on the south side of the mall. The bookstore ended up being a walden books in the far north side of the mall. It was the second-to-last store before the mall ended. We spent maybe 15 minutes browsing through the little mall bookstore before we got bored and wished we hadn’t bothered coming by.

On our way out of the store we started to turn right to walk back through the mall to our car. For some reason I’ll never know, I suddenly felt dissatisfied with our trip until I saw what the last store was. We turned around just to see what the last store was; it turned out to be a Petland.

The plot thickens.

We had talked about getting dogs soon, but we were still in our old apartment (which didn’t allow pets) for another four days before we moved into our current home.

But it doesn’t hurt to browse, right?

So we walked into the pet store and looked around. I had a fresh water fish tank set up at the time, and I was always looking for interesting structures to put into the tank to spice it up. After looking up and down the fish area, we walked down the strip of cages containing all the puppies, just to see what kinds of dogs we might want later.

I always knew I wanted a Beagle. My childhood dog was a Beagle/Blue Tick Hound mix named Reba, and she was a complete sweetheart. My brother Jason (the one who had just gotten married) and I always talked about owning Beagles once we had the opportunity.

We looked at Beagle puppies, but they were in the $400 range, which was way outside of our budget. “Oh well,” we thought, “One day that’d be great.”

It’s time for some background information, and then we’ll come back to our day at the pet store.

Amy has a much younger cousin named Taylor. She was eight at the time, and she had a Beagle pup. When her dad (Uncle Adam, who Amy and her brother Bryan affectionately called “Uncle Stupid” growing up) bought her the dog, he told Taylor that she could pick a name out for the little beagle pup. Taylor picked the name “Donut” because, well, she was eight.

Donut grew up in Uncle Stupid’s small two-bedroom apartment in Portage for her first two years on this planet. She spent a lot of time locked in the large bathroom while Adam was at work, and played with Taylor on the weekends, which she spent with her dad.

After a few years of this arrangement, it was clear that the beagle needed a little bit more room to play. Amy and I, naturally, leapt at the opportunity to take her in. But we weren’t going to be moving into our new home until Friday the 13th of August (the date should have tipped us off to the incredible frustration of owning a 95 year-old house, but we were young and dumb.)

So, back to our other story. Here we are in Zanesville, Ohio, at a Petland, looking at dogs. It was the 8th of August, 2004. Only five days until we move into our new home.

We were considering all sorts of breeds. We knew that we were going to be getting Donut within a week or two, and I loved the idea of starting right out with two dogs. But which breed to choose?

I’d love to say that we decided on a breed and went with it, because that sounds a little classier. But we just started looking at what dogs would be relatively inexpensive instead.

We came across this tiny little white dog in a cage that was marked “$99 only!” He looked a little old to still be in a pet store. He and I made eye contact, and my heart melted a little. Sort of like when you see the starving african kids on tv, and one of them start doing one-handed pushups while his brother dances in the background.

So, yeah, my heart melted a little.

We kept walking, but my mind was on the little white dog.

We looked at a few of them, but after a while, I said “I want to pet the little white one, maybe. He seems cool.” So the girl working the counter got him out for us and put him in one of those little cubicles they have set up for making people fall in love with dogs so they will make impulse purchases and then drive home two-hundred miles and regret it that night when they poop all over the cage (the dog, not the owner…).

So we get him into this cubicle. He immediately starts peeing…everywhere.

“This is the start of a beautiful relationship,” I thought.

And he never really stopped doing that.

Of course, we bought him. Along with the dog, we had to buy a small kennel, which is just a nice word for “cage,” as well as some food, a collar and leash, some treats, a couple food dishes, and what felt like $1200 dollars worth of freaking chew toys.

What started out as a $99 dog purchase turned into a $249 dollar dog&someothershit purchase.

Wait, wait. What started out as a simple trip to a bookstore turned into a $249 purchase.

No. What started out as “I’m kinda hungry, are you?” while driving across Ohio on I70 turned into all of this.

Did I mention that he never really stopped peeing himself when he was nervous?
Oh, did I mention he is the most nervous damned dog I’ve ever seen?

So we get the dog into the car. The poor little guy was so afraid the entire time.

We had to stop every 30 minutes for the rest of the 272.84 mile drive to let him go to the bathroom. What is usually a four hour drive for us took about six. But we loved every minute of it.

As we made our way west on I70 towards Columbus, we talked about names for him. It took us all of five minutes to decide to name him Sam. We had several reasons.

1. My brother Jason’s middle name is “Samuel” and since we were picking him up on the way home from Jason’s wedding, it seemed apropos.

