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Who Am I? #2
“You need to write a song!” These words coming in Messenger from a nephew startled me. “Who? I don’t write songs!” I wrote back. “Yes,” he replied. “You.” He proceeded to give me some of his reasons and suggestions. Both he and his young son have been involved in bands and gigs. They were looking for words that my grand-nephew could put to music for his next gig at The Hard Rock Cafe in their city. Gazing at Steve’s Facebook picture I tried to see the little boy I once knew. Yes, behind the long gray hair and the white beard I still could see a semblance of that little…
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Authenticity: The “Real I” and the “Real Thou”
At fourteen, a few days before I turned fifteen, I had a crash-bang encounter with the Real Thou…and He spoke directly to the Real I. Having been chosen at the last moment to replace someone on our Youth For Christ Bible quiz team, I had crammed for a week, trying to memorize scripture that we would cover in quizzes against other teams from our North Atlantic District. We were going to represent our group at a large convention in Ocean City, New Jersey. This was a big deal…and I was scared. By the time we got to Ocean City, I was not feeling well. I got worse as the…
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Authenticity: From “Me” to “Who?”
Children don’t know anything but transparency and authenticity. Their freedom to be themselves is quite compelling. It is only later that they begin to adapt to the social pressures in this fallen world. I remember in my wise four-year-old mind becoming aware that the thoughts coming in the form of ideas or conversation with others were actually coming from me. I remember the awe I would feel when I would whisper to myself, “I am Me.” Allowing the thought to reach into my very soul, I was overwhelmed with a sense of my own identity, and I marveled at this reality. But when a child is slowly growing through…
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No Pretension
Authenticity. Reality. I think that was what drew us to our farm. Yes, it was badly run down. The farm had seen a lot of living. It had been used to raise chickens and pigs, to grow crops, to supply milk, to allow a tiny family of three with little outside income to live comfortably for years. The eighty-five year old farmer had told us when we noticed the huge stacks of firewood around the house, “In the winter I stay snug as a bug in a rug.” The tiny house had been a shelter, a place of love, heartache, joy, loss. No pretense, no desire to impress, just…
