For The Ones Who Burn

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I see you circle up when that Proclaimers song starts to play. You laugh, stomp, and dance for five hundred miles, then five hundred more. There is a childlike cluelessness in your arm-waving lunacy, as if you don’t even realize you’re being watched. You do, of course, but it doesn’t matter. You really don’t care. If dignity was a man, and if he stood in the doorway gasping at your impropriety, no less than three of you would pull at his wrist so he would join the circle.

And amid your lip synced harmonies and air guitar solos, I see it: The desire to Burn like this even when the music stops. To take audacious risks. To live shamelessly. To create fearlessly, as if no hipsters could mock you from corner booths.

What you need to know is this: You already have permission.

You have permission to do what Beuchner says: to meet the world’s deep hunger with your deep gladness. It was for this reason that you were given gladness in the first place. Maybe someone told you that it was selfish to revel in it. That it was more spiritual to sacrifice passion in favor of safe service.

They were wrong. A real sacrifice is never for it’s own sake. There will be lots of “dying to self,” friends, but God delights in His family more than in burnt offerings. He created creators so they would create. He gave you talents to invest.

So don’t bury them. Let your ideas breath on their own. Wield your daydreams like swords, your wit like scalpels. Paint prophecies, sunsets, and hospitals. Sing ballads of love, and healing. Speak beauty in your tales of kings, elves and dwarves.

But beware the trolls, whose cynicism is cyanide.

They criticize, but they do not create. Your energy is too precious to waste on them. Your pearls are too costly to throw at swine.

Look to the skies instead, and find where the Light is shining. Be about your Father’s business. Write your memoir at His breakfast table. You might not see the art in every scene. Not right away. But over time, tragedies will become opportunities. Mud will turn to gold. Dirges will become dances.

And when they do, you will link arms with others who Burn, and together, you will dance a thousand miles, then a thousand more.

Savoring Somersaults

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When a five year old yells out, “Wanna see a somersault?” it is not a question. When he is already dressed like Superman, you had better be watching.

I was watching, from five states away, through my 3.5″ iPhone screen. I watched him plant his head into the carpet, kick up, then fall sideways. Enthusiastic cheering ensued from all sides. My girls tried to take the phone–they just wanted to tell me about their day–but their brothers kept stealing the limelight with their dancing and super hero moves. The phone shook with my wife’s laughter.

I lay there and considered the miracles of technology that allowed me to be with my family, even when I was two thousand miles away. I marveled about how grown up my daughters are, and what a little brute my 2 year old is. But most of all, I thought about apps: “I wonder if there’s a way to record Facetime calls so I can watch this again later.” That thought dominated my capacities for the next 5 minutes.

When I recognized what I was doing, I felt a sting of rebuke. Rather than tasting the moment, I was asking for a to-go box. How utterly silly that was, especially when I could just call them again the next day. Why was I trying to hoard this experience like someone who is about to lose it? It was a small thing, and I might have let myself off the hook, but this is a trend for me.

I try so hard to save things that I forget to savor them.

Case in point: we are a family who takes walks to the park. They usually involve a double stroller, a couple of bikes, and sometimes a tricycle. When we reach the playground, I pull out my phone, and my kids pull out their processed-cheeeeeese-smiles. I follow Jack around the most. “C’mon kid, this is for the blog,” I say. He looks at his feet and tries to duck away from me. “Smile, buddy,” I plead.

“My-o, buddy,” he parrots back.

I squeeze the trigger rapidly and stop when he runs away. I don’t know whether he’s headed for the slide or the bench, because I want to see if I got any good ones first. I flip through them and pass the phone around. “Awww, that’s a good one, dad. He’s almost looking at you,” my girls tell me. And they’re a little interested, I suppose, but they really just want to play lava monster.

When it gets dark, we head for home, where we will relive our playground adventure. I might even throw on a sepia filter. It will go nicely in my digital library with the other thousands of forgotten moments. The best ones will go in a Facebook album, because I’m cool like that.

And years down the road, my kids might even remember that precious evening when we had yet another photo shoot.

Pictures used to prompt memory. Now they can replace it.

I worry about these Instagram filters and Facebook albums. I worry that they could become graven images; sacred stones of remembrance that, by sheer accident, replace the tangible affection with loved ones. I worry that our retina displays are getting between us; that we are living vicariously through our own thumbs.

I’m not assuming that you are the same way. My wife finds joy in the act of taking pictures. Plus, she has a lousy memory, so iPhone photography is a healthy activity. If you’re like her, I applaud you.

But this is about the rest of us. The ones who enjoy gadgetry too much. The ones who take our phones out and flip it between our fingers when we’re idle for more than thirty seconds. For me, technology has become like a nervous tick. I don’t bite my nails, I read the news online. All of it leaves me dryer. More detached from the beauty around me.

And I’m tired of it.

My wife and I went to a Civil Wars concert a couple of summers ago, and I couldn’t wait to hear them sing Poison and Wine. There’s this one part in the final chorus where John Paul and Joy jump the scales together in crystalline harmony. It’s my favorite moment on the entire album. When the song came, I got ready. When the chorus came, I started recording. And when the song wound down, I realized I the moment had flown past me. I couldn’t even remember it.

Oh sure, I had captured it with my hand-held sub-sub-sub par recording device, and I could enjoy that muffled, 20-rows-back, heads-in-the-way rendition ad nauseam. But as for that genuine raw, live beauty… I had missed it. It missed me.

I don’t want to miss live beauty anymore. Especially when it’s doing somersault in my living room.