2. We were big Lord of the Rings fans at the time, and our favorite character was by far Samwise Gamgee.

We started calling him “Sammy” rather than “Sam” almost right away. That lasted for about four months, until he felt old enough to be just “sam.”  Every once in a while, we still call him “Sammy.”

I think I mentioned earlier that Sam decided to defecate in his own living space, and to roll around in it during his first night with us.

Amy and I got up after three or four hours of Sam whining and barking all night to find him covered in poo. At 3am, Amy took his kennel outside to hose it down and clean it while I gave Sam his first bath.

Joy.

So the next day I spent a few hours outside with Sam trying to teach him to play fetch and to respond to the commands “come” and “sit.”

I decided that day that “come” means “run around” in dog language. “Sit,” as it turns out, means “pee on something.”

A few days later, we moved into our new home. Uncle Stupid came down with Donut and all of her toys and whatnot.

And that’s how we went from a family of two to a family of four.

Our dogs have so much personality.

Sam pretty much never stopped being nervous. Even today, three years later, we tell visitors “ignore the white one for a few minutes until he gets used to you…unless you want to clean up pee off your shoes.”

He has recently become far more bold than ever. (I think it has something to do with kicking Donut’s ass a few weeks ago when they started bickering over food.)

Sam loves to run from window to window in our house, barking at anything that moves. That’s pretty much all he does these days, other than sleep up on top of the back of the couch.

Donut is a unique individual. We don’t call Donut by her name very often. I call her “Pretty Girl” and Amy calls her “get out of the trash!”

Donut is prissy. Prissy, in case you don’t know the word, means that you don’t have to do a damn thing anyone tells you, and you can just sit there and look pretty and melt daddy’s heart.

Well, Miss Prissy got herself into some trouble one time.

It was in January of 2005, just a few months after we adopted Donut. I was eating chicken wings, sitting on my couch. I got up to give Amy a hug before I left for my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class. Donut nobly took it upon herself to help me out by removing the necessity to throw away my chicken bones. She stuck her nose up onto the coffee table, and snatched a bone off the plate and CRUNCHED it once.

I immediately grabbed her nozzle and tried to get her to open her mouth so I could keep her from killing herself by choking on a sharp, broken chicken bone. In doing so, I slipped one thumb into her mouth to keep it open while I pulled this bone out.

CHOMP.

Blood started to flow so quickly, I thought for sure I would need stitches.

I can’t even tell you how hard I hit Donut right then. (I think I was actually responsible for an earthquake in Guatamala that evening.) But I open hand slapped her across the side literally as hard as I could. And still, she had the bone in her mouth.

But this time, she was afraid of me.

I had to go back into her mouth to get that bone with the blood flowing from my thumb. She didn’t consider biting my hand such a good idea that time. I got the bone out.

Then I kicked her.

I grabbed her by the back of the neck and led (dragged) her to her kennel and shoved her inside, kicking at the door as I closed it.

The blood continued to flow from my hand, far faster than I would have imagined was possible for a little dog bite.

After wrapping my hand up, I came back to her cage. I opened the door and sat on the floor outside of it, waiting for her to come out. For five minutes, she just shook.

Finally, one oh-so-cautious step at a time, she made her way out to me. I held her for three or four minutes and she just let me hold her, occasionally flicking her tongue across my cheek.

That’s the day that Donut and I became friends. Before that, I was just the guy who fed her. Now, I am her daddy. We cuddle every day. When we don’t, we are both sad.

I can’t help but think about that discipline situation often, because I am often feeling as if I am being disciplined by God.

I loved Donut so much that I couldn’t let her chomp on that bone. I had to grab her by the face and invade her world a little bit to keep her safe. And when she bit the hand that saved her life, I let her know what else that hand was capable of.

I believe in a God that cares so deeply about his children that he is willing to stretch to whatever it takes to keep us safe. He was willing to let us bite his hand, even, because of his love for us.

Jesus, being in essence “god”, let go of his divinity for a time and came here. He came here to save our very souls.

And we bit the hell out of his hand.

And still he chose to call us his people. He calls the church his bride.

If God was a distant, far-away God, he would never have sacrificed so much for his people. Only a very real, very present, and very caring God would have given up so much to make us his people.

I love my dogs very much. Amy and I have no children yet, and to us these dogs are like children. But I wouldn’t even consider giving up my life for them. And yet Jesus, even when asking that the burden of dying for us be taken away, expressed his submission to the will of God and gave his life in an excruciating way for our sake.

Do you know that God is so much greater than you or I? The difference between me and my dog doesn’t even come close to the difference between myself and my God.

We can’t explain everything about him. (If we could, how big would he really be, after all?) We were never told that we would be able to understand him completely. But a God who is willing to make such great sacrifice for me is a God I’m willing to serve.

Whether there was any offer of after-life benefits or not, I owe him my life. He made me. I belong to him. I am but a shadow of what he is.

He created the cosmos; I create peanut-butter and jelly sammiches.

I’m learning “Minuet in G” by J. S. Bach on the piano.

I always knew that learning classical piano music would be fun. But I had no idea just how much I would like it.

Even something as simple as a little minuet is bringing me such pleasure right now.  It makes me kind of mad that I didn’t start twenty years ago.

All the little things that I didn’t do when I was a kid sometimes make me disappointed.  I often wish my parents had made me take piano lessons, or dance lessons, or violin lessons, or … etc.

But then I think about how well-rounded I am. I was never pushed or forced into any hobby when I was a child, and because of that I have never exactly excelled in any one discipline. But I have become so well-rounded that I find it very easy to connect with just about anyone. I played soccer, basketball, baseball, and hockey competitively. I played guitar starting at age 12, and I can also handle a bass guitar, drums, and a harmonica pretty well. I have had all sorts of jobs. I can connect with people in all sorts of social groups.

Because I have not spent all my energy in any one area, I have met different people from all sorts of backgrounds, spending time in all sorts of hobbies.

And I love it.

I don’t have to be the best at anything, really. I prefer my current situation. I don’t have the pressure on me to perform as some sort of professional “anything” because I don’t have any ridiculous skill. I am just a good guy, and I’m good at lots of stuff.

I would argue that precisely because I was never forced into any sport or instrument or hobby, I am a happy, well-rounded, comfortable guy.

I feel free from focusing all of my energy into any one thing. (4 f-words in a row there…not THAT f-word…come on!)  I am happy bouncing between hobbies every few months. I don’t even feel particularly drawn back to older hobbies I have. In general, I am interested in staying in shape, stretching my mind, developing some heart (I am not particularly emotional), and influencing people.

I lost my train of thought and I don’t care to find it right now. I’ll leave that to you.

Interpret away.

So I went to bed last night planning on sleeping in until about 9, getting up, working out, and going to play golf. Instead, at about 8am, Amy reminded me that I actually wasn’t going to do any of those things; I had class at 8:30.

I also forgot about my piano lesson on Monday afternoon. About an hour before it, I remembered that I had a lesson, but I had other plans for the afternoon.

I’ve always had a problem with remembering appointments, classes, and meetings. I’m not exactly sure why yet. I’m pretty lucky to be married to a woman like Amy. She doesn’t often forget things.

(Digression: I’m watching “Rocky” right now as I type this. It’s in the big build-up scene where they are playing the main theme music for the movie and he is doing 1-handed pushups and running up the stairs and whatnot. What a cool movie!)

Amy thinks I should buy a PDA to help me get organized, but I think there’s a good chance that I would forget things just as often as I ever did.

I tend to be a “concept” thinker rather than a “detail” thinker. I did poorly in History classes my whole life because of this; I could always remember stories but I could never remember who was in them. I could remember the what happened but not when it happened.

I never had any trouble at all in a math class, though. It was all concept for me. I could see the math and just understand the solution.

I need to make sure that I structure my life in such a way that takes advantage of my strengths and minimizes my weaknesses. I should take on a role which requires me to remember a lot of things. I think that’s why I didn’t enjoy serving food at the Boathouse in Winona Lake (you ought to eat there if you are ever in the area.)

This is why I had difficulty feeling good about my job at Lifeline (managing a group home of teenage boys.) I had so many responsibilities which were simply taking care of details. It just felt like busy-work to me. I didn’t enjoy my job there at all because I was restricted in my ability to vision-cast and I couldn’t really change the program, only maintain it. Yuk.

My job at NHCC is perfect for me because I don’t have a ton of details to take care of. I get to spend a lot of my time thinking big picture. I sit with Scott and plan out some ministry idea. The rest of my time is spent with people. I spend a lot of time with college students and young adults, helping them get plugged into a fulfilling ministry

I don’t feel like typing anymore. I want to play my piano…

I played golf yesterday for the first time this season.

I was shocked at how well we did (me and Scott.) We played the back nine at Raccoon Run, our “home” course. As it was my first round (half-round, really) of the year, I was just hoping to stay under 55.

Scott usually beats me by about 8-12 strokes on 18 holes, so about 4-6 strokes on 9 holes. I assumed I would hit about a 55, and Scott would just shoot just about a 50 or so.

As it turns out, we both played really well through the first 6 holes. I was at 11 over, which is not too bad for me. I lost 3 strokes to the mud on 13, but I did really well on 14 and felt good heading into 16. Scott was at only 4 over after 6 holes, so I was already down by 7. I tend to score well on the last three holes at “The Run” so I expected to break even there and finish 7-8 behind Scott.

The poor guy put four balls off the tee straight into the water on 16, giving up 8 strokes! We ended up even after 16. I teed off on 17, which is the longest par 3 on the course. I took a nice, easy swing with my 8-iron and landed the ball clean in the middle of the green, about 8 feet from the pin. I ended up three-putting for bogey, missing my chance at my first par of the year, but all in all, it was a good hole for me.  I picked up a one stroke lead on Scott heading into 18.

I teed off with a driver on 18, a long par 4. I ended up poking the ball out there just a foot into the very light rough, about 220 yards out. Scott was in the middle of the fairway, about 30 yards back. His second shot stuck right on the green, about 14 feet behind the pin, leaving him a difficult downhill putt.

My second shot was 10 feet wide of the green, and a few feet long, leaving me a tricky chip over a lip and onto a downhill green. I ended up going 6 feet long on my chip, but feeling pretty good about it. I matched Scott’s bogey to take home a 49! Scott finished with a 50 (which would have been a 42 if there was no water on 16!)

Both of us felt really great about how we played, considering that neither of us had played since JULY of last year!

If you don’t play golf, you are missing out on what I think is the coolest sport on earth. It’s a sport in which you don’t have to compete against everyone else. You are just trying to beat the course; You are trying to beat yourself.

Oddly enough, what I like best about playing golf is not the sport itself. It is the opportunity I have to be outdoors, to feel the earth give a little under my step, to see the squirrels running around in our way. It’s the wandering in and out of the woods. It’s looking for my ball and instead finding a turtle (who lived in a little turtle home in my office for 8 months. My ever-so-creative wife named him “Turtle-Man.”)

I also love the opportunity to share a common interest with people who are not quite like me. It’s a common problem for Christ-followers to hardly interact with normal people. Sometimes, we isolate ourselves from “the world” because we fear contamination somehow, as if talking to people who don’t believe what we believe will somehow taint our souls.

If your impression of Christ-followers is “snobby, elitist, narrow-minded, republican, judgmental and ignorant,” then, honestly, you are right about a lot of them.

I have a mission to create a community of Christ-followers that breaks all of those stereotypes. And not for the sake of breaking stereotypes (because that is not really all that noble in and of itself.)

I believe that if we truly understand the business that Jesus was about when he walked on earth, we will realize that he wasn’t at all much like the Christians that you see on TV. He spent so much time around the scum of the earth that the religious people in his community assumed that he was just like them, living in the same horrible lifestyles that they were. He spent his time having dinner at whorehouses, sharing a meal with the ultimate Jewish traitors: tax collectors; He didn’t fit the mold the religious elite expected of him.

I love interacting with people on the golf course for the same reason. I believe that there are billions of people out there who think that “christian” means stuffy/elitist/etc and they never get a chance to look into what Jesus himself was actually about. I want to represent what Jesus represented: love. You can sum up his entire life on earth with that one word.

I want to spend so much time being about Jesus’ mission that religious people assume that I must be doing something wrong.

So….golf huh? Connect with creation; Connect with the Creator; Connect with people. What could be better?

I had another one of those nights. Thankfully, I was able to fall asleep just before 2am.

But I tossed and turned all night.

I don’t think there’s anything in particular that is troubling me this time. I just couldn’t sleep.

But no worries. I plan on having a pretty sweet day, sleepy or not. I have a lot of big picture stuff to figure out at work, which always refreshes me.

I’m watching the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer right now. It’s one of my favorites.

I tend to enjoy movies or books that have a genius/prodigy/savant of some sort as the main character. I am drawn to those types of personalities.

I am not a genius. I am close, but I’m not a genius.

I took an IQ test sometime in my freshman year of high school. I was told my average IQ was somewhere in the high 140’s or low 150’s.

I took a few popular unofficial IQ tests in college, with my scores ranging from 142 to 159.

I was always told that an IQ score of 160 qualified one to be called genius, but I found out 30 seconds ago when double checking these facts, that the number is actually 145.

I was wrong. I am kind of a genius.

SEE! Geniuses can be wrong.

I don’t know if I really have the capacity to figure things out better than most smart people necessarily. I don’t like the idea of thinking higher of myself as a result of some test in which I had to rearrange blocks and recognize patterns. Those things seem kind of trivial, to be honest.

I don’t deserve respect for figuring out some test. I’ve always been good at scoring high on tests. I got a 1450 on my SAT. I tend to “test” very well. But that has more to do with pattern recognition and psychology than anything.

When a teacher gives a multiple choice test, she doesn’t give it in a personality vacuum. She had to actually write the test, which means that she had to decide how to arrange the questions and answers. All I have to do is figure out what they were thinking when writing the test and I can make much better guesses when I am unsure of the answer.

If I’m given a question with five choices, I can usually rule out one or two of them based on my knowledge of the subject. And I can usually pick out two of the answers that just feels/sounds more right to me than the other. So I’m basically down to 2-3 choices. By looking at the patterns of the other answers, I can often determine what the teacher/professor was thinking when they picked this questions/answer to figure out what the answer is.

In a class I am currently taking at Grace Seminary, I have had four exams thus far. I haven’t scored lower than a 96 on any of the four exams (and to be honest, I haven’t studied at all for any of them, and I haven’t taken good notes…and I haven’t listened all that attentively in the class.) Is this because I am super-smart? I don’t think so. I think it’s because I just understand test-taking.

(Digression: It’s raining so hard outside right now! It reminds me of summer rains in south Florida.)

Maybe I’ve written too much already this morning. Yeah, I think I have. I’m going to workout and get a shower now.

Being a genius means very little if you don’t get off your couch before 11am!

No, I’m not a loser. Not in the traditional sense of the word anyways.

I managed to circumvent wordpress’ autosave function and still lose a blog entry that I was working on an hour ago. I don’t really want to get into how it happen. Suffice it to say, there was a large south american gorilla involved, he had too much alcohol, and things got a little touch and go there for a while.

What is more sad than anything is the fact that you will never get to read what I wrote. All the juicy moral nuggets that I penned (keyed) are as lost as Jack, Kate and Hurley.

Good luck sleeping tonight knowing what I wrote.

I’m not at all interested in being unremarkable.

I believe that if I don’t make a major influence on this world, then I am wasting my time. I don’t know if this is true for everyone, but for me, I think it is.

My life will only have meaning if it changes things. If I coast through life, just making a living and having some neat stuff, and the world isn’t influenced by my presence, then it would be better if I hadn’t lived at all. I’m just taking up space, and eating up resources that could have been better consumed by someone else.

This is a sample of some of the goals I have on my 5-year plan:

~ Graduate from Grace Theological Seminary with my M.A. in Local Church Ministry
~ Have articles published in majorly distributed religious magazines/journals
~ Have at least one book project in process, with several others on the chopping block
~ Teach classes either at the college level or in seminars available to church leaders
~ Dunk a basketball

Yeah, that last one is a joke. I haven’t dunked a basketball in seven years, and there is a good chance I never will again!

In a sad sort of way, I see this blog as a step forward in my aspirations of writing and teaching. I expect to hone my skills here, in an informal sort of way, so that I am better equipped to write and teach later.

I’m developing another blog called Emancipating Perception. Our goal over there is to begin to produce articles which deal with contemporary theological issues. Check out the first post for a list of the topics we plan to handle in the first few years. (please excuse my lack of activity over there…in fact, don’t excuse it, because I need to get to work!)

Are you the kind of person who is unsatisfied unless you are influencing all of creation? Consider whether your current path in life is taking towards being an influencer. Scrap your whole life plan if your current direction takes you nowhere. Imagine yourself pushing a big “reset” button, and choose a different path. It’s not easy, but it’s fulfilling.

I’m somewhere in my third month of being a piano player. I am finally comfortable enough with the instrument to feel like a musician again, and not some sort of complete hack.

It’s weird. After 12ish years of playing guitar, I just sort of know the instrument. My hands just find the right chord when I play. A fellow guitarist at my church (with far more years on the gig-stick than I have) complemented me on how I never have to look at my music for the chords. My Taylor (and now my Gibson Les Paul) just feel right in my hands.

Tonight, I jammed on my keyboard and it felt sort of like that. It became an extension of me, just for twenty or thirty minutes.

I created beauty.

I don’t know if God cries, but if he does, I bet he did when he made the world. There’s so many beautiful things, so many mountains and trees and animals. I bet it felt like a harmony when he put man and woman together. Maybe not a perfect harmony, but at least like an A2 feels like when I play that chord.

Some kind of beautifully dissonant relationship exists between men and women.

Can you imagine what it must have been like to see the world a few thousand years ago before humans traipsed their way through, smogging up the air, cee-oh-too’ing their way across town instead of walking (not smelling the freshly-cut grass from inside their cars) and digging mines and gravel pits?

I bet looking at the world back then was like hearing a symphony.

Anyways, it feels good to be a musician again. I’m sure I’ll have lost it by morning.